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In this essay, the presence of Napoleon in Sebald's work is shown to be a major structuring element of his conception of realism, which he sees as an ethical response to mass historical catastrophes. Sebald understands the violence of the modern period as originating during the Napoleonic era and extending to World War II and the Holocaust; the realism of Stendhal, Balzac, Hebel and Büchner is thus fundamentally linked to the documentary realism of Nossack, Kluge, Weiss and Sebald himself. Drawing on Celan's notion of the 'Meridian' connecting the madness of Büchner's 'Lenz' to the Final Solution, Sebald consistently posits a contingent link between the Napoleonic and Hitler eras, between historical and personal catastrophes.