httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIJimmYKYYA

An extended excerpt from Abel Gance‘s restored 1927 masterpiece, Napoleon

On this date in 1799 Napoleon left Egypt en route to seize power in France.

Frye in “The Drunken Boat”:

The self-identifying admiration that so many Romantics expressed for Napoleon has much to do with the expression of natural force, creative power, and revolutionary outbreak.  As Carlyle says, in an uncharacteristically cautious assessment of Napoleon: “What Napoleon did will in the long-run amount to what he did justly; what Nature with her laws will sanction.” (The Stubborn Structure, 209)

And here he is in one of the late notebooks on the same quote:

Carlyle said that what Napoleon did will ultimately become what he did justly: people like Napoleon never really do anything, certainly not justly.  They’re thunderstorms in the hell-world.  (CW 6, 672)