Was Napoleon actually short?

Napoleon Bonaparte was not short; he was roughly average height for a Frenchman of his time, commonly estimated around five feet six or seven inches in modern measurement, which was unremarkable for the early 1800s. The enduring image of a tiny, insecure emperor overcompensating, so fixed that Napoleon complex became psychological shorthand, is based on a misunderstanding and a smear campaign.

Two things created the myth. First, a measurement mix-up: Napoleon's height was recorded as five feet two in French units (pouces), but the French inch of the era was longer than the English inch, so converted to English measurement he was actually about five feet six or seven, average, not tiny. The French figure got read as if it were English, shrinking him on paper. Second, and probably more powerful, was propaganda: British cartoonists, especially the famous caricaturist James Gillray, gleefully depicted Napoleon as a ranting little man, an image that spread across Britain and stuck for centuries as effective wartime mockery. His nickname le petit caporal (the little corporal) added to it, though that was an affectionate term from his soldiers about rank and rapport, not stature. So the short Napoleon is a case of bad unit conversion amplified by enemy propaganda, and the psychological complex named after him rests on a historical error.