Dr Andrew Roberts on Churchill and Napoleon

ladies and gentlemen it's a great honor to be invited to address you again this morning and thank you very much indeed Alan for those kind words it's perfectly true that my book got to number two and the bestseller list beaten only by book about Michael Jackson what a fantastic conference we have had a series of serious and substantial scholars telling you genuine quotations and true facts about Winston Churchill and we've also had Boris Johnson I think I think Boris his attitude towards facts is very much what woman called a la carte and it's his speech reminded me very much for the friend of mine on radio for who said that the trouble with Winston Churchill is he thinks he's Boris Johnson and also although this has absolutely nothing to do with my speech like to have a two minute rant if that's all right about the recent BBC programme that thank you you hated it as well Maddon quite right to it it really was it was on last Saturday and it really was outrageous that the BBC can make statements such as the working-classes hated Churchill Winston Churchill could not have won the 1951 general election without at least 40% of the working-classes voting for him for the BBC to say that he didn't understand ground strategy this is the man who I think was pointed out earlier in this conference before Brook himself came up with a grand strategy that eventually won the war for the Western Allies and for the BBC also to say that Winston Churchill didn't oppose appeasement enough when it was the BBC that had kept Winston Churchill off the airwaves for so long during the wilderness years shows the intense apocrypha of that organization when it comes to Winston Churchill rant over I believe the greatest man of the 20th century Winston Churchill was profoundly influenced by the greatest man of the 19th century Napoleon Bonaparte indeed in sephora's Winston Churchill had role models in life they were his father Lord Randolph and Napoleon Bonaparte it was Winston Churchill who noted that his parents met at cows on the Isle of Wight on the 15th of August 1873 which was Napoleon's one hundred and fourth birthday Churchill admired the way that Napoleon started his successful military career early in life despite or more probably because of the fact that Napoleon's father had died when he was just 15 not much younger than Churchill was when his father died when in 1950 he summons the safale gist dr. David Butler of Princeton to brief him on the forthcoming election Churchill was somewhat taken aback to discover that Butler was a mere 25 years old better hurry up young man he teased him napoleon was only 26 when he crossed the bridge of bloody i was in quite an all recorded butler i wasn't a conservative supporter but i knew i was in the presence of the greatest man in the world Churchill learnt from Napoleon that there's nothing wrong with youthful ambition so long as it's allied with extraordinary and extraordinary talent and and of course needless to say it certainly was in both their cases neither Napoleon nor Churchill were born French but they were both Francophiles who believed in Military Glory and each had an unshakable belief in his own star they both had occasional shattering reversals of fortune we of course yesterday heard about the Dardanelles and Napoleon's life is full of them as well but they did nothing to dim that self belief Churchill didn't at all subscribe to the traditional British view of Napoleon which I'm sorry today is still the traditional view of him as you'll notice if you read any of the reviews of my book that he was a evil monster rather than just a foreign tyrant who wished to invade Britain it doubtless helped that with regard to Churchill's admiration that Napoleon had marred the first Duke of MU bruh so much in fact that he erected a bust of him at the Tuileries palace when he was first com so the only Englishman besides Cromwell to be so honored oh boo Churchill started collecting books on Napoleon from 1909 onwards which was finally to constitute a library of 170 well read volumes many of which he had bound and which can be seen today in the Churchill archives his first written reference to the Emperor appears in his longest poem written at Harrow in 1819 when he was 16 an ode to influenza it's called and the fourth of the twelve stanzas goes of Moscow's fair and famous town where fell the first Napoleon's crown it made a direful swoop the rich the poor the high the low alike the various symptoms know alike before it droop they're often a Polian references come thick and fast and together they show that Churchill not only read widely and deeply in the Napoleonic Canon but had thought carefully about the lessons of Napoleon's life and the context that it could give to the contemporary politics in which he had every intention of playing ally at the leading part in June 1909 on the on the face of it somewhat unlikely occasion of a temperance meeting in Manchester Free Trade Hall discussing the licensing bill Churchill urged his listeners to quote remember that the great Napoleon said always be strongest at the point of attack choose your point of attack single it out concentrate all your energies in it and make your attack absolutely overwhelming and effective Churchill's own own strategy both political and military could hardly be better summarized a year later again speaking this time actually on