Pod Insights The Daily Stoic Premium (🔓) Ask Daily Stoic: Ryan and Historian Andrew Roberts Talk Leadership, Character and How One Person Can Change The World About this episode Today Ryan talks with writer and historian Andrew Roberts about the process of writing about historical figures, the ways that character is tested during trying times, Roberts’ take on figures like Napoleon and Lloyd George, and more. Books by Andrew RobertsChurchill: Walking with Destiny: https://geni.us/vi8zNapoleon: A Life: https://geni.us/p3JMb9nLeadership in War: https://geni.us/MCzyPyThe Storm of War: https://geni.us/CKRDmywGet Ego Is the Enemy for just $2.99: https://geni.us/Y6mZ0This episode is brought to you by Four Sigmatic. Four Sigmatic is a maker of mushroom coffee, lattes, elixirs, and more. Their drinks all taste amazing and they've full of all sorts of all-natural compounds and immunity boosters to help you think clearly and live well. Visit http://foursigmatic.com/stoic to get 15% off your order. This episode is also brought to you by Leesa, the online mattress company. Each of their mattresses is made to order and shipped for free right to your door. All mattresses come with a 100-night trial and a 10-year warranty, so you can feel confident in your investment in a good night’s sleep. And Leesa's hybrid mattress has been rated the best overall mattress by sites like Business Insider, Wirecutter, and Mattress Advisor. Daily Stoic listeners get 15% off their entire order with the code STOIC. Just visit Leesa.com and get your mattress today.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/ryanholidayInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanholiday/Facebook: http://facebook.com/ryanholidayYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicFollow Andrew Roberts: Homepage: https://www.andrew-roberts.net/Twitter: https://twitter.com/aroberts_andrewSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:04 Ryan Holiday? Welcome to the Weekend Edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something that can help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, wisdom, and temperance. And here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We reflect. We prepare. We think deeply about the challenging issues of our time. And we work through this philosophy in a way that's more possible here when we're not rushing to work or to get the kids to school, when we have the time to think, to go for a walk,
0:46 Ryan Holiday? to sit with our journals, and to prepare for what the future will bring.
0:53 Ryan Holiday? Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. As you know, I love biographies. My books are often just an amalgamation of things I've learned or stories I've found in other biographies that I've read. I've been a big reader of biographies since I was a kid, but I love biographies. You know, I've read thousands of pages of biographies from Robert Caro, from William Manchester, from Doris Kearns Goodwin. I love really in-depth, thick biographies. I love biographies that go not just into the subject,
1:35 Ryan Holiday? but into the parents and the environment that made the subject. I love learning the historical trends that influenced the people who influenced the person. And sometimes, there's just no way better to do that than one of these big, thick 900 or 1,000-page biographies. And so, you know, I was really honored this week to talk to someone whose work I've come to relatively recently, but am now a huge fan of, Andrew Roberts. He's the biographer of Napoleon. He wrote Napoleon. A Life. He wrote Churchill, Walking with Destiny. More recently, he's published a shorter, more accessible book called Leadership in War: Essential Lessons From Those Who
2:20 Ryan Holiday? Made History. And so I talked to Andrew in this week's episode about George Marshall, who is a hero in my book, He Goes Enemy. We talk about Cato, sort of the superhero of ancient Stoic thought. We talk a lot about Napoleon. And what would the Stoics have thought of Napoleon? I mean, I think, I think they would have viewed him similarly to how Marcus Aurelius and Seneca viewed Alexander the Great. Sort of a mix of fascination, but also disgust and disillusionment. I mean, Napoleon, as compellingly as he is portrayed in Andrew Roberts' books, you know, was ultimately an insatiable conqueror. He, you
3:05 Ryan Holiday? know, I think pales in comparison to the greatness of George Washington, as we, as I talk about with Andrew, in that he sought power for its own sake. He allowed himself to be made emperor. Napoleon saw himself the descendant of Caesar, far more than wanting to follow in the noble example of Cato. But I still think they would have been impressed with his ability to organize, his ability to accomplish goals, you know, his determination, his perseverance, which is what's so interesting about Alexander the Great in the Stoics, is that Seneca quotes and talks about him positively in some respects and negatively in others. Emerson had the same sort of horror and love and hate for Napoleon. I
