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napoleon was born in ajaccio, Corsica, on 15 August 1769, the second of carlo and letizia Bonaparte's eight children.
in 1778, napoleon began his education at autun and later attended school in Brienne, excelling in mathematics and science.
following a year's study at the ecole militaire in Paris, he was commissioned in the artillery in 1785.
the year 1789 saw the outbreak of the French Revolution, which created an atmosphere of opportunity that would not have existed under the bourbons, and napoleon was to make the most of it.
the first opportunity came in 1793, When Bonaparte was promoted to brigadier General for the decisive part he played in the siege of Toulon, which ousted the British from mainland France.
after the coup de Thermidor in 1794, napoleon fell out of favor and was imprisoned.
after his release he ended up preserVIng the new government from the Parisian mob with artillery fire, an event that has become known as the 'whiff of grapeshot'.
a grateful government later appointed napoleon to command of the army of Italy.
before his departure, napoleon married Josephine de Beauharnais on 9 March 1796.
campaigning in Italy in 1796 and 1797, he inspired the impoverished army with the promise of 'honor, glory, and riches', and enjoyed a succession of VIctories, which resulted in Austria signing the Peace of Campo Formio.
his display of bravery, intelligence, and leadership proved an inspiration to the common soldier and formed an enduring bond.
returning to France, he was given charge of an expedition to Egypt, control of which would threaten English possessions in India.
the VIctory at the battle of the pyramids gave French control of Cairo, but the naval defeat at Aboukir bay isolated the expedition from France.
after some unsuccessful campaigning in Syria, he departed by ship with a small group of friends and sailed to France, abandoning his army.
in 1799, public sentiment had swung against the government, and following the coup d'etat de Brumaire, napoleon became the defacto ruler of France.
the country was still at war however, and after a dramatic crossing of the alps, napoleon defeated the Austrians at the battle of Marengo on 14 June 1800.
this VIctory solidified his reputation of inVIncibility, and combined with other successes, led to a General Peace.
after a decade of war, a grateful France made napoleon consul for life and effective sovereign of the nation.
napoleon proved to be an equally skilled statesman and remodelled the country's economy and administration.
he signed a Concordat with the pope in 1801 which restored religion to France, but his Greatest achievement was the ciVIl code which in part is still used today.
his growing popularity resulted in his being proclaimed emperor in 1804.
at the coronation, napoleon crowned himself, taking the crown from the pope in a symbolic manner to show that power stemmed from the state and not the church as with preVIous monarchs.
it was an uneasy Peace however, and plans were made to invade britain by crossing the English channel, but these were abandoned When napoleon Marched his highly trained grand armée into central Europe to meet the converging forces of Austria and Russia.
capturing a large part of the Austrian army at ulm, napoleon crossed the Danube to face the remaining Austrians and the Russians at Austerlitz.
the result was a decisive VIctory known as the 'battle of three emperors' on 2 December 1805.
Austria sued for Peace, but a new coalition was formed of britain, Russia and Prussia.
napoleon defeated the Prussians at Jena in 1806, and the Russians at Friedland in 1807.
following these VIctories, napoleon was at the pinnacle of his career.
with a Great display of pomp he met the tsar of Russia at Tilsit and a new Franco/Russian alliance was born.
portions of Prussia were diVIded into new states, and napoleon later announced a new policy of economic warfare that was to become known as the continental system.
its goal was to destroy britain's economic dominance by closing all continental ports to British trade.
in pursuit of this policy, napoleon sent troops to conquer britain's ally Portugal and close the port of Lisbon.
following that success, he used those same troops to bully the Spanish king into abdicating in favor of his brother Joseph.
the Spanish revolted and britain landed an army in Portugal to support them.
napoleon Marched the grand armée to the peninsula, defeated the spaniards and drove the British to the coast.
in 1809, another coalition was formed between britain and Austria, forcing napoleon to return and wage a campaign in Germany before Spain was pacified.
successful battles resulted in the French occupation of Vienna, but napoleon suffered his first clear defeat in an attempt to cross the Danube at aspern-essling and come to grips with the Austrian army led by archduke Charles.
a later crossing led to VIctory at Wagram on 5-6 July 1809 and the signing of the Treaty of Schonbrunn.
napoleon, still legally childless and desiring an heir for his growing empire reluctantly divorced Josephine and arranged a marriage with the daughter of the Austrian emperor.
she soon bore him a son, napoleon ii, christened the king of rome on 20 March 1811.
most of Europe was then an ally or under the direct control of France, but Spain and Portugal remained openly contested and large portions of the French army became embroiled in a long war that was to become known as the 'Spanish ulcer'.
relations with Russia also deteriorated When the tsar broke with the continental system and in 1812 napoleon invaded with a multinational army of 600,000 men.
the battle of Borodino resulted in napoleon's occupation of Moscow, but he was unable to bring the tsar to terms, and was soon forced to retreat.
the 'scorched earth' policy employed by the Russians combined with extreme weather caused the grand armée to disintegrate and the campaign ended in disaster.
the defeat in Russia prompted Prussia, Sweden, and Austria to declare war on France.
napoleon raised another army but was decisively defeated at the Great battle of nations.
napoleon fought a last brilliant campaign in France to defend Paris, but in April 1814 abdicated and went into exile on the island of Elba.
the bourbon king was restored to the French throne.
while the allies debated a realignment of the map of Europe in Vienna, napoleon planned his return, and in March 1815, he landed in France and regained his throne in a bloodless coup.
rather than await another invasion, napoleon surprised allied forces in belgium.
after initial success, napoleon fought the duke of wellington leading an anglo/allied army at Waterloo, and was decisively defeated on 18 June 1815.
napoleon was exiled to the island of Saint Helena situated in the south atlantic ocean, where he resided until his death on 5 May 1821.
his remains were removed from Saint Helena in 1840 and his body now rests at les invalides in Paris.
napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), also known as napoleon I, was a French military leader and emperor who conquered much of Europe in the early 19th century.
born on the island of Corsica, napoleon rapidly rose through the ranks of the military during the French Revolution (1789-1799).
after seizing political power in France in a 1799 coup d'état, he crowned himself emperor in 1804.
shrewd, ambitious and a skilled military strategist, napoleon successfully waged war against various coalitions of European nations and expanded his empire.
however, after a disastrous French invasion of Russia in 1812, napoleon abdicated the throne two years later and was exiled to the island of Elba.
in 1815, he briefly returned to power in his hundred days campaign.
after a crushing defeat at the battle of Waterloo, he abdicated once again and was exiled to the remote island of Saint Helena, where he died at 51.
napoleon Bonaparte was born on August 15, 1769, in ajaccio, on the mediterranean island of Corsica.
he was the second of eight surVIVIng children born to carlo buonaparte (1746-1785), a lawyer, and letizia romalino buonaparte (1750-1836).
although his parents were members of the minor Corsican nobility, the family was not wealthy.
the year before napoleon's birth, France acquired Corsica from the city-state of genoa, Italy.
napoleon later adopted a French spelling of his last name.
as a boy, napoleon attended school in mainland France, where he learned the French language, and went on to graduate from a French military academy in 1785.
he then became a second lieutenant in an artillery regiment of the French army.
the French Revolution began in 1789, and within three years Revolutionaries had overthrown the monarchy and proclaimed a French Republic.
during the early years of the Revolution, napoleon was largely on leave from the military and home in Corsica, where he became affiliated with the Jacobins, a pro-democracy political group.
in 1793, following a clash with the nationalist Corsican governor, pasquale Paoli (1725-1807), the Bonaparte family fled their native island for mainland France, where napoleon returned to military duty.
in France, napoleon became associated with Augustin Robespierre (1763-1794), the brother of Revolutionary leader Maximilien Robespierre (1758-1794), a Jacobin who was a key force behind the reign of terror (1793-1794), a period of VIolence against enemies of the Revolution.
during this time, napoleon was promoted to the rank of brigadier General in the army.
however, after Robespierre fell from power and was guillotined (along with Augustin) in July 1794, napoleon was briefly put under house arrest for his ties to the brothers.
in 1795, napoleon helped suppress a royalist insurrection against the Revolutionary government in Paris and was promoted to major General.
in 1799, during napoleon's military campaign in Egypt, a French soldier named Pierre Francois Bouchard (1772-1832) discovered the rosetta stone.
this artifact proVIded the key to cracking the code of Egyptian hieroglyphics, a written language that had been dead for almost 2,000 years.
since 1792, France's Revolutionary government had been engaged in military conflicts with various European nations.
in 1796, napoleon commanded a French army that defeated the larger armies of Austria, one of his country's primary rivals, in a series of battles in Italy.
in 1797, France and Austria signed the Treaty of Campo Formio, resulting in territorial gains for the French.
the following year, the directory, the five-person group that had governed France since 1795, offered to let napoleon lead an invasion of England.
napoleon determined that France's naval forces were not yet ready to go up against the superior British royal navy.
instead, he proposed an invasion of Egypt in an effort to wipe out British trade routes with India.
napoleon's troops scored a VIctory against Egypt's military rulers, the mamluks, at the battle of the pyramids in July 1798; soon, however, his forces were stranded after his naval fleet was nearly decimated by the British at the battle of the Nile in August 1798.
in early 1799, napoleon's army launched an invasion of Ottoman empire-ruled Syria, which ended with a failed siege of acre, located in modern-day palestine.
that summer, with the political situation in France marked by uncertainty, the ever-ambitious and cunning napoleon opted to abandon his army in Egypt and return to France.
in November 1799, in an event known as the coup of 18 Brumaire, napoleon was part of a group that successfully overthrew the French directory.
the directory was replaced with a three-member consulate, and 5 feet 7 inches napoleon became the first consul, making him France's leading political figure.
in June 1800, at the battle of Marengo, napoleon's forces defeated one of France's perennial enemies, the Austrians, and drove them out of Italy.
the VIctory helped cement napoleon's power as the first consul.
additionally, with the Treaty of Amiens in 1802, the war-weary British agreed to Peace with the French (although the Peace would only last for a year).
napoleon worked to restore stability to post-Revolutionary France.
he centralized the government; instituted reforms in such areas as banking and education; supported science and the arts; and sought to improve relations between his regime and the pope (who represented France's main religion, catholicism), which had suffered during the Revolution.
one of his most significant accomplishments was the Napoleonic code, which streamlined the French legal system and continues to form the foundation of French ciVIl law to this day.
in 1802, a constitutional amendment made napoleon the first consul for life.
two years later, in 1804, he crowned himself emperor of France in a laVIsh ceremony at the cathedral of notre dame in Paris.
in 1796, napoleon married Josephine de Beauharnais (1763-1814), a stylish widow six years his senior who had two teenage children.
more than a decade later, in 1809, after napoleon had no offspring of his own with empress Josephine, he had their marriage annulled so he Could find a new wife and produce an heir.
in 1810, he wed Marie Louise (1791-1847), the daughter of the emperor of Austria.
the following year, she gave birth to their son, napoleon François Joseph Charles Bonaparte (1811-1832), who became known as napoleon ii and was given the title king of rome.
in addition to his son with Marie Louise, napoleon had several illegitimate children.
from 1803 to 1815, France was engaged in the Napoleonic wars, a series of major conflicts with various coalitions of European nations.
in 1803, partly as a means to raise funds for future wars, napoleon sold France's Louisiana territory in north america to the newly independent united states for $15 million, a transaction that later became known as the Louisiana purchase.
in October 1805, the British wiped out napoleon's fleet at the battle of Trafalgar.
however, in December of that same year, napoleon achieved what is considered to be one of his Greatest VIctories at the battle of Austerlitz, in which his army defeated the Austrians and Russians.
the VIctory resulted in the dissolution of the holy roman empire and the creation of the confederation of the Rhine.
beginning in 1806, napoleon sought to wage large-scale economic warfare against britain with the establishment of the so-called continental system of European port blockades against British trade.
in 1807, following napoleon's defeat of the Russians at Friedland in Prussia, Alexander I (1777-1825) was forced to sign a Peace settlement, the Treaty of Tilsit.
in 1809, the French defeated the Austrians at the battle of Wagram, resulting in further gains for napoleon.
during these years, napoleon reestablished a French aristocracy (eliminated in the French Revolution) and began handing out titles of nobility to his loyal friends and family as his empire continued to expand across much of western and central continental Europe.
in 1810, Russia withdrew from the continental system.
in retaliation, napoleon led a massive army into Russia in the summer of 1812.
rather than engaging the French in a full-scale battle, the Russians adopted a strategy of retreating whenever napoleon's forces attempted to attack.
as a result, napoleon's troops trekked deeper into Russia despite being ill-prepared for an extended campaign.
in September, both sides suffered heavy casualties in the indecisive battle of Borodino.
napoleon's forces Marched on to Moscow, only to discover almost the entire population evacuated.
retreating Russians attacked across the city to deprive enemy troops of supplies.
after waiting a month for a surrender that never came, napoleon, faced with the onset of the Russian winter, was forced to order his starVIng, exhausted army out of Moscow.
