The growth of Napoleon Bonaparte has long been the talk of the town. The emperor's brilliant career is cited as an example, consoling people suffering from their small stature. The imperial ambitions of Napoleon are explained by an inferiority complex, allegedly associated with insufficient growth.
The question of the growth of Napoleon Bonaparte is not only a question of a specific anthropometric indicator. A "short" or, conversely, "tall" person is in the eyes of others. This is determined by how the height of a particular person is related to the average height.
Napoleon's height in centimeters
In 1821, the deposed emperor died on the island of St. Elena. Immediately after his death, Napoleon's personal physician performed an autopsy, and the results were recorded. The growth of Napoleon is also recorded in these records. The doctor wrote it down as "5/2". He probably used the French system of measures, and this should be read as "5 feet 2". If you translate this figure into the English system, which was slightly different from the French, you get 5 feet 6, 5 inches.
If you translate these data into the modern metric system, you get 169 cm. For a modern person, this is really below average height, but still not so much that a person would feel “short” and suffer from an inferiority complex!
Contemporaries all the more could not consider Napoleon short, because the average height in those days was from 164 to 168 cm.
The origin of the legend
To a certain extent, Napoleon himself contributed to the widespread idea of his small stature. Having come to power in 1799, Bonaparte introduced special requirements for soldiers serving in some branches of the military. So, only people whose height was at least 170 cm (in the system of that time - 5 feet 7 inches) could enter the service in the elite regiment of horse rangers. Even more radical was the requirement for the imperial guard to be at least 178 cm (5 feet 10 inches) tall.
In other words, without exception, all the soldiers were taller than Napoleon himself. Appearing with them "in public", he really could seem short.
Another possible source of the legend of the "undersized emperor" is the difference between French and English measuring systems. As mentioned, Bonaparte's personal physician recorded his height using French units. But English inches, bearing the same name, had a different meaning. 5 feet 2 inches in the English system is 157, 48 cm. This is exactly the height of the wax figure of Napoleon, presented in one of the Russian museums.
Such growth can indeed be considered small, especially for a man. But this is the result of a mistake. In reality, Napoleon was not short, and the origins of his character must be sought elsewhere.
