Bonaparte×Lovelace

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

   Respect? I respected no one who stood against France. That is the answer you want, yes?
2. 00:07
   Ada Lovelaceshare moment

   Oh, how deliciously unconvincing, General. I've read your correspondence from Saint Helena. You spent rather a lot of ink on certain adversaries for a man who claims indifference.
3. 00:18
   Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

   I wrote about them because I defeated them. One writes history, Mademoiselle. One does not admire it.
4. 00:26
   Ada Lovelaceshare moment

   And yet you returned again and again to Archduke Charles in your memoirs. The man who beat you at Aspern-Essling. That hardly reads like dismissal to me.
5. 00:37
   Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

   Ah. Charles.
6. 00:38
   Ada Lovelaceshare moment

   There we are.
7. 00:39
   Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

   Charles understood something most generals never learn. He understood that war is geometry in motion. At Aspern-Essling he saw the Danube as I would see it—as a problem of position, of timing. He caught me on the wrong side of a river with insufficient bridges. It was... methodical.
8. 01:03
   Ada Lovelaceshare moment

   Methodical! That's quite the concession from a man famous for inspired improvisation.
9. 01:09
   Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

   I do not concede. I state facts. Charles reformed the Austrian army using my own principles—corps system, artillery concentration, speed of maneuver. He studied me like a mathematician studies equations. Then he applied what he learned. For two days in May 1809, he was the better general.
10. 01:33
    Ada Lovelaceshare moment

    And that's what you respected? That he learned from you?
11. 01:37
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    I respected that he was not afraid to discard old methods. The Habsburg generals, they fought like it was still the Seven Years' War. But Charles, he saw that war had changed. He changed with it. When I crushed him at Wagram six weeks later, it was not because he was stupid. It was because I was Napoleon.
12. 02:00
    Ada Lovelaceshare moment

    Still, you mention him constantly in your writings. Wellington you dismiss as merely lucky. But Charles—
13. 02:08
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    Wellington! Bah. Wellington never beat me in an open field. He sat on a ridge at Waterloo behind his squares like a merchant behind a counter. Charles came at me with science.
14. 02:22
    Ada Lovelaceshare moment

    How very telling that science earns your respect where caution does not. And you, Lady Lovelace? Who sharpened your mind through opposition?
15. 02:31
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    You deflect to her. Very well. Who was your rival, Mademoiselle?
16. 02:37
    Ada Lovelaceshare moment

    My mother.
17. 02:38
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    Your... that is not—
18. 02:41
    Ada Lovelaceshare moment

    You asked. Lady Byron was my most formidable adversary. She spent my entire childhood trying to extract my father's poetical temperament from my soul through mathematics. She set me against equations like you set soldiers against fortifications.
19. 02:57
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    But surely you do not respect a mother who fought against your nature?
20. 03:01
    Ada Lovelaceshare moment

    Oh, but I do. She was utterly wrong about poetry being opposed to mathematics—I've proven they're complementary, music and logic intertwined. Yet her discipline made me rigorous. Her fear of my becoming Lord Byron made me exceed Lord Byron. She wanted to save me from imagination; instead she gave me the tools to imagine calculating engines that won't exist for a century.
21. 03:28
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    So she made you what you are by trying to prevent what you became. Yes. I understand this.
22. 03:37
    Ada Lovelaceshare moment

    Do you? How so?
23. 03:38
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    Every coalition against France—they wanted to cage the Revolution, to restore the old order. Instead they forced me to innovate. At Austerlitz, I let the Allies think they were outflanking me. They believed they were winning for six hours while I prepared their destruction. They taught me that appearing weak is sometimes the strongest position.
24. 04:07
    Ada Lovelaceshare moment

    A calculated deception. You let them think they'd solved your equation, then revealed you'd been working in different variables entirely.
25. 04:16
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    Precisely! You see it. Charles understood this too. After Aspern-Essling, he knew I would come back at him. So he studied what I would study—what had I learned? Where would I adapt? At Wagram, he predicted half my movements. Half! No other opponent came so close to calculating Napoleon.
26. 04:45
    Ada Lovelaceshare moment

    Yet you won.
27. 04:47
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    I always won. Until I did not. But Charles—I wrote to him, you know. After I abdicated. I told him he had been the worthiest of my continental opponents. I meant it.
28. 05:02
    Ada Lovelaceshare moment

    You wrote to him from Elba?
29. 05:03
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    From Saint Helena. By then it cost me nothing to be generous. By then I was writing for history.
30. 05:12
    Ada Lovelaceshare moment

    Ah, but that's not quite true, is it? You wrote him because you needed someone to understand what you'd accomplished. The British saw you as a tyrant. The French, a failure. But Charles—he knew exactly how difficult it had been to beat you even once.
31. 05:27
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    You are perceptive, Mademoiselle. Annoyingly so.
32. 05:30
    Ada Lovelaceshare moment