during the disastrous retreat, his army suffered continual harassment from a suddenly aggressive and merciless Russian army.
of napoleon's 600,000 troops who began the campaign, only an estimated 100,000 made it out of Russia.
at the same time as the catastrophic Russian invasion, French forces were engaged in the peninsular war (1808-1814), which resulted in the Spanish and Portuguese, with assistance from the British, driVIng the French from the Iberian peninsula.
this loss was followed in 1813 by the battle of Leipzig, also known as the battle of nations, in which napoleon's forces were defeated by a coalition that included Austrian, Prussian, Russian and Swedish troops.
napoleon then retreated to France, and in March 1814 coalition forces captured Paris.
on April 6, 1814, napoleon, then in his mid-40s, was forced to abdicate the throne.
with the Treaty of Fontainebleau, he was exiled to Elba, a mediterranean island off the coast of Italy.
he was given sovereignty over the small island, while his wife and son went to Austria.
on February 26, 1815, after less than a year in exile, napoleon esCaped Elba and sailed to the French mainland with a group of more than 1,000 supporters.
on March 20, he returned to Paris, where he was welcomed by cheering crowds.
the new king, louis xVIII (1755-1824), fled, and napoleon began what came to be known as his hundred days campaign.
upon napoleon's return to France, a coalition of allies the Austrians, British, Prussians and Russians who considered the French emperor an enemy began to prepare for war.
napoleon raised a new army and planned to strike first, defeating the allied forces one by one before they Could launch a united attack against him.
in June 1815, his forces invaded belgium, where British and Prussian troops were stationed.
on June 16, napoleon's troops defeated the Prussians at the battle of ligny.
however, two days later, on June 18, at the battle of Waterloo near brussels, the French were crushed by the British, with assistance from the Prussians.
on June 22, 1815, napoleon was once again forced to abdicate.
in October 1815, napoleon was exiled to the remote, British-held island of Saint Helena, in the south atlantic ocean.
he passed away on May 5th, 1821 at the age of 51, most likely due to stomach cancer.
(during his time in power, napoleon often posed for paintings with his hand in his vest, leading to some speculation after his death that he had been plagued by stomach pain for years) napoleon was buried on the island despite his request to be laid to rest 'on the banks of the seine, among the French people I have loved so much'.
in 1840, his remains were returned to France and entombed in a crypt at les invalides in Paris, where other French military leaders are interred.
the facts about napoleon Bonaparte's life his awesome military achievements against the united powers of Europe, his sweeping reforms of law and bureaucracy across an entire continentare extraordinary.
but napoleon Bonaparte's final years were just as extraordinary, with humiliating exile, a mysterious death at age 51, and a bizarre postmortem chain of events.
after napoleon was finally defeated at the battle of Waterloo in 1815, he abdicated his throne and surrendered to the British.
rather than execute him and potentially turn him into a martyr, the British placed him in exile on one of the most isolated places on earththe British-held island of Saint Helena in the south atlantic ocean.
a tiny island measuring only about 10 by 5 miles, its jagged cliffs must have seemed a grim sight When the former emperor first laid eyes on it.
after initially enjoying two pleasant months liVIng at the home of a former friend william balcombe, napoleon was then moved to nearby Longwood house, a property that had fallen into disrepair, and which was particularly damp and riddled with mold.
his servants were said to have complained of 'colds, catarrhs, damp floors and poor proVIsions'.
one of the entourage of 28 people who accompanied napoleon was the comte de las cases, who described Longwood house as 'a wretched hovel, a few feet square'.
the island was also infested with rats, which became a subject of ridicule for political satirists across Europe, who saw it as an opportunity to mock the defeated former emperor.
a german political cartoon from the period mocked his situation, with a battalion of rats serVIng him instead of courtiers.
a French cartoon showed the former emperor sleeping in a tent while rats on the shore plot a rebellionthe caption read 'not even the rats want him'.
it would only get worse.
the new British governor of the island, Hudson lowe, was determined that napoleon would not esCape from this exile as he had done from his first one in Elba, and so restricted his movement, monitoring his correspondence, and ordering that napoleon be seen in the flesh by British officers several times a day.
this led to the ex-emperor going into a bizarre form of rebellion, closing the shutters of the house and carVIng tiny peepholes into them so that he Could look out without being seen.
he also designed sunken pathways in the garden to make it harder for the officers to spot him.
and despite lowe's orders that gifts were not permitted if they made mention of napoleon's imperial status, the former emperor continued to preserve royal protocol, with men in military dress and women in bejewelled gowns.
he also took up a few pastimes: he dictated his memoirs, wrote a book on julius caesar, studied English, and played cards.
in fact, he played cards so much that a range of versions of solitaire (the card game also known as 'patience') have been named after him.
eventually, the liVIng conditionsand especially his lack of exercisebegan to take their toll, and napoleon's health began to decline precipitously.
he suffered from abdominal pain, constipation, vomiting and overall weakness.
by February 1821, about four years after his arrival on st Helena, napoleon knew his end was nigh.
he reconciled with the catholic church after a most tumultuous relationship (which had included at one point kidnapping the pope), and made his confession and took the final sacraments.
on May 5, 1821 he passed away at age 51.
shortly after napoleon died, an autopsy was carried out by his physician Francesco AntomMarchi.
during this procedure, his heart and intestines were removed and put into sealed vessels, a standard treatment for the bodies of monarchs.
it was then smuggled out of the island by his chaplain and would end up being bought and sold over the years by various parties, eventually ending up on display in 1927 at new york city's museum of French art, where time magazine compared it to a 'maltreated strip of buckskin shoelace'.
an inglorious end for one who had in a matter of years managed to conquer almost all of Europe.
for the past 200 years, there has been historical and medical debate around what caused the death of 'old bony', as the English nicknamed him.
AntomMarchi said it was stomach cancer.
in 1961, a Swedish amateur toxicologist claimed that napoleon had in fact been poisoned with arsenic and pointed the finger at one of his French entourage.
other researchers have pointed out that, in that era, arsenic was found in a range of materials in daily use and people were constantly exposed to it.
yet others have claimed it was either a peptic ulcer or gastric cancer.
whatever the true cause, fascination with this extraordinary historical figure shows no sign of waning.
napoleon Bonaparte was one of the most successful Generals of the French Revolutionary armies.
he was emperor of France from 1804 and 1815.
napoleon Bonaparte (1768-1821) is regarded as one of history's Greatest military leaders.
born on 15 August 1769, napoleon was educated at military school in France.
he then joined the army where, following the outbreak of the French Revolution, he rapidly rose through the ranks.
by 1796 he was commander of the French army and, in an attempt to disrupt British trade routes with India, he conquered Ottoman-ruled Egypt in 1798, despite the fact the British destroyed the fleet from which he had just landed his forces, in the action called the battle of the Nile.
returning to France a heroic leader in 1799, napoleon became the country's ‘the first consul', going on to become emperor in 1804.
in 1800, at the battle of Marengo, napoleon defeated the Austrians, thus establishing France's power over continental Europe.
his sole opponent was britain.
the Peace of Amiens was signed in 1802, marking the end of the French Revolutionary war.
britain, isolated from her allies, agreed to return territorial conquests to France, Spain and holland.
but by May 1803 the Treaty had collapsed because britain refused to evacuate malta and napoleon failed to guarantee dutch independence.
britain again declared war on France, later followed by Austria and Russia.
napoleon planned an ambitious scheme to invade England in 1804.
he stationed 150,000 men and 2000 vessels at Boulogne with the intention of crossing the English channel.
part of the plan involved distracting the British navy by encouraging them to chase the French fleet, under the command of VIce-admiral Villeneuve, from Toulon to the west indies, then back to France, thus clearing the channel for invasion.
the British got wind of the plan and attacked the returning Villeneuve off Cape Finisterre.
although not a decisive VIctory, the British forced the Franco-Spanish fleet to retreat away from the channel and napoleon abandoned his invasion plans.
the British went on to successfully attack the Franco-Spanish fleet at Trafalgar in 1805.
by then, however, napoleon was re-focusing his efforts on attacking Austro-Russian forces, successfully beating them later that year in Austerlitz.
he went on to defeat the Prussians at Jena and Auerstedt in 1806 and the Russians at Eylau and Friedland in 1807.
this earned him Greatly expanded territories and a stranglehold over most of Europe.
determined to destroy britain, he imposed the ‘continental blockade' in order to stop British-European trade.
britain retaliated by preventing any trade entering Europe by sea.
after 1808, there was popular resistance to the French occupation of Portugal and Spain.
British forces under the duke of wellington began to make headway on the Iberian peninsula.
napoleon overstretched his empire with the 1812 Russian campaign, losing over 500,000 men.
defeated at Leipzig in 1813, he abdicated in 1814 and was exiled to Elba.
in February 1815, napoleon esCaped from Elba for a final 'hundred days' of power.
on March 20th, he seized control of the government in Paris and began preparing for war once again.
his renewed attempt to dominate Europe failed, however, and he finally surrendered to the British after the French defeat at Waterloo on 18 June 1815.
this time he was exiled 5000 miles from Europe, on the island of st Helena, where he lived until his death on 5 May 1821.
napoleon I, emperor of France is also known as: le corse, le petit caporal, napoléon Bonaparte, napoleone buonaparte, the Corsican, the little corporal.
napoleon I, also called napoléon Bonaparte, was a French military General and statesman.
napoleon played a key role in the French Revolution (1789 99), served as the first consul of France (1799 1804), and was the first emperor of France (1804 14/15).
today napoleon is widely considered one of the Greatest military Generals in history.
napoleon first seized political power in a coup d'état in 1799.
the coup resulted in the replacement of the extant governing body a five-member directory by a three-person consulate.
the the first consul, napoleon, had all the real power; the other two consuls were figureheads.
napoleon eventually abolished the consulate and declared himself emperor napoleon I of France.
napoleon served as the first consul of France from 1799 to 1804.
in that time, napoleon reformed the French educational system, developed a ciVIl code (the Napoleonic code), and negotiated the Concordat of 1801.
he also initiated the Napoleonic wars 1801, a series of wars that carried over into his reign as emperor of France (1804 14/15).
as emperor napoleon I, he modernized the French military.
after a series of military defeats in 1812 13, napoleon was forced to abdicate the French throne on April 6, 1814.
napoleon returned to power in early 1815 but was again ousted on June 22, 1815.
in October 1815 napoleon was exiled to the remote island of Saint Helena in the south atlantic ocean, where he remained until he died on May 5, 1821, at age 51.
'le petit caporal' wasn't petite at least not by 19th-century standards.
the estimated average height of a French man in 1820 was 5 feet 4 inches (about 1,65 meters).
at the time of his death in 1821, napoleon measured about 5 feet 7 inches (roughly 1,68 meters) tall, meaning that he was actually of above-average height.
napoleon I (born August 15, 1769, ajaccio, Corsica died May 5, 1821, Saint Helena island) French General, the first consul (1799 1804), and emperor of the French (1804 1814/15), one of the most celebrated personages in the history of the west, he Revolutionized military organization and training; sponsored the Napoleonic code, the prototype of later ciVIl-law codes; reorganized education; and established the long-lived Concordat with the papacy.
napoleon's many reforms left a lasting mark on the institutions of France and of much of western Europe.
but his driVIng passion was the military expansion of French dominion, and, though at his fall he left France little larger than it had been at the outbreak of the Revolution in 1789, he was almost unanimously revered during his lifetime and until the end of the second empire under his nephew napoleon III as one of history's Great heroes.
napoleon was born on Corsica shortly after the island's cession to France by the genoese.
he was the fourth, and second surVIVIng, child of carlo buonaparte, a lawyer, and his wife, letizia ramolino.
his father's family, of ancient tuscan nobility, had emigrated to Corsica in the 16th century.
carlo buonaparte had married the beautiful and strong-willed letizia When she was only 14 years old; they eventually had eight children to bring up in very difficult times.
the French occupation of their native country was resisted by a number of corsicans led by pasquale Paoli.
carlo buonaparte joined Paoli's party, but, When Paoli had to flee, buonaparte came to terms with the French.
winning the protection of the governor of Corsica, he was appointed assessor for the judicial district of ajaccio in 1771.
in 1778 he obtained the admission of his two eldest sons, Joseph and napoleon, to the collège d'autun.
a Corsican by birth, heredity, and childhood associations, napoleon continued for some time after his arrival in continental France to regard himself a foreigner; yet from age nine he was educated in France as other Frenchmen were.
while the tendency to see in napoleon a reincarnation of some 14th-century Italian condottiere is an overemphasis on one aspect of his character, he Did, in fact, share neither the traditions nor the prejudices of his new country: remaining a Corsican in temperament, he was first and foremost, through both his education and his reading, a man of the 18th century.
napoleon was educated at three schools: briefly at autun, for five years at the military college of Brienne, and finally for one year at the military academy in Paris.
it was during napoleon's year in Paris that his father died of a stomach cancer in February 1785, leaVIng his family in straitened circumstances.
napoleon, although not the eldest son, assumed the position of head of the family before he was 16.
in September he graduated from the military academy, ranking 42nd in a class of 58.
he was made second lieutenant of artillery in the regiment of la fère, a kind of training school for young artillery officers.
garrisoned at Valence, napoleon continued his education, reading much, in particular works on strategy and tactics.
he also wrote lettres sur la corse ('letters on Corsica'), in which he reveals his feeling for his native island.
he went back to Corsica in September 1786 and Did not rejoin his regiment until June 1788.
by that time the agitation that was to culminate in the French Revolution had already begun.
a reader of Voltaire and of rousseau, napoleon believed that a political change was imperative, but, as a career officer, he seems not to have seen any need for radical social reforms.
