Considering that one of the most interesting aspects of Napoleon is his legacy and that one of the most mentioned facts about him is that the amount of books written about him is only surpassed by Jesus, it would be a rather laughable endeavor to attempt to write a singular post on his "character" in War and Peace, at least as he exists outside of the novel. So instead, this post will focus on how Napoleon is portrayed in the novel, and more specifically, how his portrayed in chapters he actually appears in. At some point, I may make a post about how he is discussed by other characters or how Tolstoy talks about him in expository chapters, but for now, we'll focus on the seventeen chapters he actually appears in, which certainly seems like a low number considering how he looms over the novel at large. All quotes in this post are from the Mandelker translation.
Chapter 61: After being mentioned in nearly half the chapters leading up to his first appearance, we are introduced to Napoleon seeing the Russians, able to distinguish cavalry from foot soldiers, from the village of Schlappanitz. He is in a blue cloak "which he had worn on his Italian campaign", sitting on a small grey horse in front of his marshals. "Not a single muscle of his face--which in those days was still thin--moved." Not only do we get the picture of his determination and focus, but we get a hint of what is to come and an important theme in his character arc, which is the simultaneous decline of his abilities and physical state. He also understands the military situation better than his opponents, "he saw clearly that the allies believed him to be far away in front of them." It was the anniversary of his coronation and he is in a happy, confident mood that is like "a boy happily in love". He orders the action to begin at Austerlitz and his initial portrayal, rather than the monster the Russians make him out to be, is rather positive and forceful.
Chapter 66: Napoleon is now looking at the killed and wounded, calling the dead Russians "fine men". He sees Andrei, believing him to be dead, and calls it a "fine death." This magnanimity and graciousness, not to get ahead of ourselves, is heavily contrasted later. However, Andrei realizes that his previous hero "seemed to him such a small insignificant creature compared with what was passing now between himself and that lofty infinite sky with the clouds flying over it." So while Napoleon's victory at Austerlitz is impressive and he is a force and a developed character, he means nothing compared to the world itself, and this is an important contextualization and shrinking of his character, as well as powerful foreshadowing, as Napoleon is brought down in the novel by forces bigger than him and beyond his control. Napoleon has Andrei carried to the hospital and tells the young Russian officers that they served honourably and that "you will go far!", but when he goes to Andrei, the latter thinks "of the insignificance of greatness, the unimportance of life which no one could understand, and the still greater unimportance of death, the meaning of which no one alive could understand or explain." Napoleon's "face shone with self-satisfaction and pleasure" after assigning his doctor to help Andrei. The relationship between Napoleon and doctors prove to be interesting in the latter campaign and his belief that he has done something worth being happy over is something we've already seen twice and we will continue to see (and in Tolstoy's moral thinking, self-satisfaction over what one does is usually a negative moral attribute and plays in to one of the greatest of the Tolstoyan sins, one that applies to Napoleon as well, over confidence and hubris).
Chapter 103: This is Tilsit. Nikolai Rostov recognizes Napoleon. "It could be no one else". He is wearing "a small hat a blue uniform...and the St Andrew ribbon over his shoulder." Nikolai "could not help noticing" that Napoleon doesn't sit well in his horse and has "an unpleasant and artificial smile." We haven't seen Napoleon for a while in the novel and when we do, we already see a change in him. Part of this is because the artifice has been removed. He is not the incomprehensible monster the St Petersburg court casts him as, but he stands small in the context of the entirety of existence.
Napoleon "was quite at ease with the Tsar, as if such relations with an Emperor were an everyday matter to him." This is the insult to Russian patriotism and classism in general, which has Napoleon as the upstart and usurper that considers himself equal to the hereditary kings and queens (in Nikolai's own development, this is important because he has viewed the Tsar as his hero and god that he would like to die for). Napoleon is described as "undersized...looking up straight into Alexander's eyes." He gives a medal by taking off the glove of his hand and throwing it on the ground. "It was as if Napoleon knew that it was only necessary for his hand to deign to touch that soldier's beast for the soldier to be fr ever happy". This has Napoleon as more grand, more theatrical, and thus, more ridiculous. He leaves for the narrative for an extended period of time and comes back changed even more emphatically.
Chapter 166: Napoleon leaves Dresden and punishes and rewards those who deserve it. "his historian tells us, tenderly embraced the Empress Marie Louise--who regarded him as her husband though he had left another wife in Paris". Considering Tolstoy's two most famous characters outside of this novel are a vain judge and an adulteress that kills herself, these emphases are not accidental and serve to set up how his character will be portrayed throughout.
