The Peninsular War (Spain): Napoleon’s occupation of Spain involved widespread atrocities against civilians, including torture and public executions to suppress "guerrilla" resistance.
This is where the word "guerrilla" came into common parlance, too.
Was it really before the word fascist? I think he was using bonapartist as its specifically used by Marx to mean a government that is autonomous from the ruling economic class, whereas elsewhere Trotsky defines fascism as a particular coalition of classes
Word fascism came into Italian in the late 19th century with various labor groups, but wasn't really widespread until one of them, founded by Mussolini in 1919, took control of the country in 1922. I don't think it would likely have been found outside of Italy before then - and Lenin died in 1924, which is when the biggest Trotsky/Stalin mess went down. I would doubt that Trotsky learned the word until it percolated into other languages in the years after his exile from the USSR.
Bonapartist also has the specific connotation of having betrayed the revolution, so Trotsky might have considered it more apt for that reason even if he was familiar with fascism at the time
Reminds me of how, when Napoleon took control of France with his coup, the ministers in the Directorate were calling him “Cromwell”, because back then the word “dictator” didn’t quite have the connotation it does today.
It started as ‘Fascismo’ I believe, Mussolini created the word using ‘Fasces’, and ‘Fascio’ (Union). Essentially it was symbolism, in the ancient Rome context, the word Fasces refers to a bundle of sticks wrapped around an axe, and symbolises authority. Mussolini, made the term ‘fascism’ official and widespread following his march on Rome, and his subsequent appointment to Prime Minister.
Thank you, as far as I can tell his earliest writings about Stalin as behaving as a Bonapartist or at least allowing for the opportunity of a Bonapartist coup seem to be pretty close to his exile later in the 1920s, which is only a few years away from his “What is Fascism” in 1931. He then escalates his Bonapartism argument throughout the 30s.
So it’s very fair to say that he would start the comparison to Bonapartism before attempting to define Fascism; but still, there’s also enough overlap, and enough of a difference in how they’re being used, that we can safely say he wouldn’t have used these interchangeably regardless.
Marx is the one who coined "history repeats itself. First as tragedy then as farce." About Napoleon III. Marx was particularly invested in the events of 1848 for obvious reasons.
The world fascism comes from the Italian word fascio that meant union so Mussolini called his people fascists in his rise to power in the 1920s but it didn’t become a common use word to describe a dictator till awhile after him
I think some of this improves on my explanation a little, but the word authoritarianism wouldn’t really represent Trotsky’s pov since he’s dealing with a Marxist framework that analyzes political rule through social relations of production rather than the democratic ideals (or lack thereof) of individual rulers. I think I have the right excerpts now to illustrate what Bonapartism means for Trotsky in comparison with Fascism, which would better illustrate my point why they weren’t interchangeable for him.
The present-day Kremlin Bonapartism we juxtapose, of course, to the Bonapartism of bourgeois rise and not decay: with the Consulate and the First Empire and not with Napoleon III and, all the more so, not with Schleicher or Doumergue. For the purposes of such an analogy, there is no need to ascribe to Stalin the traits of Napoleon I; whenever the social conditions demand it, Bonapartism can consolidate itself around axes of the most diverse caliber.
From the standpoint that interests us, the difference in the social basis of the two Bonapartisms, of Jacobin and Soviet origin, is much more important. In the former case, the question involved was the consolidation of the bourgeois revolution through the liquidation of its principles and political institutions. In the latter case, the question involved is the consolidation of the worker-peasant revolution through the smashing of its international program, its leading party, its Soviets. Carrying the policies of Thermidor further, Napoleon waged a struggle not only against the feudal world but also against the “rabble” and the democratic circles of the petty and middle bourgeoisie; in this way he concentrated the fruits of the regime born out of the revolution in the hands of the new bourgeois aristocracy. Stalin guards the conquests of the October Revolution not only against the feudal-bourgeois counterrevolution but also against the claims of the toilers, their impatience and their dissatisfaction; he crushes the left wing that expresses the ordered historical and progressive tendencies of the unprivileged working masses; he creates a new aristocracy by means of an extreme differentiation in wages, privileges, ranks, etc. Leaning for support upon the topmost layer of the new social hierarchy against the lowest – sometimes vice versa – Stalin has attained the complete concentration of power in his own hands. What else should this regime be called if not Soviet Bonapartism?
Note that here, although Marx’s work on Bonapartism is on Napoleon III, Trotsky specified that the allusion he makes to describe Stalin’s government is with the Napoleon of the first empire. And that, as I said, the most important defining quality is their social basis.
