PARIS ¨C Jacques Chirac couldn¡¯t stand him. Nicolas Sarkozy kept his distance. Fran?ois Hollande shunned him. But on the 200th anniversary this week of Napoleon Bonaparte¡¯s death, Emmanuel Macron has chosen to do what most recent presidents of France have avoided: Honor the man who in 1799 destroyed the nascent French Republic in a putsch.
By choosing to lay a wreath Wednesday at Napoleon¡¯s tomb under the golden dome of Les Invalides, Macron is stepping into the heart of France¡¯s culture wars. Napoleon, always a contested figure, has become a Rorschach test for the French at a moment of tense cultural confrontation.
Was Napoleon a modernizing reformer whose legal code, lyc¨¦e school system, central bank, and centralized administrative framework laid the basis for post-revolutionary France? Or was he a retrograde racist, imperialist, and misogynist?
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