He changes into a Polish uniform and goes to the Niemen to cross into Russia. He watches his soldiers work for him and has a small horse brought to him and "the shouting which accompanied him everywhere disturbed him and distracted his mind from the military cares that had occupied him from the time he joined the army." I really like this detail because it gives us an insight into the fall of Napoleon we see into the novel, as he can't sit still and contemplate the sky or have a moment of silence. He gets a telescope and a map and talks to those around him without looking up. When the Uhlans drown, they "distracted his attention. For him it was no new conviction that his presence in any part of the world, from Africa to the steppes of Muscovy alike, was enough to dumbfound people and impel them to insane self-oblivion." The whole chapter is written from the standpoint of ridiculous comedy, but Napoleon stands as someone who takes himself so seriously and sees himself as so important that colors the way Tolstoy wants us to view his character.
"That evening, between issuing one order that the forged Russian paper money prepared for use in Russia should be delivered as quickly as possible and another that a Saxon on who a letter containing information about the orders to the French army had been found should be shot, Napoleon also gave instructions that the Polish colonel who had needlessly plunged into the river should be enrolled in the Legion d'honneur of which Napoleon was himself the head." The juxtaposition of Napoleon's dishonesty and his attempt to judge and give honor is the point and, like the opera scene in the novel, how Tolstoy dresses down his character.
Chapter 170: Napoleon enters into where Balashov is waiting with "firm and resolute" steps. He is wearing "a blue uniform...so long that it covered his rotund stomach...breeches tightly fitting the fat thighs of his short legs...His short hair....plump white neck...smelt of eau-de-cologne. His full face, rather young-looking, with its prominent chin....". The physical change, hinted at earlier, is dramatic and though fatness is not a negativity in the novel (Pierre and Kutuzov are both fat, though Pierre loses weight in what proves to be his character defining moment, Natasha gains weight when she changes into the domestic life), it shows that Napoleon has, at the very least, has changed and aged.
He has a "stately appearance one sees in men of forty who live in comfort." The focus of this chapter, however, is the way he carries himself and treats Balashov: "only what took place within his own mind interested him. Nothing outside himself had any significance for him because everything in the world it seemed to him, depended entirely on his will." He complains that he did not want war, which seems to be an obvious falsehood. His false smiles play a big role again: "You are flurried--compose yourself!" Napoleon seemed to say, as with a scarcely perceptible smile." What starts to appear now that will follow his character throughout the rest of the novel is his frown: "as if fearing to give vent to his feelings, he frowned and nodded slightly"
Napoleon's left calf quivers and this coincides with his voice rising with his "small, white, plump, hand". He quickly transforms, "evidently no longer trying to show the advantages of peace and discuss its possibility, but only to prove his own rectitude and power". The chapter we spend the most time with Napoleon and let him talk and act the most has him high energy and almost crazed:
"He evidently wanted to do all the talking himself and continued to talk with the sort of eloquence and unrestrained irritability to which spoilt people are so prone."
He repeats himself several times and "greedily" sniffs from his gold snuff-box, taking everything personally, believing that Alexander could have surrounded himself with Napoleon, but instead chose his emigree commanders. He is "hardly able to keep pace in words with the rush of thoughts that incessantly sprang up proving how right and strong he was (in his perception the two were one and the same)." We've seen all subtleties and positive aspects of Napoleon thrown out the window and he appears to be an entirely different character than he was when he first appeared in the novel and I think this is both intentional and unintentional, with Tolstoy wanting to show the difference, but as he does at times, losing his consistency over the grand scale of the novel and the various sources he culled from.
Napoleon never lets Balashov talk, "grinned maliciously and again raised his snuff-box". Tolstoy has him play up his insecurity and uses this to define who he is and highlight his inauthenticity: "Napoleon was in that state of irritability in which a man has to talk, talk, and talk, merely to convince himself that he is in the right." He becomes "perturbed by the fact that he had uttered this obvious falsehood."
Meanwhile, "his fat shoulders" twitch. Napoleon believes he has convinced Balashov and this is what leads us to the next chapter, which Balashov gets a couple of jabs at Napoleon.
