Look at the painting. He seems normal height to me unless the painter used deceptively small furniture.
Apparently the British Tory press of his time sometimes depicted Napoleon as much smaller than average height, and this image persists.
In 1908 psychologist Alfred Adler cited Napoleon to describe an inferiority complex in which short people adopt an over-aggressive behaviour to compensate for lack of height; this inspired the term Napoleon Complex.
Napoleon surrounded himself with tall bodyguards and had a nickname of le petit caporal which was an affectionate term that reflected his reported camaraderie with his soldiers rather than his height, which only added to the confusion ("petit", a term of endearment as in "petit chaux", "my little cabbage").
I'm curious why he surrounded himself with tall bodyguards. Wouldn't bodyguards shorter than himself make him look taller and more impressive?
Confusion about his height also results from the difference between the French pounce (inch) and British inch—2.71 and 2.54 cm respectively. Of course the Tories reported the French "inch" which makes him about 5'2". He was measured at his autopsy to be about 1.7 metres (5' 7", English) tall.
He was average height for the period.
I told you, I don't have a Napoleon complex. I'm 1.7 meters tall!
(So much for the the Tory Press. Alfred Adler should have read a variety of newspapers and checked his facst in a couple of medical journals)
TTFN
(Peace, Skepticism, Bright, Humanism, Green, TED)
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