Napoleon: "There is nothing we can do." Meaning and A Historical Perspective on the Famous Meme

Start hereThe meme puts "There is nothing we can do" in Napoleon's mouth. In a real letter of 9 July 1813, he answered a general's "It is not possible" with "that is not French". So where did the meme's line come from?

01A Historical Perspective on the Famous Meme

The line comes from a TikTok photo slideshow posted on 15 August 2023. Two rage-comic figures, drawn as Napoleon and one of his men exiled on St Helena, trade two lines: “Napoleon, what will we do?” and “There’s nothing we can do”.

The slideshow then cuts to paintings of Napoleon on the island, set to a slowed remix of the song “Amour plastique” by Videoclub.

Those real paintings of him in exile help explain why the line gets credited to him.

We found no letter, speech or memoir in which Napoleon says it. The meme never claimed one: it started as dialogue written for two cartoon figures.

A real quotation comes with a letter, a speech, a book or a recorded conversation. This one comes with a TikTok date and nothing earlier. His collected correspondence is in French, and an English line with no French behind it is a caption, not a quotation.

Similar words do turn up, in a different sense. A letter of his from 16 May 1813 uses similar words: il ne faut rien faire à présent (“nothing must be done for now”). It is about a fortified post at the mouth of the Havel. Similar words, used in a different sense, are not the same line.

The more interesting question is why the meme stuck to him, and that one has a real answer.

Napoleon said “There is nothing we can do”	From a TikTok photo slideshow posted on 15 August 2023
Napoleon rose from humble beginnings	His family’s noble status was officially recognised in September 1771

The meme started as dialogue written for two cartoon figures.

02“There is nothing we can do.” Meme

The first slideshow drew roughly 1.2 million plays in a month. It was copied by another account on 17 August 2023, but the format only became common in late September 2023.

By 21 September 2023 the slowed remix behind it had been used in more than 22,600 posts.

Most versions follow the same three steps: a prompt, the line, then a painting of Napoleon looking sad and thoughtful on St Helena.

03“There is nothing we can do” Meaning

In the meme, the line means resignation. Something is lost, there is no move left, and the only thing to do is stare out to sea.

Creators paired it with all kinds of prompts. Much of the joke is the gap between the problem and the gloom.

The pictures matter as much as the words. Most of the images are paintings of Napoleon on St Helena, the island where he spent his last years as a prisoner. That is why the line lands. It borrows the one stretch of his life when he really had run out of moves.

The man himself tells a different story. When a general wrote to tell him something could not be done, Napoleon’s answer went the other way.

04What Napoleon Wrote About “Impossible”

On 9 July 1813, at Dresden, Napoleon answered a letter from General Lemarois, the governor of Magdeburg. Lemarois had told him that something he wanted done was not possible. The reply, as printed in his collected correspondence:

Vous avez 240,000 boisseaux d’avoine à Magdeburg. « Ce n’est pas possible », m’écrivez-vous : cela n’est pas français. Je suis donc mécontent de votre lettre.

In our translation: “You have 240,000 bushels of oats at Magdeburg. ‘It is not possible,’ you write to me: that is not French. I am therefore displeased with your letter”. He then ordered two boatloads of oats sent at once for the horses of the Guard, which were dying.

The saying Impossible n’est pas français (“Impossible is not French”) is commonly linked to this letter. The letter’s own words are longer, and the subject was oats.

Still, it is the opposite of the meme. Here is a man refusing to accept “there is nothing we can do” from someone else.

05The Rise of Napoleon: Not From Nothing

Napoleon was born in Ajaccio, Corsica, on 15 August 1769. He came from a family of minor Corsican nobility, not from humble beginnings.

His family’s noble status was officially recognised in September 1771. That recognition is what let him enter the royal military school at Brienne on 15 May 1779 as a king’s scholar. The school was meant for nobles short of money, and four degrees of nobility were required.

His father, Charles (Carlo) Bonaparte, was elected to the Corsican Estates as a representative of the nobility of the province of Ajaccio in 1771, 1772 and 1777.

From Brienne he went to the École militaire in Paris on 22 October 1784. In the exams of September 1785, 58 of 137 candidates passed. Napoleon came 42nd and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the artillery.

