A better course would be to give us your assessment of Napoleon. He is a controversial figure.
Interesting question. I'll give it a try.
Like all real people, Napoléon had good sides and bad sides. On the bad side, he is responsible for more French dead than any other Frenchmen. He caused great suffering when taking his Grande Armée towards, into and out of Russia. As head of state, he was responsible for the unspeakably horrible atrocities and looting committed by the French army in Spain and Portugal. While he lost few battles he led personally, I think he relied too much on one tactic. When Wellington caught up with his technology, Napoléon did not adapt.
On the good side, the body of law known as the code Napoléon is still the basis of most law systems (excluding Anglo-Saxon countries). He took the Franc de Germinal from distrusted reform coin status to the only realistic alternative to the British pound. His patronage of neo-classical art was an important impulse to art for generations. It took generations before Britain and Prussia could match French diplomacy (Talleyrand).
On the military side, his system of promotion by merit, even though it was polluted by who-do-you-know in practice, was hugely better than buying rank (the British system up to colonel) or rank by birth (the German system). His appreciation for common soldiers was in stark contrast with Wellington's disdain of them and Blücher's detachment. France had neither the upstairs-downstairs society in Britain, nor the stultifying, self-righteous worship of duty in Prussia. Napoléon's speechifying beat Wellington and especially Blücher by miles.
Taking it all together, I think you may conclude that Napoléon's lasting importance was civil, rather than military (draw your own conclusions on how I rate the above coin issues.) Before, there were two strands of politics: conservative (royal sovereignty) and liberal (sovereignty of the people). His third way may be described as proto-nationalist (society before individual). It would take Karl Marx to provide an alternative (class justice before individual).
Peter