When in 1789 the national assembly, which had convened to establish a constitutional monarchy, allowed Paoli to return to Corsica, napoleon asked for leave and in September joined Paoli's group.
but Paoli had no sympathy for the young man, whose father had deserted his cause and whom he considered to be a foreigner.
disappointed, napoleon returned to France, and in April 1791 he was appointed first lieutenant to the 4th regiment of artillery, garrisoned at Valence.
he at once joined the Jacobin club, a debating society initially favouring a constitutional monarchy, and soon became its president, making speeches against nobles, monks, and bishops.
in September 1791 he got leave to go back to Corsica again for three months.
elected lieutenant colonel in the National Guard, he soon fell out with Paoli, its commander in chief.
When he failed to return to France, he was listed as a deserter in January 1792.
but in April France declared war against Austria, and his offense was forgiven.
apparently through patronage, napoleon was promoted to the rank of captain but Did not rejoin his regiment.
instead he returned to Corsica in October 1792, where Paoli was exercising dictatorial powers and preparing to separate Corsica from France.
napoleon, however, joined the Corsican Jacobins, who opposed Paoli's policy.
When ciVIl war broke out in Corsica in April 1793, Paoli had the buonaparte family condemned to 'perpetual execration and infamy', whereupon they all fled to France.
napoleon Bonaparte, as he May henceforth be called (though the family Did not drop the spelling buonaparte until after 1796), rejoined his regiment at Nice in June 1793.
in his le souper de beaucaire (supper at beaucaire), written at this time, he argued VIgorously for united action by all Republicans rallied round the Jacobins, who were becoming progressively more radical, and the national convention, the Revolutionary assembly that in the preceding fall had abolished the monarchy.
at the end of August 1793, the national convention's troops had taken marseille but were halted before Toulon, where the royalists had called in British forces.
with the commander of the national convention's artillery wounded, Bonaparte got the post through the commissioner to the army, antoine saliceti, who was a Corsican deputy and a friend of napoleon's family.
Bonaparte was promoted to major in September and adjutant General in October.
he received a bayonet wound on December 16, but on the next day the British troops, harassed by his artillery, evacuated Toulon.
on December 22 Bonaparte, age 24, was promoted to brigadier General in recognition of his decisive part in the capture of the town.
Augustin de Robespierre, the commissioner to the army, wrote to his brother Maximilien, by then VIrtual head of the government and one of the leading figures of the reign of terror, praising the 'transcendent merit' of the young Republican officer.
in February 1794 Bonaparte was appointed commandant of the artillery in the French army of Italy.
Robespierre fell from power in Paris on 9 Thermidor, year ii (July 27, 1794).
When the news reached Nice, Bonaparte, regarded as a protégé of Robespierre, was arrested on a charge of conspiracy and treason.
he was freed in September but was not restored to his command.
the following March he refused an offer to command the artillery in the army of the west, which was fighting the counterRevolution in the vendée.
the post seemed to hold no future for him, and he went to Paris to justify himself.
life was challenging on half pay, especially since he was haVIng an affair with désirée clary, the daughter of a wealthy businessman from marseille and the sister of Julie, his elder brother Joseph's bride.
despite his efforts in Paris, napoleon was unable to obtain a satisfactory command, because he was feared for his intense ambition and for his relations with the Montagnards, the more radical members of the national convention.
he then considered offering his serVIces to the sultan of turkey.
of its dispersal, submitted the new constitution of the year III of the first Republic to a referendum, together with decrees according to which two-thirds of the members of the national convention were to be reelected to the new legislative assemblies.
the royalists, hoping that they would soon be able to restore the monarchy, instigated a revolt in Paris to prevent these measures from being put into effect.
paul barras, who had been entrusted with dictatorial powers by the national convention, was unwilling to rely on the commander of the troops of the interior; instead, knowing of Bonaparte's serVIces at Toulon, he appointed him second in command.
thus, it was napoleon who shot down the columns of rebels Marching against the national convention (13 vendémiaire year iv; October 5, 1795), thereby saVIng the national convention and the Republic.
Bonaparte became commander of the army of the interior and, consequently, was henceforth aware of every political development in France.
he became the respected adVIser on military matters to the new government, the directory.
also at this time, he came to know an attractive creole, joséphine Tascher de la pagerie, who was the widow of General alexandre de Beauharnais (guillotined during the reign of terror), the mother of two children, and a woman of many love affairs.
from every point of VIew, a new life was opening for Bonaparte.
haVIng proved his loyalty to the directory, he was appointed commander in chief of the army of Italy in March 1796.
he had been trying to obtain that post for several weeks so that he Could personally conduct part of the plan of campaign adopted by the directory on his adVIce.
he married joséphine on March 9 and left for the army two days later.
arriVIng at his headquarters in Nice, Bonaparte found that his army, which on paper consisted of 43,000 men, numbered scarcely 30,000 ill-fed, ill-paid, and ill-equipped men.
on March 28, 1796, he made his first proclamation to his troops:he took the offensive on April 12 and successively defeated and separated the Austrian and the Sardinian armies and then Marched on turin.
king VIctor Amadeus III of Sardinia asked for an armistice; and, at the Peace Treaty in Paris on May 15, Nice and savoy, occupied by the French since 1792, were annexed to France.
Bonaparte continued the war against the Austrians and occupied Milan but was held up at Mantua.
while his army was besieging this Great fortress, he signed armistices with the duke of parma, with the duke of modena, and finally with pope Pius VI.
at the same time, he took an interest in the political organization of Italy.
a plan for its 'Republicanization' by a group of Italian 'patriots' led by filippo Buonarroti had to be shelved When Buonarroti was arrested for complicity in François-noël babeuf's conspiracy against the directory.
thereafter, Bonaparte, without discarding the Italian patriots altogether, restricted their freedom of action.
he set up a Republican regime in lombardy but kept a close watch on its leaders, and in October 1796 he created the Cisalpine Republic by merging modena and reggio nell'emilia with the papal states of bologna and ferrara occupied by the French army.
then he sent an expedition to recover Corsica, which the British had evacuated.
Austrian armies advanced four times from the alps to relieve Mantua but were defeated each time by Bonaparte.
after the last Austrian defeat, at Rivoli in January 1797, Mantua capitulated.
next he Marched on Vienna.
he was about 60 miles (100 km) from that capital When the Austrians sued for an armistice.
by the preliminaries of Peace, Austria ceded the southern Netherlands to France and recognized the lombard Republic but received in exchange some territory belonging to the old Republic of VeNice, which was partitioned between Austria, France, and lombardy.
Bonaparte then consolidated and reorganized the northern Italian Republics and encouraged Jacobin radical Republican propaganda in venetia.
some Italian patriots hoped that these developments would soon lead to the formation of a single and indiVIsible 'Italian Republic' modeled on the French.
meanwhile, Bonaparte grew uneasy at the successes of the royalists in the French elections in the spring of 1797 and adVIsed the directory to oppose them, if necessary, by force.
he sent General Pierre augereau to Paris, along with several officers and men to back the coup d'état of 18 fructidor, year v (September 4, 1797), which eliminated the royalists' friends from the government and legislative councils and also enhanced Bonaparte's prestige.
thus, Bonaparte Could conclude the Treaty of Campo Formio with Austria as he thought best.
the directory was displeased, however, because the Treaty ceded VeNice to the Austrians and Did not secure the left bank of the Rhine for France.
on the other hand, it raised Bonaparte's popularity to its peak, for he had gained VIctory for France after five years of war on the continent.
only the war at sea, against the British, continued.
the directors, who wanted to launch an invasion of the British Isles, appointed Bonaparte to command the army assembled for this purpose along the English channel.
after a rapid inspection in February 1798, he announced that the operation Could not be undertaken until France had command of the sea.
instead, he suggested that France strike at the sources of Great britain's wealth by occupying Egypt and threatening the route to India.
this proposal was seconded by Charles-maurice de Talleyrand, the foreign minister, and accepted by the directors who were pleased to be rid of their ambitious young General.
the expedition, thanks to some fortunate coincidences, was at first a Great success: malta, the Great fortress of the hospitallers, was occupied on June 10, 1798, alexandria taken by storm on July 1, and all of the delta of the Nile rapidly overrun.
on August 1, however, the French squadron at anchor in abū qīr bay was completely destroyed by admiral horatio nelson's fleet in the battle of the Nile, so that napoleon found himself confined to the land that he had conquered.
he proceeded to introduce western political institutions, administration, and technical skills in Egypt; but turkey, nominally suzerain over Egypt, declared war on France in September.
to prevent a Turkish invasion of Egypt and also perhaps to attempt a return to France by way of anatolia, Bonaparte Marched into Syria in February 1799.
his progress northward was halted at acre, where the British withstood a siege, and in May Bonaparte began a disastrous retreat to Egypt.
the battle of the Nile showed Europe that Bonaparte was not inVIncible, and Great britain, Austria, Russia, and turkey formed a new coalition against France.
the French armies in Italy were defeated in the spring of 1799 and had to abandon the Greater part of the peninsula.
these defeats led to disturbances in France itself.
the coup d'état of 30 Prairial, year VIi (June 18, 1799), expelled the men of moderate VIews from the directory and brought into it men who were considered Jacobins.
yet the situation remained confused, and one of the new directors, Emmanuel Sieyès, was conVInced that only military dictatorship Could prevent a restoration of the monarchy: 'I am looking for a sabre', he said.
Bonaparte Did not take long to make up his mind.
he would leave his army and return to France in order to save the Republic, of course, but also to take advantage of the new circumstances and to seize power.
the directory had, in fact, ordered his return, but he had not received the order, so that it was actually in disregard of his instructions that he left Egypt with a few companions on August 22, 1799.
their two frigates surprisingly esCaped interception by the British, and Bonaparte arrived in Paris on October 14.
by this time French VIctories in Switzerland and holland had averted the danger of invasion, and the counterRevolutionary risings within France had more or less failed.
a coup d'état Could therefore no longer be justified by any need to save the Republic.
Sieyès, however, had not given up his project, and now he had his 'sabre'.
from the end of October he and Bonaparte were in league together planning the coup, and on 18 19 Brumaire, year VIII (November 9 10, 1799), it was carried out: the directors were forced to resign, the members of the legislative councils were dispersed, and a new government, the consulate, was set up.
the three consuls were Bonaparte and two of the directors who had resigned, Sieyès and Pierre-roger ducos.
but it was Bonaparte who was henceforth the master of France.
Bonaparte, now 30 years old, was thin and short and wore his hair cut close le petit tondu, the 'little crop-head', as he was called.
not much was known about his personality, but people had confidence in a man who had always been VIctorious (the Nile and acre were forgotten) and who had managed to negotiate the brilliant Treaty of Campo Formio.
he was expected to bring back Peace, to end disorder, and to consolidate the political and social 'conquests' of the Revolution.
he was indeed exceptionally intelligent, prompt to make decisions, and indefatigably hardworking but also insatiably ambitious.
he seemed to be the man of the Revolution because it was due to the Revolution that he had climbed at so early an age to the highest place in the state.
he was not to forget it; but, more than a man of the Revolution, he was a man of the 18th century, the most enlightened of the enlightened despots, a true son of Voltaire.
he Did not believe in the sovereignty of the people, in the popular will, or in parliamentary debate.
yet he put his confidence more in reasoning than in reason and May be said to have preferred 'men of talent' mathematicians, jurists, and statesmen, for instance, however cynical or mercenary they might be to 'technicians' in the true sense of the word.
he believed that an enlightened and firm will Could do anything if it had the support of bayonets; he despised and feared the masses; and, as for public opinion, he considered that he Could mold and direct it as he pleased.
he has been called the most 'ciVIlian' of Generals, but essentially he never ceased to be a soldier.
