Learning Day: Napoleon Bonaparte's Saucy Romance Novel

I can’t decide who’s a bigger weirdo: Napoleon Bonaparte, or his modern fans. I also don’t have to decide, because I can poop on them both within one column. Join me, Dearest Hotdoggers, for a journey into a crummy self-published “how to be masculine and get laid/loved” novella…written by Napoleon.

Yes! *The* Napoleon! He did a Threat Level Midnight and you can read it. He never published it, but historians have. How did we get here? The short answer is “megalomania.” In 1795, Napoleon had a chunk of time between army jobs. He used that hiatus from cannon-murder to write a Romanticist epic novella. He was young-ish (25½). He was in love-ish. He wrote this novel about a specific lady, and married a different lady the following year. Napoleon tried-ish to harness his love-ish feelings in a mighty work of literature. And I say “tried-ish” because his book is short, bad, and written in the voice of history’s all-time shallowest man. When I read the (English) text of Clisson et Eugénie, I discovered an author both too self-centered to treat other people as people, and too busy grasping for power to flesh out his self-worship.

Anyway that’s why Napoleon wrote a book. Or rather, a “book.” Because here’s the true reason I’ve read Clisson et Eugénie: modern historians and experts gassed me up about it. I read history for fun, I’m curious about everything (FOLLOW LINK FOR PROOF), and over the past couple months I decided to find out Napoleon’s whole deal. In a typical American education, Napoleon gets one cameo, as a Louisiana Purchase salesman. He needed money, or something, so he sold the Mississippi River Valley like a used car.

Maybe our European friends learn more about Napoleon. And about everything. Due to their commie “good schools.” In the United States, Napoleon is Famous For Being Famous (Classy Historical Figure Division). That’s all we know. He’s famous and he’s supposed to be famous, unlike those ding dang Kardashians, who are not supposed to be famous, even though if we’re being honest we’re all much better versed in the details of Kim’s humongous (pardon my French) oeuvre. Napoleon’s oeuvre is appearance-based too. We know his hat, his horse, and one myth about his height that’s been busted one million times. I wanted to know more. So I’ve done a bunch of research. For additional scholarship on Napoleon, I recommend one line of text in the second-best Russell Crowe period drama. It’s accurate, it’s fast, and then you see a great movie. I do not recommend this 869-page history book about Napoleon, which I read cover to cover, while frowning.

There are a range of historical takes on Napoleon. One of the main takes is that he sucks. He caused fifteen straight years of massive bloodshed, and killed the good elements of the French Revolution, so he could crown himself Emperor and try to be more famous than Julius Caesar. In the end he left France [checks maps] about the same size it was before, and sadder/grief-ier. That stinks. Therefore he stinks.

This take on Napoleon is common. It’s particularly common among British historians. Some people allege that’s from bias, because Napoleon and Britain fought a lot. Spoiler: the Brits are right, about Napoleon. Even if they’re super wrong about their own monsters. A broken clock is right twice a day.

However, the frequency of the “Napoleon was bad” take means there’s a wide open lane for “Napoleon was good” books. Especially English-language books. Which brings us to Andrew Roberts, the British historian who mega-wasted my time. In between lauding Napoleon’s work ethic, and glossing over the, uh, 💀results💀 of that work ethic, Roberts pitches Napoleon as an underappreciated liberator and Renaissance man with a poetic soul. Roberts also revealed the existence of Clisson et Eugénie to me, by gassing it up. He calls it the product of “endless drafting and re-drafting.” He encourages us to “view Clisson et Eugénie through an eighteenth-century literary prism, rather than as a cheap romance of today.” And if Roberts puts a gallon of gas in that tank, the Times Of London adds several Imperial gallons:

A pair of translator-scholars max this out. Peter Hicks and Émilie Barthet assembled the English language version, and in essays tacked onto the front and back of their e-book, they spill gas out of the tank and all over the side of the Peugeot.

So yes, of course I read Clisson et Eugénie. After all, [re-checks beginning of ‘Master And Commander’] NAPOLEON WAS THE MASTER OF EUROPE. Therefore, we’re lucky to have this novella-length glimpse into his heart and mind! Now let’s open our e-books and discover that Clisson et Eugénie is seventeen pages long. Whoops! A “novella” it ain’t. Heck, I’ve written that length of a document to propose a bison emoji. Where’s my equestrian painting? Where’s my heroic image of me, in a big hat, riding a mighty hoofed stallion?

Okay I take it back, I don’t want that. Also stay away from bison. Also also, stay away from the literary stylings of anybody who killed a baby democracy *and* multiple generations of human adults, because he wanted a gold Caesar hat. Napoleon stinks, comprehensively, and at writing specifically. Here’s how his clown imitation of a book starts:

At last: a story about a guy who likes violence. We’ve only had access to that rarely-told genre since the first friggin’ cave paintings.

However: this is a novel! A novel imitating the Romantic movement! A movement with a love-y name, I guess! So perhaps Napoleon will share a nuanced, three-dimensional viewpoint on the value of violence in–

Okedoke. So while others wasted time – in the sense that they learned active listening – Agent Michael "Clisson" Scarn had a ferocious Army Stuff phase. What happens next? Does Napoleon/Clisson mature beyond this? Or does he, oh I dunno, write fanfiction about himself where his flaw is that he’s *too* good?

