French Mark 200-Year Anniversary of Crowning Napoleon Emperor

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For France, those were the days.

The French aren't pining for the return of their 19th-century empire, but the 200th anniversary Thursday of Napoleon Bonaparte's crowning as emperor is a reminder of their country's former glory.

The Corsican, whose diminutive size belied his continental ambitions, is back in the news for the bicentennial - and the timing couldn't have been more telling for a country facing an identity crisis and searching for its role in a 25-member European Union and a wider world led by the United States.

"History has been a little hard on the French lately," said Steven Englund, an American award-winning biographer of Napoleon. "And I think they're looking for reasons to celebrate their own history."

The Napoleon nostalgia underscores France's obsession with retaining its influence as a self-appointed EU leader and creating a "multipolar" world - its buzzword for a counterweight to U.S. hegemony.

President Jacques Chirac was a top opponent of the American-led invasion of Iraq, but other than give them a dressing down, he could do little to stop EU candidate nations from backing the U.S.-led war. His ire was partly directed at Poland, a country said to respect Napoleon.

While some foreign critics assail France as living off faded glory, it is in some ways continuing Napoleon's work - without his use of force - in pressing its vision for a European, multinational alternative to U.S. might.

"He built Europe," said Thierry Lentz, director of the Napoleon Foundation. "It has only been since the end of the Second World War that we've done it without fighting."

In France, some fondly remember Napoleon's influence as nation-builder, leaving a huge imprint on architecture, public works and civil administration.

Towns and coins once carried his name. He created the much-ballyhooed Legion of Honor award. His imprint on style survives from the Arch of Triumph to sewers and street lamps in Paris, known as the City of Light.

Critics consider him the megalomaniacal bully of Europe and a forebear of more recent tyrants, such as Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini of Italy or Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.

But Napoleon's ambition and influence are unquestioned. Even after his armies plowed through Europe, soaking its eastern plains in blood, countries like Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Spain kept many reforms imported from France's Republican ideal.

With his legacy so controversial, the government planned no official commemorations of the coronation.

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