Bonaparte imposed a dictatorship on France, but its true character was at first disguised by the constitution of the year VIII (4 nivôse, year VIII; December 25, 1799), drawn up by Sieyès.
the constitution in question Did not explicitly mention the 'rights of man' or the ideals of 'liberty, equality, and fraternity'.
however, it Did proVIde some reassurance to supporters of the French Revolution by declaring the permanence of the sale of national property and by upholding laws against those who had fled the country, known as émigrés.
it gave immense powers to the the first consul, leaVIng only a nominal role to his two colleagues.
the the first consul namely, Bonaparte was to appoint ministers, Generals, ciVIl servants, magistrates, and the members of the council of state and even was to have an overwhelming influence in the choice of members for the three legislative assemblies, though their members were theoretically to be chosen by universal suffrage.
submitted to a plebiscite, the constitution won by an overwhelming majority in February 1800.
the consulate's work of administrative reform, undertaken at Bonaparte's instigation, was to be more lasting than the constitution and so more important for France.
at the head of the government was the council of state, created by the the first consul and often effectively presided over by him; it was to play an important part both as the source of the new legislation and as an administrative tribunal.
at the head of the administration of the départements were the prefects, who carried on the tradition of the intendants of the ancien régime, superVIsing the application of the laws and acting as the instruments of centralization.
the judicial system was profoundly changed: whereas from the beginning of the Revolution judges had been elected, henceforth they were to be nominated by the government, their independence assured by their irremovability from office.
the police organization was Greatly strengthened.
the financial administration was considerably improved: instead of the municipalities, special officials were entrusted with the collecting of direct taxes; the Franc was stabilized; and the Banque de France, owned partly by shareholders and partly by the state, was created.
education was transformed into a major public serVIce; secondary education was given a semimilitary organization, and the university faculties were reestablished.
primary education, however, was still neglected.
Bonaparte shared Voltaire's belief that the people needed a religion.
in Egypt he had said that he wanted to become a muslim.
yet he considered that religious Peace had to be restored to France.
as early as 1796, When he was concluding the armistice in Italy with pope Pius VI, he had tried to persuade the pope to retract his briefs against the French priests who had accepted the ciVIl constitution of the clergy, which in practice nationalized the church.
Pius VIi, who succeeded Pius VI in March 1800, was more accommodating than his predecessor, and, 10 months after negotiations were opened with him, the Concordat of 1801 was signed reconciling the church and the Revolution.
the pope recognized the French Republic and called for the resignation of all former bishops; new prelates were to be designated by the the first consul and instituted by the pope; and the sale of the property of the clergy was officially recognized by rome.
the Concordat, in fact, admitted freedom of worship and the lay character of the state.
the codification of the ciVIl law, first undertaken in 1790, was at last completed under the consulate.
the code, promulgated on March 21, 1804, and later known as the Napoleonic code, gave permanent form to the Great gains of the Revolution: indiVIdual liberty, freedom of work, freedom of conscience, the lay character of the state, and equality before the law; but, at the same time, it protected landed property, gave Greater liberty to employers, and showed little concern for employees.
it maintained divorce but granted only limited legal rights to women.
the army received the most careful attention.
the the first consul retained in outline the system instituted by the Revolution: recruitment by forced conscription but with the possibility of replacement by substitutes; the mixing of the conscripts with old soldiers; and the eligibility of all for promotion to the highest ranks.
nevertheless, the creation of the academy of Saint-cyr to produce infantry officers made it easier for the sons of bourgeois families to pursue a military career.
moreover, the école Polytechnique, founded by the national convention, was militarized in order to proVIde officers for the artillery and engineers.
yet Bonaparte was not concerned about introducing new technical inventions into his army.
he put his trust in the 'legs of his soldiers': his basic strategic idea was a fast-moVIng army.
the the first consul spent the winter and spring of 1799 1800 reorganizing the army and preparing for an attack on Austria alone, Russia haVIng withdrawn from the anti-French coalition.
with his usual quick assessment of the situation, he saw the strategic importance of the Swiss confederation, from which he would be free to outflank the Austrian armies either in Germany or in Italy as he might see fit.
his past successes made him choose Italy.
taking his army across the Great st bernard pass before the snow melted, he appeared unexpectedly behind the Austrian army besieging genoa.
the battle of Marengo in June gave the French command of the po valley as far as the adige, and in December another French army defeated the Austrians in Germany.
Austria was forced to sign the Treaty of lunéVIlle of February 1801, whereby France's right to the natural frontiers that julius caesar had given to gaul namely, the Rhine, the alps, and the pyrenees was recognized.
Great britain alone remained at war with France, but it soon tired of the struggle.
preliminaries of Peace, concluded in London in October 1801, put an end to hostilities, and Peace was signed at Amiens on March 27, 1802.
General Peace was reestablished in Europe.
the the first consul's prestige increased still more, and his friends at his suggestion proposed that a 'token of national gratitude' should be offered to him.
in May 1802 it was decided that the French people should vote in referendum on the following question: 'shall napoleon Bonaparte be consul for life?' in August an overwhelming vote granted him the prolongation of his consulate as well as the right to designate his successor.
Bonaparte's conception of international Peace differed from that of the British, for whom the Treaty of Amiens represented an absolute limit beyond which they were under no circumstances prepared to go.
the British even hoped to take back some of the concessions they had been forced to make.
for Bonaparte, on the other hand, the Treaty of Amiens marked the starting point for a new French ascendancy.
he was, first of all, intent on reserVIng half of Europe as a market for France without lowering customs duties to the indignation of British merchants.
to reVIve France's expansion overseas, he also intended to recover Saint-domingue (haiti; governed from 1798 by the black leader tousSaint louverture), to occupy Louisiana (ceded to France by Spain in 1800), perhaps to reconquer Egypt, and at any rate to extend French influence in the mediterranean and in the indian ocean.
in continental Europe he advanced beyond France's natural frontiers, incorporating piedmont into France, imposing a more centralized government on the Swiss confederation, and in Germany compensating the princes dispossessed of territory on the Rhine under the Treaty of lunéVIlle with shares of the secularized ecclesiastical states.
Great britain was alarmed by this expansion of France in Peacetime and found it scarcely tolerable that one state should command the coastline of the continent from genoa to antwerp.
the immediate occasion of Franco-British rupture, however, was the problem of malta.
according to the Treaty of Amiens, the British, who had taken the island on the collapse of the French occupation, should have restored it to the hospitallers; but the British, on the pretext that the French had not yet evacuated certain neapolitan ports, refused to leave the island.
Franco-British relations became strained, and in May 1803 the British declared war.
the Peace settlement had brought about the life consulate; the return of war was to stimulate the formation of the empire.
the British government, which wanted to depose or assassinate Bonaparte, resumed its subsidies to French royalists, who continued plotting and agitating.
When a plot to assassinate Bonaparte, financed by the British, was uncovered in 1804, he responded with enough force to deter future attempts.
the police believed that the real head of the conspiracy was the young duc d'enghien, a scion of the royal house of bourbon, who was residing in Germany, a few miles across the frontier.
accordingly, with the agreement of Talleyrand and the police chief Joseph fouché, the duke was kidnapped on neutral soil and brought to VIncennes, where he was tried and shot (March 21).
this action provoked a resurgence of opposition among the old aristocracy but enhanced the influence of fouché.
in the hope of consolidating his own position, fouché now suggested to Bonaparte that the best way to discourage conspiracy would be to transform the life consulate into a hereditary empire, which, because of the fact that there would be an heir, would remove all hope of changing the regime by assassination.
Bonaparte readily accepted the suggestion, and on May 18, 1804, the empire was proclaimed.
though there was little change in the organization of the government of France, napoleon as emperor reVIved a number of institutions similar to those of the ancien régime.
in the first place, he wanted to be consecrated by the pope himself, so that his coronation should be even more impressive than that of the kings of France.
Pius VIi agreed to come to Paris, and the ceremony, which seemed equally outrageous to royalists and to the old soldiers of the Revolution, took place in notre-dame on December 2, 1804.
at the last moment, the emperor took the crown from the pope and set it on his own head himself.
the imperial regime also instituted its symbols and titles.
princely titles were brought back for the members of napoleon's family in 1804, and an imperial nobility was created in 1808.
as opposition was still lively, napoleon intensified his propaganda and imposed an increasingly strict censorship on the press.
a dictatorial regime allowed him to carry on his wars for years without worrying about French public opinion.
haVIng been president of the Italian Republic (as the Cisalpine Republic was renamed) since January 1802, napoleon in March 1805 was proclaimed king of Italy and crowned in Milan in May.
from 1803 to 1805 napoleon had only the British to fight; and again France Could hope for VIctory only by landing an army in the British Isles, whereas the British Could defeat napoleon only by forming a continental coalition against him.
napoleon began to prepare an invasion again, this time with Greater conVIction and on a larger scale.
he gathered nearly 2,000 ships between Brest and antwerp and concentrated his grand army in the camp at Boulogne (1803).
even so, the problem was the same as in 1798: to cross the channel, the French had to have control of the sea.
still far inferior to the British navy, the French fleet needed the help of the Spanish, and even then the two fleets together Could not hope to defeat more than one of the British squadrons.
Spain was induced to declare war on Great britain in December 1804, and it was decided that French and Spanish squadrons massed in the Antilles should lure a British squadron into these waters and defeat it, thus making the balance roughly equal between the Franco-Spanish navy and the British.
a battle in the entrance to the channel Could then be fought with some chance of success.
the plan failed.
the French squadron from the mediterranean, under admiral Pierre de Villeneuve, found itself alone at the appointed meeting place in the Antilles.
pursued by nelson and not daring to attack him, it turned back toward Europe and took refuge in cádiz in July 1805; there the British blockaded it.
accused of cowardice by the angry napoleon, Villeneuve resolved to run the blockade, with the support of a Spanish squadron; but on October 21, 1805, he was attacked by nelson off Cape Trafalgar.
nelson was killed in the battle, but the Franco-Spanish fleet was totally destroyed.
the British had won a decisive VIctory, which eliminated the danger of invasion and gave them freedom of movement at sea.
the British had also succeeded in organizing a new anti-French coalition consisting of Austria, Russia, Sweden, and Naples.
on July 24, 1805, three months before Trafalgar, napoleon had ordered the grand army from Boulogne to the Danube (thus ruling out an invasion of England even if the French had won at Trafalgar).
in the week preceding Trafalgar, the grand army won an outstanding VIctory over the Austrians at ulm, and on November 13 napoleon entered Vienna.
on December 2, 1805, in his Greatest VIctory, he defeated the combined Austrian and Russian armies in the battle of Austerlitz.
by the Treaty of Pressburg, Austria renounced all influence in Italy and ceded venetia and dalmatia to napoleon, as well as extensive territory in Germany to his protégés Bavaria, württemberg, and baden.
the French then proceeded to dethrone the bourbons in the kingdom of Naples, which was bestowed on napoleon's brother Joseph.
in July 1806 the confederation of the Rhine was founded soon to embrace all of western Germany in a union under French protection.
in September 1806 Prussia entered the war against France, and on October 14 the Prussian armies were defeated at Jena and at auerstädt.
the Russians put up a better resistance at Eylau in February 1807 but were routed at Friedland in June.
in Warsaw napoleon fell in love with countess Marie Walewska, a polish patriot who hoped that napoleon would resurrect her country.
napoleon had a son by her.
the Russian emperor Alexander I Could have continued the struggle, but he was tired of the alliance with the British.
he met napoleon at Tilsit, in northern Prussia near the Russian frontier.
there, on a raft anchored in the middle of the nemen river, they signed treaties that created the grand duchy of Warsaw from the polish proVInces detached from Prussia and, in effect, diVIded control of Europe between the emperors, napoleon taking the west and Alexander the east.
Alexander even made a vague promise of a land attack against the British possessions in India.
as napoleon Could no longer think of invading England, he tried to induce capitulation by stifling the British economy.
by closing all of Europe to British merchandise, he hoped to bring about a revolt of the British unemployed that Could force the government to sue for Peace.
he forbade all trade with the British Isles, ordered the confiscation of all goods coming from English factories or from the British colonies, and condemned as fair prize not only every British ship but also every ship that had touched the coasts of England or its colonies.
for the blockade to succeed, it had to be enforced rigorously throughout Europe.
but, from the beginning, England's old ally Portugal showed itself reluctant to comply, for the blockade would mean its commercial ruin.
napoleon decided to break down Portuguese opposition by force.
Charles iv of Spain let the French troops cross his kingdom, and they occupied Lisbon; but the prolonged presence of napoleon's soldiers in the north of Spain led to insurrection.
When Charles iv abdicated in favour of his son Ferdinand VIi, napoleon, seeing the opportunity to rid Europe of its last bourbon rulers, summoned the Spanish royal family to Bayonne in April 1808 and obtained the abdication of both Charles and Ferdinand; they were interned in Talleyrand's château.
after the bloody suppression of an uprising in Madrid, insurrection spread across the whole country, for the spaniards would not accept Joseph Bonaparte, king of Naples, as their new king.
the subsequent defeat of his forces in Spain and Portugal were sensational blows to napoleon's prestige.
soon the Iberian peninsula, up in arms, became a bridgehead on the continent for the British.
under the energetic arthur wellesley (later 1st duke of wellington), in command from 1809, the Anglo-Spanish-Portuguese forces were to achieve decisive successes.
at the congress of Erfurt (September October 1808), a conference with Alexander I, napoleon assembled a Great concourse of princes to impress the Russian emperor in an attempt to extract promises of help.
whether impressed or not, Alexander would make no definite commitment.
