7 interesting facts about Napoleon Bonaparte

By Michael Gryboski, Mainline Church Editor Tuesday, November 21, 2023

Many believed he was the Antichrist

Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte in royal robes, as painted by François Gérard in 1805. | Wikimedia Commons

Given his prominence on the world stage, attacks on church hierarchy and seemingly unstoppable military power, it should be no surprise that many contemporaries believed Napoleon was the Antichrist.

Historian Philip Dwyer wrote that English pamphleteers and writers during the French Revolution developed "a tendency to displace the traditional popular association of the Antichrist with Rome onto Republican France."

"It did not take much of a leap, once this pattern had been established, to then project the image of the Antichrist onto Napoleon," wrote Dwyer. "It was an image, moreover, that flourished in most parts of Europe, and certainly in Spain and in Russia after the French invasion of those countries."

Napoleon also weathered the allegation of being the Antichrist in the United States.