Napoleon

"I call Napoleon the agent or attorney of the middle class of modern society; of the throng who fill the markets, shops, counting-houses, manufactories, ships, of the modern world, aiming to be rich."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Representative Men
Napoleon, Man of the World (1850) is one of a series of addresses Ralph Waldo Emerson gave on the leaders who most influenced his work and whose biographies eventually became the content of a collection entitled Representative Men (also available from Cosimo Classics). What Emerson extolled was Bonaparte's appreciation of the common man and the values of contemplation and individualism, not the military or political prowess for which other writers praised him.