I know I’m presenting long sections of Napole-words. That’s because I want to express the extreme degree of his [French Word For “Autofellatio”]. Also, I want to show you how little depth Napoleon puts into the love story here. First, Napoleon eases Clisson into not-war with some quick lines about Clisson choosing to rest. However, Clisson remains too busy studying the blade to waste time on a Wife Hunt:

Clisson then wanders the woods alone, because he is above the frippery of humans. But Napoleon can’t send this guy on a hike without detouring into this guy’s perfectness:

Clisson then goes to a spa bath. There, he meets two woman-shaped trophies. According to Napoleon, you can tell one of these women is better, because she is the exact type of woman A Great Man Of History would be smart and special enough to prefer.

Wow: this Eugénie gal is amazing at signifying Clisson’s amazingness. She’s even pretty good at figuring out how amazing somebody else is! Not as good at it as Clisson, obviously. But they proceed to hang out once, and boy oh boy, she is *very* sort of into him:

Darn his confounding greatness! Which gets mistaken for being kind of a dick! Everyone is wrong about him, the same way! Anyway due to this setback, Clisson needs a whole nother date to lock down Eugénie’s heart. Here is the entire text of that process:

There you have it. On page seven. (We meet Eugénie on page four.) Love story complete, and even Napoleon wants to yada yada the boring rest of it. Here is what happens one page later:

The birth of children, plural, is an *aside* in this story. There is also no description of a wedding, at all, even though it is 1795 and these characters are probably Catholic. If I may reference the TV show The Office one more time, this is like if the pilot showed Jim and Pam meeting, kissing, and pulling kids out of a desk drawer like magicians. Maybe even stranger, here is Napoleon’s very next pair of sentences:

That’s right. To Napoleon, the whole point of love and children is to dunk on guys who said you’re weird. “Would a creepy freak have these child-shaped Normal Guy Certificates?” Anyway I’ll race to the end of Napoleon’s book now, because he does that as an author. Clisson et Eugénie leaps to year seven of their marriage. That’s when Clisson gets called away by the army for One Last Mission. Eugénie is sad about it. Clisson responds to her pain with patient, consistent negging:

Clisson goes to the front. Eugénie writes to him, asks him to come home, and describes sad dreams about him dying there. Clisson replies by telling her about his own sad dream that made him really upset, because that is what a caring partner does. Then Clisson gets wounded (hero), and sends his friend Berville to go check on and live with and take care of Eugénie (double hero). Eugénie and Berville fall in love (obstacle for hero). Clisson proceeds to get “completely recovered from his glorious wounds”, but also learns Eugénie loves his friend. The friend he sent to cohabitate with her, on purpose. So Clisson remains at the front (triple hero). And he solves everyone’s problems by on-purpose leading a suicide mission (infinity hero), after sending a final letter to Eugénie, forgiving Eugénie (i.e. blaming Eugénie). That event is the last line of the story because, to Napoleon, the only important character died.

So that’s Clisson et Eugénie. But my column is about two books, because both of them filled me with endless disdain for their author. Napoleon was as shallow and bloodthirsty in his prose as he was in his wars. And as far as historian Andrew Roberts goes, he says his goal is to convince you Napoleon was a relatively positive figure. He also quotes Napoleon saying “Women should not be looked upon as equals of men. They are, in fact, only machines for making babies.” Roberts cites this in the context of Napoleon legislating new laws for most of Europe. Napoleon’s rule set women’s rights back, further, and for a long time. Roberts also details Napoleon’s extramarital sport-porking. As Napoleon grimly marched his army into new countries, he mechanically marched his penis into each Polish duchess, Italian opera singer, and Austrian future second wife presented to him. Napoleon was like James Bond, but with a much higher body count, and a living Tracy Bond he betrays toutes les nuits.

Even by the standards of his time, Napoleon was a hardcore misogynist. You would think that would make it harder to write a glowing book about the guy! So I came out of Andrew Roberts’s book believing Roberts didn’t sweat that stuff because Roberts shares those values. Of course Roberts lives now, so he’s that by our standards. He isn’t quite cheerleading any of this. But Roberts tosses off an end-of-book mention that Napoleon had at least eighteen affairs, and probably lots more. And when Roberts tells those women’s stories, he leans on Napoleon’s quotes about them. Or he barely tells their story at all. The woman Napoleon wrote Clisson et Eugénie about (Désirée Clary) doesn’t even get many pages – and what we do learn is amazing! She goes on to marry one of Napoleon’s lieutenants *and* become the Queen of Sweden and Norway.

And then there’s Pauline Fourès. I almost threw my Kindle across the room when Roberts wasted the story of Pauline Fourès. Until reading his book I’d never heard of her. After reading his book, I want to know everything about her. Because Roberts introduces her as Napoleon’s sex trophy during the Egyptian Campaign. And Roberts dumps her back out of his book with a passage that could be a better book:

Huh? What? In an 869-page tome, that’s a blink-and-you-miss-it couple of lines. Roberts Clisson et Eugénie’d the most interesting person in Napoleonic France. It stinks. He stinks. And so does his favorite guy in history. It turns out crappy sexist writing comes in all shapes, sizes, lengths, and reputations. And congratulations, Dearest Hotdoggers: you’re all set to not read two massive hunks of it.

Alex Schmidt makes Secretly Incredibly Fascinating, which is a good podcast. LISTEN TO IT IMMEDIATELY.

...

If these images are borked, you can read this article and every other one on the much better in every way 1900HOTDOG.COM.