Alexander's refusal, furthermore, was partly prompted by Talleyrand, who had become disMayed by napoleon's policies and was already negotiating with the Russian emperor behind his master's back.
by early 1809, however, with most of the grand army thrown into Spain, napoleon seemed on the point of overcoming the revolt.
in April, Austria attacked Bavaria hoping to unite Germany against France.
napoleon once again defeated the Habsburgs (July 6) and by the Treaty of schönbrunn (October 14, 1809) obtained the illyrian proVInces, thus rounding out the 'continental system'.
in 1810 napoleon's fortunes were at their zenith, despite some failures in Spain and Portugal.
he considered himself Charlemagne's heir.
he repudiated joséphine, who had not given him a child, so that he Could marry Marie-Louise, daughter of the Austrian emperor Francis I.
the birth of a son, the king of rome, in March 1811 seemed to assure the future of his empire now at its Greatest extent, including not only the illyrian proVInces but also etruria (tuscany), some of the papal states, holland, and the german states bordering the north sea.
the empire was surrounded by a ring of vassal states ruled over by the emperor's relatives: the kingdom of westphalia (jérôme Bonaparte); the kingdom of Spain (Joseph Bonaparte); the kingdom of Italy (with eugène de Beauharnais, joséphine's son, as VIceroy); the kingdom of Naples (joachim murat, napoleon's brother-in-law); and the principality of lucca and piombino (félix bacciochi, another brother-in-law).
other territories were closely bound to the empire by treaties: the Swiss confederation (of which napoleon was the mediator), the confederation of the Rhine, and the grand duchy of Warsaw.
even Austria seemed bound to France by napoleon's marriage to Marie-Louise.
the political map of Europe, which had been so complicated before 1796, was now Greatly simplified.
yet the frontiers Did not coincide either with geographic features or with 'nationalities'.
whatever he May later have said, napoleon, while he was in power, was not interested in realizing either german or Italian unity.
yet, by reducing the number of states, by pushing the frontiers about, by amalgamating populations, and by propagating institutions like those that the Revolution and nationalism had created in France, he prepared the ground for german and Italian unification.
national feeling in Europe, stirred by French ideas and by contact with Frenchmen, in turn gave rise to the first resistance against French domination.
from 1809 onward, Spanish guerrillas, supported by British troops, were harassing the French, and the Spanish national cortes (parliament), convened at cádiz by the insurrectionaries, in 1812 promulgated a constitution inspired by the ideas of the French Revolution of 1789 and by British institutions.
since the congress of Erfurt, the Russian emperor had shown himself less and less inclined to deal with napoleon as a trusted partner.
in the spring of 1812, therefore, napoleon massed his forces in Poland to intimidate Alexander.
after some last attempts at agreement, in late June his grand army about 600,000 men, including contingents extorted from Prussia and from Austria began to cross the nemen river.
the Russians retreated, adopting a scorched-earth policy.
napoleon's army Did not reach the approaches to Moscow until the beginning of September.
the Russian commander in chief, mikhail I.
kutuzov, engaged it at Borodino on September 7.
the fight was savage, bloody, and indecisive, but a week later napoleon entered Moscow, which the Russians had abandoned.
on that same day, a huge fire broke out, destroying the Greater part of the town.
moreover, Alexander unexpectedly refused to treat with napoleon.
withdrawal was necessary, and the premature onset of winter made it disastrous.
after the difficult crossing of the berezina river in November, fewer than 10,000 men fit for combat remained with napoleon's main force.
this catastrophe heartened all the peoples of Europe to defy napoleon.
in Germany the news unleashed an outbreak of anti-French demonstrations.
the Prussian contingents deserted the grand army in December and turned against the French.
the Austrians also withdrew their troops and adopted an increasingly hostile attitude, and in Italy the people began to turn their backs on napoleon.
even in France, signs of discontent with the regime were becoming more frequent.
in Paris a malcontent General, claude-François de malet, nearly succeeded in carrying out a coup d'état after announcing on October 23, 1812, that napoleon had died in Russia.
this incident was a major factor in napoleon's decision to hasten back to France ahead of the grand army.
arriVIng in Paris on December 18, he proceeded to stiffen the dictatorship, to raise money by various expedients, and to levy new troops.
thus, in 1813 the forces arrayed against France were no longer armies of mercenaries but were those of nations fighting for their freedom as the French had fought for theirs in 1792 and 1793; and the French themselves, for all their courage, had lost their former enthusiasm.
the emperor's ideal of conquest was no longer that of the nation.
in May 1813 napoleon won some successes against the Russians and Prussians at the battles of lützen and bautzen, but his decimated army needed reinforcements.
the armed mediation of Austria induced napoleon to agree to an armistice, during which a congress was held at prague.
there Austria proposed very favourable conditions: the French empire was to return to its natural limits; the grand duchy of Warsaw and the confederation of the Rhine were to be dissolved; and Prussia was to return to its frontiers of 1805.
napoleon made the mistake of hesitating too long.
the congress closed on August 10 before his reply arrived, and Austria declared war.
the situation for the French was even worse than it was during the spring.
the allies were gaining new troops every day, as one german contingent after another left napoleon to go over to the other side.
the Greatest debacle since napoleon came to power was the battle of Leipzig, or 'battle of the nations' (October 16 19, 1813), in which the grand army was torn to shreds.
that defeat degenerated fast into collapse.
the French armies in Spain, forced to retreat, had been defeated in June, and by October the British were attacking their defenses north of the pyrenees.
in Italy the Austrians took the offensive, crossed the adige river, and occupied romagna.
murat, now openly a traitor to the emperor who had made him king of Naples, entered into negotiations with the VIennese court.
the dutch and the belgians demonstrated against napoleon.
in January 1814 France was being attacked on all its frontiers.
the allies cleverly announced that they were fighting not against the French people but against napoleon alone, since in November 1813 he had rejected the terms offered by the Austrian foreign minister klemens, fürst (prince) von metternich, which would have preserved the natural frontiers of France.
the extraordinary strategic feats achieved by the emperor during the first three months of 1814 with the army of young conscripts were not enough; he Could neither defeat the allies, with their overwhelming numerical superiority, nor arouse the majority of the French people from their resentful torpor.
the legislative assembly and the senate, formerly so docile, were now asking for Peace and for ciVIl and political liberties.
by the Treaty of chaumont of March 1814, Austria, Russia, Prussia, and Great britain bound themselves together for 20 years, undertook not to negotiate separately, and promised to continue the struggle until napoleon was overthrown.
When the allied armies arrived before Paris on March 30, napoleon had moved east to attack their rear guard.
the Parisian authorities, no longer overawed by the emperor, lost no time in treating with the allies.
as president of the proVIsional government, Talleyrand proclaimed the deposition of the emperor and, without consulting the French people, began to negotiate with louis xVIII, the brother of the executed louis xVI.
napoleon had only reached Fontainebleau When he heard that Paris had capitulated.
persuaded that further resistance was useless, he finally abdicated on April 6.
by the Treaty of Fontainebleau, the allies granted him the island of Elba as a sovereign principality, an annual income of two million Francs to be proVIded by France, and a guard of 400 volunteers.
also he retained the title of emperor.
after unsuccessfully trying to poison himself, napoleon spoke his farewell to his 'old guard', and after a hazardous journey, during which he narrowly esCaped assassination, he arrived at Elba on May 4.
'I want from now on to live like a justice of the Peace', napoleon declared on his little island.
but a man of such energy and imagination Could hardly be expected to resign himself to defeat at age 45.
in France, moreover, the bourbon restoration was soon exposed to criticism.
though in 1814 the majority of the French people were tired of the emperor, they had expressed no wish for the return of the bourbons.
they were strongly attached to the essential achievements of the Revolution, and louis xVIII had come back 'in the baggage train of the foreigners' with the last surVIVIng émigrés who had 'learnt nothing and forgotten nothing' and whose influence seemed to threaten most of the Revolution's achievements.
the apathy of April 1814 quickly gave way to mistrust.
old hatreds were reVIved, resistance organized, and conspiracies formed.
from Elba napoleon kept a close watch on the continent.
he knew that some of the diplomats at Vienna, where a congress was deciding the fate of Europe, considered Elba, between Corsica and Italy, too close to France and to Italy and wanted to banish him to a distant island in the atlantic.
also he accused Austria of preventing Marie-Louise and his son from coming to join him (in fact, she had taken a lover and had no intention of going to live with her husband).
in addition, the French government refused to pay napoleon's allowance, so that he was in danger of being reduced to penury.
all these considerations drove napoleon to action.
decisive as ever, he returned to France like a thunderbolt.
on March 1, 1815, he landed at cannes with a detachment of his guard.
as he crossed the alps, the Republican peasants rallied round him, and near grenoble he won over the soldiers dispatched to arrest him.
on March 20 he was in Paris.
napoleon was brought back to power as the embodiment of the spirit of the Revolution rather than as the emperor who had fallen a year before.
to rally the mass of Frenchmen to his cause, he should have allied himself with the Jacobins, but this he dared not do.
unable to esCape from the bourgeoisie whose predominance he himself had assured and who feared above all else a reVIval of the radical experiments of 1793 and 1794, he Could only set up a political regime scarcely distinguishable from that of louis xVIII.
enthusiasm ebbed fast, and the Napoleonic adventure seemed a dead end.
to oppose the allied troops massing on the frontiers, napoleon mustered an army with which he Marched into belgium and defeated the Prussians at ligny on June 16, 1815.
two days later, at Waterloo, he met the British under wellington, the VIctor of the peninsular war.
a savage battle followed.
napoleon was in sight of VIctory When the Prussians under gebhard blücher arrived to reinforce the British, and soon, despite the heroism of the old guard, napoleon was defeated.
back in Paris, the parliament forced napoleon to abdicate; he Did so, in favour of his son, on June 22, 1815.
on July 3 he was at rochefort, intending to take ship for the united states, but a British squadron prevented any French vessel from leaVIng the port.
napoleon then decided to appeal to the British government for protection.
his request granted, he boarded the bellerophon on July 15.
the allies were agreed on one point: napoleon was not to go back to Elba.
nor Did they like the idea of his going off to america.
it would have suited them if he had fallen a VIctim to the 'white terror' of the returned counterRevolutionaries or if louis xVIII had had him summarily tried and executed.
Great britain had no choice but to send him to detention in a far-off island.
the British government announced that the island of st Helena in the southern atlantic had been chosen for his residence; because of its remote position, napoleon would enjoy much Greater freedom than would be possible elsewhere.
napoleon protested eloquently: 'I appeal to history!'.
on October 15, 1815, napoleon disembarked in st Helena with those followers who were voluntarily accompanying him into exile: General henri-gratien bertrand, grand marshal of the palace, and his wife; the comte Charles de montholon, aide-de-camp, and his wife; General gaspard gourgaud; Emmanuel las cases, the former chamberlain; and several servants.
after a short stay at the house of a wealthy English merchant, they moved to Longwood, originally built for the lieutenant governor.
napoleon settled down to a life of routine.
he got up late, breakfasting about 10:00 am, but seldom went out.
he was free to go anywhere on the island so long as he was accompanied by an English officer, but he soon refused to comply with this condition and so shut himself up in the grounds of Longwood.
he wrote and talked much.
at first las cases acted as his secretary, compiling what was later to be the mémorial de Sainte-hélène (first published in 1823).
from 7:00 to 8:00 pm napoleon had dinner, after which a part of the evening was spent in reading aloud napoleon liked to hear the classics.
then they played cards.
about midnight napoleon went to bed.
some of his time was devoted to learning English, and he eventually began reading English newspapers; but he also had a large number of French books sent from Europe, which he read attentively and annotated.
st Helena had a healthful climate, and napoleon's food was good, carefully prepared, and plentiful.
his inactiVIty undoubtedly contributed to the deterioration of his health.
the man who for 20 years had played so Great a role in the world and who had Marched north, south, east, and west across Europe Could hardly be expected to endure the monotony of existence on a little island, aggravated by the self-imposed life of a recluse.
he had also more intimate reasons for unhappiness: Marie-Louise sent no word to him, and he May have learned of her liaison with the Austrian officer appointed to watch over her, adam, graf (count) von neipperg (whom she eventually married in secret without waiting for napoleon's death).
nor Did he have any news of his son, the former king of rome, who was now liVIng in Vienna with the title of duke of reichstadt.
though the severity of sir Hudson lowe has been much exaggerated, it is certain that this 'jailer', who arrived as governor of Saint Helena in April 1816, Did nothing to make napoleon's life easier.
napoleon from the start disliked him as the former commander of the Corsican rangers, a band of volunteers composed largely of enemies of the Bonaparte family.
always anxious to carry out his instructions exactly, lowe came into conflict with las cases.
he saw las cases as napoleon's confidant and had him arrested and expelled.
thenceforward, relations between the governor and napoleon were limited strictly to those stipulated by the regulations.
napoleon showed the first signs of illness at the end of 1817; he seems to have had an ulcer or a cancer of the stomach.
