In the last grand strategy class before spring break this semester, we came to Napoleon. It's been a long journey from Sun Tzu back at the start of the semester, but Napoleon, himself an assiduous student of grand strategy who carried a copy of Sun Tzu with him on campaign, studied the careers of Hannibal and Scipio, and made practical and conscious use of the teachings of Machiavelli, is an important figure for young grand strategists to contemplate.
Dedicating time to Napoleon is one of the shifts I've made to the grand strategy curriculum used at the mother of all grand strategy programs back at Yale. I don't do this lightly, but Napoleon strikes me as a pivotal figure in strategic history whose rise and fall have much to teach, and whose career and accomplishments remained the focus of strategic thought from Jomini and Clausewitz to Mahan and beyond. He also straddles the boundary between classical and renaissance strategists and the strategists of the modern world. Like Machiavelli, Napoleon's intellectual toolkit came from the literary productions of ancients like Polybius, Plutarch and Livy, but unlike the great Florentine the political and ideological problems that engaged and ultimately overwhelmed Napoleon are very much like those strategists must grapple with today.
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