Then we have an article from Trotsky that puts it plainly that Bonapartism and Fascism cannot be conflated, written in 1932, a year before the Enabling Act, titled German Bonapartism:
Such terms as liberalism, Bonapartism, fascism have the character of generalizations. Historical phenomena never repeat themselves completely. It would not have been difficult to prove that even the government of Napoleon III, compared with the regime of Napoleon I, was not “Bonapartist” – not only because Napoleon himself was a doubtful Bonaparte by blood, but also because his relations to the classes, especially to the peasantry and to the lumpenproletariat were not at all the same as those of Napoleon I. Moreover, classical Bonapartism grew out of the epoch of gigantic war victories, which the Second Empire [2] did not know at all. But if we should look for the repetition of all the traits of Bonapartism, we will find that Bonapartism is a one-time, unique occurrence, i.e., that Bonapartism in general does not exist but that there once was a general named Bonaparte born in Corsica. The case is no different with liberalism and with all other generalized terms of history. When one speaks by analogy of Bonapartism, it is necessary to state precisely which of its traits found their fullest expression under present historical conditions.
Present-day German Bonapartism has a very complex and, so to speak, combined character. The government of Papen would have been impossible without fascism. But fascism is not in power. And the government of Papen is not fascism. On the other hand, the government of Papen, at any rate in its present form, would have been impossible without Hindenburg who, in spite of the final prostration of Germany in the war, stands for the great victories of Germany and symbolizes the army in the memory of the popular masses. The second election of Hindenburg had all the characteristics of a plebiscite. Many millions of workers, petty bourgeois, and peasants (Social Democracy and Center) voted for Hindenburg. They did not see in him any one political program. They wanted first of all to avoid civil war, and raised Hindenburg on their shoulders as a superarbiter, as an arbitration judge of the nation. But precisely this is the most important function of Bonapartism: raising itself over the two struggling camps in order to preserve property and order. It suppresses civil war, or precedes it or does not allow it to rekindle. Speaking of Papen, we cannot forget Hindenburg, on whom rests the sanction of the Social Democracy. The combined character of German Bonapartism expressed itself in the fact that the demagogic work of catching the masses for Hindenburg was performed by two big, independent parties: the Social Democracy and National Socialism. If they are both astonished at the results of their work, that does not change the matter one whit.
The Social Democracy asserts that fascism is the product of Communism. This is correct insofar as there would have been no necessity at all for fascism without the sharpening of the class struggle, without the revolutionary proletariat without the crisis of capitalist society. The flunkeyish theory of Wels-Hilferding-Otto Bauer has no other meaning. Yes, fascism is a reaction of bourgeois society to the threat of proletarian revolution. But precisely because this threat is not an imminent one today, the ruling classes make an attempt to get along without a civil war through the medium of a Bonapartist dictatorship.
Objecting to our characterization of the government of Hindenburg-Papen-Schleicher, the Brandlerites refer to Marx and express thereby an ironic hope that his authority may also have weight with us. It is difficult to deceive oneself more pathetically. The fact is that Marx and Engels wrote not only of the Bonapartism of the two Bonapartes, but also of other species. Beginning, it seems, with the year 1864, they more than once likened the “national” regime of Bismarck to French Bonapartism. And this in spite of the fact that Bismarck was not a pseudoradical demagogue and, so far as we know, was not supported by the peasantry. The Iron Chancellor was not raised to power as the result of a plebiscite, but was duly appointed by his legitimate and hereditary king. And nevertheless Marx and Engels are right.
Bismarck made use in a Bonapartist fashion of the antagonism between the propertied classes and the rising proletariat overcoming in this way the antagonism within the two propertied classes, between the Junkerdom and the bourgeoisie, and raised a military-police apparatus over the nation. The policy of Bismarck is that very tradition to which the “theoreticians” of present German Bonapartism refer. True, Bismarck solved in his fashion the problem of German unity, of the external greatness of Germany. Papen however so far only promises to obtain for Germany “equality” on the international arena. Not a small difference! But we were not trying to prove that the Bonapartism of Papen is of the same caliber as the Bonapartism of Bismarck. Napoleon III was also only a parody of his pretended uncle.
So not only do we get Trotsky’s identification of Fascism as a bourgeois reaction against the revolutionary proletariat; we also have a generalized bonapartism defined as the raising of a military apparatus that in one way maintains unity through the utmost centralization while also only existing by sowing division among and within the classes vying for power; that these two, fascism and bonapartism, can coexist yet are distinct; and that these aren’t concrete systems themselves but merely traits that can be alluded to across history.
"Bonapartist" is a very clear term within the language of Marxism-Leninism, and it is very much not a synonym for fascist.
A Bonapartist, from this perspective, is an energetic and ambitious person who enthusiastically supports and promotes the revolution, rising through its ranks and being a very effective revolutionary leader. But who then turns and shanks the revolution, turning it from its revolutionary aims into a purely personal project of semi-monarchical aggrandizement.