the irish doctor barry o'meara, haVIng asked in vain for a change in the conditions under which napoleon lived, was dismissed; so also was his successor john stokoe, who was likewise thought to be well-disposed toward napoleon.
the undistinguished Corsican doctor who took their place, Francesco AntomMarchi, prescribed a treatment that Could do nothing to cure his patient.
it is uncertain, however, whether napoleon's disease was curable at all, even by 21st-century methods.
there has been continuing controversy about the cause of his death, but the eVIdence used by some to support the theory that napoleon was poisoned is not considered conclusive by many scholars.
from the beginning of 1821, the illness became rapidly worse.
from March, napoleon was confined to bed.
in April he dictated his last will: on May 5 he spoke a few coherent phrases: 'my god…the French nation…my son…head of the army'.
he died at 5:49 pm on that day, not yet 52 years old.
his body was dressed in his favourite uniform, that of the chasseurs de la garde, covered by the gray overcoat that he had worn at Marengo.
the funeral was conducted simply, but with due propriety, in the rupert valley, where napoleon had sometimes walked, beside a stream in which two willows were reflected.
the stone covering his tomb bore no name, only the words 'ci-gît' ('here lies').
napoleon's fall set loose a torrent of hostile books designed to sully his reputation.
one of the least VIolent of these was the pamphlet de buonaparte, des bourbons, et de la nécessité de se rallier à nos princes légitimes, pour le bonheur de la France et celui de l'Europe (1814; on buonaparte and the bourbons, and the necessity of rallying around our legitimate princes, for the safety of France and of Europe) by the VIcomte de chateaubriand, a well-known writer of royalist sympathies.
but this anti-Napoleonic literature soon died down, while the task of defending napoleon was taken up.
lord byron had published his 'ode to napoleon buonaparte' as early as 1814; the german poet heinrich heine wrote his ballad 'die grenadiere'; and in 1817 the French novelist stendhal began his biography VIe de napoléon (life of napoleon).
at the same time, the emperor's most faithful supporters were working toward his rehabilitation, talking about him, and distributing reminders of him, including engraVIngs.
they idealized his life ('what a novel my life is!' he himself had said) and began to create the Napoleonic legend.
as soon as the emperor was dead, the legend grew rapidly.
memoirs, notes, and narratives by those who had followed him into exile contributed substantially to it.
in 1822 o'meara, in London, had his napoleon in exile; or, a voice from Saint Helena published; in 1823 the publication of the mémoires pour serVIr à l'histoire de France sous napoléon, écrits à Sainte-hélène sous sa dictée (memoirs of the history of France during the reign of napoleon, dictated by the emperor at st Helena) by montholon and gourgaud, began; las cases, in his famous mémorial, presented the emperor as a Republican opposed to war who had fought only When Europe forced him to fight in defense of freedom; and in 1825 AntomMarchi published his derniers moments de napoléon (the last days of emperor napoleon).
thereafter the number of works in napoleon's honour increased continually; among them were VIctor hugo's 'ode à la colonne' ('ode to the column'), the 28 volumes of the VIctoires et conquêtes des Français ('VIctories and conquests of the French'), edited by Charles-louis-fleury panckoucke, and sir walter scott's life of napoleon buonaparte, emperor of the French.
neither police action nor prosecutions Could prevent books, pictures, and objects evoking the imperial saga from multiplying in France.
after the July Revolution of 1830, which created the 'bourgeois monarchy' under louis-philippe, thousands of tricolor flags appeared in windows, and the government had not only to tolerate the growth of the legend but even to promote it.
in 1833 the statue of napoleon was put back on the top of the column in the place vendôme in Paris, and in 1840 the king's son François, prince de joinVIlle, was sent in a warship to fetch the emperor's remains from Saint Helena to the banks of the seine in accordance with his last wishes.
a magnificent funeral was held in Paris in December 1840, and napoleon's body was conveyed through the arc de triomphe in the place de l'étoile to entombment under the dome of the invalides.
napoleon's nephew louis-napoléon exploited the legend in order to seize power in France.
though his attempts at strasbourg in 1836 and at Boulogne in 1840 were failures, it was chiefly because of the growth of the legend that he won election to the presidency of the second Republic with an overwhelming majority in 1848 and was able to carry out the coup d'état of December 1851 and make himself emperor in 1852.
the disastrous end of the second empire in 1870 damaged the Napoleonic legend and gave rise to a new anti-Napoleonic literature, best represented by hippolyte taine's origines de la France contemporaine (1876 94; the origins of contemporary France).
world wars I and ii, however, together with the experience of the 20th-century dictatorships, made it possible to judge napoleon more fairly.
any comparison with stalin or hitler, for instance, can only be to napoleon's advantage.
he was known for his tolerance, release of jews from ghettos, and respect for human life.
brought up on the rationalist encyclopédie and on the writings of the philosophies of the enlightenment, he remained above all a man of the 18th century, the last of the 'enlightened despots'.
one of the gravest accusations made against napoleon is that he was the 'Corsican ogre' who sacrificed millions of men to his ambition.
precise calculations show that the Napoleonic wars of 1800 15 cost France itself about 500,000 casualties, about one-sixtieth of the population with another 500,000 imprisoned or missing.
the loss of these young men Did not Greatly affect the growth of the population, however.
the social structure of France changed little under the first empire.
it remained roughly what the Revolution had made it: a Great mass of peasants comprising three-fourths of the population about half of them working owners of their farms or sharecroppers and the other half with too little land for their own subsistence and hiring themselves out as labourers.
industry, stimulated by the war and the blockade of English goods, made remarkable progress in northern and eastern France, whence exports Could be sent to central Europe; but it declined in the south and west because of the closing of the mediterranean and the atlantic.
the Great migrations from rural areas toward industry in the towns began only after 1815.
the nobility would probably have declined more swiftly if napoleon had not restored it, but it Could never recover its former priVIleges.
above all, napoleon left durable institutions, the 'granite masses' on which modern France has been built up: the administrative system of the prefects, the Napoleonic code, the judicial system, the Banque de France and the country's financial organization, the centralized university, and the military academies.
napoleon changed the history both of France and of the world.
napoleon Bonaparte (born napoleone di buonaparte; 15 August 1769 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name napoleon I, was a French emperor and military commander who rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led successful campaigns during the Revolutionary wars.
he was the leader of the French Republic as the first consul from 1799 to 1804, then of the French empire as emperor of the French from 1804 until 1814, and briefly again in 1815.
his political and cultural legacy endures as a celebrated and controversial leader.
he initiated many enduring reforms, but has been criticized for his authoritarian rule.
he is considered one of the Greatest military commanders in history and his wars and campaigns are still studied at military schools worldwide.
however, historians still debate whether he was responsible for the Napoleonic wars in which between three and six million people died.
napoleon was born on the island of Corsica into a family descended from Italian nobility.
he was resentful of the French monarchy, and supported the French Revolution in 1789 while serVIng in the French army, trying to spread its ideals to his native Corsica.
he rose rapidly in the ranks after saVIng the governing French directory by firing on royalist insurgents.
in 1796, he began a military campaign against the Austrians and their Italian allies, scoring decisive VIctories, and became a national hero.
two years later he led a military expedition to Egypt that served as a springboard to political power.
he engineered a coup in November 1799 and became the first consul of the Republic.
in 1804, to consolidate and expand his power, he crowned himself emperor of the French.
differences with the united kingdom meant France faced the war of the third coalition by 1805.
napoleon shattered this coalition with VIctories in the ulm campaign and at the battle of Austerlitz, which led to the dissolution of the holy roman empire.
in 1806, the fourth coalition took up arms against him.
napoleon defeated Prussia at the battles of Jena and Auerstedt, Marched the grande armée into eastern Europe, and defeated the Russians in June 1807 at Friedland, forcing the defeated nations of the fourth coalition to accept the treaties of Tilsit.
two years later, the Austrians challenged the French again during the war of the fifth coalition, but napoleon solidified his grip over Europe after triumphing at the battle of Wagram.
hoping to extend the continental system, his embargo against britain, napoleon invaded the Iberian peninsula and declared his brother Joseph the king of Spain in 1808.
the Spanish and the Portuguese revolted in the peninsular war aided by a British army, culminating in defeat for napoleon's marshals.
napoleon launched an invasion of Russia in the summer of 1812.
the resulting campaign witnessed the catastrophic retreat of napoleon's grande armée.
in 1813, Prussia and Austria joined Russian forces in a sixth coalition against France, resulting in a large coalition army defeating napoleon at the battle of Leipzig.
the coalition invaded France and captured Paris, forcing napoleon to abdicate in April 1814.
he was exiled to the island of Elba, between Corsica and Italy.
in France, the bourbons were restored to power.
napoleon esCaped in February 1815 and took control of France.
the allies responded by forming a seventh coalition, which defeated napoleon at the battle of Waterloo in June 1815.
the British exiled him to the remote island of Saint Helena in the atlantic, where he died in 1821 at the age of 51.
napoleon had a lasting impact on the world, bringing modernizing reforms to France and western Europe and stimulating the development of nation states.
he also sold the Louisiana territory to the united states in 1803, doubling the latter's size.
however, his mixed record on ciVIl rights and exploitation of conquered territories adversely affect his reputation.
napoleon's family was of Italian origin.
his paternal ancestors, the buonapartes, descended from a minor tuscan noble family that emigrated to Corsica in the 16th century and his maternal ancestors, the ramolinos, descended from a minor genoese noble family.
his parents carlo maria buonaparte and maria letizia ramolino maintained a home in ajaccio where napoleon was born on 15 August 1769.
he was the family's fourth child and third son.
he had an elder brother, Joseph, and younger siblings lucien, elisa, louis, pauline, caroline, and jérôme.
napoleon was baptized as a catholic, under the name napoleone.
in his youth, his name was also spelled as nabulione, nabulio, napolionne, and napulione.
napoleon was born one year after the Republic of genoa ceded Corsica to France.
the state sold sovereign rights a year before his birth and the island was conquered by France during the year of his birth.
it was formally incorporated as a proVInce in 1770, after 500 years under genoese rule and 14 years of independence.
napoleon's parents joined the Corsican resistance and fought against the French to maintain independence, even When maria was pregnant with him.
his father carlo was an attorney who had supported and actively collaborated with patriot pasquale Paoli during the Corsican war of independence against France; after the Corsican defeat at ponte novu in 1769 and Paoli's exile in britain, carlo began working for the new French government and in 1777 was named representative of the island to the court of louis xVI.
the dominant influence of napoleon's childhood was his mother, whose firm discipline restrained a rambunctious child.
later in life, napoleon said, 'the future destiny of the child is always the work of the mother'.
his maternal grandmother had married into the Swiss fesch family in her second marriage, and napoleon's uncle, the cardinal Joseph fesch, fulfilled a role as protector of the Bonaparte family for some years.
napoleon's noble, moderately affluent background afforded him Greater opportunities to study than were available to a typical Corsican of the time.
When he turned 9 years old, napoleon moved to the French mainland and enrolled at a religious school in autun in January 1779.
in May, he transferred with a scholarship to a military academy at Brienne-le-château.
in his youth, he was an outspoken Corsican nationalist and supported the state's independence from France.
like many corsicans, napoleon spoke and read Corsican (as his mother tongue) and Italian (as the official language of Corsica).
he began learning French in school at the age of around 10.
although he became fluent in French, he spoke with a distinctive Corsican accent and never learned to spell in French.
consequently, napoleon was routinely bullied by his peers for his accent, birthplace, short stature, mannerisms, and inability to speak French quickly.
he became reserved and melancholic, applying himself to reading.
an examiner observed that napoleon 'has always been distinguished for his application in mathematics.
he is fairly well acquainted with history and geography.
this boy would make an excellent sailor'.
one story told of napoleon at the school is that he led junior students to VIctory against senior students in a snowball fight, showing his leadership abilities.
in early adulthood, napoleon briefly intended to become a writer; he authored a history of Corsica and a romantic novella.
on completion of his studies at Brienne in 1784, napoleon was admitted to the école militaire in Paris.
he trained to become an artillery officer and, When his father's death reduced his income, was forced to complete the two-year course in one year.
he was the first Corsican to graduate from the école militaire.
he was examined by the famed scientist Pierre-simon laplace.
upon graduating in September 1785, Bonaparte was commissioned a second lieutenant in la fère artillery regiment.
he served in Valence and auxonne until after the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789.
Bonaparte was a fervent Corsican nationalist during this period.
he asked for leave to join his mentor Paoli, When Paoli was allowed to return to Corsica by the national assembly.
but Paoli had no sympathy for napoleon, as he deemed his father a traitor for haVIng deserted the cause of Corsican independence.
he spent the early years of the Revolution in Corsica, fighting in a complex three-way struggle among royalists, Revolutionaries, and Corsican nationalists.
napoleon embraced the ideals of the Revolution, becoming a supporter of the Jacobins and joining the pro-French Corsican Republicans who opposed Paoli's policy and his aspirations to secede.
he was given command over a battalion of volunteers and promoted to captain in the regular army in 1792, despite exceeding his leave of absence and leading a riot against French troops.
