The Napoleon Myth in Quebec: From Aversion to Adulation

Painting of Napoleon at the Battle of Wagram in 1809 during the Napoleonic Wars. Public Domain

Commentary

During Napoleon’s lifetime, French Canadians feared and opposed him. But later on, Quebecers, like almost everyone else, made a heroic myth of the man.

Napoleon Bonaparte, the former artillery officer and self-crowned emperor who ruled France between 1799 and 1815 and conquered half of Europe, is history’s ultimate heroic-romantic figure. As a ruler, builder, lawgiver, and military leader, as a champion of the downtrodden, resister of British power, apostle of liberty for humanity, embodiment of the glory of France, and lover of countless women, his reputation has enjoyed a long afterlife since his death in humiliating South Atlantic exile in 1821. In 2014, even that most English of historians, Andrew Roberts, published a brilliant adulatory biography of Napoleon, calling him “a giant of the modern era,” the “founder of modern France and one of the great conquerors of history.”

Napoleon is beloved in many countries, so it’s no surprise that he has enjoyed a long popular honeymoon in Quebec too, as former Canadian Senator Serge Joyal wrote in The Dorchester Review a few years ago, based on his book published only in French.

Napoleon became incredibly popular in Quebec. Between the 1820s and the 20th century it’s hard to keep track of all the men baptized “Napoleon,” such as Napoléon Bourassa, man of letters; Simon-Napoléon Parent, lawyer and politician; Paul “Napoléon” Bruchési, professor and archbishop; and Charles-Eugê​ne-Napoléon Boucher de Boucherville, doctor and politician, to name but a few. (Likewise, many girls were named after Napoleon’s wives, Josephine and Marie Louise.) Sir Wilfrid Laurier knew Napoleon’s life by heart. Sir Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine combed his hair like Napoleon’s and inserted his right hand into his waistcoat like Napoleon. Sir George-Étienne Cartier wore a Napoleon pin on his coat—and more importantly, he sponsored the legal reforms that replaced the old 17th-century French civil law in 1865 (in Lower Canada) with the predominantly Napoleonic Code of today.

Napoleon remains a popular brand, if not for babies then for all manner of products from food and drink, to brandy and perfume, to fireplaces. (Not in Russia, which Napoleon invaded in 1812, earning him the title of “Antichrist” in Tolstoy’s epic saga “War and Peace.”) Everywhere else, though, Napoleon retains a round measure of popularity and adulation, including in Quebec.

But it was not always so.

Time was when the French Canadians—throughout Napoleon’s life from his rise and fall as a general and ruler of Europe, and long before Confederation—disapproved of him and were rather inclined to celebrate whenever he lost a battle.

That is because French Canadians back then were well aware that their distinct nationality, language, and religion had been protected and even promoted by the British Crown, by the British governors, since 1760, and that they had gained new vigour in the elective and representative parliamentary institutions the British brought to the Canadas in 1791. French Canadians of that time were British monarchists. Even reformers like Louis-Joseph Papineau were satisfied (most of the time) that loyalty to the ruling British Crown took the place of the defeated French one, and the phrase “Vive le roi” still applied. It made sense that French Canadians would despise Bonaparte as a usurper, pretender, and threat to their British liberties.

Thus, when Admiral Horatio Nelson defeated Napoleon’s navy at Aboukir (the Battle of the Nile) in 1802, both English- and French-speaking Canadians celebrated with aplomb. The same occurred when Nelson beat the combined French and Spanish fleets at the even greater Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Le Canadien, the leading nationalist newspaper in Lower Canada—the champion of the political and economic rights of French Canadians—welcomed the defeat of the tyrant Bonaparte.

Nelson's Column in Montreal was erected in 1809 in memory of British naval commander Admiral Horatio Nelson, following his death at the Battle of Trafalgar during the Napoleonic Wars. njene/Shutterstock

And thus, English and French Montrealers were joyously united in making donations to build a splendid column in memory of Horatio Nelson and his victory at Trafalgar, which remains one of the more extraordinary sights for visitors to Old Montreal today. A crocodile at the base represents the earlier victory at Aboukir. The bishop and the superior of the Sulpician order of priests joined merrily with Anglo-Montrealers James McGill and John Ogilvy to pay for the monument, built 30 years before the one in London! In 1809, the conservative reformer Denis-Benjamin Viger, an elected member of the National Assembly, wrote a booklet denouncing Napoleon as a dictator and contrasting him unfavourably with Canada’s British rulers, who protected French Canada’s language, religion, and laws.

