[fclaerho]

"In France, you mostly see him as a caricature nowadays." Certainly not, not for 60% of French people at least, if you check the polling regarding the last ceremony.

"Napoleon's invasions […] created the imbalanced situation that led to two world wars." what? That's quite a stretch you're proposing here.

[watwut]

Tho, in my biased sample, French I talked with were not shocked at that that Napoleon is remember negatively where I am from. They took it as understandable that parts of world he came through will see him destruction from abroad.

Oddly, Americans got offended over idea of Napolean not being hero or worth praise. On HN there was even pearl clutching about "judging past by current standards", but he was disliked significantly more at his time (of course, for us it is past irrelevant history for them it was death of close ones, property destruction and hunger).

[kmeisthax]

"Judging [the] past by current standards" sounds like the person you were talking to may not have cared so much about Napoleon, as much as they care about all the cheap statues of literal Confederate slave-owners and defenders of slavery that got reactionarily dotted over the American South. There's been a big movement over the past decade in America to tear them down (IMHO, rightfully so) and a lot of people consider that "rewriting history" (which is rich considering the history of the Lost Cause).