Chapter 171: This is the dinner he has with his marshals and the visiting Balashov. Just like earlier, he is in good spirits after a ride. He asks Balashov many questions about Moscow, fixating on the churches and how that represents "the backwardness of a people". Tolstoy's relationship with the church in the novel is certainly complicated and he rejects the narrative of pious Russians versus godless Frenchmen because he spends so much time critiquing the Russian nobility, but this blanket statement Napoleon has is very important.
Napoleon later is "in that well-known after-dinner mood which, more than any reasoned cause, makes a man contented with himself and disposed to consider everyone a friend." He again brings up that Alexander surrounds himself with Napoleon's enemies. He considers "War is my profession", cementing the idea that he was seeking a war, not avoiding it. He pulls the ear of Balashov "gently, smiling with his lips only."
Chapter 194: Napoleon, looking for a battle, orders an advance to Moscow, but this is the scene with Lavrushka, with Tolstoy blatantly contradicting Thiers throughout the entire chapter, having Lavrushka realize he is with Napoleon, but pretends not to be because Napoleon has nothing to offer him, similar to Prince Andrei's reaction to seeing him. When Napoleon reveals himself, he pretends to be surprised.
Chapter 213: We are on the eve of Borodino and we get probably the strangest scene of Napoleon. He is finishing his toilette "snorting and grunting". He has a "plump hairy chest" with valets sprinkling cologne on him. He frowns when someone comes in and dresses and comes out too quick for his surprise, then pretends he doesn't see it. When he is told of the battle at Salamanca, he is not surprised with how it went with him not there. He pulls De Beausset's ear and is pleased to hear an untruth from him. He gets his gold snuff-box again and brings it to his nose. He gets his portrait of his son, calls him the king of Rome and has everyone to leave, "leaving the great man to himself and his emotion." It is a scene that could be solemn, but again Tolstoy injects comedy into everything to highlight the absurdity of the situation and to contrast the seriousness of Napoleon.
He brings the portrait out for the soldiers to see and gives a proclamation to his soldiers that they will be able to say they were in the great battle before Moscow. He has his portrait put away, saying it is too young for him to see the battle.
Chapter 214: Napoleon rides and surveys his army, in which historians call him a genius for doing so. He gives off an air of profundity, giving out his dispositions, which Tolstoy calls "obscure and confused if one allows oneself to regard the arrangements without religious awe of his genius...Not one of these was, or could be, carried out." The chapter ends with Napoleon being too far away to know the course of the battle or be able to do anything about it.
Chapter 216: Napoleon says "The chessmen are set up, the game will begin tomorrow!"
He gets punch, talks about Paris and the court, tells jokes, and is compared to "a famous, self-confident surgeon who knows his job does when turning up his sleeves and putting on his apron while a patient is being strapped to the operating-table." The self-confidence is a setup for Tolstoy, and his, for once, unseriousness proves to not only be a mistake, but massively inappropriate to the weight Borodino is given in the novel, as well as the massive loss of life that happened there. However, Tolstoy gives him the first human-like moment in quite a while in the rest of the chapter in a way to set up a calm before the storm. He is unable to sleep and his cold (talked about in detail elsewhere) is getting worse, causing him to blow his nose loudly. He talks with Rapp, which ends with him frowning and he rants against doctors, claiming that the body is a machine for living. He tells Rapp that military art is "being stronger than the enemy at a given moment." He sees the next day as having to deal with Kutuzov. He asks a soldier whether he has had his rice and rides up as the battle begins.
Chapter 220: Napoleon is trying to see what is going on in the battle, but can't. All the reports he are getting are false and can't be representative. None of his orders can be carried out, something that is highlighted in many of the chapters that discuss Napoleon.
Chapter 221: Napoleon, still drinking punch, gets angry when asked if he can spare reinforcements and that "I don't yet see my chessboard clearly." He tells Belliard that "In the heat of a battle it is easy to make a mistake." When he does give reinforcements, he needlessly changes which reinforcements to send. Tolstoy compares this to how a doctor "hinders by his medicines--a role he so justly understood and condemned." I only really appreciated the doctor sections in writing this article, but the chessboard and doctor mentions are paid off rather strongly in a novel that don't always pay off analogies or pays them off and then beats them to death by repetition.