3:48 Ryan Holiday? think the Stoics would have been much more in line with Churchill. They would have respected him. They would have admired him. They certainly would have seen flaws in his personality. And, you know, I think Churchill had some Epicurean tendencies, to be sure. But I think there's some similarities in Churchill to Cicero, to Seneca, you know, highly ambitious, highly motivated, definitely wanted to be at the center of things, if not at the absolute top of things. And yet, what made Churchill so great, and this is something I think Seneca and Cicero both sort of fell short on, is that he seemed to be, to believe in the cause more than in himself, you know, seemed to be, you know, his sort of personal bravery and courage is
4:32 Ryan Holiday? unquestionable, certainly wasn't corrupted by fame and fortune the way that the other two were. So again, I think obviously these characters existed well past the sort of heyday of Stoicism, but that doesn't mean we can't sort of study them in a similar way that the Stoics would have. And I think that's one of the reasons why I wanted to have Andrew on the show. We even talk about the importance of biography, how one can learn from biographies. I was just reading recently, someone was saying that Plutarch is probably the most influential writer who ever lived, because Plutarch's biographies of ancient Roman and Greek figures influenced so many of the most influential people who
5:16 Ryan Holiday? ever lived, including both Napoleon and Churchill. And so Andrew is just a fascinating guy. His biography, as we talk about it, Napoleon is a little transgressive, being an Englishman who talks somewhat admiringly of Napoleon. I actually really liked his biography of Margaret Thatcher in Leadership in War, but just a fascinating, clever, creative guy, one of probably the best living biographers of our time. He's controversial, he's clever, he's funny, and got a wonderful accent, which you will listen to in today's episode. So check this out, listen to it, and then I can't recommend his books Napoleon and Churchill
6:00 Ryan Holiday? and Leadership in War strongly enough. You will love them, they will take some time, but now is a great time to be dedicating yourself to big books that you don't normally have time to read. And so let's get into it with Andrew.
6:14 Ryan Holiday? Hi Andrew, you know, what I loved about your books, what really struck me with them, and something I sort of feel is missed in a lot of modern biographies, but is much more vivid, whether you're reading Plutarch or the sort of ancient biographies, is you seem to actually like and be fascinated by the people that you're writing about.
6:36 Speaker 01 Thank you very much. That's kind of you, and it's great to be on the show as well, Ryan. I think you've either got to love or hate the person that you're writing about. It's okay to hate them as well, in fact, but you must be emotionally connected to them, because otherwise, if you're living with somebody for three years, in the case of my last Churchill book, or six years, it took me to write the Napoleon book, and indeed, six years for Lord Salisbury as well. And that is a long time to commit to a person, almost as long as some relationships. And the idea that you can do that and not have an emotional commitment to them is strange, really, I suppose.
7:18 Ryan Holiday? Right. And I think what comes through to me in your books is not only do you have strong feelings about the person, but you seem to be hearkening back more towards an ancient tradition, which is that there's really something to learn from these larger-than-life figures, as opposed to, you know, I can feel like sometimes the biographies are bogged down in minutia, or they paint such a mixed picture, that it's impossible to actually learn anything from the person that you might apply in your actual life.
7:50 Speaker 01 Yes, that's right. I think there's no point in writing about somebody unless he has, he or she has something a little bit further, a little bit more than the normal, to tell you about the human condition. Otherwise, why do it?
8:05 Ryan Holiday? Right, and so I loved Leadership in War. It reminds me of Doris Kern Goodwin's book, Leadership in Turbulent Times. It seems like it's a very timely book. What does leadership look like under pressure? And even that's, I think, a little bit ancient, too. I mentioned Plutarch earlier, but what I love about Plutarch is he's like, how can I compare and contrast these figures in a way that allows the reader or a leader to learn something? I feel like you really did that in this book, where you're sort of contrasting the good leaders of the 19th and 20th century with the bad leaders of the 19th and 20th century.
8:47 Speaker 01 That's kind of you. I think my books, Hitler and Churchill and Napoleon and Wellington, try to do that. I mean, I didn't have the classic Plutarchian model in mind. He did Romans and Greeks, it seems, didn't he? And that would have been unfortunately beyond me. But nonetheless, it is interesting to contrast characters. I'm just reading a very good biography, or at least book, about Oliver Cromwell at the moment, and the number of contrasts between him and Charles I, I think, would make a really excellent sort of in-depth character study of those two men, because they really were polar opposites in so many ways. And the other thing, of course, is that it draws the reader in.
