Napoleon: Coming Soon on Real Dictators…
Early access to new episodes for Noiser+ subscribers.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Press play and read along
Transcript
Speaker 1 How does one individual become the most powerful man on earth, only to blow it in the blink of an eye?
Speaker 1 In the year 1769, a boy is born on the Mediterranean island of Corsica.
Speaker 1 From humble beginnings, he will become not just emperor of France, but the master of continental Europe, the most brilliant general of his age, a virtual god.
Speaker 2 He had it all, really. He had charisma, he had ability, and he had the drive to achieve what he wanted most of the time.
Speaker 1 He will reshape his adopted homeland and bestride the continent through a 20-year series of conflicts, the wars that bear his signature.
Speaker 2 He completely dominated 19th-century European culture, Western culture, as a symbol of human possibility. People were just absolutely amazed to look at somebody like this.
Speaker 2 They saw him as having superhuman qualities in a way.
Speaker 1 But then, almost inevitably he will fall
Speaker 3 for him life is conquest and to live is to move to die is nothing but to live without glory is to die every day he's a self-made man but it all ends badly and that makes the character grow and gives birth to his legend
Speaker 1 in modern times there's been something of a rehabilitation of his reputation some no longer see him quite as an ogre
Speaker 1 but he still divides opinion. Was he a freedom fighter? A champion of the oppressed?
Speaker 2 He kept the best parts of the French Revolution, these very important, world-changing ideas, and he got rid of all the sad and mad ones.
Speaker 1 Or was he a delusional egomaniac? A reckless adventurer who left a trail of corpses behind him, three million of them?
Speaker 2 He didn't have an off-switch. He is very susceptible to boredom, and the one activity which thrilled him was war.
Speaker 5 I don't know if he intended to become this authoritarian ruler/slash dictator, but ultimately, I think his ambition led him to that.
Speaker 1 Either way, he's become a man of such legend that the world is on first-name terms with him. Still,
Speaker 1 Napoleon.
Speaker 1 The Napoleon story, coming soon from Noiser.
