On
a busy street in the centre of Montauban in southern France, with
roadworks blasting the pavement nearby, there is a spot earmarked for a
new statue of France's last national dictator.
Once
Europe's biggest problem, Napoleon Bonaparte is still posing a dilemma
for France, 200 years after his death in exile on the Atlantic island of
St Helena.
Napoleon
was a brilliant military general, who saved the French Revolution and
laid the foundations of the modern French state. He also gave Montauban
its own county in 1808, despite being less than an hour's drive from
Toulouse.
But
is that enough to offset his dictatorship and aggression, and his
decision to reinstate slavery after it had been abolished in France?
"As
with any historical figure, some parts are darker than others," said
deputy mayor Philippe Bécade. "If you take just one element, it's very
easy to condemn anyone. Today we're in a dictatorship of the politically
correct, and I'm among those who want to fight it."
So how do you commemorate Napoleon in the 21st Century?
Divisions
over how France should remember Napoleon have grown since the
bicentenary of his birth 50 years ago, with much of the debate now
focusing on his reintroduction of slavery to islands in the Caribbean
and Indian Ocean.
"Napoleon
was a military pragmatist," says Prof Malick Ghachem, a historian with
France's Foundation for the Memory of Slavery.
"For
him, as for many others, having a massive slave empire in the Caribbean
was good for the greater glory of France and the French economy. But
does it make sense to centre this debate on the figure of Napoleon
himself? If you think he's the person calling the shots and shaping the
course of events that doesn't necessarily change how you interpret
French history".
On
the 200th anniversary of Napoleon's coronation as emperor in 2005, both
the French president and prime minister at the time found themselves
out of the country. Cabinet colleagues, including then-interior minister
Nicolas Sarkozy, decided against joining any commemorations.
Stand too close to Napoleon, many politicians have judged, and there is a risk you will get burned.
Not
so President Emmanuel Macron, who will on Wednesday lay a wreath at
Napoleon's tomb after giving a speech about his legacy.
It
won't be a "blissful hagiography, or a denial, or a repentance", says
the Elysée Palace, but will suggest that France took the best from the
emperor's legacy and separated it from the worst.
Power of nostalgia
But
politicians like Alexis Corbière, from the far-left party France
Insoumise, believe the state - and especially the president - should not
be commemorating the anniversary at all.
"He's
making political use of history, and that poses a problem for me," Mr
Corbière told the BBC. "It's worrying in the current French climate,
when there is widespread doubt about democracy, and when some French
people perhaps even hope for an authoritarian strongman."
The original authoritarian strongman of the early 1800s is still etched
into the memory of France's European neighbours, according to Renaud
Blanloeil, who runs a group that organises reconstructions of Napoleonic
battles in full costume.
Napoleon Bonaparte was a man who knew the power of public image.
One
of his favourite portraits shows him leading his army across the Alps
on a magnificent horse. He was actually riding a mule.
Two
centuries later his image here is more balanced, more controversial.
But his relationship to France was always complex: a man who died in
exile, after the shame of military defeat, and was laid to rest in
honour under a golden dome.
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