Napoleon Buonaparte and his legacy is a controversy that is still debated today, and two firsthand accounts of life under Napoleon diverges from a fictional 19th century account to show just that. The accounts of Giovanni Patrizi and Jacob Walter diverge from that of Honore Balzac’s in the soldiers’ reason to fight, soldier’s treatment while in the army, and Napoleon’s legacy. Balzac’s fictional account diverges from that of Patrizi’s and Walter’s because he serves to exemplify what people in the French countryside felt about the grandeur of Napoleon, while Patrizi’s and Walter’s account serve as memoirs for no one but themselves. While historians can learn to understand the experiences of the past from firsthand accounts, they have to be cautious of partiality and faulty memory.
In Guoguelat’s account,…show more content… Balzac seems to write a comical fictional account aimed for Parisian readership, while Patrizi and Walter write for no one but themselves. Balzac seeks to present truth with fiction. Balzac shows how Napoleon to the French countryside is an all empowering general that gave glory to France. This is not his opinion, but rather a sweeping, generic observation. The firsthand accounts of Patrizi and Walter prove that there are others who think otherwise from what Balzac presents. Patrizi, for instance, was “insulted” at the emperor’s congratulations towards his son’s shipping off to the French military (Patrizi, 75). The soldiers in the grand army and the parents who had to watch their children be shipped off to war, of course, were unhappy. In addition, Balzac did not serve in the army himself. He did not experience the hardships that Walter did, wherein he watched men grow “weaker everyday” and companies grow “smaller” (Walter, 79). Balzac speaks for what he understands the French countryside thinks about Napoleon, while Patrizi and Walter speak from their personal
