Napoleon Bonaparte Was Not a Warmongering Conquerer

I too will merely post my opening arguments and will let my opponent elaborate on his points, followed by mine. People who have read "The Wars Against Napoleon" will find my three arguments closely mirror theirs: 1. When Napoleon came to power in 1799 most of Europe already hated France, determined to restore the ancient regime of the Bourbons. All-out war was bound to happen unless France took back the democracy it had given birth to. 2. The efforts put forth by Napoleon as Consul and later Emperor was based on trying to prevent or avoid those inevitable wars, not on conquering lands. 3. I will explain, war by war from the War of the Second Coalition to the War of the Sixth Coalition, that Napoleon was never the one to declare war. As he later said at St. Helena he was always the one to be attacked, not the other way around. After each of his victories Napoleon offered concessions, often extravagant ones, to the defeated enemy for the sole purpose of avoiding another war. Before I end and allow my opponent to elaborate on his points I will address a part of his argument: "And then, after being exiled to Elba, Napoleon once again arises to do what? Raise an army of two hundred and eighty thousand men in order to overthrow the recently restored King of France and invade Belgium! He wished to destroy Coalition Armies before they combined. What kind of peaceful fellow returns from a humble exile. .. " I will stop here. For one, his exile was far from humble. He might have been exiled but that did not mean he maintained a efficient intelligence network. Numerous assassination attempts were plotted against him, which was another reason why he decided to escape from Elba and return to France. Conscious of the political danger of Napoleon's continuing popularity, the Bourbon usurpers weren't consent with just neutralizing the emperor. They became obsessed with is assassination. The Congress of Vienna was already having talks of having Napoleon re-located somewhere further. A candidate was the Azores, but eventually St. Helena was picked. When Napoleon returned he did not immediately raise an army or march to war. In fact, he informed them that he accepted the Treaty of Paris, thereby indicating he renounced any claim to reconquer the frontiers of 1792 and instead engaged to respect those of 1789. Quite the attitude of a war-mongerer! The Coalition could not deny that the overwhelming majority of the French people did not want anything to do with the Bourbons any longer. They chose Napoleon and the Empire, and based on his reception when he returned this couldn't have been any more true. In a personal letter Napoleon attempted to convince the sovereigns of Europe that the Ancient Regime no longer suited the French nation: "The Bourbons no longer wished to associate themselves with French beliefs or manners. France had to separate itself from them. Its voice called for a liberator. .. Enough glory has already decorated the flags of various nations. Great successes have usually been followed by great reverses. A better arena is open today to sovereigns, and I am the first to enter it. " How did the Coalition respond? By forming a Seventh Coalition in preparation for a massive, 700,000-strong invasion of France. The illegitimacy of this new war imposed on France agitated the British opposition party. Their spokesman in the Commons declared: "Bonaparte was received in France as a liberator. The Bourbons lost their throne through their own mistakes. It would be a monstrous act to make war on a nation to impose on it the government it did not want. " The Morning Chronicle, a British newspaper, said in a article pointed to Lord Castlereagh, the foreign secretary: "English patriots think that the powers of the continent are unified not so much against Bonaparte as against the spirit of liberty. " Napoleon was aware of this and made a final attempt for peace with the British cabinet, who he told he was prepared to discuss any peace proposal, regardless of what it might be. He received no response. The Prussian Secretary of the Congress of Vienna openly expressed the reactionary ideology of the Coalition: "the wishes of the French people, even if they were formally expressed, would have no effect and no weight. " Despite the emperor's proclaimed desire to live in peace with its neighbors, Europe mobilized on a hateful anti-French crusade to forcefully shove a puppet government down the throats of the French, a government they detested. I eagerly await my opponent's response and his elaboration on his points! SOURCES: -The Wars Against Napoleon: Debunking the Myth of the Napoleonic Wars by Ben Weider and General Michel Franceschi