‘Restless, doomed hero’: is Macron fated to follow in Napoleon’s footsteps?

The president has an imperial view of France's place in the world yet he is level-pegging with Marine Le Pen in the polls

News of the death of Napoleon Bonaparte in exile on St Helena, 200 years ago this week, did not reach London until July, 1821 - but the press reacted swiftly. Thus terminates the most extraordinary life yet known to political history", the Times declared.

France's deposed emperor, who seized power in a 1799 coup and was finally defeated at Waterloo in 1815, was a destroyer of the rights of nations ... [who] extinguished liberty in France and had no hold upon his subjects but their love of military glory," it said.