Post’s critic panned ‘Napoleon’ movie, Alexander Hamilton panned leader

The Post recently panned Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon” starring Joaquin Phoenix as “looney tunes” — an opinion largely unchanged from Post founder Alexander Hamilton’s assessment of the French leader 200 years ago.

The nation’s oldest continuously operating daily newspaper was established in the autumn of 1801.

The terror and anarchy of the French Revolution were mostly over and Napoleon was ruling France as first consul.

Alexander Hamilton and his Post successors were unequivocal in their distaste for the diminutive de-facto dictator:

“A Corsican has usurped the throne of [France]. Twenty-four millions are made to submit to the will of an obscure foreigner,” the paper wrote in December 1803, a year before Hamilton’s death.

“Suicides have become common. Murder is esteemed an amusement. Divorces daily take place,” the paper added in lurid descriptions of his misrule. “Fathers have poisoned their children, wives have murdered their husbands. Children have become parricides. Prostitutes are registered on the public records … Such is the present condition of the once flourishing France.”

Napoleon and his confederates had abandoned the principles of liberty and instead “planted the poisonous tree of despotism,” The Post wrote.

After treading gingerly in 1802, The Post’s reporting began to turn as the French ruler prepared for an invasion of England.

The coverage became sharply negative after he was crowned emperor at the end of 1804 and his armies fanned out across Europe.

“The touch of Napoleon is death,” The Post warned in July 1808. “When his arm shall be able to reach us . . . it would be madness to hope that the tyrant who has not only usurped the government of a subverted republic but has destroyed every republic on earth, except our own, would spare the United States.”

Over the years the paper unflinchingly bestowed several colorful sobriquets on the conquerer, including “the devil,” “the tyrant of Europe,” “the great bandit,” and “the great desolator,” while his armies were “like beasts of prey, devouring and destroying everything before them.”

By 1810, Napoleon was at the zenith of his powers and had imposed ferocious trade restrictions on the nations he occupied.

The Post offered a furious condemnation — leaning into its Federalist free-market bonafides:

“The people will fight if it is necessary, but they will never submit again to be tied neck and heels and be kicked and cuffed by such fellows as Napoleon Bonaparte,” the paper thundered. “They will not submit to the commands of a foreign tyrant. They despise the threats of Napoleon the First as much as they do those of George the Third.”

Napoleon has committed “a series of unheard of frauds and perfidies, cruelties and crimes. Cruelties over which a Nero . . . would have wept, and crimes from the commission of which, even the soul of a Caligula would have recoiled,” the paper wrote in August 1810.

The Post’s coverage of the Battle of Waterloo came on Aug 2. 1815:

“IMPORTANT” blared the headline in all caps bringing news of the tyrant’s defeat. “The enemy fled in confusion leaving behind 150 cannons, with their ammunition, which fell into the hands of the Allies.”

The Post even carried a first-hand account of the battle, headlined “Defeat of Bonaparte,” from the Duke of Wellington, who led the victorious British forces.

Lord Andrew Roberts, author of a major new biography of Napoleon, said domestic US politics and Hamilton’s intense rivalry with Thomas Jefferson might have fueled the then-broadheet’s fire against the Frenchman.

“Jefferson — who was our second ambassador after Franklin — was considered very, very pro-French,” Roberts said.

Hamilton, the nation’s first Secretary of the Treasury, never met Napoleon and was killed in a duel by then-Vice President Aaron Burr in Weehawken, NJ, in July 1804.

In a curious twist of fate, Hamilton did have dinner with Napoleon’s playboy brother Jerome in 1804, according to his personal letters.

The sit-down at Hamilton’s home — in the Manhattan neighborhood now known as Hamilton Heights — was just weeks before the founding father’s fateful rendezvous with Burr.