ecure neediness that, if anything, put her off intimacy. The young general embarked on his Italian campaign just a few days into the couple’s marriage, writing to her almost constantly from the battlefield. For her part, Joséphine seems to have struck up affairs back in France in her husband’s absence and her silence drove him to send increasingly pleading missives.
5. HE WASN’T ACTUALLY SHORT.
The rumor about Napoleon’s height—or lack thereof—started during his lifetime. English propagandists depicted the general as comically diminutive in critical cartoons during the Napoleonic Wars. The belief became so deeply established that in the 20th century, a psychological complex specific to short men was named after him. But how tall was he really? Probably around five-foot-six—which was actually just about average for the era. That height comes from what was written at the time of his death. A physician’s note that accompanied Napoleon’s coffin says that he was five-foot-two “from the top of the head to the heels”—but an additional note specifies that this is French measurements and that it is equal to five-foot-six in English terms.
6. HE ONCE WROTE A ROMANCE NOVEL.
That’s right, Napoleon Bonaparte was a general, a revolutionary, an emperor and—on at least once occasion—a romance novelist. Written just before he met and married Joséphine in 1795, Clisson et Eugénie tells a fictionalized account of the young soldier’s relationship with Bernardine Eugénie Désirée Clary, whose sister married his brother Joseph. The novella was never published during his lifetime and following his death, the manuscript was divided into segments that sold as souvenirs at auction houses in the centuries after. Although the various segments were published at one time or another, a complete English translation wasn’t reconstructed until 2009. If you’re interested in reading the tale of passionate lovers separated by war and ultimately death, you can find Clisson et Eugénie on Amazon.
7. HE PROBABLY WASN'T AFRAID OF CATS.
There are a lot of claims swirling about that Napoleon—and many other famous generals-turned-dictators—suffered from “ailurophobia,” or fear of cats. But Katharine MacDonogh, author of Reigning Cats And Dogs: A History Of Pets At Court Since The Renaissance, says that “No record exists of Napoleon either liking or hating cats."
8. NAPOLEON’S ARMY DISCOVERED THE ROSETTA STONE.
Napoleon is best remembered for his political and military prowess, but during his early life, he also considered himself a scientist, and was elected membership to to the National Institute, the foremost scientific society in post-Revolutionary France, in 1797. For his expedition to seize Egypt and thus cut off Britain’s trade route, Napoleon brought along 150 savants—scientists, engineers, and scholars to survey the topography, environment, culture, and history of Egypt—in addition to his troops. The 23-volume Description de l'Égypte contained unprecedented knowledge of the country, but perhaps the greatest find was the Rosetta Stone. Captain Pierre François-Xavier Bouchard discovered the inscribed slab during the demolition of an ancient wall in the city of Rosetta. He immediately recognized the potential significance and had the stone shipped to Cairo. Written in hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek, the Stone eventually proved to be the cipher that cracked ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.
9. BEETHOVEN ORIGINALLY PLANNED TO DEDICATE HIS THIRD SYMPHONY TO NAPOLEON.
Ludwig van Beethoven greatly admired the general, even into Napoleon’s early years as First Consul after overthrowing the existing government. When he began working on Symphony 3, Beethoven professed to be inspired by Napoleon’s heroic exploits and ostensibly democratic ideals. But then, in 1804, even after declaring himself First Consul for life, Napoleon had himself crowned Emperor of France and Beethoven lost all respect for him. According to Ferdinand Ries, a student and early biographer of the c
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