9:32 Speaker 01 I'm not trying to write dry as dust academic history. I am trying to write history which gives people pause for thought. And so that kind of contrast between people, I think, is an interesting way to look at them.
9:46 Ryan Holiday? And I particularly liked your biography of Marshall. Marshall's been a hero of mine, sort of ironic amongst the historical figures, because he was so not into self-promotion, he's sort of been given short shift by history. But I just, I find him to be sort of the ideal, modern statesman, leader, and obviously contrasts so much with the kinds of leaders that we have right now.
10:14 Speaker 01 Yes, oh undoubtedly. No, George Marshall was a was a giant, but he was a courtly Pennsylvanian gentleman. And to be able to be that, really, I think, is pretty extraordinary in an era. That, and obviously in the nineteen forty's, courtly Pennsylvanian gentlemen were much more the norm. But in an era of leadership, which did throw up, of course, huge characters like Winston Churchill and George Patton. He wasn't like that. Marshall was a was a much more self-contained figure. And and all the more impressive for it. And the way in which also he was capable of dealing with these
10:56 Speaker 01 huge egos like Douglas MacArthur, for example. But at the same time, when he was going to choose somebody for Supreme Allied Commander, he went for somebody who was rather like him. In fact, in Dwight Eisenhower.
11:11 Ryan Holiday? Yeah, no, that's a that's a great point. I think oftentimes we sort of bemoan the, you know, let's say the ethics or the temperament of our leaders. And, you know, we wish they were more like college professors, or we wish they were more like sort of pure and honest and good. But the reality is politics and warfare are very dirty businesses. And and I think the the great leaders manage to sort of be good, but actually deal in dirty business. And and and I think that that was unique about Marshall.
11:45 Speaker 01 And also, of course, they're not all morally upstanding individuals personally. And Marshall was indeed, as was actually in his private life, Winston Churchill and several of the others. But but by and large, that doesn't really ultimately matter in leadership. In with leadership, you've got to take the whole person. And if somebody is unfaithful to his wife, like David Lloyd George, it doesn't necessarily mean that he's not going to be a a great war-winning leader like David Lloyd George was. So it's a difficult one, the the connection between private morality and public effectiveness.
12:25 Ryan Holiday? Well, that was something I was going to ask you. So where do you come down then as a historian who's looked at such a broad swath of history and having profiled Hitler and Stalin and some of the failed leaders of that period? Well, something we talked about at Daily Stoic, Heraclitus had this great expression. He said, "Character is fate" or "Character is destiny." And so the argument there would be like your personal morality does matter because it's symptomatic of larger character flaws. How do you see character working with and for these larger-than-life figures that you've written about?
12:59 Speaker 01 Well, I'm afraid my, at least the nine people that I write about leadership in war, they really do span the gamut when it comes to personal character. You have people like Margaret Thatcher, who are morally impeccable. We mentioned George Marshall earlier, but others like Admiral Nelson, who very clearly wasn't and yet was undoubtedly a great leader. So I'm afraid I'm not really one for Heraclitus's argument on this score. I think that you can be a complete shit to your wife, the way that David Lloyd George was, for example.
13:40 Speaker 01 He was once asked, there's a terrible story about him, leave a true one, he was once asked whether or not he was going to be taking Mrs. Lloyd George to the Paris Peace Conference. And he replied, "Would you take sandwiches to a banquet?" Which is a pretty appalling remark to make about one's own wife, but nonetheless, he was the man who won the war.
14:02 Ryan Holiday? Yeah, and I wonder if maybe it's, it sort of depends on what your role is in a given situation in that, like, Marshall and Eisenhower, both men of very upstanding character, although Eisenhower did cheat on his wife, although somewhat understandable when you're trapped in Europe for five consecutive years, I suppose. But the-
14:29 Speaker 01 Try telling that to your wife.
14:33 Ryan Holiday? I just I just mean, when you look at the character of of those two men, I think obviously Eisenhower was a good president, Marshall would have been a good president. Whereas the the character flaws of, say, a MacArthur were well suited when he was contained solely to a singular command, but were you to put him in the position of supreme leadership, perhaps that's when, maybe under that pressure, the character flaw would not have have continued to be sustainable.
