Cobra Effect · Famous myths
Was Napoleon really short?
How enemy cartoons and French inches made an average man famously short.
7 cards, read aloud in 2:14, with a test and sources.
Napoleon Bonaparte is remembered as a very short man.
The idea is so strong that a short man with a need to dominate is said to have a Napoleon complex. But he seems to have been about average height for a Frenchman of his time.
After his death in 1821, his height was recorded as five feet two, in French units.
A French inch was longer than an English inch. Converted, that is about one metre sixty eight, or about five feet six in English measure. Englishmen who met him described him as about five feet seven.
British cartoonists turned him into a tiny, bad tempered figure.
During the wars with France, artists such as James Gillray drew him again and again as small and ridiculous. The cartoons were popular, and the picture stuck.
His guards may have made him look shorter.
The soldiers of his Imperial Guard were chosen partly for their height. Among tall men, a man of average height looks small. His nickname, the little corporal, was a term of affection, not a comment on his height.
Historians do not all agree on the exact figure.
A few argue that his height was recorded in English units, which would make him shorter. Most read it in French units, and English observers’ own descriptions support that. The weight of the evidence points to a man of ordinary height.
The phrase Napoleon complex came much later.
It is often linked to the idea of an inferiority complex, from the psychologist Alfred Adler. Whether shorter men really are more aggressive is still debated, and the evidence is mixed.
So when a famous insult sticks, ask who first made it.
Napoleon’s image was shaped partly by his enemies’ cartoons. A difference between French and English inches did the rest. He was an ordinary height, made small by the story told about him.
Sources
- La taille de Napoléon, Fondation Napoléon. The recorded measurements of his height, in French.
- Was Napoleon short?, Encyclopaedia Britannica. The French inch, the tall guards and the nickname.
- Cultural depictions of Napoleon, Wikipedia. His height, the cartoons, and the minority view on the measurement.
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