The rest of the rise is the familiar part. He took power in the coup of 18 Brumaire (9 November 1799). He was crowned Emperor of the French in Notre-Dame on 2 December 1804, placing the crown on his own head.

06The Fall of Napoleon: A Series of Unfortunate Events

Russia, 1812. In June 1812 nearly 440,000 men were lined up along the Niemen, ready to invade Russia. Counts of what came back differ:

• The Fondation Napoléon’s preface to his correspondence gives about sixty thousand troops recrossing the Niemen.
• World History Encyclopedia says fewer than 100,000 of the 615,000 men committed to the whole campaign returned.

The crossing of the Berezina in late November alone cost between 25,000 and 40,000 men. On 5 December Napoleon left the army at Smorgon to return to Paris.

Elba, 1814. He abdicated at Fontainebleau, unconditionally by 6 April 1814, and was sent into exile on the island of Elba.

Waterloo, 1815. On 1 March 1815 he landed at Golfe-Juan, and by 20 March he was back in the Tuileries palace. On 18 June 1815 he was defeated at Waterloo, in Belgium, by the British and Prussian allied armies. He abdicated on 22 June and gave himself up to the British navy.

07St Helena: The Real Dead End

This is the part of his life the meme borrows. Napoleon reached St Helena on 15 October 1815.

He had already escaped from Elba once, and this time the guard was heavy. The Fondation Napoléon describes the island as “well guarded by three thousand men, and four vessels constantly surveyed its coastline to prevent any landing”.

It was a genuine dead end. What he did there is the part the meme leaves out. His days were built around meals, riding and dictating his memoirs to his companions. He had brought more than 600 books with him.

He died on St Helena on 5 May 1821, at the age of fifty-one. The people at his bedside wrote down different broken phrases, and none of them is this line.

• General Charles de Montholon, who shared his exile, thought he heard “France — armée, tête d’armée — Joséphine” in the early hours of 5 May.
• General Henri Bertrand’s journal records “at the head of the army” in the same night.

The Fondation Napoléon describes Montholon’s memoirs as “untrustworthy”.

Both accounts mention the army. The rest differs, so treat each version as one witness’s memory.

08Legacy and Impact

The Civil Code. Promulgated on 21 March 1804, the Code civil ran to 2,281 articles. Its property laws swept away feudal traditions. In France and across continental Europe, it fixed ideas such as equality, citizenship, freedom of conscience and the protection of property.

It also restored the authority of the husband. A married woman could not perform any legal act or manage her own property without her husband’s agreement.

Slavery. A law of 20 May 1802 provided that slavery would be maintained in the colonies returned to France under the Treaty of Amiens. The Fondation Napoléon calls the re-establishment of slavery, and the repression that followed, a stain on the posterity of the consular regime.

Both belong in the story. The meme is about a lonely man on an island. The record is about a ruler whose laws spread across Europe, for better and for worse.

09Why It Resonates

The meme is still worth enjoying as a meme. It is a good joke about resignation, and St Helena was a real place where the options ran out.

The paintings give the mood a face. In our reading, that is the appeal: a modern mood borrowing an old painting of a real exile.

It helps to keep the two apart: the mood belongs to 2023, and the man belongs to the record. For a longer method, see how to spot a fake quote or an invented source. For the rest of his life, see Napoleon Bonaparte: the facts.

DocumentIs there a date and a document?

LanguageIs there an original-language version?

SenseDo the same words mean the same thing there?

RecordWhat did he say on the subject?

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How we checked this · Last checked October 2026

• The meme's origin, dates and play counts are as given in Know Your Meme's dated entries for August and September 2023.
• "We found no letter, speech or memoir" rests on a web search for the English line with Napoleon's name and a search of volume 25 of his correspondence (1813) for the French words. Those words turn up only in other senses, such as the 16 May 1813 letter on the page.
• The 9 July and 16 May 1813 letters were read in the 1868 printing of his correspondence (Internet Archive scan); the English translations are ours.
• Montholon's account of the last night was read in the 1847 English edition (vol. III, pp. 214–215); Bertrand's words through the Fondation Napoléon's timeline of his last days. Shannon Selin's article was used to compare the witnesses.
• The size of the St Helena garrison is quoted from the Fondation Napoléon because no second source for it could be opened.
• Counts of the army that came back from Russia differ between sources, so both are given.

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13Sources