15:04 Speaker 01 Well, exactly. And I think also, although of course Douglas MacArthur was Chief of US of the US Army, Chief of Staff of the US Army in his time.
15:13 Ryan Holiday? Yes.
15:13 Speaker 01 Was also, in the Second World War, he'd have had to have done three extra things that he didn't really have to do in his time. The first was to deal with the press and and public relations to a much greater degree than any US Army Chief of Staff had to do in the past. The second thing, of course, was to deal with Congress and the President, which he which he did have to do, but nonetheless, on a on a much more intense footing than when he was Chief of Staff. And the third thing, of course, was trying to integrate with the Allies. And what George Marshall was brilliant at was getting on with people
15:53 Speaker 01 like Winston Churchill, and somehow he also managed to get on with General Sir Alan Brooke, the British Chief of Staff, who basically had contempt for him as a strategist, not as a man.
16:08 Ryan Holiday? Sure.
16:09 Speaker 01 And Marshall was able to do all of those three things on top of creating strategy and creating an army of 200,000 people and turning into into one of 16 million. So he really was, as Churchill called him, the organizer of victory.
16:26 Ryan Holiday? What I love about Marshall is, and I think this is maybe a fourth thing that you'd add to the responsibilities of leadership as you get that higher. Marshall was a cultivator of talent and saw himself more as a servant leader. Whereas, so when you look at sort of the coaching tree, as they call it in sports, of the coaches that, you know, come from one's coaching staff, Marshall has a very impressive coaching tree. MacArthur absolutely did not because he was sort of, for the most part, surrounded himself with sycophants or, you know, was sort of paranoid that people were plotting against him. So to be a leader at that level, you have to have leaders underneath you. And, you know, when MacArthur was chief of staff, he punished Marshall.
17:11 Ryan Holiday? He saw Marshall as a threat. So I think it's also, do you have the ego to realize that it's not really about you at that point?
17:18 Speaker 01 Yes, and I think it's fair to say that George Marshall and MacArthur obviously didn't get on, but it's worthwhile pointing out that Eisenhower did all right under
17:29 Ryan Holiday? True.
17:30 Speaker 01 MacArthur out in the Philippines. Although he did make the marvelous joke that working for MacArthur in the Philippines told him everything he needed to know about amateur dramatics.
17:42 Ryan Holiday? Yes. Well, so to go to this idea of character being fate, what I found fascinating about your Napoleon biography is you have somewhat of a contrarian take on Napoleon. You like him and you saw him as a, as a sort of the most brilliant man of his age and I could feel coming through the book, your admiration for him in many ways. What strikes you about Napoleon? Why did you decide to write this book?
18:11 Speaker 01 I think, actually, ultimately, it was his sense of humor. He's been accused so often by British historians of being a proto Hitler figure. And the more that I read about him and thought about him, the more ridiculous, ludicrous that is, in fact. And one of the things, one of the giveaways was the sense of humor, actually. He was an extremely funny man, which most dictators tend not to be.
18:43 Speaker 01 He was also so bound up with the liberating side of the French Revolution, keeping the best bits of the French Revolution, meritocracy and freedom of religion and equality before the law and so on.
19:00 Ryan Holiday? Sure.
19:00 Speaker 01 That he thought that they were all worth proselytizing across Europe. And of course, this had to be done in the ultimately in the sort of baggage train of the French army. But when you look at it closely, of those seven wars of the coalitions, actually, Napoleon only started two of them. The other five were started by different coalitions of allies attempting to crush him and with him, the ideas of the French Revolution. So I took, as you say, contrarian line, but what I profoundly believe in that really for years, we've the historians who were most affected by the Second World War,
19:45 Speaker 01 historians of the 50s, 60s, 70s, really up to the 90s, and all see Napoleon through a completely false prism, that of the Fuhrer.
19:57 Ryan Holiday? And I imagine that's a slightly more transgressive view for you to take as as as as someone who is British. My, interestingly, I was trying to think about my prism. When I think about Napoleon, I see it through the American lens. And what strikes me, Americans have also sort of at that time sort of had a love, hate, admiration for Napoleon. I guess when I contrast, you know, Washington with Napoleon, obviously Napoleon's military accomplishments are, you know, incredible compared to Washington, although Washington did beat the British and Napoleon never did. But that idea of characters, fate comes back to me. I guess, you know, Washington repeatedly renouncing power,
20:41 Ryan Holiday? Washington sort of having some purpose or vision beyond himself.
