Napoleon could’ve been the proud owner of the very first submarine, or he could’ve commanded the first steam-powered warship. If Napoleon hadn’t literally missed those two boats, we might all be speaking French.
Woulda. Coulda. Shoulda.
Most people believe attacking Russia in the winter was Napoleon’s undoing. It was an undeniable failure, but I disagree. Sometimes it’s that one unthinking moment, that one terrible, horrible, no good, very bad decision that truly sinks us. Such is the case with Napoleon. Here’s what I believe led to the emperor’s ruin.
Napoleon itched to conquer the Brits. In his quest to take over Britain, he laid plans worthy of any evil genius.
While researching background for my novel, A School for Unusual Girls, I discovered that Napoleon had plans to dig a tunnel under the channel. If that didn’t work out, he considered launching an aerial attack using hydrogen powered air balloons. Airships. I’m not kidding. Sounds like a steampunk plot, doesn’t it?
He also had the idea to build a gigantic wind powered barge—a huge raft—as big as our modern aircraft carriers, to ferry his troops across to Dover.
Grandiose schemes?
You bet. But here we are 210 years later and the Chunnel, which didn’t open for traffic until 1995, is built in the exact location my favorite evil genius intended to build it.
Here’s a peek at what his drawing board may have looked like…
Clearly Napoleon was a man ahead of his time. He had a team of engineers and commissioned scientists from other countries to design weaponry and attack vessels. Does this remind you of some of the James Bond super villains? One of Napoleon’s foreign scientists included the brilliant American inventor, Robert Fulton. Yep, the very same Robert Fulton who invented the steamship.
Therein lies the rub. When Fulton presented his design for a steam-powered warship to Napoleon, the emperor scooted back from the table and had a Pinky and the Brain moment. He stood, hand on the hilt of his sword, and said, “What, sir? You would make a ship sail against the wind and currents by lighting a bonfire under her decks? I pray you excuse me. I have no time to listen to such nonsense.”
That was Napoleon’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad mistake. And here you thought Alexander had a bad day.
If Napoleon had built those steam-powered ships he could’ve swiftly and easily crossed the channel and England would now be a French speaking province. Mind you, I’m very glad things worked out as they did. But why? Why did this man with so much foresight and genius reject Fulton’s amazing inventions?
Robert Fulton also designed a submarine for the French. Can you believe it? A genuine submarine. Guess what he named it… the Nautilus.
I bet your mind leapt straight to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, right? Jules Verne (another of my beloved geniuses) named his fictional craft after Fulton’s actual submarine as a tribute to his fellow scientist. After all, Verne was a man of science long before he fell in love with writing fiction.
Fulton’s amazing mini-sub was an incredible feat of engineering for the time. It moved through the water using a hand-crank propeller. He tested it in the Seine. Three men stayed inside under twenty-five feet of water for more than an hour. They were able to travel faster than four men rowing on the surface. And get this—he even built a torpedo—a torpedo that in that same test blasted apart the hull of an abandoned ship.
The idea of trying to sneak up on their enemies underwater excited Napoleon’s engineers. They oversaw Fulton’s development of the Nautilus. Unfortunately, later in the year, when Napoleon came to watch another test on the Seine, the Nautilus leaked.
Exasperated, Napoleon decided Fulton was a fraud and sent him packing.
Naturally, the British were delighted to invite Fulton to design weapons for them. Although, it wasn’t until he went back to America that the inventor found financial backing to build his steam-powered warship, a warship that could’ve been Napoleon’s.
Back to our question…
Here’s Napoleon, a guy who thinks he can conquer the world, and nearly does. He dreams of flying hot air balloons to attack his British nemesis. He designed a gigantic barge big enough to carry a legion across the channel. He even considered digging a tunnel under the ocean.
But what, he can’t see the value of a steamship… it begs the question. Why?
As you may have guessed, I’ve got a theory. I call it: the problem of two small super geniuses in this crazy, mixed-up world theory.
Napoleon fascinates me. I love working with him as the background conflict in the Stranje House novels. He is the quintessential super villain: suave, rich, a phenomenally compelling leader and a brilliant strategist. Simply put, Napoleon Bonaparte is a science-fiction-worthy genius with an unfortunate case of megalomania.
