Napoleon's complex - truth or myth?

Did Bonaparte earn this honor by his nature or is it all just a byproduct of propaganda?

Napoleon I Bonaparte succeeded in resurrecting the empire that died as a result of the French Revolution at the beginning of the 19th century, and then threw continental Europe at his feet. He was one of the most famous military geniuses, and today we often mention him because of a psychological phenomenon.

According to tradition, Napoleon compensated for the low growth by fighting. The Napoleon complex is one of the biggest male problems they have to deal with all their lives.

A person who has an average or smaller number of inches than most, feels inadequate and less valuable.

The stereotype that accompanies shorter men is that they are more aggressive, louder and have a greater desire to attract attention and prove themselves, which Freud explained by the fact that it is a defensive ego attitude that makes a man unable to bear to be below average.

Anthropologists justify the more aggressive performance of lower men by the evolutionary theory according to which lower and weaker men proved their superiority by being loud and aggressive.

Although Napoleon was not considered a giant in the physical sense, he was certainly not unusually short. If the French ruler was of average height, then why did we remember him as a short figure?

It is British propaganda that immortalized him as a temperamental dwarf, and James Gilray is especially deserving, whose numerous caricatures were very popular during Napoleon's reign (1799-1814, 1815). Gilray was a talented cartoonist and graphic artist. He ruthlessly ridiculed Bonaparte, to the extent that on one occasion a French statesman demanded that the British authorities censor his drawings.

How did the opinion that Napoleon was extremely short? It is believed that this stems from the fact that the French ruler was always surrounded by a personal guard made up of extremely tall and large men. Wherever Napoleon went, he was shorter than anyone who made up his entourage, so the French people remembered him as a "little corporal" - first a sign of sympathy, and later an insult to the general.