The Emperor’s Last Stand Against Oblivion: How Napoleon Came to Dabble in Celestial Warfare

I, Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor, strategist of unrivaled caliber, have faced many adversaries. Austria, Russia, the frosty wasteland of Moscow—they all fell to my brilliance. Even Elba couldn’t contain me. Yet, one enemy remained elusive, hovering out there in the blackened void, utterly indifferent to my rank or military cunning: the “black hole.” A pitiless adversary, consuming stars, devouring light, obliterating everything without so much as a surrender flag.

It all began innocently enough, or as innocent as it gets when one is an emperor in exile. As fate would have it, one autumn evening on St. Helena, after my standard five-hour diatribe on the incompetence of the British and the singular glory of French artillerie, I happened upon a peculiar tome, one that stirred a new fire in my restless soul. There, on the cover, an incomprehensible swirl of cosmic chaos lay taunting me, labeled in gold letters: A Beginner’s Guide to Stellar Catastrophes. I was, of course, instantly hooked.

Why, you ask, would Napoleon—the Emperor of the French, the man whose very name evokes the thunder of cannon fire and the majesty of conquest—be intrigued by something so unfathomably remote as outer space? Let me tell you, if you’re confined to a rock in the Atlantic Ocean with only the wind and a colony of seabirds for company, you begin to understand a thing or two about loneliness. And nothing, nothing, makes one feel quite as alone as the prospect of a black hole.

I pored over that book as if it were a new map to seize control of Europe. But instead of Prussians and Austrians, I found quasars, neutron stars, and something called the event horizon. That last part, I learned, was the “point of no return”—where everything plunges headlong into oblivion. How poetic! How foreboding! And how annoying that an object so immensely powerful would never face the might of my Grande Armée.

After weeks of studying diagrams and crude illustrations, an idea dawned upon me, brilliant as any battlefield stratagem. It seemed only fair that I, Napoleon Bonaparte, the modern Caesar, should lay bare the true horror and power of these interstellar adversaries for the lesser minds of the world to comprehend. A direct campaign would be out of the question (no cavalry charges in the cosmos), but an educational video—now that, dear reader, would be my battlefield.

By this point, my initial curiosity had spiraled into a matter of deep personal grievance. How dare these black holes consume stars so unceremoniously, swallowing whole galaxies without so much as an ounce of the pomp and circumstance that I, Napoleon, would insist upon? How dreadfully un-French! I knew that in the long history of human ambition, such destruction demanded some sort of analysis or, at the very least, a video warning all fragile beings of the universe what they might be dealing with.

Yet, I was aware that my credibility might be doubted by the star-gazers of modernity. I had been, after all, a general, a consul, and a twice-crowned emperor, but alas, never an astrophysicist. So, I sought out an ally. Enter Monsieur Pierre, a lowly astronomer in his own right, who had been dispatched to St. Helena to keep an eye on me. A better recruit could not be found—he was intimidated by my reputation yet entranced by the lure of cosmic exploration. Together, we crafted a presentation fit to educate the masses while satisfying my imperial urge to subdue these unruly forces of nature.

Our discussions grew animated. “But sire,” Pierre argued one evening, “the black hole does not destroy like an army; it dismantles objects atom by atom, consuming them whole!”

I threw my hat in rage. “Exactly! And that, Pierre, is the tragedy! This is not a dignified defeat, this is... unceremonious annihilation! The stars do not even have the chance to capitulate!” There I stood, incensed, as if these black holes had committed the gravest insult against the glory of France herself.

Pierre, bless his academic soul, tried to introduce scientific terms to describe the chaos these black holes wrought: spaghettification, photon spheres, singularities. But it was no use. To me, the whole affair seemed less like the sterile language of science and more like the stuff of barbaric warfare. Each star torn asunder was a casualty, each atom stretched infinitely—a reminder of the travesties of Waterloo, magnified on an astronomical scale.

It was only logical that I should record these thoughts, and perhaps provide the common man a means to visualize this cosmic battlefield. By the end of our research, Pierre and I had cobbled together enough diagrams, simulations, and sketches to illustrate the inevitable demise of a star caught in the insidious gravitational grip of a black hole. But, of course, a mere slideshow would not suffice; we needed impact, drama—a show worthy of an emperor.

With a bit of persuasion (and a very strongly worded letter to the modern world), we arranged for our findings to be woven into a medium as grand as the subject itself: a video presentation. I was adamant about one thing—there would be no minimizing the ferocity of these black holes. No, this would be nothing less than a public declaration of my disdain for these black-hearted vortexes, a rallying cry for all celestial bodies threatened by their unholy hunger.

I can already hear the scoffs of the scientists who will watch this video, dismissing my analysis as the rantings of an ancient despot. But let them scoff! Let them bask in their limited understanding of the universe’s ferocity. I know what it means to be consumed by ambition, to plunge forward heedless of the consequences, to annihilate obstacles in one’s path. These black holes and I, we are not so different, though I at least had the decency to conduct my conquests with honor and flair.

But unlike my campaigns, which ended on the blighted fields of Waterloo, a black hole’s destructive march never ceases. These dreadful things tear down whole stars, bit by bit, until all that’s left is a faint ring of light—a memory, an echo of what once was. They are not conquerors; they are erasers, devoid of passion, consuming light itself without so much as a triumphant cry.

So here, on the eve of my celestial campaign, I give you this video. Consider it a tribute to all who dare to burn brightly, to those whose existence defies the pull of oblivion. Watch, as I once did, with fascination tinged by terror, as the cosmic tyrants devour their prey in the coldest of battles. And remember: it takes a true emperor to recognize an enemy worth fearing.

While I may be bound by the limits of mortality, trapped on this distant rock, my message will soar through the ether, a warning against these faceless conquerors of the cosmos. For though I may not have claimed the heavens, I shall certainly stake my name as the one who first stood against the darkest pits of their tyranny.

So, watch the video. Learn of these dark adversaries. And if, one day, some distant civilization speaks of Napoleon Bonaparte not as a conqueror of Europe, but as a herald of galactic survival, then perhaps my exile on St. Helena was not in vain.