Think of him like Lex Luthor, only played by somebody super cool like, say, Billy Zane, except short.
When Napoleon walked into a crowded room, he was used to being the biggest, baddest dude there. Well, scratch that, he was short. But one thing Napoleon knew for sure, he was the smartest guy in the room. Oh, who am I kidding? He was used to being the most intelligent guy in all of France—maybe the whole world.
It didn’t matter if he was short and balding, he was the all-powerful emperor of France and the brightest thinker in Europe.
Enemies cowered. His lieutenants bowed low. Women swooned.
Enter Robert Fulton, a good-looking, likeable guy, sporting a head full of dark curly hair and a gutsy can-do attitude. Unless I miss my guess, Fulton had a pretty clear notion that he was one of the brighter candles in the candelabra.
He had ideas. Big ideas. Exciting ideas. He was going places. Doing things.
I doubt a fellow like Robert Fulton tiptoed around the emperor’s temperamental ego. Fulton was excited about his inventions, eager to discuss their potential, and confident of their worth.
Take two geniuses, add a spoonful of jealousy, a dollop of over-zealousness, a heaping cup of super ego, give it a vigorous stir and stand back while it erupts.
And there you have it: the burr under Napoleon’s proverbial saddle, the reason he made his terrible, horrible, no good, very bad mistake.
There was no way Napoleon was going to allow someone with as much genius as Robert Fulton to stand on his stage. His ego wouldn’t allow it. Thus, he made one of the most crushing decisions of his otherwise strategically amazing career.
I’m so intrigued by the personality clash between these two men that I wrote Robert Fulton’s fictional nephew into book two of my Stranje House novels. And of course, Napoleon looms large in the background. Why not? He was an irresistible super villain.
The article was originally published in June 2015.
Kathleen Baldwin has written several award-winning traditional Regency romances for adults, including Lady Fiasco, winner of Cataromance’s Best Traditional Regency, and Mistaken Kiss, a Holt Medallion Finalist. The Stranje House series—A School for Unusual Girls, Exile for Dreamers, and Refuge for Masterminds—is available from Tor Teen. She lives in Texas with her family.
Except for the height, I can’t help but think of parallels to certain present-day leaders and their own reactions to people who challenge them as the smartest guy in the room.
Napoleon wasn’t short, he was a bit above average height. The “short” idea comes from British propaganda and pictures of Napoleon surrounded by old guard soldiers who were specifically picked for their great height.
As I understand it, Napoleon wasn’t actually short:
http://history.howstuffworks.com/history-vs-myth/napoleon-short.htm
Please stop endorsing falsehoods: Fulton did not invent the steamship; that was done by John Fitch and James Rumsey (https://www.asme.org/engineering-topics/articles/history-of-mechanical-engineering/the-genesis-of-the-steamboat) over 20 years before Fulton thought of the Clermont.
@1: Another falsehood: Napoleon was not particularly short; he was probably about 5 ft 6 in tall; the French equivalent of the inch, la pouce,e was 27.1 mm, or about 7% larger than the English inch (25.4 mm). That Nelson was peculiarly short was also a falsehood.
More in the “Napoleon as evil genius line,” I like to think what would happen had Napoleon been resurrected and placed in charge of the French Army in Jan 1940. Hitler would have been suing for peace as the French Army occupied Berlin in early June in response to the German invasion in May.
I see the height has been covered. It should also be noted that the torpedo was closer to a mine. It was an explosive charge placed against the hull with a fuse that gave the submarine time to get away before the explosion. It was not the (self)propelled device the word torpedo conjures in the mind of a modern person.
While the subs might have complicated a close blockade, I don’t think they’d have won the war.
@@.-@ I don’t think a Napoleon-level leader would be necessary for that.
Speaking of Napoleon in SF, he turns up in Fred Brown’s story “Come and Go Mad,” in an odd way. Napoleon costumes also turn up in “The Prisoner” as I recall.
Napoleon is my hero. I feel he is one of the best dictators in history of the World.
Jules Verne, while he was interested in science and did copious amounts of research for his novels, was not a scientist. He was trained as a lawyer but then became a playwright and short-story writer with his first novel published when he was 35.
As an avowed bonapartist, I find offense in your description of the Emperor!