the Boer War in the House of Commons Churchill said unless a nation was so fortunate as to possess a very like great general like Napoleon or the Duke of Wellington or the Duke of Marlborough it must win its Wars either by the superior quality or quantity of the troops employed it was a clever linking of his hero Napoleon's name with that of his other great hero his great ancestor more brawn but a constituency meeting in Dundee in September in 1912 Churchill said we studied the interests of the millions we have marched like Napoleon with the opinions of millions of men we have faith in our work and we are proud of it and the following year at Alexandra Palace he added the great Napoleon he often called him the great Napoleon and described us as a nation of shopkeepers if that be true it is astonishing that we have not managed to make our legislation a little fairer to shopkeepers in making the British case for war within a month of its breaking out in August 1914 Churchill argued in the Commons that it is the old struggle of a hundred years ago against Napoleon the grouping of the forces is different the circumstances are different the occasion is different the man above all is different happily but the issue is the same we are at grips with militarism England stands in the path of this overgrowing tower of course the Napoleon reference was used against Churchill almost as much as by him in July 1803 Napoleon referred to Antwerp as a pistol pointed at Great Britain and when in October 1914 Churchill embarked on the brave controversial but ultimately doomed attempt to keep the city out of German hands for as long as possible The Morning Post wrote of Churchill this severe lesson ought to teach him that he is not the Napoleon but a minister of the crown with no time are either to organise or to lead armies in the field in the interwar years the cartoonist David Lough occasionally portrayed Churchill as a would-be Napoleon intended to be to Churchill's detriment a month after the ant worked about debacle Churchill summed up the ghosts of the British heroes of the Napoleonic Wars in the Lord Mayor's banquet at the Guildhall we see the monuments of the men who fought against Napoleon he said we may feel tonight almost as if we have their counsel and their aid and we may derive inspiration and encouragement from their memory Churchill's Napoleon obsession but which I don't mean in a pejorative sense because I myself suffer from it very seriously raised its head in the Gallipoli campaign as well on the April on the 8th of April 1915 Churchill rode to the First Sea Lord Jacky criticizing fish's plans to delay or even cancel the Dardanelles operation in it Churchill quoted Napoleon's remark we are defeated see because our Admirals have learnt where I know not that war can be made without running risks criticizing the Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Snowden in a debate on unemployment in March 1930 turtle said we all know how Napoleon before the Battle of Leipzig said do you think that I'm a man who cares a snap of the fingers for the lives of a hundred thousand soldiers and it's very likely by the way that meta Nick made up that quote and that Napoleon never said it but those are the days aren't they when of course people did no such things and that church the children were actually taught history properly in their schools you will I'm sure will know and be equally as shocked as I am about the recent the recent survey of schoolchildren sixteen to eighteen year olds who who some thirty four percent of whom believed that the American War of Independence was won by Denzel Washington and there's another one quite recently which actually some I think it was one was it one-fifth of schoolchildren who believed that Winston Churchill was a fictional character yes alongside Eleanor Rigby and Sherlock Holmes two months after that attack on philip snowden he Churchill who attacked him again in the finance bill saying there are 40 million pounds to be swept away before we get to any concerts constructive social program even if a surplus were in view Napoleon said to his soldiers from the top of these pyramids 40 centuries are looking down on you the chance of the Exchequer says to the Clyde from the trough of the Treasury 40 million pounds a gaping up at you varlet Bonham Carter believed Churchill a Napoleon shared a belief in advancing their families and tells the charming story in her book Winston Churchill as I knew him of how I often told him that one quality he shared with his great hero Napoleon was nepotism that if he had been Napoleon he would have popped all the guests the family called guests these cousins his brother Jack and Sonny more breh on every throne in Europe and made his mother Empress of Byzantium he didn't deny it and suggested it might have been quite a good thing to do I think Sonny would have made done very well in Spain and Jack might have made one of the Scandinavian countries and then violet Bonham Carter goes on to say he smiled as he distributed these crowns but it was clear that the prospect appealed to him in January 1932 during the wilderness years in which he kept a bust of Napoleon on his desk skirts chart wall he told an author Robert Balan that he would only write a 5,000 word introduction to balanced biography of Napoleon on condition that he kept the copyright as he had as he might one day write a book on the subject