The 18th-century British cartoonist James Gillray was the first to satirize Napoleon as a “thundering boastful character.” Later in the 20th century, despite Napoleon’s being of average height for his time, the term Napoleon Complex was applied to short men whose feelings of inferiority led to “a strong desire for power and dominance.”

You don’t have to be short to feel inferior or crave power. We don’t have to speculate on Napoleon’s mindset; the despot himself shared that with General Philippe-Paul de Ségur. During Napoleon’s 1812 invasion of Russia, Ségur served as his aide-de-camp. Ségur’s historical account Defeat: Napoleon’s Russian Campaign became a primary source for Tolstoy’s’ War and Peace.