It should also be noted that the torpedo was closer to a mine. It was an explosive charge placed against the hull with a fuse that gave the submarine time to get away before the explosion. It was not the (self)propelled device the word torpedo conjures in the mind of a modern person.
In fact, this is what “torpedo” meant for most of the 19th century – it meant a mine. When Admiral Farragut cried “damn the torpedoes – full steam ahead!” at Mobile Bay in 1864, he was talking about tethered mines. And before that, “torpedo” meant a fish – an electric ray, which lurks around in shallow murky water and can give you a nasty shock if you tread on it, from which Fulton got the idea for naming his charge. And that in turn comes from the same root as the word “torpid”, either because torpedo rays just lie around all the time, or because if you tread on one you’ll just lie around for a bit.
The submarines would have been of limited use anyway, and would have been no use at all against the close blockade. If you need to paddle up next to an enemy ship and attach a charge to it, that is simply not going to be possible in the open sea. You will need to do it while the ship is at anchor. That’s what the British did to the Tirpitz and the Italians to the Valiant.
Now, you know the important thing about the British fleet during the Napoleonic wars? It was almost never at anchor. The blockading squadrons constantly guarding every French port were at sea for years at a time. They were resupplied at sea, obviously they didn’t need to be refuelled, and unless something very serious happened they could repair themselves. Crew and officers would often not set foot on land for an entire year at a stretch. So they were immune to submarine attack. Maybe a lucky attack on Portsmouth Roads or Spithead or Plymouth or the Nore would have found a ship of the line at anchor and been able to destroy it. But then, so what? You’ve killed one ship. The British literally had hundreds.
And in any case, how did you get there from France?Your crew can’t paddle all the way across the Channel underwater – the Nautilus would need to be towed or carried to near the target by a surface vessel. And every port in France was under close blockade…
I’m currently (re)-reading the Sharpe books, which aren’t exactly SF/F but they do have old ‘bony. Mind you, I’m only up to Sharpe’s Prey so there’s not been much sign of him yet.
@11 Whoops. Close blockade didn’t mean what I thought it meant :p
Seriously, “villain? “Evil”?
That’s the sort of labels you might use if your major source on the Napoleonic Wars were actual British newspapers from the period. Surely whether someone is a “villain” is just a matter of point of view? To a lot of French, both then and now, he is a national hero. He was certainly less tyrannical than many other kings or conquerors. As for “evil”, surely no one evil would enact the Code Napoléon or emancipate the Jews of France?
And the height thing is getting really old; I was sure it was well known that it’s a myth. He really wasn’t short by the standards of his time.
The first submarine known to have been used in combat was the Turtle designed by David Bushnell used by the Continental military in the War for Independence. She was built in 1775.
Fulton did not have a first there either.
What’s with calling Napoleon a villain? He obviously wasn’t a saint, but he was pretty clearly better than his enemies. He was consistently the more progressive and trying harder to produce a lasting peace than anybody he went up against. Europe would have been a lot better off if Napoleon had won. His defeat was a victory for reaction and absolute monarchy.
@14 Clamarnicale
As an American, I’m inherently skeptical of British propaganda. The British were not the “good guys” during the period of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. But that doesn’t mean that Napoleon wasn’t a villain.
France’s Revolutionary government emancipated the Jews in September 1791, long before Napoleon Bonaparte took power. The Revolutionaries went on to abolish slavery in February 1794. When Napoleon became the ruler of France, he maintained Jewish emancipation, but did everything in his power to reverse the abolition of slavery. Napoleon sent an army to Haiti, betrayed Toussaint Louverture and threw him in jail, and started a long and bloody war for the sole purpose of enslaving the newly freed people of Haiti.
Napoleon wasn’t evil for fighting the British. He was evil because he betrayed the best ideals of the Revolution and tried to restore people to the legal status of property.
Napoleon wasn’t evil for fighting the British.
Some people might argue that waging an aggressive war of conquest for twelve years, looting half a continent and killing millions of people, in order to make yourself and your family emperors of half the world, is at least a slightly evil-ish thing to do.
As for “evil”, surely no one evil would enact the Code Napoléon or emancipate the Jews of France?
Or make the trains run on time?