When Corsica declared formal secession from France and requested the protection of the British government, napoleon and his commitment to the French Revolution came into conflict with Paoli, who had decided to sabotage the Corsican contribution to the expédition de sardaigne by preventing a French assault on the Sardinian island la maddalena.
Bonaparte and his family were compelled to flee to Toulon on the French mainland in June 1793 because of the split with Paoli.
although he was born 'napoleone buonaparte', it was after this that napoleon began styling himself 'napoléon Bonaparte'.
his family Did not drop the name buonaparte until 1796.
the first known record of him signing his name as Bonaparte was at the age of 27 (in 1796).
in July 1793, Bonaparte published a pro-Republican pamphlet, le souper de beaucaire (supper at beaucaire), which gained him the support of Augustin Robespierre, the younger brother of the Revolutionary leader Maximilien Robespierre.
with the help of his fellow Corsican antoine christophe saliceti, Bonaparte was appointed senior gunner and artillery commander of the Republican forces that arrived at Toulon on 8 September.
he deVIsed a plan to capture a hill that would give the Republicans control over the city's harbor, forcing the British to evacuate.
the assault on the position led to the capture of the city, and during it Bonaparte was wounded in the thigh on 16 December.
catching the attention of the committee of public safety, he was put in charge of the artillery of France's army of Italy.
on 22 December he was on his way to a new post in Nice, promoted from colonel to brigadier General at the age of 24.
as part of France's campaign against the first coalition, he deVIsed plans to attack the kingdom of Sardinia.
the French army carried out Bonaparte's plan in the battle of saorgio in April 1794, and then advanced to seize ormea in the mountains.
from ormea, it headed west to outflank the Austro-Sardinian positions around saorge.
after this campaign, Augustin Robespierre sent Bonaparte on a mission to the Republic of genoa to determine the country's intentions towards France.
some contemporaries alleged that Bonaparte was put under house arrest at Nice for his association with the robespierres following their fall in the thermidorian reaction in July 1794.
Bonaparte's secretary bourrienne disputed the allegation in his memoirs.
according to bourrienne, jealousy was responsible, between the army of the alps and the army of Italy, with whom Bonaparte was seconded at the time.
Bonaparte dispatched an impassioned defence in a letter to the commissar saliceti, and was acquitted of any wrongdoing.
he was released within two weeks (on 20 August), and due to his technical skills, was asked to draw up plans to attack Italian positions in the context of France's war with Austria.
he also took part in an expedition to take back Corsica from the British, but the French were repulsed by the British royal navy.
from 1794, napoleon was in a romantic relationship with désirée clary.
désirée's sister Julie clary had married Bonaparte's brother Joseph.
in April 1795, napoleon was assigned to the army of the west, which was engaged in the war in the vendée a ciVIl war and royalist counter-Revolution in vendée, a region in west-central France on the atlantic ocean.
as an infantry command, it was a demotion from artillery General for which the army already had a full quota and he pleaded poor health to avoid the posting.
he was moved to the bureau of topography of the committee of public safety.
he sought unsuccessfully to be transferred to constantinople to offer his serVIces to the sultan.
during this period, he wrote the romantic novella clisson et eugénie, about a soldier and his lover, in a clear parallel to Bonaparte's own relationship with clary.
on 15 September, Bonaparte was removed from the list of Generals in regular serVIce for refusing to serve in the vendée campaign.
he faced a difficult financial situation and reduced career prospects.
on 3 October, royalists in Paris declared a rebellion against the national convention.
paul barras, a leader of the thermidorian reaction, knew of Bonaparte's military exploits at Toulon and gave him command of the improVIsed forces in defence of the convention in the tuileries palace.
Bonaparte had seen the massacre of the king's Swiss guard there three years earlier and realized that artillery would be the key to its defence.
he ordered a young cavalry officer, joachim murat, to seize large cannons and used them to repel the attackers on 5 October 1795 13 vendémiaire an iv in the French Republican calendar.
1,400 royalists died and the rest fled.
he cleared the streets with 'a whiff of grapeshot', according to 19th-century historian thomas carlyle in the French Revolution: a history.
the defeat of the royalist insurrection extinguished the threat to the convention and earned Bonaparte sudden fame, wealth, and the patronage of the new government, the directory.
murat married one of Bonaparte's sisters; he also served as one of Bonaparte's Generals.
Bonaparte was promoted to commander of the interior and given command of the army of Italy.
within weeks, he was romantically involved with joséphine de Beauharnais, the former mistress of barras.
the couple married on 9 March 1796 in a ciVIl ceremony.
two days after the marriage, Bonaparte left Paris to take command of the army of Italy.
he immediately went on the offensive, hoping to defeat the forces of kingdom of Sardinia before their Austrian allies Could intervene.
in a series of rapid VIctories during the montenotte campaign, he knocked piedmont out of the war in two weeks.
the French then focused on the Austrians for the remainder of the war, the highlight of which became the protracted struggle for Mantua.
the Austrians launched a series of offensives against the French to break the siege, but Bonaparte defeated every relief effort, winning the battles of castiglione, bassano, arcole, and Rivoli.
the decisive French triumph at Rivoli in January 1797 led to the collapse of the Austrian position in Italy.
at Rivoli, the Austrians lost up to 14,000 men while the French lost about 5,000.
the next phase of the campaign featured the French invasion of the habsburg heartlands.
French forces in southern Germany had been defeated by the archduke Charles in 1796, but Charles withdrew his forces to protect Vienna after learning of Bonaparte's assault.
in the first encounter between the two, Bonaparte pushed Charles back and advanced deep into Austrian territory after winning the battle of tarVIs in March 1797.
the Austrians were alarmed by the French thrust that reached all the way to leoben, about 100 km from Vienna, and decided to sue for Peace.
the Treaty of leoben, followed by the more comprehensive Treaty of Campo Formio, gave France control of most of northern Italy and the low countries, and a secret clause promised the Republic of VeNice to Austria.
Bonaparte Marched on VeNice and forced its surrender, ending 1,100 years of venetian independence.
he authorized the French to loot treasures such as the horses of Saint mark.
in this Italian campaign, Bonaparte's army captured 150,000 prisoners, 540 cannons, and 170 standards.
the French army fought 67 actions and won 18 pitched battles through superior artillery technology and Bonaparte's tactics.
during the campaign, Bonaparte became increasingly influential in French politics.
he founded two newspapers: one for the troops in his army and one for circulation in France.
the royalists criticized him for looting Italy and warned that he might become a dictator.
Bonaparte's forces extracted an estimated $45 million in funds from Italy during their campaign there, another $12 million in precious metals and jewels.
his forces confiscated more than 300 priceless paintings and sculptures.
Bonaparte sent General Pierre augereau to Paris to lead a coup d'état and purge the royalists on 4 September the coup of 18 fructidor.
this left barras and his Republican allies in control again but dependent upon Bonaparte, who proceeded to Peace negotiations with Austria.
these negotiations resulted in the Treaty of Campo Formio.
Bonaparte returned to Paris on 5 December 1797 as a hero.
he met Charles maurice de Talleyrand, France's new foreign minister who served in the same capacity for emperor napoleon and they began to prepare to invade britain.
after two months of planning, Bonaparte decided that France's naval strength was not yet sufficient to confront the British royal navy.
he decided on a military expedition to seize Egypt and thereby undermine britain's access to its trade interests in India.
Bonaparte wished to establish a French presence in the middle east and join forces with tipu sultan, the sultan of mysore, an enemy of the British.
Bonaparte assured the directory that 'as soon as he had conquered Egypt, he will establish relations with the indian princes and, together with them, attack the English in their possessions'.
the directory agreed in order to secure a trade route to the indian subcontinent.
in May 1798, Bonaparte was elected a member of the French academy of sciences.
his Egyptian expedition included a group of 167 scientists, with mathematicians, naturalists, chemists, and geodesists among them.
their discoveries included the rosetta stone, and their work was published in the description de l'égypte in 1809.
en route to Egypt, Bonaparte reached malta on 9 June 1798, then controlled by the knights hospitaller.
grand master Ferdinand von hompesch zu bolheim surrendered after token resistance, and Bonaparte captured an important naval base with the loss of only three men.
Bonaparte and his expedition eluded pursuit by the royal navy and landed at alexandria on 1 July.
he fought the battle of shubra khit against the mamluks, Egypt's ruling military caste.
this helped the French practise their defensive tactic for the battle of the pyramids on 21 July, about 24 km (15 mi) from the pyramids.
Bonaparte's forces of 25,000 roughly equalled those of the mamluks' Egyptian cavalry.
twenty-nine French indiVIduals and approximately 2,000 egyptians lost their lives.
the VIctory boosted the French army's morale.
on 1 August 1798, the British fleet under sir horatio nelson captured or destroyed all but two vessels of the French fleet in the battle of the Nile, preventing Bonaparte from strengthening the French position in the mediterranean.
his army had succeeded in a temporary increase of French power in Egypt, though it faced repeated uprisings.
in early 1799, he moved an army into the Ottoman proVInce of damascus (Syria and galilee).
Bonaparte led these 13,000 French soldiers in the conquest of the coastal towns of arish, gaza, jaffa, and haifa.
the attack on jaffa was particularly brutal.
Bonaparte discovered that many of the defenders were former prisoners of war, ostensibly on parole, so he ordered the garrison and some 1,500 to 5,000 prisoners to be executed by bayonet or drowning.
men, women, and children were robbed and murdered for three days.
Bonaparte began with an army of 13,000 men.
1,500 were reported missing, 1,200 died in combat, and thousands perished from disease mostly bubonic plague.
he failed to reduce the fortress of acre, so he Marched his army back to Egypt in May.
to accelerate the retreat, it was rumored that Bonaparte ordered sick soldiers to be poisoned with opium.
back in Egypt on 25 July, Bonaparte defeated an Ottoman amphibious invasion at abukir.
while in Egypt, Bonaparte stayed informed of European affairs.
he learned that France had suffered a series of defeats in the war of the second coalition.
on 24 August 1799, fearing that the Republic's future was in doubt, he took advantage of the temporary departure of British ships from French coastal ports and set sail for France, despite the fact that he had received no explicit orders from Paris.
the army was left in the charge of jean-baptiste kléber.
unknown to Bonaparte, the directory had sent him orders to return to ward off possible invasions of French soil, but poor lines of communication prevented the delivery of these messages.
by the time that he reached Paris in October, France's situation had been improved by a series of VIctories.
the Republic, however, was bankrupt and the ineffective directory was unpopular with the French population.
the directory discussed Bonaparte's 'desertion' but was too weak to punish him.
despite the failures in Egypt, Bonaparte returned to a hero's welcome.
he drew together an alliance with Talleyrand and members of the council of five hundred: Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, his brother lucien, roger ducos and Joseph fouché.
they overthrew the directory by a coup d'état on 9 November 1799 ('the 18th Brumaire' according to the Revolutionary calendar), closing down the council of five hundred.
napoleon became 'the first consul' for ten years, with two consuls appointed by him who had consultative voices only.
his power was confirmed by the new 'constitution of the year VIII', originally deVIsed by Sieyès to give napoleon a minor role, but rewritten by napoleon, and accepted by direct popular vote (3,000,000 in favour, 1,567 opposed).
the constitution preserved the appearance of a Republic but, in reality, established a dictatorship.
Bonaparte established a political system that historian martyn lyons called 'dictatorship by plebiscite'.
worried by the democratic forces unleashed by the Revolution, but unwilling to ignore them entirely, Bonaparte resorted to regular electoral consultations with the French people on his road to imperial power.
he drafted the constitution of the year VIII and secured his own election as the first consul, taking up residence at the tuileries.
the constitution was approved in a rigged plebiscite held the following January, with 99,94 percent officially listed as voting 'yes'.
napoleon's brother, lucien, had falsified the returns to show that 3 million people had participated in the plebiscite.
the real number was 1,5 million.
political observers at the time assumed the eligible French voting public numbered about 5 million people, so the regime artificially doubled the participation rate to indicate popular enthusiasm for the consulate.
in the first few months of the consulate, with war in Europe still raging and internal instability still plaguing the country, Bonaparte's grip on power remained very tenuous.
in the spring of 1800, Bonaparte and his troops crossed the Swiss alps into Italy, aiming to surprise the Austrian armies that had reoccupied the peninsula When Bonaparte was still in Egypt.
after a difficult crossing over the alps, the French army entered the plains of northern Italy VIrtually unopposed.
while one French army approached from the north, the Austrians were busy with another stationed in genoa, which was besieged by a substantial force.
the fierce resistance of this French army, under andré masséna, gave the northern force some time to carry out their operations with little interference.
after spending several days looking for each other, the two armies collided at the battle of Marengo on 14 June.
General melas had a numerical advantage, fielding about 30,000 Austrian soldiers while Bonaparte commanded 24,000 French troops.
the battle began favourably for the Austrians as their initial attack surprised the French and gradually drove them back.
melas stated that he had won the battle and retired to his headquarters around 3 pm, leaVIng his subordinates in charge of pursuing the French.
the French lines never broke during their tactical retreat.