20:47 Ryan Holiday? Maybe that was the one thing that I I felt was absent in Napoleon. I was curious what you thought about that.
20:53 Speaker 01 Yes, well, it certainly was, of course, absent in Napoleon. There was no sense of that sin sonatus, that self-abnegation of power. When Napoleon got power, he jolly well hung on to it in a way that Washington, as you as you point out, never did, and is the greater man for it. In fact, it was George III, wasn't it, who was told that that Washington was going to give up power and said then he will be the greatest man in the world.
21:19 Ryan Holiday? Yeah.
21:21 Speaker 01 And when one looks now at Napoleon's legacy and Washington's, Washington's is the greater, however.
21:31 Speaker 01 Nonetheless, you know, when it comes to, oh, I don't know, the I suppose the the the Frenchness of Napoleon, to put it in a different, in a in a way, he was he was sort of he was essential to Frenchness in a way that that Washington is also obviously tremendously important to American-ness. But but today, a there are large numbers of Frenchmen who who denounce Napoleon, whereas I've never met an American who
22:09 Ryan Holiday? Sure.
22:09 Speaker 01 who denounces Washington, except now you get a slight revisionist aspect over the slaveholding issue and his his attitude towards the Native Americans early on in his career. So there is a revisionist aspect, but in in France, the pretty much the whole of the French left have have hated Napoleon and his legacy for nearly 200 years.
22:35 Ryan Holiday? Do you do you think? I guess with Napoleon, what maybe was lacking, or I felt was sort of a flaw in him, is that there wasn't that sort of strong internal compass. There was this clear sense of administrative genius, military genius, a sense that the old regime clearly was not working. But, for instance, his decision about slavery, at least Washington seemed to have been more morally conflicted about slavery than Napoleon was.
23:06 Speaker 01 Well, hang on, he did abolish slavery in 1814. Not for very long, of course.
23:15 Ryan Holiday? But after first reinstating it, right?
23:19 Speaker 01 After reinstating it, yes. No, he flip-flopped on slavery, whereas George Washington didn't, did he?
23:26 Ryan Holiday? Only in death, right? In death, Washington was the only founder to free his slaves.
23:34 Speaker 01 Yes, yes. It was a bit sort of late, I would have thought.
23:36 Ryan Holiday? Yeah, that's true. But it's like Napoleon had this sense of Europe as a set of chess pieces, and no one was better at that than him, and could size up personalities. But I was just curious what you thought maybe the animating principle, what was the cause that motivated? Was it himself, or was there some deeper?
24:00 Speaker 01 There was a driving force of personal destiny. He believed in his star. Of course he did. That's one of the driving aspects of Napoleon. But no, I really do think it was his recognition in his twenties, which of course is an absolutely key time, as I argue in my Leadership in War book, that period in one's early twenties when you look at the world and see whereabouts you are in relation to it, in relation to politics, the general Veltan Schauung that you take on in your early twenties. And what he took on... From the French Revolution, which broke out when he was twenty years old, was that
24:43 Speaker 01 there was the possibility of a better world, a world in which you are not judged, your rank and status in society is not judged on the basis of what your grandfather and father did. That really is something. Of the twenty six marshals of the French Empire created by Napoleon, half of them were the sons of personal servants and barrel coopers and innkeepers and so on. People who'd never, in a million years, been able in their own lifetimes to become princes and dukes. And that really was a liberating spirit for Europe in those days.
25:25 Ryan Holiday? And maybe Napoleon's almost disadvantaged by the fact that that seems in retrospect to be so obvious, so preposterous, that he's not fully given credit for turning it.
25:39 Speaker 01 That's right. No, no, no, absolutely right. I mean, it doesn't, it doesn't strike us as revolutionary, truly revolutionary, to do that. But imagine if for a thousand years you had not been able to go up or down in society, and then suddenly the son of a bootblack can become king of Sweden. I mean, that really is a truly incredible thing, and it could only have been done had the French Revolution just ripped up the rules. And Napoleon was a great one for appointing people regardless of their background. I mean, and this is interesting because he was actually himself a bit of a snob.
