I’ve recently finished reading Napoleon: A Life, a well researched book by Andrew Roberts about the full and well travelled life of Napoleon Bonaparte, his rises and falls, and glimpses of what made the famous soldier-statesman tick. These are my main takeaways:

Leadership

Spirit de Corps

• “A general’s principle talent consists in knowing the mentality of the soldier and in winning his confidence. And, in these two respects, the French soldier is more difficult to lead than any other. He is not a machine to be put in motion but a reasonable being that must be directed”’ - Napoleon
• “More battles are lost by loss of hope than loss of blood” - Napoleon
• “It is astonishing what power words have over men” - Napoleon, speaking of the 32 demi brigade, who had his words “I was tranquil, the brave 32nd demibrigade was there” embroidered in large gold letters on its colours, which further increased their courage
• Napoleon found it essential to keep his troops moral high, which he actioned upon in different ways:
  • Napoleon was known to give electrifying pep talks (harangues) before battles
    • “One must speak to the soul. It’s the only way to electrify the men” - Napoleon
  • Napoleon had a strong sense of identification of soldier with his regiment’s corps
  • Ordered for plays and songs to be held for the troops, gave medals, made sure there was pride his platoons
  • Upon receiving petitions from his men (such as on the subject of increasing their pensions), he would act on them immediately
  • Napoleon held small gestures like removing a medal of honor from him and giving it to a soldier that he observed a particularly valiant behaviour
  • He joked around with troops, reminiscing on war stories with veterans. He would make sure to share his wine with the sentries. He was accessible. Small things perhaps, but helped build morale and breed devotion.
  • Napoleon references to the ancient world made their troops see that they were part of a larger whole, a larger part of history. Their lives, and if it comes to it, their deaths, mattered.
  • Napoleon told his troops how much their family and neighbours would honour their valiant behaviour

Leadership style

• “[A leader’s] youth is almost indispensable in commanding an army” - Napoleon
• Napoleon was first frowned upon by his peers when being given control of the army of Italy, near to his marriage with Josephine. They were not impressed by him showing unimpressive pictures of his wife, and his small stature. But as soon as he started talking about operations, logistics, asking for info and laying out the plan, they immediately saw Napoleon “grow”. Competence and diligence, above appearances.
• Napoleon’s planning and concentration of forces were crucial to his consecutive battle victories
• It was an intense environment, but his staff generally admired him. He was polite, and would forgive small mistakes
• “Fear and uncertainty accelerate the fall of empires: they are a thousand times more fatal than the dangers and losses of an ill-fated war” - Napoleon
• Julius Caesar once faced a mutiny that forced him to draw back. Caesar allowed them to be released, but addressed them as mere civilians, rather than soldiers. He won them back with this gesture. Like Julius Caesar, Napoleon was sure to admonish the troops that were under expectations.
• To his troops Napoleon was lavish in praise, but to his family, ambassadors and ministers he was acerbic. Severe to his officers, kind to the men.
• Napoleon instructed officers to hold 4 to 8 hour reviews, where the group, weapons and drills were inspected. It made soldiers used to being ready and weaponed, and showed them that their leader was attentive and cared about them.
• “You don’t need wit during times of war. You need to be precise, display backbone and simplicity” - Napoleon to Jerome, who he placed as king of Westphalia

Leading masses

• “The masses should be directed without them being aware of it”. Napoleon to Fouché
• When Napoleon centralized power and appointed the prefects, the regime was turned into a meritocratic system, where officials would be promoted according to their performance. They would need to provide statistical data and annual tours of their departments, and Napoleon made sure they were properly trained.
• “The men who have changed the world never succeeded by winning over the powerful, but always by stirring the masses. The first method is a resort to intrigue and only brings limited results. The latter is the course of genius and changes the face of the world.” - Napoleon on St Helena
• Napoleon mentioned that a nation is always what you had wit to make of it. Triumph of faction, parties, divisions, was the fault of those in authority only. No people are bad under a good government, just as troops are bad under good generals. As such, Napoleon mentioned the directory men brought France down to the level of their own blundering and were degrading her, and she was beginning to repudiate them
• After a decade of revolution, many French men were desperate for leadership, and recognized that the parliamentary process inhibited that, as did a constitution that was next to impossible to amend. So they were willing to see their representative government to be temporarily suspended, an opening that Napoleon took advantage of.
• “Confidence from below, authority from above”- Bonapartist dictum
• “Chouannerie and the émigrés are skin diseases, terrorism an internal malady” - Napoleon
• “If you treat the mob / rabble with kindness, these creatures fancy themselves invulnerable. If you hang a few, they get tired of the game, and they become submissive and humble as they ought to be” - Napoleon when defending Place de la Concorde

