EX UNGUS NAPOLEON
[Nietzsche, EH 'Clever', 3]

This is a good time to look at Nietzsche's perspective on Napoleon [NAP].

Nietzsche mentions NAP throughout his career.
The references are at first brief, but then flourish as Nietzsche enters the second phase of his philosophising.
Perhaps, in his first phase, when he was under the Francophobic influence of Wagner his enthusiasm for NAP was muted.

In his first book, the Birth of Tragedy (1972), Nietzsche writes;

"When Goethe on one occasion said to Eckermann with reference to Napoleon:
'Yes, my good friend, there is a also a produtiveness of deeds',
he reminded us in a charmingly naive manner that the non-theorist is something incredible and astounding to modern men".
[BT sec., 18]

Notice that Nietzsche introduces NAP within the context of Germanism - i.e., of Goethe's approval. But here we see at once the central theme which will pervade Nietzsche's attitude toward NAP; - Anti-Modernism.
NAP is so unlike modern men; he is a man of instinct, a man of productivity. He is not a man of theories - unlike most moderns.

In his next series of books which include an eulogy of Wagner - The Untimely Meditations, Nietzsche does not dwell on NAP. However, we see from his notebooks at this time that NAP was still in his thoughts;

"Naopoleon as a healthy yellow tiger".
[Unpublished Writings from the period of UM; 31(3) 1873]

As the title of the previous essays suggests, Nietzsche was persuing the question of untimeliness, of the unfashionable, of the Anti-Modern.
In the book that signals his break with Wagnersim, 'Human All Too Human' (1878), this point is made again in relation to NAP;

" DANGER and GAIN in the CULT of GENIUS ... [...] recall Napoleon, for example, whose belief in himself and his star and whose resulting contempt for other human beings were exactly what made his own being grow into the powerful unity that sets him apart from all other men".
[HA, 164]

As well as Anti-Modernism, we here see the beginning of NAP being seen as an exemplar - as a Type.
It is this notion that is given full reign in Nietzsche's next phase ....