Large compilations like these make me uneasy, they present a much simpler view of a career or person than is actually the case. It is history with blinkers on.

I would agree that Napoleon was rather less than monstrous and many of the atrocities listed can be mitigated through circumstances. I speak as one who is rather less than an admirer of Napoleon. He was capable of great cruelty and ruthlessness in achieving his ends and showed it on a number occasions as has already been posted, but it is certainly the scale of those deeds, played on the highest stage in Europe rather than the deeds themselves, that tend to blacken his name.
For my part it is absurd to portray Napoleon as a defender of the ordinary folk or as any different from the oligarchs people tend to compare him with. He was an excellent example of a relative nobody climbing the ladder during the Revolution, provided you came from a semi respectable noble family, had an above average education I’m sure many could have risen very high, as indeed many with less going for them did (like a number of marshals), but it’s no good to pretend he was anything but another monarchical head of state with far greater powers than any other European monarch, barring perhaps, the Tsar. The Napoleonic Wars were about the rights of Kings and the Rule of Law amongst Nations rather than about the rights of man. French defence of republican ideals pretty much ended with the peace of Amiens, and probably before it.
That being said, as I have often learned from your good self, there are many strong, logical, arguments to defend Napoleon’s personal reputation, which was somewhat different to the public reputation accrued as the emperor of the French.

Josh.