Governing

• States are ever more vulnerable as when they are attempting to reform themselves
• Upon unification of law codes in France, Napoleon recurrently asked: “is it fair? Is it useful?”
  • “One should not overburden with over-detailed laws. Law must do nothing but impose a general principle. It would be vain if one were to try every possible situation.” - Napoleon
• Because of labor shortages caused by constant war, wages increased by 25% during his 15 year rule.
• High inflation brings forth the opportunity for having a newcomer governing, because people are desperate for solutions, and will reward anyone who brings forth a solution. As seen with the arrival of Bonaparte to France in 1799, where inflation was high (price of bread was astronomical, but directors were immune since they paid themselves a salary linked to the value of 30k pounds of wheat). Bonaparte was seen as being a good top down zealot autocratic solution that placed a constitution with strong executive power with central control.
• Napoleon’s marriage to Marie Louise, the daughter of the Austrian leader Francis, was strategic. For some time it coerced the Austrian leader to not join the Prussians and Russians, which would reduce Napoleon’s chances for a victory

Central command and control

• “Nothing is so important in war, than undivided command” - Napoleon
• Dangers of overbearing concentration of power with a single point of failure:
  • His controlling nature likely stifled initiative. Several of his leads were only good in his presence, but without him present, they would falter. Dupont was one of them
  • The allies successful strategy was to only attack Napoleon’s lieutenants, but avoid confrontations with Napoleon himself. Napoleon, by not scaling himself properly, caused this situation where only where he was present could the army thrive. Everywhere else, it got defeated. A big lesson.
  • Choosing the right people is crucial:
    • Some of the biggest blunders Napoleon made were about the placement of people in the wrong positions. Like Ney on a big battalion, sul on a more administrative position, and another one as war minister when he should be in the battle of Waterloo. It’s very important to play to people’s strengths
    • Like Julius Caesar, Napoleon was betrayed and placed in bad position by people who previously wronged him but he didn’t persecute, like Talleyrand and Fouché, who were openly planning a cue against Napoleon’s empire and negotiating peace terms in 1814.
  • During the Russian campaign, he was regularly lied to by his senior officers, since no one wanted to be Napoleon’s line of fire. There is an example of a deception that involved 3 of them, one of them being Murat. Napoleon was once very close to his men, but in this campaign, where he needed their support the most, he was often lied to. For example on the number of provisions available for men, 10 days were communicated, when they were close to none.

Leanness

• Napoleon’s core system allowed him to be quick and flexible, living off the land instead of relying on vulnerable supply lines. This flexibility allowed it to outmaneuver the enemy and exploit its slowness.
  • This leanness is comparable to what fast moving startups do to adapt to new challenges, by reorganizing their organization quickly and effectively, allowing it to change course very quickly, and concentrate power of the crucial aspects of the business
  • As a contemporary counter-example, Kmart was not able to move fast and adapt, leading to its bankruptcy after Wallmart innovated with a store logistics network design that made it much more efficient. Kmart needed to have change fast and efficiently for that to happen, but instead just kept doing the same, with mostly superficial changes like barcode scanners that were did not yield the same impact because it did not have an evolved network to leverage them

Behaviour

Energy. Urgency. Moving fast.

• His father died at 38 when Napoleon was 15 years old. Napoleon’s urgency, drive and boundless energy might be partly explained by that, in that he foreseen that his life too, would be short.
• Napoleon was energetic and injected immediate energy wherever he went. Everything around Napoleon happened at a tremendous pace. He hated wasting a minute in a day. Napoleon read newspapers or had texts read to him while he was in a hot bath, being shaved, or in the carriage with his wife Josephine.
  • “If you want to dine well, dine with Cambacérès. If you want to dine badly, dine with Lebrun. If you want to dine quickly, dine with me” - Napoleon to a general
    • Napoleon often took only 10 minutes to eat, except for family suppers on Sundays, where he might spend half an hour.
    • Everything in his palace revolved around work. He dined when he could.
    • He never drank spirits, and there are no examples of him being drunk.
  • Napoleon also didn’t take the time in his love making: “the matter was over within 3 minutes”
• “If you make war, wage with energy and severity. It’s only means of making it shorter and less deplorable for mankind” - Napoleon
• “Impatience” is the word that appears when other people portray Napoleon
• In the beginning, he moved fast with his armies because he didn’t have resources to do sieges. That need led to rapid movement that caught the enemy off balance. He did have many problems just having his men fed and shod:
  • He had a consistent concern to have his men well shod, such that he ordered Prussians to exchange their boots with the french, since they would not be needing then anyway
  • He sent multiple letters requesting for supplies, specially footwear for soldiers
    • He likely didn’t say that an army marches on his stomach, but surely knew that they marched on their feet
    • He had a chief of staff writing his dictations that was crucial. He transposed his rapid fires and raw wishes into well defined, polite and diplomatic plans and commands. He was so proficient that he managed to convince his wife to share a chateau with his mistress, and vice versa.
• “Energy, energy!” - Napoleon to his brother, who he made king and found to lack energy and drive
• “Activite, activite, vitesse. Je me recommended a Vous” (translated to “activity, activity, speed. I’m counting on you”) - Napoleon postscript of a message to his lieutenant