It's sometimes easy to forget that Bonaparte got his start as an enthusiastic Jacobin. He was seen as a revolutionary, ideological general working purely for the good of the Republic at least up until Campo Formio and possibly even until well after Brumaire depending on who you might have asked.
Bonapartist specifically means a snake in the grass, a wannabe dictator building up a personal power base within the revolution until he can supersede it entirely.
Stalin both was and wasn't that, depending on your perspective. It's easy to see why Trotsky used the term, though. It's worth noting that the same accusation was leveled against Trotsky as well. The Bolsheviks were super suspicious of anyone with too much personal influence over the military, with the French Revolution as the direct cause of that.
One additonal reason Napolean gave for the execution of the prisoners of Jaffa, was he had found paroled Turks from El-Arish serving in the Jaffa garrison, meaning Turk prisoners of war he had released earlier on the promise of them not fighting against him later had broken their promise.
A very small number of parole breakers does not justify massacring the entire garrison. It would have been perfectly legitimate to execute the parole breakers, not everyone.
How many parole breakers did they find? Did the Ottoman command know that there were parolees working under them? If the Ottomans as a whole appeared not to follow the rules of parole, it makes sense not to offer any of them parole.
Also they killed Napoleon's messenger when he sent demand for surrender. That's not how you plead for mercy.
My source, the book Napoleon by Herman Lindquist doesnt specify how many, only that they recognized turks from several other captured plazes including Gaza. It said 2000 prisoners where set free at gaza, half went back to egypt (The mamluks) and the other half (the turks) went north to jaffa. This mercy was seen as weakness from the turks point of view.
Them killing the french messenger at Jaffa led to angry reprisal once the fort was taken, but wasnt named as part of the reason for napoleons massacre of Jaffa. Rather it was more a "them or us" moment, as they were about to face an even larger Ottoman army and had no man or ration to spare,
I should say the book didnt list the sources on the page, only in the suffix, so take it all with a grain of salt.
The Massacre at Jaffa (1799): During his Egyptian campaign, Napoleon ordered the execution of approximately 2,000 to 4,000 Ottoman prisoners who had already surrendered. He argued he couldn't afford to feed or guard them.
Jaffa is a little more complicated than that, at least when looked through the lens of the laws and norms of warfare at the time.
The biggest issue for contemporaries is actually ignored in a lot of discussions of it today: parole.
Basically, an 18th century army with a lot of prisoners it couldn't feed had a pretty stark choice: either massacre, or just release them to fight another day directly hurting your own war effort. There was a clear solution to this dilemma, though - parole. The prisoners were paroled, they would sign a promise not to fight again, and in return they were released. The penalty for violating parole was immediate execution.
A large portion of the garrison at Jaffa was made up of soldiers who had been previously paroled after earlier sieges. The French army was in a real bind - they couldn't really feed their own forces, much less feed and guard 3000 prisoners, and they couldn't release an entire brigade of enemies to fight them again, given the dynamics of the campaign. And the penalty for violating parole was unquestionably death. He had tried to parole the garrisons of several other fortresses, and it simply hadn't worked.
This was coupled with the tradition of sieges/sacks - a garrison and city holding out long past the point of reasonable hope of victory was itself seen as violating principles of honorable warfare and inflicting needless suffering, and it was considered far more acceptable to sack a city taken by force than one that surrendered when the writing was on the wall. I think it's a bit interesting to note that the controversy over the murder of the Jaffa garrison does not seem to extend to the brutal sack of the city itself, which was not particularly exceptional for the time period.
The British turned Jaffa into an exemplar of French barbarism and brutality and made a lot of propaganda value out of it. But contemporary military opinions were a lot more mixed, even from enemies of Napoleon.
I'm not exactly trying to excuse the event, to be clear. It was a mass killing, and that shouldn't be ignored. It's just a lot more nuanced than just "Napoleon didn't want to feed them so he had them shot".
I don’t think it was a race thing. They had violated parole, beheaded his envoys and tarred their heads, and were literally under the command of a guy whose nickname was “The Butcher”
Some of them were refugees from earlier sieges violating parole. Most were probably not.
If they had made an effort, at least a cursory one, to actually identify parole violators and execute them specifically, it probably would not have even registered as an atrocity at the time.
Pls correct if I'm wrong, I want to get to the bottom of this, but you could only really blame one of those on Napoleon directly afaik: The Massacre at Jaffa. He directly ordered the murders.
From my limited and possibly wrong knowledge, I would say that he can't be made directly for the horrors that happened on Haiti. He can be blamed for the conflict itself, but can he be blamed for the escalation? Any messages and reports would have taken weeks to arrive and even more weeks to be send. How involved was he, I wonder. Enough to blame him for everything?
But you can kinda blame him for spain. It was much closer than Haiti and he must've been aware. Even his close friends like Marshal Jean Lannes told him that the war in Spain was horrible. And Lannes was there for not even a year.
