In class, my professor asked what contributed to Napoleon's success. I claimed that he was a military strategist and extensively studied the campaigns of Caesar and Alexander the Great. My professor then said that Napoleon failed all his military history classes.
She also claimed that Napoleon's success was due to his conscripted military, claiming Napoleon's forces were often much larger than his opponents in battle. This confused me as I had always thought Napoleon faced larger armies but used a strategy of divide and conquer.
Anyway, I was wondering if any historians could clear up these discrepancies or knows where I can read about Napoleon's performance in school. Thanks!
Napoleon, as /u/crosoccer points out, graduated relatively poorly at his military college - but was himself an avid military historian. His complex and patchy record as a student does not preclude him from having a persistent lifelong enthusiasm for military history. His scholarly record is also marked by his fathers death. A teenager's scholarly marks from the 18th century are, in general, not a watertight measure for someone's potential intelligence or career - especially when personal circumstances are considered. The actual relevance of his academic performance for understanding his actions several decades later is questionable, especially for an undergraduate audience. You wouldn't discuss Kissinger's highschool or undergraduate performance in a class about the Nixon administration.
It seems as though your professor is trying to make a relatively noncontroversial point - that innovations in French military organisation in the early 19th century were important - in a way that is needlessly controversial. She structured that aspect of the lecture, presumably, to leave students with a strong impression of the importance of mass mobilisation. There is no problem with trying to stress that wars are affected by broad systemic issues as much, if not more, as they are by any personal leadership. In fact, it's a necessary part of how military history should be taught.
The error is that to do so, she out-of-hand makes a handful of claims that are very poorly supported. Napoleon was an accomplished military leader. They did fight and win many difficult battles, in many of which they were outnumbered. And whilst there are many complex reasons for why the Napoleonic wars turned out as they did, it is very much worth pointing out that Napoleon himself did typically perform better than the average military leader of his period.
Edit - a word.
Napoleon's schooling is an often misquoted era of his life. Hopefully I can help clear some of these up.
Napoleon valued military history more then the average officer of the time.
"Later in life, Napoleon urged his junior officers ‘to read and re-read the campaigns of Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Julius Caesar, Gustavus Adolfus, Prince Eugene and Frederick the Great. This is the only way to become a great captain."
However, despite his love for military history, he graduated 42nd out of 58 in his military college before being commissioned as an officer. This is often why Napoleon is thought to have been a poor student. So why would a lover of military history do so poorly compared to his classmates?
The answer to that is circumstance. His father died of stomach cancer at the age of 38 the year that Napoleon attended his final military college, leaving the family drowned in debt. Napoleon felt this pressure, and decided to take his final exams early - after just 1 year of schooling as opposed to the normal 2 to 3 years of schooling in military college. Given the circumstances, he performed relatively well. He said later in life that the circumstances around his graduation ‘influenced my state of mind and made me grave before my time’.
Napoleon was not a perfect student either. Going to school before military college, he was noted to have been terrible at both German and Latin, but it is hard to question that he was extremely well versed in Military History.
Quotes from Napoleon the Great by Andrew Roberts. Can provide exact pages if needed.