He's a unique figure. Running across the world, finding himself constantly drawn to battles for the freedom of this or that group, he had a penchant for winning military campaigns that were then politically squandered by the people he trusted. A committed republican at a time when it was a revolutionary and scandalous position, he won half of Italy for a king he didn't like (and who really didn't like him) and then effectively self-exiled. More than once, he had to be held back by aristocratic leaders scared by his "uppity" plebeian success. And he was as popular as the Beatles - all over Europe, men wanted to die for him and women wanted to run away with him. The difference between him and Napoleon (the real one from Corsica, not Notting Hill) was that he sincerely never wanted to rule anything or anyone.