“I saw the emperor – this soul of the world – go out from the city to survey his reign. It was truly a sensation to see such an individual, who, concentrating on one point, while seated on a horse, stretches over the world and dominates it.”

October 13 1806 the German philosopher saw Napoleon ride by on his way to a great victory.

Napoleon was at the height of his power and had ruthlessly swept through Europe on his way to take Russia, to unite Europe under French rule. As described by Jonathan Black in his book, The Sacred History:

“Hegel believed he was seeing the realisation, the unfolding of the great Cosmic Mind – ‘the Absolute’ – before his eyes. He would write that certain individuals stood at the forefront of all great historical movements and could ‘cause the ideal to stand before the real’. In his eyes, Napoleon was a man of action who revealed to humankind its creative possibilities. Napoleon knew what he had to do, and because he was unfolding the history of the world, the divine plan, he could break moral codes, infringe the rights and trample over others and destroy.”

Napoleon’s sweep through Europe ended on the outskirts of Moscow in November 1812, at the onset of winter, the plan was to take Moscow and rest his soldiers for the continuing campaign of European domination. As he regrouped his army in preparation for the onslaught, the Russian soldiers seemingly melted away, into and beyond the city, setting it on fire. Moscow was built of mainly timber houses and was razed to the ground, denying Napoleon the rest his men needed, the ‘inevitable’ victory, and the choice to either freeze without shelter in the bitter cold of a Russian winter or retreat.

The French Emperor, intent on conquering Russia, set out with an army of 600,000 soldiers, about 100,000 returned home. The bitterness of the winter, rather than Russian military might defeated Napoleon.

Nothing much changes. “Despotism creates circumstances of its own undermining. The information gets worse, the sycophants get greater in number, the corrective mechanisms become fewer and the mistakes become more consequential” is how Stephen Kotkin described the weakness of despots in a recent essay.

Their ability to seduce millions in their megalomaniacal rise to power and cause massive destruction of human lives and the crippling of economies they leave in their wake, a wasteland of destruction, poverty and grief. And too often an ill-equipped and ill-prepared body of would be liberators are left to pick up the........

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