Preparation

• Napoleon would take care to know the terrain, topology and other details of the places he would fight or invade. Before the Russian campaign, he ordered for very detailed descriptions to be made of the territory. Everything from road length to depth of river. Every possible detail.
• He was more keen to glean information directly from the place, rather than hear its dignitaries’ speeches. As an example, he once left a dignitary haranguing to the air as Napoleon moved to his next destination.

Seizing the opportunity

• “Winning is not enough if one doesn’t take advantage of success.” - Napoleon
• “All great events hang by a single thread. The clever man takes advantage of everything, neglects nothing that may give him some added opportunity; the less clever man, by neglecting one thing, sometimes misses everything.” - Napoleon
• “I’ve destroyed the Austrian army simply by marches” - Napoleon
• There is immense value in initiative and making sure your advantage is not lost and you don’t need to cross the same bridge twice. After the defeat in Russia, the army’s weak position exposed Napoleon to allied assaults, forcing him to lose territories. When trying to get them back, the allies used the tactics previously used by Napoleon against the allies, making them work against him. If Napoleon would have kept those territories and army, then he wouldn’t have needed to be in this very tough spot.
  • As a learning, do a decisive victory, and don’t take it for granted and leave it to chance. Keep your advantage, stay lean, don’t allow bloat to creep into the organization, don’t get too comfortable in a high stakes environment. Past performance gains don’t mean you’ll get the same results in the future, using the same strategy and tactics.
  • Napoleon also made the mistake of not keeping his forces concentrated, contradicting his own war maxims, and allowed for lesser political concerns to take over, like focusing on taking over Berlin to punish Prussia which was of low strategic value
  • The corp system that Napoleon introduced was replicated, and his tactics were exploited and studied by enemies, losing one of his main leverages.

Taking risks. Decisiveness.

• “If the art of war was only the art of not risking anything, glory would be prey to mediocrity. We need a full triumph!” - Napoleon
• ”(…) If one is not ready to take risks when the time is ripe, one ends up doing nothing” - Napoleon on Waterloo
• “When the house is crumbling, is it time to busy oneself in the garden? A change here is indispensable” - Napoleon to Mamond
• “There is no immortality but the memory that is left in the minds of men. To have lived without glory, without leaving a trace of existence, is not to have lived at all.” - Napoleon

Persist, don’t drop the ball

• “The first qualification of a soldier is fortitude under fatigue and privation. Courage is only the second; hardship, poverty and want, are the best schools for a soldier.” - Napoleon war maxim
• “A general-in-chief should ask himself frequently during the day: What should I do if the enemy’s army appears now in my front, or on my right, or my left? If he has any difficulty in answering these questions, his position is bad, and he should seek to remedy it.” - Napoleon war maxim
• “I have never been seduced by prosperity; adversity shall find me superior to its blows” - Napoleon
• “Posterity would never have seen the measure of your spirit, if it had not seen it in misfortune” - Napoleon
• “True heroism consists of being superior to the ills of life, in whatever shape the may challenge to the combat” - Napoleon (1815)

Continuous improvement

• He was not embarrassed by his initial little knowledge he had about the details of general administration. He asked many questions, asked for the definition and meaning of the most common words, he provoked discussion, and kept it going until his opinion was formed
  • “Sometimes in these discussions I have said things that a quarter of an hour later I have found to be all wrong. I have no wish to pass for being worth more than I really am” - Napoleon
  • “He brought to the discussions a clarity, a precision, a strength of reason and range of views that astonished us” - consulate about Napoleon
  • He quickly taught himself to ask short questions that demanded direct answers like “How far along are we with the Arc of Triumph?” or “Will I walk on the Seine bridge upon my return?”
  • Napoleon allowed strong discussions to be held in the counsel because he believed to be the strongest debater in the whole conseil. He allowed himself to be attacked because he knew how to defend himself.
  • Napoleon liked to talk in a familiar way, was fond of discussions but didn’t impose his opinions, and made no pretension of superiority, either of intelligence or rank.

