Napoleon Bonaparte was a man...
Illustration
Napoleon Bonaparte was a man obsessed with power. Born of a noble family, loved by a woman who forgave all but his infidelity, surrounded by people who fawned over him in his conquests, lauded by even the rationalist Emerson, he carried within himself an inability to ever bend, to ever forge true friendship, to ever give himself to anyone as wholeheartedly as he gave himself to war and the hope of conquest. His own mother has been quoted as saying, "I foresee that he will bring disaster on himself and all his family. He should be content with what he has. He tries to grasp too much, and will lose all." Driven as he was, he saw both conquest and defeat, but his defeat at last was total. Banished, condemned, he still hoped that history would laud him, but finally even he said of himself, "No one but myself can be blamed for my fall. I have been my own greatest enemy, the cause of my disastrous fate." Thackeray, in The Chronicle of the Drum wrote his most suitable epitaph: "Though more than half the world
was his,
He died without a rood his own;
And borrowed from his enemies
Six feet of ground to lie upon."
-- Herrmann
was his,
He died without a rood his own;
And borrowed from his enemies
Six feet of ground to lie upon."
-- Herrmann
