Do the French think of Napoleon as an evil dictator or National hero?
It depends. French royalists – evil dictator French republicans – national hero. Since France is a republic, I would think the French people of today view Napoleon as a national hero! In fact, the majority of the world probably viewed Napoleon as a hero. Napoleon was good because he was the symbol of the French Republic and he spread the ideas of liberty, equality and fraternity around a Europe ruled by tyrant Kings (i.e. Britain, Austria, Prussia, Russia, Spain etc). As a result, many democratic countries to this day use the “Napoleonic Code” as their basic law.