Over ambition

• “One must never ask of fortune more than she can grant” - Napoleon on Saint Helena
• One needs to know when to stop. Know when you’ve reached your peak, stop, and maintain your position (which is incredibly hard by itself):
  • Relying on fortune is a risky endeavour. Napoleon was lucky several times. Once you are lucky too many times, you might come under the impression that fortune is on your side. But the more times you roll the dice, the higher the chances that you’ll get a disastrous result
  • His dream to be like Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great blinded him, as was seen in his pursuits in Egypt, that he was fascinated there because Alexander the Great was there. Different times, different factors come into play.
• Napoleon could have held his empire at its peak, and only he could bring it down. He had an army to fight off the Russians at the border, and could have French limited territorial expansion. The downfall was self-inflicted.
  • Invading Spain was a blunder. He should have kept her as an allie, to avoid France being surrounded on three fronts.
  • Napoleon had the entire Europe at his control. Instead of a Russian invasion, he could have held the borders and defended them as needed. Even if he had to abdicate some territories, he should have stopped there, and tried to make peace with Spain and Britain, and end the continental blockade.
  • When the Russian invasion was failing, Napoleon should have backtracked from going to Moscow. It was greedy to expect that Alexander I, Emperor of Russia, would accept peace.
  • As the empire was on its decline, Napoleon was given the opportunity to sue for peace by Metternich, by losing Warsaw and other territories, but would still hold Italy and avoid further battles and men being killed, and having France’s borders reduced to even less than was proposed in this offer.
• As a consequence of the empire’s defeats in Russia and Leipzig, and subsequent invasion of France:
  • The patriotic republican anthems (that Napoleon had previously banned) no longer worked. The French surrendered without a fight. With a town surrendering to a single horseman for example.
  • “Public opinion is a mysterious and invisible power, to which everything must yield. There is nothing more fickle, more vague, or more powerful; yet capricious as it is, it is nevertheless much more often true, reasonable, and just, than we imagine” - Napoleon, upon the allied invasion to France

Complacency

• Upon the Russian invasion, the empire’s army structure seemed to show several signs of complacency:
  • When invading Russia, one of the generals brought a personal chef, fancy clothes, Napoleon HQ had 50 carriages carried by 650 horses, had a multi national army ordered by his step son to lead an important maneuver that should have been done by an experienced general. Because it was such a big army, the Russians did not want to counterattack, leading Napoleon to stretch his supply lines. This compromised speed and leanness (which was a crucial piece of Napoleon’s war tactics), having an immense cost to sustain this vast army.

Perception. Deception.

• Data manipulation:
  • It’s a principle of war that you should over-inflate the communicated number of available units, and this practice got so out of control that Napoleon snapped at a poem sincerely lauding him for defeating armies thrice his size, which was actually true since he only 30 thousand units. The problem was that it did not align with his inflated battle reports where he communicated to have a 300 thousand unit army.
  • He would pepper his troops addresses with statistics and their achievements.
• “We must speak to the eyes” - Napoleon on luxuries, in its imperial days
• “My health is very good” - repeated at exhaustion by Napoleon on his closing remarks, even when his health was not the best.
• “Truth is so precious that it deserves to be protected by bodyguards of lies” - Churchill
• “The historian, like the orator, must persuade. He must convince.” - Napoleon
• On the day of the Coup of 18 Brumaire, there was an extraordinarily early meeting that the objecting elders didn’t know about where highly consequential decisions were made in the presence of elders that were believed to not compromise the coup. Extraordinarily “extraordinary” early meetings are one of the oldest tricks in politics.

Religion and War

Religion

• “Wishing to be an atheist does not make you one” - Napoleon
• “If I had to choose a religion, the sun as the universal giver of life would be my god.” - Napoleon
• “In religion I do not see the mystery of the Incarnation, but the mystery of the social order. It associates with Heaven an idea of equality that keeps rich men from being massacred by the poor…Society is impossible without inequality, inequality intolerable without a code of morality, and a code of morality unacceptable without religion.” - Napoleon on the social value of religion
  • Napoleon viewed the idea of god to be useful to maintain good order, to keep men in the path of virtue and to keep them from crime. To robbers and galley slaves physical restrictions to be imposed. To enlightened people, moral ones.
• Napoleon believed the major problem with Christianity was that it did not excite courage, since it took too much care to go to heaven, and that christianity and its promises of afterlife detract men from this life, diminishing its practical value.
• Napoleon mentioned that no man is considered just and virtuous if he doesn’t know where he came and where he is going. Simple reason cannot guide them in this matter. Without religion, one continuously walks in darkness.
• “We should not deprive the poor merely because they are poor, of that which consoles their poverty. Religion is a kind of vaccination which, by satisfying our love for the marvelous, keeps out of the hands of charlatans and conjurers.” - Napoleon, about priests charging more than 6 francs per funerals
• “Fighting is a soldier’s religion; I never changed that. The other is the affair of women and priests. As for me, I always adopt the religion of the country I am in.” - Napoleon
• “The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful.” - Edward Gibbon