something he tragically never got around to doing two years later he told Clemmy I really must try to write a Napoleon before I die but the work piles up ahead and I wonder whether I shall ever have the time and strength herzl drafted napoleon into combat in the struggle against appeasement of course in his great speech about the German air Menace on the 29th of November 1934 he said another of his speeches that was not broadcast by the BBC needless to say he said beware Germany is a country fertile in military surprises the great Napoleon in the years after llena was completely taken by surprise by the strength of the German army which fought the war of liberation although he had officers all over Germany the strength of the army which fought him in the Leipzig campaign was three or four times as strong as he expected in March 1936 just as he had before the First World War he said for 400 years the policy the foreign policy of England has been to oppose the strongest most aggressive most dominating power on the continent and particularly to prevent the low-cal countries falling into the hands of such a power viewed in the light of history these four centuries of consistent purpose amid so many changes of names and facts of circumstances and conditions must rank as one of the most remarkable episodes which the records of any race nation state or people can show moreover on all occasions England took the most difficult course faced by philip ii of spain against louis xiv under William the third and more breh against Napoleon against Vilhelm ii of germany it would have been easy and must have been very tempting to join with the stronger and share the fruits of his conquest however we always took the harder course joined with the less strong powers made a combination against them and thus defeated and frustrated the Continental military tyrant whoever he was whatever nation he led lest anyone misapprehend and think Churchill did not admire no podían the following month in the Daily Mail he described the Emperor as a military tyrant a conqueror a man of order and discipline a man of overwhelming eget ISM but his grandeur defied misfortune and Rises superior even to time two months later speaking about the hapless Sir Thomas inskipp had the Ministry of Defense coordination job that of course should have been given to Churchill Churchill said he has allowed himself to become the innocent victim of responsibilities so strangely so in harmoniously so perversely grouped endowed with powers so cribbed and restricted that no one not even napoleon himself would be able to discharge them with satisfaction so much an admirer of Napoleon was Churchill and also of Lawrence of Arabia that in his eulogy on TE Lawrence in October 1936 he went so far as to say Lawrence might have realized Napoleon's young dream of conquering the East he might have arrived at Constantinople in 1919 or 1920 with most of the tribes and races of Asia Minor and Arabia at his back the coming of the Second World War saw Churchill making his famous do not yield another yard speech of the 3rd of April 1939 in which he said we read how when Napoleon's army lay at the line 140 years ago the threat of invasion hung over this country from day to day dependent upon the shift of the wind our ancestors showed qualities of doggedness and phlegm deemed remarkable by all who observed it but that is nothing to the ordeal which the British nation is today facing with complete composure nothing with which Napoleon threatened England is half as in two in intimate or direct as the destruction on and ordeal which would fall upon this country should we in be involved in a modern war it was of course a theme to which he was to return during some of his greatest wartime speeches with the implicit message that Britain had been there before and triumphed and thus could do so again Churchill had therefore the difficult job of both of miring the great Napoleon but also using him as a model enemy for earlier bravery against the threat of invasion nor could he be too rude about Napoleon even if he wanted to be because the French were our allies in a debate on Norway on the 11th and Norway the Norway campaign on the 11th of April 1940 he once again used Napoleon from a historical analogy telling the common for myself I consider that Hitler's action in invading Scandinavia is as great a trial a strategic and political era as that committed by Napoleon in 1907 when he invaded Spain Napoleon was twice mentioned in the great fourth of June 1940 speech in which Churchill told the British people of the story of the evacuation from Dunkirk which of course began 75 years ago yesterday when Napoleon lay at Boulogne for a year with his flat-bottomed boats and his grant and his Grande armée Churchill said he was told by someone there are bitter weeds in England there are certainly a great many more of them since the British Expeditionary Force returned later in that same speech he said in the days of Napoleon the same wind which would have carried his transports across the channel might have driven away the blockading fleet there was always the chance and it is that chance which is excited and befooled the imaginations of many continental tyrants during the Battle of Britain on the 5th of September 1940 Churchill took the opportunity to differentiate between Hitler and Napoleon's Empire saying in a broadcast no one can say how far hair Hitler's