• slacktoid@lemmy.mlEnglish
    2·
    6 days ago

    Its cause the British and the French while both using feet and inches had different sizes for what an inch was. So a 5’ 2" in France was closer to 5’ 7" in England. But it’s easier to say he is short and didn’t like that.

  • CyberEgg@discuss.tchncs.de
    1·
    6 days ago

    I don’t quite get it. Apparently, Napoleon’s height was ridiculed and used for english propaganda, but I often hear that actually, he wasn’t a small person. I looked it up, wikipedia says he was 1.68 m. That’s damn short though.

      • CyberEgg@discuss.tchncs.de
        0·
        6 days ago

        No, not always. There were fluctuations depending on several factors, nutrition being one (and an important one).

        Still, 1.68 seems just tiny ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

        • peregrin5@lemm.eeEnglish
          0·
          5 days ago

          1.68m is 5’5" which is yeah short but not too far from the (self-reported) average male height in France today which is 5’9" (1.75m) (Bayesian estimates actually say 5’7" (1.70m)). During Bonaparte’s time average male height in France was 5’4" (1.62m) so he was actually taller than average by a tiny bit.

          • CyberEgg@discuss.tchncs.de
            0·
            5 days ago

            I cannot relate to feet and inches for height, I’m all but used to imperial units.

            All I am saying though is that 1.68 is very small from my perspective and if that’s the average height back around 1800, people where tiny then.

  • Deestan@lemmy.world
    1·
    6 days ago

    He is such an absurd historical figure to read about, the way he could get people to rally around him and make his armies work smoothly no matter what.

    It looked like he could just wash ashore naked and alone anywhere, recruit a loyal army from whomever appeared to live nearby, and snowball it into a huge professional fighting force on the way to conquer the nearest city.

    • Contentedness@lemmy.nz
      1·
      6 days ago

      I listened to a podcast about his life & times, some of the sources they used included his love letters which added a whole other dimension to his character. You have this immensely powerful and gifted military leader, feared across Europe, writing to a 19 year old he just met at a party about how he’s just going to die of sadness if she doesn’t write back to him immediately.