26:21 Speaker 01 You know, he came from an aristocratic, although poverty-stricken, nonetheless, in Horserun terms, aristocratic background. You know, he liked gentlemen and the son of gentlemen and so on, but he would also appoint Massena and Ney and Bernard, who came from absolutely nowhere, who came from the working classes of French society.
26:46 Ryan Holiday? So to connect to, obviously, Stoicism, which is what we talk about in my work the most, I was fascinated by something Napoleon talks about several times and that you spend a great deal of time discussing in the book, which was his ability, he talks about the lifelong effort it had been for him to contain his emotions, to not be scared in battle, not to react, not to be scared. Can you walk me through the work he did on himself to be so self-contained?
27:18 Speaker 01 Yes, I think it started when he was an officer in the army, where, of course, you can't show fear. And especially in that kind of fighting that he started with, where he was on the front line at Toulon, the cannonballs flooded around him. And he had to be, for his men, fearless or seymour. And then you get him, obviously, taking part in 60 battles, not always on the front line, of course, the more important he became, especially once he was emperor, the further back it was important that he be. However, he was
28:01 Speaker 01 still being mildly wounded, but not badly wounded, at the Battle of Ratibon in 1809, when he's been emperor for four years. So he's somebody who shows tremendous courage, but also he was able to compartmentalize his mind, which I think is quite a Stoic capacity to have, whereby whatever was going on at the time, he would be able to twitch his mind off and think about something else if he needed to. So even in the... In the ashes of burnt Moscow, he was able, in the Kremlin, to sit down and write
28:43 Speaker 01 the rules for a girls' school that he wanted to set up in Saint-Denis, just outside Paris. When, just before the, night before the Battle of Borodino, which was going to be the bloodiest battle in the whole history of mankind up until that point, he was, he wrote the regulations for the Comédie Française. This is an extraordinary, and indeed wrote to the prefect of Genoa, telling him to stop taking his mistress to the opera. This is a really extraordinary capacity to compartmentalize his mind. And he says in 1814 that, and he's got to, really, if he's going to take major decisions,
29:25 Speaker 01 he's got to be able to cut out all human emotion. And that's an extraordinary thing for a leader to admit. But I think it's, it's probably true for some of the really truly great ones, that they can't allow ordinary human emotion to cloud their judgments. And they have to take it entirely on the, on the merits and the basis of the case. And Napoleon was very good at doing that.
29:52 Ryan Holiday? My, my last question, and I told you I wanted to talk to you a little bit about Cato, and you said you didn't know much about him, but, but actually, I learned quite a bit about him in your Napoleon book. I'm, I'm, I'm in the middle of writing a book called Lives of the Stoics. That's a series of biographies of the, the great Stoics from history. And, and I, I didn't know that Napoleon had, one, that, that he had Cato in his Hall of Heroes, so to speak, at, at his, his French estate. Was it the Tolleries? How do you pronounce that?
30:23 Speaker 01 The Tuileries Palace.
30:25 Ryan Holiday? Yeah, he, he had a statue of Cato there. But I guess, in, in his book on Julius Caesar, he talked about how Cato, you know, had decided to kill himself rather than live under the tyranny of Julius Caesar. And I thought it was fascinating that Napoleon had this sort of counter, this sort of very real politic pragm- Dramatic argument. He was like, who did, who did Cato help by committing suicide? Certainly didn't help his cause. He only helped Julius Caesar. I just thought it was fascinating that, that he had looked at these Stoic figures from history and sort of ran it through his very Napoleonic lens and, and, and it really,
31:06 Ryan Holiday? I don't know, I just thought that was a, one of the, one of the most fascinating footnotes in your whole book.
31:11 Speaker 01 The ancients mattered enormously to him. He read about them. He wrote, of course, a biography of Julius Caesar when he was on St. Helena, which actually, when you look into it carefully, is a, is pretty much a translation of the Gallic Wars rather than a true biography. But nonetheless, you know, that's what he decided he was going to do when he knew he wasn't going to get off St. Helena. And for most of his time on St. Helena, he knew that he was dying of cancer. And, and that's what he, he thought would be a useful way to spend his time. He used to read the ancients when he, his father had a good library on, on Corsica.
31:54 Speaker 01 He also, when he was on Elba, used to read the ancients. And he took books, including Caesar, on campaigns with him in the, in the Great Campaigns. So yes, this is a man who, I mean, all of that society, of course, educated society, did, did read the ancients. But for Napoleon, he took it almost as a, as a sort of, you know, manual for himself, for his career and for his rule.