Empire will extend before this war is over but I have no doubt that it will pass away of swiftly as and perhaps more swiftly than did Napoleon's Empire although of course without any of its glitter or its glory in fact Hitler's Empire lasted 12 years against Napoleon 16 from 1799 to 1815 but it covered slightly more of Europe than Napoleon's though of course unlike Napoleon he never captured Hitler never captured Cairo Madrid or Moscow on the 21st of October 1940 Churchill broadcast to the French people a curious choice of date since it was Trafalgar day telling them Frenchmen rearm your spirits before it's too late remember how Napoleon said before one of his battles these same Prussians who are so boastful today were three to one at llena and six to one at mumm-ra yet just as just as Churchill didn't mention that he was broadcasting on Trafalgar day he also sensibly didn't mention that Napoleon had said those words just before the Battle of Waterloo Churchill's references to Napoleon's weren't to Napoleon weren't all confined to public pronouncements please see the Times of February the fourth he wrote to his war Minister David Morrison in 1941 is it really true that a seven mile cross-country run is enforced upon all in this division from generals to privates does the army Council think this is a good idea it looks to me rather excessive a colonel or a general ought not to exhaust himself in trying to compete with young boys running across country seven miles at a time the duty of officers is no doubt to keep themselves fit but still more to think of their men and to take decisions affecting their safety or comfort who's the general of this division and does he run the seven miles himself if so he may be more useful for football than for war um could Napoleon have run seven miles across country at Austerlitz perhaps it was the other fellow he made run some have compared Hitler's conquests with those of napoleon churchill said in the commons on the 7th of May 1941 it may be that Spain and Russia will shortly furnish new kind of chapters to that theme it must be remembered however that Napoleon's arm is carried with them the fierce liberating and egalitarian winds of the French Revolution whereas Hitler's Empire had nothing behind it but racial self-assertion espionage pillage corruption and the Russian boot yet in Napoleon's Empire with all its faults and all its glories fell and flashed away like snow at Easter till nothing remained but his Majesty's ship Bellerophon which awaited its suppliant refugee overall however as Churchill put it in September 1944 I always hate to compare Napoleon with Hitler as it seems an insult to the great Empire sorry the great emperor and warrior to connect him in any way with a squalid caucus boss and butcher when Churchill visited Paris in November 1944 he took part in the Armistice celebrations and he used the opportunity to visit lay down the lead and on the 12th of November he told the Paris liberation committee at a reception at the OTO of the view that if there had been an opportunity of fighting on equal terms the French army would have shown and was going to show qualities which made its fame imperishable in the pages of history under the leadership of great men of the past Clemenceau Fache and Napoleon by whose tomb I stood yesterday once again he diplomatic he didn't explain to the French why their army in May 1940 which was stronger in numbers of planes tanks and Men hadn't had the opportunity to fight on equal terms with the Germans after the war was over Churchill paid further compliments to Napoleon describing him in history of the english-speaking peoples as the greatest man of action born in Europe since Julius Caesar adding that the impetus of the French Revolution has been spread by the genius of Napoleon to the far quarters of Europe ideals of liberty and nationalism born in Paris had been imparted to all the European peoples in the 19th century ahead they were to clash resoundingly with the ordered world for which the Congress of Vienna had striven if France was defeated and her empire Emperor fallen the principles which had inspired her lived on they were to play a notable part in changing the shape of government in every European country Britain not accepted Allen Packard in his brilliant essay on Churchill in Napoleon of 2011 pointed out how quote as an historian Churchill stood in the British liberal weak tradition the Whigs had originally welcomed the French Revolution are now hailed Napoleon as the modernizing force that had swept away old tyrannies and established a new Europe based more on law and liberty the French Emperor was celebrated by the Romantic poets and immortalized in the hagiographic biographies that form a large part of Churchill's own collection Churchill therefore enthusiastically embraced the Byronic stance towards Napoleon and also that of hazlit and Goethe and Hegel and Beethoven at least up until the consulate at the end of the consulate period and it was a noble tradition the similarity of British military strategy in the Second World War to that of the Napoleonic Wars has been written about extensively from Basel little hearts to Michael Howard and many others and it's too obvious to go into here beyond to say that Churchill clearly learned from Pitts and Nelson and Wellington successes as much as Hitler failed to learn from Napoleon's great blunder of 1812 by pressing