Denouncing the "faults" of Napoleon Bonaparte, such as the reestablishment of slavery, but also celebrating his qualities as "builder and legislator" and defender of national sovereignty, Emmanuel Macron drew up, this Wednesday, a portrait "in plain language -obscure ”of this controversial figure in the history of France.

Affirming that "Napoleon Bonaparte is a part of us", Emmanuel Macron, first president to speak on Napoleon since Pompidou, explained in a speech at the Institut de France for the bicentenary of the death of the Emperor wanting to achieve a "Enlightened commemoration".

"A strategist, a legislator, a builder"

With, he insisted, "the will not to give anything to those who intend to erase the past on the grounds that it does not correspond to the idea they have of the present", in an implicit criticism of the past. "Cancel culture". "From the Empire we gave up the worst, from the Emperor we embellished the best," he said, calling once again to "look our History in the face and as a whole". On slavery, which Napoleon restored, he declares that “the Second Republic in 1848 repaired this betrayal of the spirit of the Enlightenment”.

Referring to the loss of human life for which the Emperor is responsible, he underlines that France has since "placed the value of human life above anything, in wars or in pandemics", a reference to the management of Covid-19.

He finally condemned his "arbitrary exercise of a solitary power" The Head of State, on the other hand, paid tribute to "a strategist, a legislator, a builder", to "this part of France which conquered the world".

A life of "will", "freedom", "taste for the possible"

He celebrated the one who "set in stone the civil equality between men with the Civil Code, the protection of the law for all with the Penal Code". But added that the State had "continued this work of progress by acting for equality between women and men" and "by abolishing the death penalty", while Napoleon is criticized for having registered the inferiority of the wife in relation to her husband in the Civil Code.

Another echo to the news, Emmanuel Macron also applauded the one who "calmed relations with the great religions", by the Concordat, by the Grand Sanhédrin, a Jewish supreme court convened by Napoleon at the beginning of the XIXth century.

In an ode to individual worth that resonates with his own political credo, he finally celebrated a life of "will", "freedom", "taste for the possible", which "demonstrates that a man can change the course of History ”, as well as an“ invitation to take one's risk, trust the imagination, be fully oneself ”.

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  • Commemoration

  • Napoleon

  • History

  • Emmanuel Macron