32:24 Ryan Holiday? Yeah. And it, it struck me as both illustrative and revealing. And I'd be curious for your thoughts. It's like sort of Cato almost universally throughout history, but then particularly in that Enlightenment period. I mean, Washington's hero is Cato. Some of the great lines from the American Revolution, you know, give me liberty or give me death. I regret I only have one life to give to my country. These come from Addison's play about Cato. I don't know. It just struck me as strange, like Napoleon, living in that same time, to have a negative take on Cato for sort of dying on principle. And is that, is that sort of revealing about maybe what fundamentally animated Napoleon in your view?
33:08 Speaker 01 Yes, I mean, Napoleon did consider suicide on a couple of occasions. He tried it, tried it once, possibly twice. In April 1814, he took poison. And so, and that was sooner than
33:27 Speaker 01 live in a, in a sort of post-Napoleonic Europe. So in that sense, he did follow Cato's leadership, but of course he survived and then went on to live on St Helena. He, he, he did think that suicide was a perfectly reasonable way to deal with dishonour, but I think he, like Cato, had so much pride. I'm not sure that, that these, these great Roman suicides were down to, to a belief in, in political systems, so much as a tremendous sense that you don't want to be
34:12 Speaker 01 captured and in some cases, of course, with the Romans actually displayed, you know, in, in cages.
34:19 Ryan Holiday? Paraded.
34:19 Speaker 01 Triumph of your enemy. You mustn't be paraded. You, one thinks of King Mithridates III, as so many others who, who just can't bear the humiliation of, of being paraded in the, in the triumph of one's enemy. And that's a, that's a much more powerful sense. Napoleon, on the other hand, thought that he was going to be able to be given a, a country house in the home counties of England and live as a gentleman. And when it became clear that that wasn't the case, he was infuriated.
34:52 Ryan Holiday? Yeah, it was almost, that, that belief struck me as so, so naive that, that you would be the mortal enemy of a country and, and then they would, they would somehow not treat it as just a game, that they'd welcome him to England with open arms.
35:08 Speaker 01 That's right, especially after some hundred thousand people had, had either been killed or wounded in the various struggles and battles between his escape from Elbe and him getting to, on the boat to St Helena.
35:26 Ryan Holiday? And I guess ultimately, not having read it, but glance what you talked about. I think in the sort of battle of, you know, the Republican forces and then the Caesarian forces, that what turns Rome from a republic to an empire. It seems like ultimately, you know, Napoleon was was sort of a fan of Julius Caesar and Julius Caesar himself, you know, didn't mind trading tens or hundreds of thousands of lives if it got him what he wanted. And maybe that's ultimately, you know, the darker side of Napoleon and.
36:00 Speaker 01 No, no, no, no, I take issue with you there. I don't.
36:04 Ryan Holiday? Okay.
36:05 Speaker 01 I really don't believe that. I don't think I can't see an instance in which he traded thousands of lives for anything for his own glory. I think that he obviously, as a commander, especially if it was a huge commander like the invasion of Russia, for example, tens of thousands of people died. But that's a huge difference between assuming that his motivation was was primarily for his own glorification. I don't think it was in the slightest.
36:34 Ryan Holiday? Well, don't you think he could have he could have stayed and not escaped after his first exile?
36:39 Speaker 01 No, after his first exile, the one to Elba, unfortunately, as he actually landed, the allies who were all in Vienna at the time at their congress declared him an outlaw and and mobilized their armies to invade France. So there was no question of him being able to. He wanted to just be allowed to stay as emperor of France. He was open to negotiations and discussions, but but they had an army of 150,000 Austrians, 350,000 Russians and the British and the Prussians, all converging on France to overthrow him.
37:20 Ryan Holiday? But if he'd stayed in Elba, that wouldn't have happened. I just mean, I mean, he was willing, he was willing to trade hundreds of thousands or many thousands of lives to to try to retake France.
37:31 Speaker 01 Well, he was hoping, he was hoping that because the Bourbons were so unpopular by then, he was going to be acclaimed, which he was, and that he was then going to be able to do do a deal in which tens or hundreds of thousands of Allied lives weren't going to be lost. So that I don't think holds up as some kind of a moral failing of his.
37:52 Ryan Holiday? Got it.
