Napoleon on Muhammad
← Back to Napoleon ProfileWritten during his exile, Napoleon Bonaparte, in his *Précis des guerres de César*, offered a surprisingly admiring assessment of Muhammad as a military and political leader.
“Mahomet was a great man, an intrepid soldier; with a handful of men he triumphed at the battle of Bender (sic); a great captain, eloquent, a great man of state, he revived his fatherland and created a new people and a new power in the middle of Arabia.”
From exile, Napoleon Bonaparte reflects on Muhammad's political and military success, portraying him as a powerful leader whose achievements surpassed those of Moses and Jesus.
“Muhammad was a prince; he rallied his compatriots around him. In a few years, the Muslims conquered half of the world. They plucked more souls from false gods, knocked down more idols, razed more pagan temples in fifteen years than the followers of Moses and Jesus did in fifteen centuries. Muhammad was a great man. He would indeed have been a god, if the revolution that he had performed had not been prepared by the circumstances.”