In 1815, when the Duke of Wellington and his Dutch, Belgian, and German allies defeated Napoleon on land in the Battle of Waterloo, church bells rang and bonfires were lit across Upper and Lower Canada. When the Duke of Wellington died in 1852, the Parliament of United Canada closed for the day in honour of “the man who conquered the conqueror of the world.”

That French-English consistency and unity over the death of the tyrant and enemy of freedom (as Bonaparte was then seen) was natural and fitting.

If only it could have stayed that way today, with English and French Canadians united in understanding their history and traditions, their common protection under the Crown, and knowing the sources of their liberty and free institutions in the 1774 Quebec Act, the 1791 Canada Act, and our evolving former Constitution prior to 1982.

However that may be, everything began to change after Napoleon’s exile to the Atlantic island of Saint Helena in 1815 until his death in 1821 at age 51.

It is notable that the myth of Napoleon as hero, embodiment of glory and liberty, and champion of the world’s downtrodden, was born with a fake document.

During his exile, the reading public around the world was curious about his fate. In due course, a forgery was published called the “Memoires de Napoleon Bonaparte: Manuscrit venu de Sainte-Helene.” It was the brainchild of a Frenchman named Jacob-Frederic Lullin and published in London in 1817 and in Quebec City and Montreal in 1818.

Lullin seemed to capture the style everyone expected of Napoleon, and filled the book with noble musings about the freedom of oppressed national minorities ruled by despotic kings (not as he had ruled the people he conquered, of course!) and romantic longings for the spread of science and enlightenment to the darker corners of the globe. Lullin portrayed a great mind utterly selfless in his devotion to mankind in the abstract. It was arrant poppycock, but the semi-literate public lapped it up.

“Napoleon on Saint Helena,” by Franz Josef Sandmann, depicts Napoleon during his exile in the South Atlantic. Public Domain

Napoleon’s real memoirs were published in 1821 soon after his death. But the myth stuck and in fact grew to gargantuan proportions by way of countless books, plays, and operas—the way most people picked up their scraps of pseudo-history in those days.

One of those who caught the nationalistic Napoleon bug was the great Quebec historian Francois-Xavier Garneau while on a visit to France in 1831. The movement for reform in Lower Canada was then still a blend of conservative loyalism to the Crown alongside a growing republican, philo-American element. Generally, French-Canadian nationalists in the 19th century were comfortable with the British connection and the British institutions that served them well—but they could not trust those English Canadians in Quebec and Upper Canada who attacked the French language and French Canadians. (Oddly enough, that was still true in the 1990s when an anglophile Parti Quebecois leader, Jacques Parizeau, wore British tweeds, smoked a pipe, and exclaimed “By Jove!” while fighting like hell against Ottawa and English Montreal.)

Finally, let’s not forget the First Nation in B.C.’s Okanagan called “Bonaparte,” alternately “Stuctwesemc Bonaparte,” part of the Shuswap, who live on Bonaparte Indian Reserve No. 3 near the Bonaparte River, which flows into the Thompson River near Ashcroft.

Shuswap oral history records that “long before the white man” a “company of warriors from the Chilcotin,” bringing their wives with them, came into the Bonaparte valley to conquer and enslave the vulnerable while Shuswap fishermen were away “encamped on the Fraser River during the salmon season.” However, the invaders miscalculated. They did not know the geography and were detected by Nlakaʼpamux (previously known as the Thompson Indian Band) scouts. A force of Nlakaʼpamux drove the invaders into the Similkameen Valley, where they were forced to make terms. The Okanagan Salish, or Syilx, people next door then noticed that the Chilcotin women were “larger and better looking than their own,” and began intermarrying with the Chilcotin newcomers.

Napoleon, with his notorious affection (shall we say) for the female of the species, would no doubt have approved.

The name of the Bonaparte River itself is recorded as early as 1826, just five years after the emperor’s death, according to “British Columbia Place Names,” edited by scholars Philip and Helen Akrigg. The curious name contradicts assertions among the chattering classes that geographical names only “honour the colonizers.” Napoleon did not colonize B.C., and the St’Uxwtews people are proud of their distinctive and evocative name.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.