To start and lead a "SUCCESSFUL" revolution...

[rotorgun]

Meneldil Now, one can discuss whether or not the French revolution was successful. Even though it led to a - benevolent - dictatorship and to a return of the monarchy after 1815, it did a good job of exporting the ideas of the Enlightenment in Europe and of strengthening them in France.

I would say that Napoleon's rule was anything but benevolent. His rigging of electoral results, control of the media, repression of the intelligentsia, mass murder of religious and political opponents (through his minister of police Fouche) are but a few of many such examples. This is not to mention a penchant for loot that made Hermann Goering look like a petty shop lifter. Enlightened he may have been, even progressive in many ways, but he was still a thug, something akin to a mafioso don.