I'll answer this question which several are enquiring after:
So in what was Julius Caeser a better politician?!
Out of all the great personages of history, Caesar, if anyone deserves to be called a true master of politics, rivalled perhaps only by Otto Von Bismarck and his own nephew Augustus.
The sole criticism that I am hearing is that Caesar was ultimately assasinated while Napoleon was not. Since there were several attempts to assasinate Bonaparte I don't see how he can really claim to stand above Caesar in this - Caesar just refused to use bodyguards. If Caesar had a fault, it was also that he was far, far too lenient.
Caesar's political career is a study of genius in the art of both reading and directing political trends and using them to his advantage. The way that he rose up the
Cursus Honorum from being born into an impoverished noble family (much as Napoleon was) to building up a signifigant power base and translating this into a string of political offices, including the prestigous
Pontifex Maximus, outmaneuvering all of his opponents in their attempts to bring him crashing downalone entitles him to be called a political genius. But Caesar's true masterpiece, that even Napoleon cannot rival, is his creation and maintainance of the First Triumvirate. In his forging of a political alliance to sieze unrivalled power in the Republic, and in his use of said power immeditaly afterwards, Caesar demonstrated an unrivalled mastery of both domestic and foriegn policy in his own time and estabalished himself as a politician and statesman for the ages. And this was all before he had ever fought a single major battle. As Caesar embarked on the second stage of his career; the military stage, he only added to his demonstratiion of mastery of politics and statescraft. The Conquest of Gaulis not only a masterpiece of military strategy and tactics, but also a masterpiece of statesmanship and politics in which Caesar transformed what had been countless squabbling tribes into a unified and stable province dominated by parties devoted to his interests, in the process demonstrating that he could master other people's politics as ably as he could master his own. And while all of this was going on he had to, while conducting one of the greatest wars in history, maintain his influence back in Rome, ensuring that the ground on which he stood was not cut out from underneath him, and in doing this he further demonstrated his political genius. Following the Gallic War he embarked on his great Civil War, where he made use of politics and diplomacy to win just as much as by waging war. Having seized absolute power, and having been annointed
Dictator Perpetuus by the people of Rome, he proceeded to accomplish more in just one year of ruling than most rulers manage in a lifetime. His farseeing statesmanship was demonstrated most clearly of all in his laying the foundations for an Imperial Nation-State that was arguably the greatest of all Rome's achievements, and while doing this he showed himself to be one of the greatest administrators of all time (although I acknowledge freely that Napoleon was also an extraordinary administrator). Ultimately, Caesar's tragedy was that he tried to do what he did without violence, without terror, but instead attempted to try and win his enemies over to his side. For the most part, he did succeed. It is notable that out of almost 1000 Senators, only 60 joined the conspiracy to assasinate him. Caesar refused to employ bodyguards, saying that to have done so would have been a sign that he was afraid of death, which he was not. And so he met his fate. Such is the tragedy of the greatest genius ever produced by Rome. For a much for succinct and well-written account of what I've summarized and alluded to, I recommend reading
Caesar: Politician and Statesman by Matthias Gelzer.
Napoleon was in his own right a political and administrative genius, but he simply cannot compete. His brilliance was marked by two flaws: he sometimes lacked foresight in politics, and he lacked Caesar genius for comprehending , acting on, and shaping realities. Napoleon's Empire ultimately was not built on a stable foundation as Caesar's was, and for this reason it could not stand. He lacked Caesar's marked ability to read trends in certain areas, and for this reason fell. That he was ultimately defeated owes not to a faliure in military affairs, but to a faliure in the political arena. Thus though his rule was longer than Caesar's, ultimately Napoleon failed in the long run.
Caesar by contrast, though he was assasinated, was in the end the winner. The events that followed his death followed the political lines he had laid down, and his foresight in selecting as his heir his nephew Octavian (later the Emperor Augustus) allowed for the Roman Empire in its great potential to be realized. No greater vindication of his political genius and foresight is possible.
A much better Caesar vs Napoleon debate is which of them was the greater military genius. Anyone want to take me up on it?