Napoleon then has the de Beausset scene where Beausset wants to eat and thinks they have won the battle, a great portrayal of an evidently real scene. He "was experiencing a feeling of depression like that of an ever-lucky gambler who after recklessly flinging money about and always winning, suddenly, just when he has calculated all the chances of the game, finds that the more he considers his play the more surely he loses." Napoleon realizes that things are not the same as they were. He considers the unsuccessful campaign, "it was like a dream in which a man fancies that a cutthroat is coming to attack him, and raises his arm to strike that cutthroat a terrible blow which he knows should annihilate him, but then feels that his arm drops powerless and limp like a rag, and the horrors of unavoidable destruction seizes him in his helplessness." He rides throughout the horror of the battle and realizes that it seemed "unnecessary and horrible." He refuses to send his guard because he doesn't want it destroyed "eight hundred leagues from France."
Chapter 225: While looking at the "terrible spectacle of the battlefield" at Borodino, Napoleon's "sallow face swollen and heavy, his eyes dim, his nose red, and his voice hoarse involuntarily listening with downcast eyes to the sounds of firing." Borodino completely breaks him and changes his motivation: "At that moment he did not desire Moscow, or victory, or glory (what need had he of more glory?). The one thing he wished for was rest, tranquillity, and freedom."
He yells that the Russians want more and that the French should let them have it, a complete contrast to how he saw his enemies early in the novel. As the novel wears on, Napoleon's powerlessness over the course of history and the world around him: "he fell back into that artificial realm of imaginary greatness, and again--as a horse walking a treadmill thinks it is doing something for itself--he submissively fulfilled the cruel, sad, gloomy, and inhuman role predestined for him."
Tolstoy quotes what he wrote about the Russian war from St. Helena and then writes "Napoleon, predestined by Providence for the gloomy role of executioner of the peoples, assured himself that the aim of his actions had been the peoples' welfare, and that he could control the fate of millions and by the employment of power confer benefactions...He imagined that the war with Russia came about by his will, and the horrors that occurred did not stagger his soul." The contradiction of Napoleon for Tolstoy is that he claims responsibility for events that no person should want to claim responsibility for.
Chapter 245: A very different than when last we saw him Napoleon sees Moscow and is filled "with the rather envious and uneasy curiosity men feel when they see an alien form of life that has no knowledge of them."
He wonders what Alexander is thinking, even thinking the war is a personal struggle between the two, and how "strange and majestic" the moment is. He decides that he will spare Moscow, even though he can tear it apart. He calls for the boyars to be brought to him, even though they no longer exist. He learns that Moscow is empty and he is in a terrible position of appearing to be ridiculed.
Chapter 246: Napoleon calls Moscow being empty "incredible" and stays outside the city.
Chapter 285: Napoleon in Moscow tries to set up a government and makes an announcement to the city. He does "all in his power", which is implied, and even explicit in other chapters, to not be very much, and tries to stop the chaos. The next chapter shows all this is for nothing.
Chapter 294: With Kutuzov unable to keep his troops back or the Cossacks plundering, Napoleon rides out to inspect his line and nearly gets captured, only escaping because the Cossacks are too busy going after loot. Napoleon, "with his forty-year-old stomach", understands that he has to leave on the Smolensk road, with "the forces which influenced the whole army" acting on him. While he is mentioned in twenty-four more chapters and Tolstoy is obviously not done making his point, he does not appear in the book again and, strangely, his leaving of the army is not even dramatized, but only discussed.
In the novel, Napoleon's basic character arc is that he starts as a strong, powerful military commander with respect for his enemies, and then transforms into a confident equal of Alexander before becoming a rather ridiculous comedic character that is extremely full of himself. He is broken by Borodino before becoming bold again as he approaches Moscow, only to be instantly ridiculed and having no power over the events around him, finally leaving the novel weak and realizing he has no choice. The decline of his power is captured in the novel, as Austerlitz is his crowning achievement, while the retreat from Moscow is what kicks off a series of low moments for Napoleon that ends with his exiles and death.
As a character, overconfidence is what defines Napoleon, as does ridiculous ceremony and a sense of importance that is undercut by his failure to control events and the reality of him being a tool rather than a master of tools. This is one of the central theses of the book; a singular man is not the director of events, but the meaning of events is basically incomprehensible to us, especially when we are in them. He, at times, appears as a cartoon character and is even the butt of a joke on more than one occasion, but there is a bit of an understanding of why he is who he is, with Tolstoy understanding how the circumstances around him can not allow him to be anyone other than who he is. He is the villain of Russia, and the Russians blame him, but, at least in the chapters he appears, he isn't represented as a cardboard villain, but as a man who wildly misinterprets the events he is participating in, similar to how Pierre, Rostopchin, and Nikolai Bolkonsky misinterpret the events they are in or surrounded by.
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