37:52 Speaker 01 You're right.
37:53 Ryan Holiday? Well, no, look.
37:53 Speaker 01 When you, when you talk about Julius Caesar, you're absolutely right. I mean, when one looks at the eagles that he put on the standards, the choice of the Senate as being the upper house of the of the French legislature, of his own taking on the imperial, imperial position, calling himself emperor, that's all, that's all very much out of the Caesarian rulebook. Although, of course, Julius Caesar didn't call himself emperor because, to all intents and purposes, the first emperor of Rome.
38:27 Ryan Holiday? Sure. No, and, and, look, I, I, I found the book fascinating, and I think ultimately, what, what makes it so great and why I think reading biography is important, is that your book raises these questions and puts them up for us to to think about in a way. It's not just, where was this person born? What did they do? It, it's the great lives sort of put forth these great, complicated questions that history repeats over and over and over again.
38:58 Speaker 01 That's right. And I think that's why it's important to remember that the, that the great man or great woman view of history, which has been so derided in academia over the last half century or century or so, actually does have a valid reason for its existence. The Marxist view, the Whig view of history, the determinists who argue, in T. S. Eliot's words, that history is just vast impersonal forces.
39:31 Speaker 01 Is right to an extent, of course it is, but actually unless one works out what's going through Napoleon's mind in eighteen twelve, or indeed Adolf Hitler's mind in nineteen forty one, you can't explain the invasion of Russia in both of those cases. And so it is important to Winston Churchill's mind in nineteen forty, when he got the British people to to fight on against Hitler. And these are key moments where individuals really do matter, and therefore, in my view, it's worth studying.
40:02 Ryan Holiday? No, and we didn't even get to talk about Churchill, but but you're in a way, that's kind of the theme of of all your books, it feels like, is you you pick individuals who individually changed changed history. And yes, they're larger than life. And yes, their virtues and vices are greater than than than many of ours. But at the same time, they were just ordinary people, you know, Winston Churchill had to write books for a living. And and Napoleon, as you say, began and started his life, you know, sweating about legal matters regarding his inheritance and and that, you know, even from all that smallness can come,
40:42 Ryan Holiday? you know, enormous impact on not just people alive in the moment, but but for generations and generations afterwards.
40:51 Speaker 01 Couldn't have better myself.
40:54 Ryan Holiday? And to me, the ultimate disproving of the attack against the great man of history theory I saw on an internet meme is for anyone who believes that an individual can't change history, let me tell you about a person who ate a bat in China about six months ago.
41:10 Speaker 01 Absolutely. Yes, that's very good. But I tell you what, before we go, can I speak of that, speaking of the coronavirus crisis?
41:22 Ryan Holiday? Yes.
41:23 Speaker 01 Can I just read one paragraph, just a couple of sentences from a speech that Churchill gave to the Royal College of Physicians?
41:31 Ryan Holiday? Please.
41:32 Speaker 01 March nineteen forty four, which I have in front of me, and which I think is is very interesting and useful. When people say that it's not a war that we're fighting against coronavirus, I think that Churchill would very much think that it is. And and the reason for that is this this paragraph from the speech you made. The discoveries of healing science must be the inheritance of all. That is clear. Disease must be attacked, whether it occurs in the poorest or the richest man or woman, simply on the ground that it is the enemy. And it must be attacked just in the same way as the fire brigade will give its full assistance to the humblest cottage as readily as to the most important mansion.
42:16 Ryan Holiday? That's beautiful. And as always Churchill seems both timeless and ahead of his time.
42:23 Speaker 01 Thank you very much indeed, Ryan. It's been great being on the show.
42:26 Ryan Holiday? I appreciate it. Thanks. Hey, everyone. Great news. The ebook edition of Ego is the Enemy is on sale this weekend, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday for just $2.99 on Amazon. And to make it even better, we're offering a discount on Ego is the Enemy themed stuff in the Daily Stoic store. Get 20% off our Ego is the Enemy pendants and challenge coins with the code Ego Discount, or you can get an Ego print for just $10 when you buy a matching pendant with a code Ego Print. You can go to store.dailystoic.com and just search Ego and you'll find the Ego is the Enemy Challenge Coin Pendant Print and you'll get Ego is the Enemy,
43:10 Ryan Holiday? number one bestseller on Amazon for just $2.99 right now. Thanks. Do well.
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