Bonaparte×Lincoln

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   Welcome back to Reborn Radio. Up next on TITANS: Napoleon Bonaparte and Abraham Lincoln, on On the rival they secretly suspected was right all along.
2. 00:09
   Abraham Lincolnshare moment

   Well, I suppose we should start with the obvious question. Who was yours? The rival who kept you up nights, the one you kept arguing with in your head long after the debate ended?
3. 00:19
   Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

   Talleyrand. Always Talleyrand. That limping, perfumed traitor served me for years while selling my secrets to anyone with a purse. But he was right about Russia, wasn't he? He told me not to go. Told me the empire was overstretched.
4. 00:40
   Abraham Lincolnshare moment

   Did he say it to your face, or just to everyone else?
5. 00:43
   Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

   To my face. I threw him out of my office. Called him—well, we're on the radio. But yes, he said it directly, and I would not listen. And you? Who was your Talleyrand?
6. 00:57
   Abraham Lincolnshare moment

   George McClellan. My general who wouldn't fight, my subordinate who called me a baboon, my opponent in '64 who wanted to make peace with the rebellion. I removed him from command twice. But here's the thing—he was right that I didn't understand military logistics at the start.
7. 01:12
   Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

   McClellan? The one who let Lee escape after Antietam? You think he was right?
8. 01:18
   Abraham Lincolnshare moment

   About some things, yes. He told me I was asking the impossible, throwing men into battles without proper supply lines, without enough training. And in '61 and '62, he was correct. I didn't know what I was asking. Of course, he also wouldn't move when he did have everything he needed, which was its own problem.
9. 01:36
   Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

