Napoleon Bonaparte was of roughly average height for his time, not notably short.

At his death, Napoleon’s height was recorded as 5 feet 2 inches in French units of the time, which were longer than English inches. Converted to modern measurement, that comes out to about 5 feet 7 inches, or 170 centimeters — close to the average height of a Frenchman in his era.

The myth of a diminutive, insecure Napoleon likely grew out of British wartime propaganda cartoons that exaggerated his stature for mockery, combined with confusion over the differing French and English inch. It probably didn’t help that he was often surrounded by the unusually tall soldiers of his Imperial Guard, which made him look shorter by comparison.