Napoleon

Last year Napoleon saved my life. I had just gotten sober, which meant I suddenly had a lot of time on my hands. I thought I should probably start listening to podcasts; they were something that seemed to have taken off while I was gone. I asked Instagram for recommendations. Lots of sweet girls from university suggested How To Fail, but I felt strongly that I had failed enough. A DJ, who looks a little bit as though Mick Jagger were put through an AI filter, suggested a podcast called The Age of Napoleon by an American amateur historian called Everett Rummings. There are over two hundred episodes, each at least one hour long, often two. We recently reached 1807 and have only just begun to invade Spain.


On the 18th of June I celebrated two years of sobriety. Everett tweeted that on this day in 1815 the battle of Waterloo had been fought. I was thrilled to learn that I share an anniversary with the defeat of my favourite despot. I like it a lot when people describe a great achievement or accomplishment as ‘their Waterloo’. In The Long View, her masterpiece, Elizabeth Jane Howard’s extremely beautiful protagonist is married to a total sadist. She has an affair with a minor shipping magnate, a man of diminutive size. Her husband is nonplussed and says, ‘Why, you would have been that man’s Waterloo.’ I often hope that one day a man thinks that I am his Waterloo, and tells me so in those terms. In Brother of the More Famous Jack by Barbara Trapido, Jonathan, who is very sexy, says of the protagonist, ‘I would pawn the holy grail for ten minutes in that woman’s pants’. I.e she’d be his Waterloo.


My own Waterloo was not romantic, it involved upsetting everyone I knew and having to go and sit in church halls at least four times a week. I have found that this has equipped me with the basic social skills and morality others seem to have been born with. Maybe my sobriety isn’t best described in terms of Waterloo at all. Waterloo was a total victory for the British, and my sympathies have always been with the Grand Armee so I consider it a defeat. I had fought a battle which I had lost, after which I had to drastically restructure my forces. I was the Prussians after their defeats at Jena and Aurstedt; it was clear that the old way was no longer working. I would have to restructure my artillery, cavalry and infantry along entirely new lines. Everything I once thought I knew was open to renegotiation. It was the treaty of Tilset. And like the Prussians I was totally fucked. All of my favourite people have had their reckonings, and this was mine.


This may seem inconceivable to anyone who has a normal approach to abusing substances, but you have to be very brave to be sober and forego your usual medicines for dealing with the world. I often think about this bravery in terms of nineteenth century military history. I discussed this with some sober friends recently and said that for me getting sober often felt as though I were a light cavalry officer on a reconnaissance mission in the early morning. It is foggy and I am tired, the air clears, and suddenly I find myself facing an army nobody knew was there was there, alone. I have no choice about where I have found myself, my only option is courage. In recovery I am often given the bumper sticker that courage isn’t the absence of fear, it is feeling fear and acting anyway. I suppose that the light cavalry officer’s duty would have been to find cover and make for HQ post haste without getting shot—not too difficult in an age where musket fire was famously inaccurate. I should think that courage under fire was much easier before the advent of the AK.


I typed Napoleon into eBay, I have had an account since I was eleven. I learnt that Cavalli had made some jeans with Napoleon on them in the noughties. They were great, but unaffordable. I set up a saved search for Napoleon in Women’s Clothing UK Used towards the beginning of my obsession. I got a notification for a Moschino Jeans top. It was perfect. It featured Napoleon Crossing the Alps by Davide, except Napoleon’s horse had diamanté in its mane. I knew that I had to have it and so months of negotiations began. At times I feared that the seller had died, and at others that she thought I was a lunatic. I set a monthly reminder on my phone, so that I would not forget to write to her and ask her if she would sell it. I had once bought it outright, but she had never sent it. It was relisted. She made excuses, but I was patient and eventually victorious. I enjoyed the thrill of the chase and managed to get it down from forty-five pounds to twenty. I am sure she was glad to be rid of me even though we were both unfailingly polite.


I met a man who told me that he also loved Napoleon. He was tall, dark, handsome and a bit old. He had a spaniel who I was fond of. He told me that he had read Andrew Roberts’ biography of Napoleon. I didn’t have the heart to explain, why, from a historiographical point of view, this book is dumb. I didn’t suggest that he ought to have read Adam Zamoyski’s excellent biography, with its superior focus on the Italian campaigns, instead. Months later he invited me to go and see the terrible Ridley Scott film and then we fell in love.


The ensuing relationship has ruined many things for me, Neil Young, my Duolingo streak and my grasp on reality were its gravest casualties. It turns out that this man was an erstwhile indie musician of mild fame, which perhaps explained why he was the only man I have ever met who could pull off black skinny jeans. He was jealous to the point of delusion and thought me an incurable flirt. I told him that he knew I had been raised by the gays in Soho and so what was he really expecting? I explained that I have had an eBay account since I was eleven, so I am really very loyal. This did not seem to help. He once accused me of flashing my tits, but I was showing a gay man the logo on my new men’s XXL Christian Lacroix t-shirt. I remember feeling very proud of it. I had bought it on eBay. The worst incident was when he accused me of flirting with that horrible man who insisted on playing his ukulele to Dua Lipa at Glastonbury this year and then went viral. 


I used to love being in public places with him, and waiting for a lull in the room’s conversation. When it got quiet enough I would look at him and say the word ‘nonce’ just loudly enough. I miss that a lot. I used to call him Arthur Miller because he was constantly doing the crucible on me, and I once offered to buy him a lobotomy from Claire’s. Ultimately the relationship didn’t work out. I have retained my love of Napoleonic warfare, because I am a bigger fan than he his.


Napoleon was extremely jealous of Josephine, the love of his life. Her letters to one of her lovers were once published in the British press while Napoleon was away at sea. Napoleon had cause to be jealous, but the indie musician did not. I told him this and he said it was new rave anyway and I said I wished my boyfriend didn’t think I was a whore.




Marina Scholtz is a writer who lives in a very chic squat in London. She makes tiktoks on out of print books inconsistently as @oopsarchive.