Napoleon into service against Hitler before and during the Second World War in giving the British Empire a template to work from and an example to follow in the Napoleonic Wars Churchill made good all his reading about the Emperor above all however Napoleon reminded Churchill that one man can indeed change history can inspire millions and make all the difference for ladies and gentlemen never has the great man view of history been more clearly enunciated than in the careers of Winston Churchill and his ultimate role model Napoleon Bonaparte I can hardly present myself as an impartial chair here and but the sole reason I hated wasn't me sitting here if it had been Lloyd George sitting here of course what he would have said is is what instead of Churchill that you've spoiled yourself by reading too much and let's see if anyone agrees see what people would agree with Lloyd George and I suspect not but questions from the floor we got a question Thank You Andra that was fascinating one might without knowing what you've just told us expected Churchill to seek to emulate obviously the Duke of Marlborough well then perhaps Walsh who held from westrom down the road from Chartwell and Willington clearly however it was Napoleon the campus's imagination and was the role model and given your deep knowledge of all three characters could you tell us a little bit more about why you think it was Napoleon rather than Wellington who became the role model for Churchill I think I think the obvious answer would be that Wellington was a failure as a politician he in each of the issues that he embraced both this Prime Minister and before and indeed afterwards the opposition's Catholic emancipation the opposition to the extension of the franchise and the opposition to the repeal of the Corn Laws of the least at the beginning Wellington was was proved wrong by the experience of history and that obviously is not something that any statesman is going to want to try to emulate also of course he was Prime Minister for two years whereas Napoleon was master of Europe for a half a generation and that's going to be more attractive to a man like Winston Churchill okay one last question do we have another question okay so there's one one over here we'll go we're going here curious on your on your thoughts on the fact that Napoleon stood for so many things that Churchill did not stand for conquest dictatorship so forth and so on any any thoughts on that well yes and Napoleon didn't believe that all of the Wars of the Napoleonic Wars which started of course in the revolutionary French Wars in 1792 when Napoleon was only 24 years old could be blamed on Napoleon there were seven walls of coalition and and all but two of them were actually started by the Allies against Napoleon rather than by Napoleon of course the to disastrous ones that Napoleon did start the attack on Spain that the Churchill mentioned by the way mentioned it happened in 1807 in fact was 1808 but nonetheless and the other one was of course the invasion of Russia those two were opportunistic and an ultimately suicidal mistakes made by Napoleon and but one can't blame the whole of the Napoleonic Wars these these wars of conquest which you speak as on this single warmonger owing to the fact that the Austrians and Prussians and and indeed the British who of course were at war with him for longer than anybody else at all and in fact almost as much as all the rest of them put together were also entirely committed to this to this struggle so I don't think Churchill did see Napoleon as a as a as a he thought of him as a ruthless man he called him a tyrant which involves the dictatorship thing that you mentioned but but he didn't think of him as the kind of modern tyrant indeed he wasn't the kind of modern tyrant along the lines of Hitler or Stalin or Mao who wanted to insert his own ideology into the into everybody's daily lives he didn't want to impose into the hearts of men in the same way that that the the Stalin model the modern 20th century dictate model did so he think that he thinks he thought of Napoleon as a as a follow-on from louis xiv rather than as the beginning of the modern dictatorial model and also just to just to sum up and I notice that I've managed to catch up all the time that you've lost there and at the other point of course that needs to be remembered is that at the end of the Napoleonic Wars the and this might be another reason that that that Churchill admired and this this whole period and was so fascinated by this period and read about it and and spoke about it so often at was at the Congress of Vienna that ended those Wars two hundred years ago next month that the British managed to get although it had absolutely no territorial ambitions in continental Europe it did manage to get those nits nodal points around the world like Trinidad and Heligoland and Zanzibar and Cape Colony and various places out in Asia which were the the key nodal points for the creation of the British Empire that Winston Churchill served Maude so ladies and gentlemen I can end on a happy note thank you very much indeed

Channel: The International Churchill Society

Views: 22,171

Rating: 4.8344827 out of 5

Keywords: Winston Churchill, Prime Minister, Great Britain, Allies, Andrew Roberts (Author), Napoleon Bonaparte (Military Commander)

Id: a36GFWEp45g

Length: 30min 25sec (1825 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 29 2015