    My mother's training. She would be horrified to hear me praised by you.
33. 05:35
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    Then she would be a fool. Your mind works as mine does—you see patterns, systems, the architecture beneath surface chaos. This is rare. This is why you needed a rival who understood systems.
34. 05:54
    Ada Lovelaceshare moment

    Actually, I should clarify. My mother wasn't my only rival. There's Charles Babbage.
35. 06:00
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    Another Charles! Who is this one?
36. 06:02
    Ada Lovelaceshare moment

    The inventor of the Analytical Engine, the calculating machine I wrote about. Brilliant man. Utterly convinced that his engine's importance lies in computing numbers faster. He cannot see—or will not see—that it could manipulate symbols, create music, generate art. We argue about this constantly.
37. 06:23
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    He has the weapon but does not understand its full power. Yes, I knew many generals like this.
38. 06:31
    Ada Lovelaceshare moment

    Exactly so! And I must keep arguing with him because he's the only one who's built the foundation I need. He's made the machine; I'm discovering what it means. We need each other desperately, and we drive each other to distraction.
39. 06:47
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    This is the finest kind of rivalry. Not the battlefield kind—though that has its pleasures—but the kind where you each hold half the answer. My marshals, some of them were like this. Davout understood logistics as I understood strategy. We fought constantly. He made me better.
40. 07:13
    Ada Lovelaceshare moment

    Do you think, General, that we require opposition to reach our full capacity? Is a rival simply an enemy we've learned to use?
41. 07:20
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    No. An enemy wants you dead. A rival wants you worthy. Charles did not want me dead at Aspern-Essling—well, perhaps in the moment, yes—but truly, he wanted to prove he could match Napoleon Bonaparte. There is a difference. It is the difference between murder and a duel.
42. 07:47
    Ada Lovelaceshare moment

    My mother wanted me perfect. Babbage wants me to confirm his genius. Both pushed me past what I thought I could achieve. I resented them both. I needed them both. I still think of arguments with my mother when I'm formulating a difficult notation.
43. 08:03
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    Yes! When I was planning campaigns in 1813, exhausted, nearly beaten, I would think: what would Charles do here? How would he position his artillery? And then I would do something he could not predict. He was in my head, making me sharper.
44. 08:22
    Ada Lovelaceshare moment

    It's rather like having a second processor, isn't it? Another engine running parallel calculations, challenging your outputs.
45. 08:30
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    I do not understand your mechanical language, but yes. A worthy rival is a whetstone. You cannot sharpen a blade on silk.
46. 08:38
    Ada Lovelaceshare moment

    Oh, that's rather good. May I steal that for my notes?
47. 08:41
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    You may. I stole enough in my lifetime. And your Charles—this Babbage—does he know you see him as a rival?
48. 08:50
    Ada Lovelaceshare moment

    I think he knows I see his machine more clearly than he does, which drives him spare. But respect? I'm not certain he thinks women capable of being rivals. More like... talented assistants who've gotten above themselves.
49. 09:05
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    Then he is an idiot. I made my brother Joseph King of Spain and he understood less of warfare than you appear to understand of these engines. Competence has no gender. It has only results.
50. 09:21
    Ada Lovelaceshare moment

    How refreshingly practical of you, General. Though I suspect you weren't quite so enlightened about women in government.
51. 09:28
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    I was practical about power. Women held salons, influenced policy, controlled fortunes. I worked with reality, not philosophy. If a woman could hold Spain, I would have made her Queen of Spain. Joseph could not hold Spain. No one could hold Spain. That place was impossible.
52. 09:53
    Ada Lovelaceshare moment

    We've rather wandered from rivals to regrets, haven't we?
53. 09:57
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    Rivals become regrets when you fail to defeat them properly. I should have finished Charles in 1809. I should have never let the Peninsula bleed my army dry. Wellington was there with his damned defense while I was in Russia. These things connect.
54. 10:17
    Ada Lovelaceshare moment

    And I should have been born forty years later when Babbage's engine was complete. When the Royal Society might have taken my work seriously instead of treating it as a clever woman's hobby. But then I suppose I wouldn't have had to fight so hard to see clearly.
55. 10:33
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    No. You would have seen less. Comfort makes cowards. Opposition makes emperors. Or empresses of thought, in your case.
56. 10:42
    Ada Lovelaceshare moment

    Empress of imaginary machines that may never be built. Yes, quite the empire.
57. 10:48
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    I died on an island, Mademoiselle. Alone, sick, probably poisoned, certainly defeated. And still—still—I was Napoleon. You do not need the machine to be built. You need to have been right about what it could do. History will prove you or disprove you. That is enough.
58. 11:10
    Ada Lovelaceshare moment

    Is it? Is it really enough?
59. 11:13
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    It will have to be. For both of us.