Was Napoleon actually short?

Not really. Estimates of Napoleon's height range from about 1.57 metres to 1.70 metres. Even the lowest figure was the height of an average Frenchman of his day, and the highest was above average. By the standards of his time, he was ordinary.

So where does the "tiny tyrant" come from? Mostly from British cartoons. During the wars with France, cartoonists mocked Napoleon by drawing him small, and James Gillray, often called the father of the political cartoon, made the joke stick. Napoleon is said to have complained, near the end of his life, that Gillray's caricatures did more than all the armies of Europe to bring him down.

Measurements added to the muddle. A French inch of the time was about 2.7 centimetres, longer than the 2.54-centimetre English inch, so "5 feet 2 inches" in French units is taller than it sounds in English ones. His nickname, le petit caporal, didn't help either: "petit" here was affectionate, a sign of closeness to his soldiers, not a comment on his size. And he was often surrounded by his elite guards, who had to be at least 1.83 metres tall.

Historians still argue over the exact number. But whichever estimate you pick, Napoleon was not a short man. He was an average man drawn short by his enemies.