"
Many persons have made comparisons between Bolivar and Napoleon, Bolivar
and Washington and Bolivar and San Martin. Juan Montalvo (in "Simon
Bolivar") writes that Bolivar is not so well known as Napoleon because
the glamour of Napoleon's life reduced to silence the lives of his
contemporaries. He asserts that in the future, Bolivar will take his place
beside the French Emperor. Napoleon owes his glory to Chateaubriand, to
Lamartine, to Madame de Stael, to Byron, to Victor Hugo, while Bolivar has
had few biographers, and a very few have spoken of him with the power and
authority of those who praised or attacked Napoleon.
Regarding a comparison between Washington and Bolivar, Montalvo says:
"Washington presents himself to memory and imagination as a great
citizen rather than as a great warrior; as a philosopher rather than as
a general.... Washington and Bolivar have in common their identity of
purpose; both aspired to the freedom of a country and the establishment
of democracy. The difference between these two illustrious men
in the excessive difficulty one had to conquer and the abundance with
which the other carried on his work to the end. Bolivar, during several
periods of the war, had no resources at all, nor did he know where to
get them; his indestructible love for his country, the sense of honor
active in his breast, the fertile imagination, the supreme will, the
prodigious activities which formed his character, inspired in him
wisdom to turn the impossibility into a reality.
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