   A general who will not fight is no general at all. I would have had him shot. But go on—what did he teach you?
10. 01:45
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Patience. Which I know sounds strange coming from someone who fired him. But McClellan showed me that I needed to understand the machinery of war before I could demand results. After him, I knew what questions to ask Grant, what was reasonable and what was fantasy.
11. 01:59
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    Grant. Yes. I read about him. He understood what you finally understood—that war is arithmetic. You must be willing to spend lives to win. McClellan could not stomach that.
12. 02:18
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Neither could I, at first. That's what McClellan saw in me—the hesitation, the hope that somehow we could have war without its consequences. He suspected, rightly, that I was learning this job in the middle of doing it.
13. 02:31
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    At least you kept your republic. Talleyrand was right that I would lose everything, and he made certain of it. He negotiated against me at Vienna, helped restore the Bourbons. The man I made a prince unmade my empire.
14. 02:48
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Did he do it for France, do you think? Or for Talleyrand?
15. 02:51
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    For France, he would say. He always said he served France, not me. And perhaps—this is what haunts me—perhaps he did. Perhaps France was better served by a stable Europe than by my glory.
16. 03:10
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    That's quite an admission from Napoleon Bonaparte.
17. 03:13
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    I have had time to think, Mr. Lincoln. Time and nothing else. When you are on St. Helena, alone, you think about what was necessary and what was... pride. Talleyrand understood that my empire could not last. It was built on conquest, and conquest must always continue or collapse. There is no steady state.
18. 03:44
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    McClellan told me something similar about the war. He wanted to fight it gently, to preserve the possibility of reconciliation. Make it hurt too much, he said, and you'll never stitch the country back together. I didn't listen. I let Sherman burn his way to the sea.
19. 04:00
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    And you won.
20. 04:01
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    And I was killed by a man who thought I'd been too harsh on the South. And Reconstruction became a disaster of revenge and corruption. And maybe, just maybe, McClellan's way—slower, more careful—would have left less poison in the ground.
21. 04:14
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    You cannot think this way. You won your war. You freed the slaves. You preserved the Union. What came after—that is not your fault.
22. 04:24
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Isn't it? If the way you win determines the peace that follows? Talleyrand knew that. That's why he switched sides—he was thinking about the next fifty years while you were thinking about the next battle.
23. 04:36
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    Yes. Exactly yes. This is what I did not see. I thought if I won enough battles, the peace would take care of itself. But he knew—peace must be built as carefully as war is waged.
24. 04:52
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    So when did you realize he'd been right?
25. 04:54
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    On the ship to St. Helena. I was reading the newspapers, the treaties. I saw how they had divided Europe, created a balance. It was clever. It was what I could never have done, because I could not stop. Talleyrand could stop. He knew when enough was enough.
26. 05:13
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I used to have this nightmare, even before the assassination. I'd dream that I was standing in a graveyard that stretched to the horizon—all the men who died in the war. And McClellan would be there, just watching me, not saying anything. Just watching.
27. 05:26
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    Did he forgive you? In the dream?
28. 05:29
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I never asked. I think I was afraid he'd say there was nothing to forgive, that he understood why I had to do it. That would have been worse somehow than anger.
29. 05:38
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    I wrote to Talleyrand once, near the end. From Elba, before the Hundred Days. I never sent it. I asked him—I actually asked him—if he thought I had been wrong about everything.
30. 05:54
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    What would he have said?
31. 05:55
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    He would have said, 'Not everything, Sire. But enough.' That was his way. He would compliment you while cutting your throat. But he would have been right. I was not wrong about everything. The Code Napoleon, the administrative reforms, the meritocracy—these things lasted. But the empire, the glory, the conquest—this was pride, not policy.
32. 06:26
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Did you love him? As much as you hated him?
33. 06:28
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    What kind of question is that?
34. 06:31
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    An honest one. I'm asking because I think I loved McClellan, in a way. Loved him for seeing my weaknesses clearly, for not pretending I was something I wasn't. Hated him for being cautious when caution meant more dead slaves. But loved him for caring about the men's lives when I was learning not to count the cost.
35. 06:49
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    Yes. I suppose, yes. Talleyrand was the only man who ever spoke to me as an equal, even when I was emperor. Everyone else feared me or worshipped me. He just looked at me with those cold eyes and calculated. I loved him for that. For seeing me as I was.
36. 07:15
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    And for being willing to tell you the truth even when you didn't want to hear it.
37. 07:19
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    Even when it destroyed me. Perhaps especially then. He had the courage of his convictions. I had the courage of my ambitions. These are not the same thing.
38. 07:35
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    No, they're not. McClellan had convictions—preserve the Union, minimize the bloodshed, fight a limited war. I had an ambition—end slavery, win at any cost, remake the nation. His convictions couldn't win the war. But they might have won a better peace.
39. 07:49
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    So we are both sitting here, two dead men, admitting that the people we fought against understood something we did not?
40. 07:56
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I'm admitting it. You're still deciding.
41. 07:58
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    No. I have decided. Talleyrand was right. Not about everything—he was still a traitor, still a man who served himself first. But about the essential thing: that you cannot build a lasting order on force alone. You need legitimacy, compromise, limits. I had none of these.
42. 08:23
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    And yet you changed Europe forever. And I changed America forever. Maybe being right about tactics doesn't matter as much as being right about direction.
43. 08:31
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    Or maybe it matters more than we want to believe. What is victory if it cannot last? What is glory if it ends on a rock in the Atlantic, or in a theater with a bullet in your head?
44. 08:45
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    You're in a dark mood today, Emperor.
45. 08:47
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    Your topic, not mine. You asked about rivals. The rival I cannot escape is not Talleyrand. It is the version of myself who might have listened to him. Who might have stopped after Austerlitz, consolidated, built instead of conquered. That rival—the one I might have been—he haunts me more than any enemy.
46. 09:16
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Now that I can understand. The Abraham Lincoln who listened to McClellan, who fought a limited war, who preserved slavery in the border states permanently to keep the peace—he might have saved a hundred thousand lives. And he would have failed at the only thing that mattered. I hate him, that other Lincoln. But I understand why he would have been easier to live with.
47. 09:36
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    Easier for whom?
48. 09:38
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    For everyone but the slaves. Which is why he's the rival I'm glad I defeated. Maybe that's the difference. You wish you'd listened to Talleyrand. I'm grateful I didn't listen to McClellan. But we both had to fight ourselves as much as we fought them.
49. 09:50
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    And that, Mr. Lincoln, is the only war that matters in the end. The one between what you are and what you should be. Talleyrand won that war. I did not. You—I think perhaps you fought it to a draw.
50. 10:08
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    That's generous, coming from a man who conquered half of Europe before breakfast. But I'll take a draw. In war, in politics, in the fight with yourself—a draw means you're still standing when it ends. That's something.
51. 10:21
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    Yes. That is something. Though I would have preferred victory.
52. 10:27
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Of course you would. You're Napoleon Bonaparte. But today, at this table, we're just two men who learned too late that our enemies understood us better than we understood ourselves. That's its own kind of defeat.
53. 10:37
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    Or its own kind of wisdom. Perhaps they are the same thing.