I subscribe to the idea that those "Great Persons" are shaped by the environment they grow in, and allowed to do what they do by the will of the "zeitgeist", fo

I subscribe to the idea that those "Great Persons" are shaped by the environment they grow in, and allowed to do what they do by the will of the "zeitgeist", for a lack of a better word. If not for Napoleon, someone else like him would have done what he did. Perhaps slightly differently, but overall history would have followed a similar path. Post-Revolution France was eager to defend against and defeat the monarchies that surrounded and threatened it. The General was only allowed to rise so high because there was a want to militarize the country.