In a one-horse town called Hestrud, on the Franco-Belgian border, there’s a monument which encapsulates Europe’s enduring fascination with Napoleon. The story carved upon this plinth is more like poetry than reportage. As Napoleon passed through here, on his way to Waterloo, he struck up a conversation with a bold little boy called Cyprien Joseph Charlet. ‘You think victory will always follow you, but it always disappears,’ this audacious lad told him, apparently. ‘If I were you, I’d stay at home. Tomorrow your star will surely dim.’
Well, that’s the story, anyway. Fact or fiction, or a bit of both? In a way, it hardly matters. Napoleon recorded this incident in his memoirs, casting himself as a tragic hero, and much of Europe has taken him at his own estimation. Napoleon met his Waterloo, but today his star burns brighter than ever. ‘Living, he failed to win the world,’ wrote Chateaubriand. ‘Dead, he possesses it.’ And his ultimate monument is the European Union.
Naturally, in France Napoleon is still revered. Had Britain produced such a military maestro, we’d probably forgive his many flaws. It’s elsewhere in the eurozone that his veneration is so intriguing. These were countries that he conquered, at the cost of almost a million men, but in the lands he bled white there’s no sense that he’s despised. In Britain he’s a pantomime villain. Here in the Low Countries he’s a sort of Caesar. He personifies the growing division between Britain and the EU.
If you swot up on your European history, it’s easy to see why Napoleon is regarded far more benevolently here. For the beleaguered Belgians, Napoleon was one in a long line of foreign despots. Before the French revolution, they were subjects of the Austrian Emperor; afterwards, of the Dutch king.
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