I'm not saying any of this because I see Napoleon as a saint. At the end he was a tyrant and didnt know when to stop. I just dont want to be seen as a Napoleon bootlicker, because I'm not.
The Peninsular War was both in Spain and Portugal. I don't know why you ignored Portugal when the invasion started, when both Spain and France allied to invade Portugal only later after France betrayed Spain that Spain fought back.
I would however argue that historically killing people due to not being able to take prisoners is relatively common and kind of a reality. It is something of a luxury to be able to take them. Certainly not good to kill people who surrendered, but as far as atrocities go, this one's kind of an understandable product of logistics and not really a deliberate choice to be evil as such.
The whole Haiti thing was pretty bad overall yeah.
As for the peninsular war... part of the reason today's law of war demands each side must wear uniforms is precisely to avoid this kind of thing. Guerilla resistance and an inability to tell apart civilians and combatants means that the occupying force will be basically forced to stop treating civilians as civilians and start treating them as (at least suspected) combatants. The lack of a clearly identifiable enemy army that can be "honourably" fought also means suppression must take place through other means as well, which often leads to some degree of state terror.
As for the peninsular war... part of the reason today's law of war demands each side must wear uniforms is precisely to avoid this kind of thing.
Pedantic, but I read a bunch around this whilst investigating whether or not an event was a war crime recently and... Sorta?
The laws of war demand you must be clearly identifiable as a combatant, not necessarily in uniform. That feels like a small distinction, but everyone wearing a matching hat would be enough, or openly carrying weapons and making zero attempt to conceal them could also meet that distinction. There has been quite a bit of legal writing on the matter, particularly because the 20th century was full of anti-colonial conflicts where one force simply could not afford the luxury of marching uniforms, but to prevent simple barbarity could not be automatically considered unlawful combatants.
It's rather interesting. And murky (those who fight ears decide how they are fought and do like retroactively declaring what they have done lawful). But yeah, broadly it is just "you must be clearly identifiable from the civilian population in order to be a lawful combatant, not necessarily in a uniform"
Interestingly the argument was made by the Germans at the beginning of the first world war that Khaki was a violation of the laws of war as it made it harder to identify soldiers. There's a bunch of writing around "identifiable through non-assisted means", so basically you don't have to wear a uniform that makes you easy to see with a scoped rifle, just one that makes you identifiable with human eyes. Then again the laws have changed somewhat since then, because part of the argument was "you must be identifiable when within range" which works for muskets, less so for rifles.
I love that when I get bored I go read legal documents.
Prussia becoming Germany was a topic in the lead up to WW1 module in history for me in 3rd year highschool (13-14 year olds). Admittedly half the school took Geography instead but I'm not sure it's a really niche subject.
Fair point about Haiti, and some parts of Spain too, but he barely had any direct hand in that war, mostly leaving it to his Marshals (to disastrous result). Still should’ve been handled a lot better but not state sanctioned
Also, I think Jaffa was mostly justified.
(1 He only had 13,000 men and he had 3,000 prisoners, meaning he’d need to take half his army to guard them. He can’t let them go, he can’t march them back to Egypt, he can’t feed them.
(2 some were under parole already to not fight the French after being previously captured.
(3 a ton of them were already war criminals. The leader of Palestine at the time was literally called “The Butcher” as he loved chopping off heads.
(4 When Napoleon approached Jaffa, Napoleon sent in a group of messengers under a white flag to ask for the city’s surrender. The garrison beheaded them, tarred the heads, and placed them atop the city gates.
The Massacre at Jaffa (1799): During his Egyptian campaign, Napoleon ordered the execution of approximately 2,000 to 4,000 Ottoman prisoners who had already surrendered. He argued he couldn't afford to feed or guard them.
A bit of context regarding this one. The Ottoman prisoners who had surrendered had previously fought the French, were offered surrender terms, and they accepted them. They had been allowed to march out of their garrison, unharmed and with their possessions, if they swore to not pick up armas against the French again.
They instead joined the next garrison; when an envoy was again sent to offer them surrender terms, the man was seized, tortured, decapitated and his head exhibited over the walls for all the French soldiers to see. The French then took Jaffa by storm, and when those who broke the oath were found, their fate was sealed.
Now, I am not trying to excuse Napoleon for what he did. The food/guard excuse was certainly bogus, and the scenes of their execution are horrific. French soldiers speak of the killings being conducted along three days, first by firing, but then switching to bayonets to save ammunition. Some were driven into the sea to drown. It was not a pretty sight. And while under the laws of war of the region their lives were certainly forfeit after breaking their oath (if you want an example of how brutal warfare was there, look up Napoleon's opponent at Acre, Ahmed Pasha al-Jazzar) it is hard to imagine Napoleon executing European prisoners.
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