The growth of Napoleon Bonaparte - the error of calculations

The sunny clear day of August 15, 1769 in history is known as the birthday of the most famous person in Europe - Napoleon Bonaparte. The boy was the second in the family, belonging to the ancient, but a poor family, but his tremendous perseverance and dedication made him one of the greatest military leaders in the world.

On the triumphal path of Bonaparte is well known: he was the first French consul, then the emperor of France, led brilliant military campaigns that turned his mighty empire into one of the most powerful powers in Europe. Then there was a campaign against Russia, complete collapse, abdication and in the end - death on the island of St. Helena.

The name of this man has always been associated with many legends and rumors, some of which are already so ingrained in human minds that they began to be perceived as a reality. And strangely enough, but the growth of Napoleon Bonaparte, always considered very small, also refers more to the rumor area than to reality.

His name is very often taken as an example of a human "low" syndrome, when people are credited with aggressiveness in order to compensate for this shortcoming in addition.

Traditionally, it was considered that the growth of Napoleon Bonaparte barely reached 156 centimeters, but this is at least strange, because contemporaries never called him undersized. Moreover, in many sources it is said of him as an emperor with a height of 165 centimeters.

Then where does the legend "the small growth of Napoleon Bonaparte" lead from? Many researchers believe that the reason for his nickname.

It is known that Napoleon was called "The Little Corporal", and the reason for this is not a short stature, but a disproportion in the figure. The emperor had a disproportionately large head, catching sight of his lifetime images. And it is likely that "Little Corporal" he was nicknamed precisely because of the apparent fragility of the figure in conjunction with youth. After all, Napoleon was already a general at the age of twenty-six. And so it was fate that he was surrounded mostly by tall people, against which he really looked small, besides, he did nothing to look taller: he did not wear fashionable at the time boots with high heels or Hats with a magnificent plume. He essentially wanted to be perceived by such a person as the soldiers loved him.

The riddle of his short stature was solved just recently. It turns out that when, after death, the growth of Napoleon Bonaparte was measured, we got five feet two inches and four lines. Later, scientists when translating this value into centimeters were guided not by the French futures operating in those years, but by English. Hence the difference. And if we start from the table of European feet presented in the encyclopedia of Brockhaus and Efron, you can see that they really are different.

Consequently, the growth of Napoleon after death was about one meter 69 centimeters, and this despite the fact that he was already quite a decrepit old man. Hence the conclusion: in his youth the French emperor was a man of medium build, and not a short man at all.

Therefore, the prevailing view over the centuries that Bonaparte was a very small "fat man" is a delusion.