To Napoleon, the way that politicians in Paris had forced metric measurements on the public was a lesson in bad government.
Napoleon Bonaparte’s frustration at the way that metres and kilos were forced on the people of France following the Revolution of 1789 has often been quoted with grim amusement by those who lament the passing of yards and ounces. And yet the lesson he was teaching us has rarely been taken to heart, either by his critics or his admirers, though it applies in so many areas of our common life.
The great French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte protested that in calling England ‘a nation of shopkeepers’ he had paid us a compliment.
‘The English are a nation of shopkeepers’ intoned Napoleon Bonaparte, offending many English politicians including Viscount Castlereagh, Foreign Secretary from 1812 to 1822. But as the great General, by now exiled on the island of St Helena, told his personal physician Dr O’Meara, he had meant it as a compliment. The English, he said, should stop trying to be French.