The belief that the French emperor was tiny, birthing the "Napoleon complex."
Documented
A translation error plus British propaganda
Napoleon measured 5 pieds 2 pouces in French units, roughly 5 feet 6-7 inches in modern measure, above the French male average then. British cartoonists, especially James Gillray, spent years drawing him as a furious child-sized tyrant. The nickname "le petit caporal" was affectionate, referring to his closeness to troops.
Assessment: Fully debunked. Autopsy and contemporary records confirm his height.
Stories
The tall Imperial Guard
A supporting detail often cited: his elite guard had minimum height requirements, making him look small standing among giants.
Assessment: True as far as it goes, but secondary to the unit confusion and the propaganda campaign.
Interesting claims
The first media assassination
The claim: the short-Napoleon story was not a translation error that stuck but a deliberate psychological operation, the earliest modern case of a hostile press manufacturing a physical caricature to shrink a political threat. Cartoonists were the weapon; inches were the payload.
Assessment: British cartoonists did wage documented visual war on him. Whether the height myth was engineered or merely convenient is unknowable, but the template it created, diminish the body to diminish the man, is now standard practice.
Sources and further reading
Francesco Antommarchi, autopsy record, St. Helena, May 1821: 5 pieds 2 pouces in French measure, about 5 ft 6 in English
James Gillray, The King of Brobdingnag and Gulliver, 1803, the caricature machine
Worth asking
If a measurement can be propaganda, which of your mental facts are someone else's campaign?