"It is true that Napoleon perfected several features of modern totalitarianism, economic warfare, mass propaganda, and other deplorable innovations: he marched with events, as he put it. But it is not from these things that his myth has sprung. He captured the imagination of those who harked back to--or looked forward to a return of--the gods and heroes of the ancient world. Alone among modern dictators he conquered mankind not by preaching systems and ideologies, not by speeches and demagoguery, not (though he used them) by terror and secret police--but by the sheer magnetism of his personality, by the concentrated application of his mind, by the infectious boldness of his ventures."
J. Christopher Herold, The Mind of Napoleon (1955).
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