History is worse than useless if it does not
accurately chronicle and describe events; and biography is valueless and
misleading if it does not truly set forth individual character.
There is, however, a kind of great-man literature in which truth is
comparatively unimportant, and that is the literature of popular legend
and tradition. Whether it purports to be historical or biographical, or
both, it derives its interest and value from the light that it throws
upon the temperament and character of the people who originate it,
rather than from the amount of truth contained in the statements that
it makes about the man.
The folk-tales of Napoleon Bonaparte herewith presented, if judged from
the viewpoint of the historian or the biographer, are absurdly and
grotesquely untrue; but to the anthropologist and the student of human
nature they are extremely valuable as self-revelations of national
character; and even to the historian and the biographer they have some
interest as evidences of the profoundly deep impression made by
Napoleon's personality upon two great peoples--the Russians and the
French.
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