The Napoleonist syndrome is a psychological complex, or character disorder, underlying the attachment shown by members of a combatant country to the enemy leader Napoleon.
It may be extended to cover parallel switches of allegiance in more modern times.
Nineteenth-century examples During the 1790s, there was considerable sympathy outside France with the ideals of the French Revolution; but a decade later, after Napoleon had come to sole power, active sympathisers were much reduced in numbers:Boyd Hilton, A Mad, Bad and Dangerous People? (Oxford 2008) p. 210 the collapse of Beethoven's Napoleonist family romance, on hearing of Bonaparte's coronation as emperor, is a prime example of the change.M. Solomon, Beethoven Essays (Harvard 1988) pp. 78–9 Those Napoleonists that remained, however, came from all sides of the political spectrum—ranging from Queen Caroline to Radicals like William Hazlitt—something that has prompted a psychological explanation of their underlying motivation.E. Tangye Lean, The Napoleonists (1970) p. 377
The common factor in that syndrome is taken to be an ambivalent relationship to the parent or parent of origins, leading to a rejection of national authority, and its projection abroad.Boyd Hilton, A Mad, Bad and Dangerous People? (Oxford 2008) p. 210 The argument is particularly convincing in the case of a group of Radicals including Leigh Hunt and William Godwin, as well as Hazlitt—all the sons of dissenting ministers, whose religious beliefs they had rejected but whose influence on them remained substantial nevertheless.A. L. Rowse, History Today 21 (1971) p. 146 Their common revolt against their fathers led to a counter-identification with the heroic figure presented by NapoleonL. Hudson, The Way Men Think (Essex 1993) p. 44—his Promethean challenge to the existing orderJ. Christopher Herold, The Age of Napoleon (NY 1965) pp. 112–3 and p. 197 seeming to offer a stark contrast to the narrow authoritarianism represented both by their own fathers, and by the British royal family.J. A Howk, William Hazlitt (1977) p. 237
Literary analogues Russian literature was pervaded by Napoleonism,G. Steiner, Tolstoy or Dostoevsky (Penguin 1967) pp. 29–30 from Pushkin to Raskolnikov.D. Magarshack, Intro, Crime and Punishment (Penguin 1976) p. 14 Doris Lessing in The Golden Notebook parodied the Western Communist idealisation (paternalisation) of Stalin: "... working for us! For the world! ... in custody of the destinies of us all.... with a fatherly twinkle in his eyes".D. Lessing, The Golden Notebook (Penguin 1973) pp. 302–4
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