Cruelties of war

• “To cannon, all men are equal” - Napoleon
• In the battle of Borodino in Russia near Moscow, the combined killed and wounded were equivalent to a fully laden jumbo jet crashing into a 6 square miles area every 5 minutes, during the 10 hours of the battle.
• Ahmed Jezzar, also known as “The Butcher”, was known for his cruel punishments, such as nailing horse shoes in the feet of enemies. At the same time, Ahmed also enjoyed doing origami for his guests.
• Half a million men were lost by France after the Russian war, and Russia had 200k killed and about 300k wounded.

The Person

Who was Napoleon

• Napoleon as a name was not common at the time, but not unheard of.
• Napoleon was protective and concerned about his family. His siblings went on to be kings, nobles and leaders appointed by him, which several times proved to be unfruitful.
• His mothers’ father was the governor of Ajaccio, and his father Carlo was close to Pasquale Paoli, who fought for the independence of Córsega.
• Napoleon attended the royal nursery, because his father applied to be noble and sat on the royal assembly.
• Napoleon was well read and voracious reader of biographies and history. At age 9, he apparently read the 800-page La Nouvelle Héloïse, a novel about love and redemption, and said ‘It turned my head.’
• Napoleon had a disdain for human rights, free press, equal outcome, and parliamentarism. He was favorable towards central power, order, education and military values.
• Napoleon took a leave from the military to resolve the debts from his father that threatened to bankrupt his mother.
• Nomenclature was important for Napoleon, and renamed several places. For example, Place Louis XV to Place de la Concorde.
• Focus on the important things: Napoleon was excellent at prioritization, dealing immediately with urgent matters
• In times of difficulty, he was a master of his nerves. He had immense self control, he trained himself to not let his emotions betray themselves. This was seen at the time as a classical virtue
• Towards his later years, Napoleon was more lethargic and less performant, likely because of ailments like hemorrhoids that likely were the reason for him to not ride horseback in Waterloo. He had a potbelly at that point, was overweight, and was less energetic, and didn’t have many proper nights sleep.
• In Kalinengrad, he joked that he had found a new element: earth, wind, fire, earth, water and, mud
• “The soul wears out the body” - Napoleon

Relationships

• “Love is the occupation of the idle man, the amusement of a busy one, and the shipwreck of a sovereign.” - Napoleon, after Désirée rejected him.
• “A soldier must remain faithful to his wife, but must only think to return to her when there is nothing else to do” - Napoleon
• “The prettiest women are the hardest to make love to” - Napoleon on the way to Saint Helena
• “The French are like women: you must stay away from them for too long” - Napoleon, after the retreat from Russia.
• The only letters he did not dictate were the ones to his wife and mistresses, and when he needed to sign a document.
• Napoleon was ruthless. He divorced Josephine because he didn’t have a male heir yet, and no sons. And he didn’t want to fall into a situation like Caesar or Alexander the Great, where upon their death, everything descended into chaos. It was the best for his dynasty, and for France, in his view
  • Napoleon divorced from Josphine, who received 2 million francs per year, two properties, and was allowed to keep the title of empress. “She wept, but she took”
  • Although it was a grandson from Josephine that would become the next emperor of France, and her direct descendents today sit on the thrones of several countries. Napoleon’s, held none.
• A friend of Josephine was known to have slept with so many ministers that she was considered government property.
• Josephine only disclosed her debts when she had Napoleon’s ring around her finger.
• Napoleon’s relationships were brittle. When Napoleon started to fall and France was invaded, Marie Louise (his wife at the time) seemed to be in denial, only worried about futile matters and etiquette, in an attempt to drown out the earthquake outside, and the clash between Napoleon and her father (the leader of Austria). Also, Joseph, Napoleon’s brother, was wooing her, and eventually she had relations with another man later on.
  • Talleyrand, previously Napoleon’s foreign minister, sent a letter to Alexander from Russia saying that Napoleon’s Paris defenses were weak, which was a decisive piece of information that led to the last kneel of Napoleon’s defenses. Talleyrand had already proved to not be trustworthy by Napoleon, yet no decisive reprimand at the time was made by Napoleon.