@18, do remember that the series of wars which included the Napoleonic Wars were started when Prussia and Austria invaded France.
I don’t like Napoleon, particularly, but his attitudes towards slavery were very consistent with all but the most radical of people of the era; abolition of slavery was very much a minority position. Heck, continuation of slavery was a major factor behind the movement for Texan independence and the expansion of slavery for later US war against Mexico.
In many of the countries that Napoleon and annexed, the Civil Code was the first time there was actually a legal system which actually applied between the nobility and other classes. Graf von Kinderschänder could not be sued by his tenant, Hans Beizenesser, and it’s possible that the Hans could not even testify against the graf in a criminal case.
@19, that’s basically a racist taunt against the Italians. The trains already ran on time.
@20 swampyankee
The French had already abolished slavery before Napoleon came to power. His attitude might have been consistent with that of many Americans, but slavery wasn’t that popular in France outside of a small class of planters and merchants who depended on slavery for their living. French slavery was concentrated in their colonies, not in the mother country itself, and it wasn’t a fundamental part of one region’s economy and culture, as it was in the American South. Since the French didn’t grow up surrounded by slavery, it was easier for them to reject it, or at least not to view it as a vital part of their lives.
Napoleon didn’t just passively tolerate the existence of slavery; he sent a army to Haiti to revoke the freedom a previous French government had already decreed. Imagine an American President after Lincoln sending the United States Army to South Carolina to repeal the Thirteenth Amendment, and we can have some sense of how bitterly disappointed abolitionists of the time must have been to see France going back on the progress they’d previously made.
The Civil Code was a legitimate accomplishment, and an important one. It’s worth noting, though, that the French had previously solved the problem of different laws for nobles and commoners by legally abolishing the status of nobility. Napoleon wasn’t interested in that solution because he wanted to make himself an Emperor, and his brothers kings. For a man who only rose to be a general because of the Revolution’s introduction of merit promotion, he was awfully enthusiastic about nepotism.
Thank you to everyone who explained about Napoleon not being short. That detail about the French and the English having different sized inches makes me feel as though the universe is out to get us.
Napoleon made things better for the Jews, and then he made things worse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_and_the_Jews
“In 1808 Napoleon rolled back a number of reforms (under the so-called décret infâme of 17 March 1808), declaring all debts with Jews to be annulled, reduced or postponed. This caused so much financial loss that the Jewish community nearly collapsed. In an effort to promote assimilation, Jews were restricted in where they could live, unless they converted to Christianity. Napoleon ended these restrictions by 1811.”
Naomi Novik’s dragon books are good about the horror of trying to defeat someone who’s smarter than you are.
@22 NancyLebovitz,
The Universe isn’t out to get us; we’re doing too good a job to need outside help. Just to help your sleep, a pound of gold doesn’t weigh the same as a pound of lead.
Sources
Calvert, J.B., “Old Units of Measure,” https://mysite.du.edu/~jcalvert/tech/oldleng.htm
20: that’s the Revolutionary Wars. They ended with a truce which Napoleon used to build up his army and prepare to invade and occupy his neighbours. Then the wars started again.
And “abolition of slavery was very much a minority position”?? No. It was abolished in England thirty years before.
@24: Not in the British overseas possessions, nor in those of Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Denmark, …..
Slavery in Europe, proper, was pretty limited at this time. In England, for example, it had become non-existent by the 16th Century and a series of court decisions in the 18th Century “As soon as a man sets foot on English ground he is free’,” (http://www.anti-slaverysociety.addr.com/huk-slavery.htm). These decisions did not apply in Scotland (where personal ownership of slaves was banned in 1778; http://www.blackhistorymonth.org.uk/article/section/history-of-slavery/scotland-and-slavery/) or Ireland, nor did they apply to British colonies (note that using “British” for the colonies before the Acts of Union in 1707 is anachronistic, and the legal systems of England and Scotland were never entirely merged).
And, to the admins: please shut down anybody who promulgates the falsehood conflating indentured servitude with chattel slavery.
The discussion seems to be getting a bit heated, so please remember our guidelines: don’t make disagreements personal when expressing your opinions, and please keep the tone of the conversation civil and constructive.
I wanted to mention the Turtle, but I see Crusader75 @15 has beat me to it :)