selected anniversary an event in this article is a february selected anniversary may be in html comment link to napoleon's portrait the link to napoleon's portrait at the beginning of this article is a broken link please fix thank you neutrality please this following passage isn't exactly neutral in its tone after all the military record is unquestioned years of wars perhaps six million europeans dead france bankrupt her overseas colonies lost and it was all such a great waste for when the self proclaimed t te d'arm e was done france's losses were permanent and she began to slip from her position as the leading power in europe to second class status that was bonaparte's true legacy please remove please sign your talk posts and please place new threads at the bottom of the page as to your comment it is a direct quotation and therefore not suppposed to be neutral after all it is in a section of the article that describes conflicting views about napoleon it is an accurate portrayal of one of those conflicting points of view talk ah yes but we probably need a quotation from another view that conflicts it would anyone be able to find one heru nar some comments regarding france's utter defeat in the napoleonic wars should be part of the article nonetheless the fact that france slipped from being the top european power to a secondary level clearly below britain's and soon also below germany's and even austria's is hardly contentious it must be remembered that the revolutionary wars and the napoleonic wars came hard on the heels of what appeared to europe's intellectuals as britain's final unavoiding loss of great power status following the independence of the u s just six years before the assault on the bastille actually france was the dominate continental power until the franco prussian war and remains a great power to this day i must respectfully disagree with this latest assertion since france was smaller in size and less influential than both austria and russia before the prussian war even if one were to concede that it was the main continental power that would imply a loss of status before the napoleonic wars it was the main european power including britain and had beaten combined enemy armies time and time again as for keeping great power status to this day i'm sure that that should come as great surprise to the french humiliated by nazi occupation and resolutely defeated both in vietnam and algeria now it's true they can veto stuff in the un just like the then underdeveloped island of taiwan did until for whatever that's worth aussiesta who cares about your stupid pov you are telling nonsense nazi humiliation etc pff weren't the us humiliated in vietnam in cuba and now in iraq so they aren't great anymore then right didn't the soviet retreated from afghanistan what about them the german were defeated and occupied in and what about them what about the old good british they were wiped by the germans in the campaigns of norway then france and dunkirk a defeat transformed into a great victory what a joke actually in indochina and algeria the french had times less casualties than their opponents is this a defeat a defeat is supposed to happen when one is loosing a war not when he is winning it these two decolonization wars were wasted by politics the very same happened in the overlooked suez crisis of the british surrendered there they left their french and israeli allies without warning ever heard about the madagasacar war of independence no why because france smashed the rebellion in a such violent way there are ashamed of no one knows what happened in madagascar in so it is not in history books moreover france is still a great power with remaining overseas territories and a strong nuclear force the third one in terms of warheads after russia and usa your beloved austrian and german doesn't have so watch your tongue quoting a non neutral pov is just the same as giving your own opinion who do you think you can fool with your francophobic tricks ah the legendary french manners brushing insults and rants aside my point remains unchallenged following napoleon's defeat france slipped