Napoleon is the model for Julien Sorel: the poor lieutenant who became master of the world with the sword. The admiration for him explains Julien's ambition and also his hypocrisy, because, in the world Julien lives in, admiring Napoleon has to stay hidden.
The formation comes from the old chief surgeon, who told him of the battles of Lodi, Arcole, and Rivoli. The Memorial of Saint Helena is the book Julien prizes most, and it is the one that falls into the stream when his father strikes him at the sawmill. Together with Rousseau's Confessions and the bulletins of the Grande Armée, it forms "his Koran," and he "would let himself be killed for these three works."
In the house of the royalist mayor, Julien keeps a portrait of Napoleon in his mattress and burns it in a hurry when he risks being discovered. On one occasion he lets slip that Napoleon was "the man sent by God for young Frenchmen," and he has to retract it. He measures everything by the yardstick of the hero: he refuses partnership with Fouqué because, at twenty-eight, "Bonaparte had already accomplished his greatest feats."
The novel shows that this nostalgia is not his alone. At the seminary, the masons of the cloister say: "In the time of the other one, now that was something!" and recall that a mason could become a general. In Paris, the model loses force. After seeing Mathilde weep, Julien forces himself to read the Memorial of Saint Helena, dictated by Napoleon, for two hours, with only his eyes, and throws the book far away to decide to frighten her. In prison, he even dismisses the Napoleon of Saint Helena as charlatanism.