Napoleon Bonaparte text message story: Napoleon asks the group chat
A short, funny WhatsApp-style chat starring Napoleon Bonaparte (1769 to 1821), French military leader and emperor, with his wife and his old rival. He is the one man in history whose height is still a group-chat topic, which makes the question he asks here the whole joke.
Read the chat
- Napoleon: quick question for the group
- Josephine: go on
- Napoleon: does anyone else think I am short
- Wellington: I have never once said that
- Josephine: you said it just now, dear
- Napoleon: I said it as a QUESTION
- Wellington: then the answer is: it depends who you are standing next to
- Napoleon: I am leaving this chat
- Josephine: you are the one who made it
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Who was Napoleon Bonaparte?
- He crowned himself Emperor of the French in 1804 and was beaten at Waterloo in 1815 by an army under the Duke of Wellington.
- Historians put his height at about 1.69 m, ordinary for his time; the "short" idea comes partly from French inches being longer than English ones.
- He died in exile on the island of Saint Helena.
The chat is invented. Napoleon Bonaparte never sent these messages, and the story is labelled as fiction wherever it appears.
How this chat is built
It runs 9 messages between Napoleon and Josephine and Wellington. Napoleon writes 4 of them. The longest line is “then the answer is: it depends who you are standing next to” (Wellington) and the shortest is “go on” (Josephine). The word “said” comes back 3 times, which is where the rhythm of the joke comes from. It closes on “you are the one who made it” from Josephine.
It is shown in the WhatsApp look , one of the WhatsApp-style chat tools. In the editor you can switch it to any other look and the whole conversation follows.