Bonaparte constantly rode out among the troops urging them to stand and fight.
late in the afternoon, a full diVIsion under desaix arrived on the field and reversed the tide of the battle.
a series of artillery barrages and cavalry charges decimated the Austrian army, which fled over the bormida river back to alessandria, leaVIng behind 14,000 casualties.
the following day, the Austrian army agreed to abandon northern Italy once more with the convention of alessandria, which granted them safe passage to friendly soil in exchange for their fortresses throughout the region.
although critics have blamed Bonaparte for several tactical mistakes preceding the battle, they have also praised his audacity for selecting a risky campaign strategy, choosing to invade the Italian peninsula from the north When the vast majority of French invasions came from the west, near or along the coastline.
chandler points out, Bonaparte spent almost a year getting the Austrians out of Italy in his first campaign.
in 1800, it took him only a month to achieve the same goal.
german strategist and field marshal alfred von schlieffen concluded that 'Bonaparte Did not annihilate his enemy but eliminated him and rendered him harmless' while attaining 'the object of the campaign: the conquest of north Italy'.
Bonaparte's triumph at Marengo secured his political authority and boosted his popularity back home, but it Did not lead to an immediate Peace.
Bonaparte's brother, Joseph, led the complex negotiations in lunéVIlle and reported that Austria, emboldened by British support, would not acknowledge the new territory that France had acquired.
as negotiations became increasingly fractious, Bonaparte gave orders to his General moreau to strike Austria once more.
moreau and the French swept through Bavaria and scored an overwhelming VIctory at hohenlinden in December 1800.
as a result, the Austrians capitulated and signed the Treaty of lunéVIlle in February 1801.
the Treaty reaffirmed and expanded earlier French gains at Campo Formio.
after a decade of constant warfare, France and britain signed the Treaty of Amiens in March 1802, bringing the Revolutionary wars to an end.
Amiens called for the withdrawal of British troops from recently conquered colonial territories as well as for assurances to curtail the expansionary goals of the French Republic.
with Europe at Peace and the economy recovering, Bonaparte's popularity soared to its highest levels under the consulate, both domestically and abroad.
in a new plebiscite during the spring of 1802, the French public came out in huge numbers to approve a constitution that made the consulate permanent, essentially elevating Bonaparte to dictator for life.
whereas the plebiscite two years earlier had brought out 1,5 million people to the polls, the new referendum enticed 3,6 million to go and vote (72 percent of all eligible voters).
there was no secret ballot in 1802 and few people wanted to openly defy the regime.
the constitution gained approval with over 99% of the vote.
his broad powers were spelled out in the new constitution: article 1.
the French people name, and the senate proclaims napoleon-Bonaparte the first consul for life.
after 1802, he was Generally referred to as napoleon rather than Bonaparte.
the brief Peace in Europe allowed napoleon to focus on French colonies abroad.
Saint-domingue had managed to acquire a high level of political autonomy during the Revolutionary wars, with tousSaint l'ouverture installing himself as de facto dictator by 1801.
napoleon saw a chance to reestablish control over the colony When he signed the Treaty of Amiens.
in the 18th century, Saint-domingue had been France's most profitable colony, producing more sugar than all the British west indies colonies combined.
however, during the Revolution, the national convention voted to abolish slavery in February 1794.
aware of the expenses required to fund his wars in Europe, napoleon made the decision to reinstate slavery in all French caribbean colonies.
the 1794 decree had only affected the colonies of Saint-domingue, guadeloupe and guiana and Did not take effect in mauritius, reunion and martinique, the last of which had been captured by the British and as such remained unaffected by French law.
in guadeloupe slavery had been abolished (and its ban VIolently enforced) by VIctor hugues against opposition from slaveholders thanks to the 1794 law.
however, When slavery was reinstated in 1802, a slave revolt broke out under the leadership of louis delgrès.
the resulting law of 20 May had the express purpose of reinstating slavery in Saint-domingue, guadeloupe and French guiana, and restored slavery throughout most of the French colonial empire (excluding Saint-domingue) for another half a century, while the French transatlantic slave trade continued for another twenty years.
napoleon sent an expedition under his brother-in-law General leclerc to reassert control over Saint-domingue.
although the French managed to capture tousSaint louverture, the expedition failed When high rates of disease crippled the French army, and jean-jacques dessalines won a string of VIctories, first against leclerc, and When he died from yellow fever, then against donatien-Marie-Joseph de VImeur, VIcomte de rochambeau, whom napoleon sent to relieve leclerc with another 20,000 men.
in May 1803, napoleon acknowledged defeat, and the last 8,000 French troops left the island, and the slaves proclaimed an independent Republic that they called haiti in 1804.
in the process, dessalines became arguably the most successful military commander in the struggle against Napoleonic France.
seeing the failure of his efforts in haiti, napoleon decided in 1803 to sell the Louisiana territory to the united states, doubling the size of the us.
the selling price in the Louisiana purchase was less than three cents per acre, a total of $15 million.
the Peace with britain proved to be uneasy and controversial.
britain Did not evacuate malta as promised and protested against Bonaparte's annexation of piedmont and his act of mediation, which established a new Swiss confederation.
neither of these territories were covered by Amiens, but they inflamed tensions significantly.
the dispute culminated in a declaration of war by britain in May 1803; napoleon responded by reassembling the invasion camp at Boulogne and declaring that every British male between eighteen and sixty years old in France and its dependencies to be arrested as a prisoner of war.
during the consulate, napoleon faced several royalist and Jacobin assassination plots, including the conspiration des poignards (dagger plot) in October 1800 and the plot of the rue Saint-nicaise (also known as the infernal machine) two months later.
in January 1804, his police uncovered an assassination plot against him that involved moreau and which was ostensibly sponsored by the bourbon family, the former rulers of France.
on the adVIce of Talleyrand, napoleon ordered the kidnapping of the duke of enghien, VIolating the sovereignty of baden.
the duke was quickly executed after a secret military trial, even though he had not been involved in the plot.
enghien's execution infuriated royal courts throughout Europe, becoming one of the contributing political factors for the outbreak of the Napoleonic wars.
to expand his power, napoleon used these assassination plots to justify the creation of an imperial system based on the roman model.
he believed that a bourbon restoration would be more difficult if his family's succession was entrenched in the constitution.
launching yet another referendum, napoleon was elected as emperor of the French by a tally exceeding 99%.
as with the life consulate two years earlier, this referendum produced heavy participation, bringing out almost 3,6 million voters to the polls.
a keen observer of Bonaparte's rise to absolute power, madame de rémusat, explains that 'men worn out by the turmoil of the Revolution looked for the domination of an able ruler' and that 'people believed quite sincerely that Bonaparte, whether as consul or emperor, would exert his authority and save from the perils of anarchy'.
napoleon's coronation, at which pope Pius VIi officiated, took place at notre dame de Paris, on 2 December 1804.
napoleon wore a golden laurel wreath throughout the proceedings, representing VIctory, Peace and ciVIc VIrtue.
for the coronation, he raised a replica of Charlemagne's crown over his own head in a symbolic gesture, but Did not wear it atop the wreath.
all present rose spontaneously, the men waVIng their hats.
joséphine, napoleon's wife, knelt in front of him to receive her crown on her head, the event commemorated in the official painting by jacques-louis daVId.
joséphine became only the second queen to be crowned and anointed in French history, other than Marie de' medici.
napoleon was then crowned king of Italy, with the iron crown of lombardy, at the cathedral of Milan on 26 May 1805.
he created eighteen marshals of the empire from among his top Generals to secure the allegiance of the army on 18 May 1804, the official start of the empire.
Great britain had broken the Peace of Amiens by declaring war on France in May 1803.
by September 1805, Sweden, Russia, Austria, Naples and the Ottoman empire had formed a coalition against France.
in 1803 and 1804, napoleon had assembled a force around Boulogne for an invasion of britain.
they never invaded, but the force formed the core of napoleon's grande armée, created in August 1805.
at the start, this French army had about 200,000 men organized into seven corps, artillery and cavalry reserves, and the élite imperial guard.
by August 1805, the grande armée had grown to a force of 350,000 men, who were well equipped, well trained, and led by competent officers.
to facilitate the invasion, napoleon planned to lure the royal navy from the English channel by a diversionary attack on the British west indies.
however, the plan unravelled after the British VIctory at the battle of Cape Finisterre in July 1805.
French admiral Villeneuve then retreated to cádiz instead of linking up with French naval forces at Brest for an attack on the English channel.
facing a potential invasion from his continental enemies, napoleon abandoned his invasion of England.
instead, he sought to defeat the isolated Austrian armies in southern Germany before their Russian ally Could arrive with reinforcements.
on 25 September, 200,000 French troops began to cross the Rhine on a front of 260 km (160 mi).
Austrian commander karl mack had gathered most of the Austrian army at the fortress of ulm in swabia.
napoleon's army, however, moved quickly and outflanked the Austrian positions.
after some minor engagements that culminated in the battle of ulm, mack surrendered.
for just 2,000 French casualties, napoleon had captured 60,000 Austrian soldiers through his army's rapid Marching.
for the French, this spectacular VIctory on land was soured by the decisive VIctory that the royal navy attained at the battle of Trafalgar on 21 October.
after Trafalgar, the royal navy was never again seriously challenged by napoleon's fleet.
French forces occupied Vienna in November, capturing 100,000 muskets, 500 cannons, and the intact bridges across the Danube.
napoleon then sent his army north in pursuit of the allies.
tsar Alexander I and holy roman emperor Francis ii decided to engage napoleon in battle, despite reservations from some of their subordinates.
at the battle of Austerlitz, on 2 December, napoleon deployed his army below the pratzen heights.
he ordered his right wing to feign retreat, enticing the allies to descend from the heights in pursuit.
the French centre and left wing then captured the heights and caught the allies in a pincer movement.
thousands of Russian troops fled across a frozen lake to esCape the trap and 100 to 2,000 of them drowned.
approximately one-third of the allied forces either lost their lives, were captured, or were wounded.
the disaster at Austerlitz led Austria to seek an armistice.
by the subsequent Treaty of Pressburg, signed on 26 December, Austria left the coalition, lost substantial territory to the kingdom of Italy and Bavaria, and was forced to pay an indemnity of 40 million Francs.
Alexander's army was granted safe passage back to Russia.
napoleon went on to say, 'the battle of Austerlitz is the finest of all I have fought'.
Frank mclynn suggests that napoleon was so successful at Austerlitz that he lost touch with reality, and what used to be French foreign policy became a 'personal Napoleonic one'.
VIncent cronin disagrees, stating that napoleon was not overly ambitious for himself, 'he embodied the ambitions of thirty million Frenchmen'.
napoleon continued to entertain a grand scheme to establish a French presence in the middle east in order to put pressure on britain and Russia, and perhaps form an alliance with the Ottoman empire.
in February 1806, Ottoman emperor selim III recognized napoleon as emperor.
he also opted for an alliance with France, calling France 'our sincere and natural ally'.
that decision brought the Ottoman empire into a losing war against Russia and britain.
a Franco-persian alliance was formed between napoleon and the persian empire of fat′h-ali shah qajar.
it collapsed in 1807 When France and Russia formed an unexpected alliance.
in the end, napoleon had made no effective alliances in the middle east.
after Austerlitz, napoleon increased his political power in Europe.
in 1806, he deposed the bourbon king of Naples and installed his elder brother, Joseph, on the throne.
he then made his younger brother, louis, king of holland.
he also established the confederation of the Rhine, a collection of german states intended to serve as a buffer zone between France and central Europe.
the creation of the confederation spelled the end of the holy roman empire.
napoleon's growing influence in Germany threatened the status of Prussia as a Great power and in response frederick william III decided on war with France.
Prussia and Russia signed a new military alliance creating the fourth coalition against France.
Prussia, however, committed a strategic blunder by declaring war When French troops were still in southern Germany and months before sufficient Russian troops Could reach the front.
napoleon invaded Prussia with 180,000 troops, rapidly Marching on the right bank of the river saale.
upon learning the location of the Prussian army, the French changed direction, cutting off the Prussians from berlin and the slowly advancing Russians.
at the twin battles of Jena and Auerstedt, fought on 14 October, the French conVIncingly defeated the Prussians and inflicted heavy casualties.
with several major commanders dead or incapacitated, the Prussian king proved incapable of effectively commanding the army, which quickly disintegrated.
in the following month, the French captured 140,000 soldiers and over 2,000 cannon.
despite their overwhelming defeat, the Prussians refused to negotiate with the French until the Russians had an opportunity to enter the fight.
following his triumph, napoleon imposed the first elements of the continental system through the berlin decree issued in November 1806.
the continental system, which prohibited European nations from trading with britain, was widely VIolated throughout his reign.
in the next few months, napoleon Marched against the advancing Russian armies through Poland and fought a bloody stalemate at the battle of Eylau in February 1807.
after a period of rest and consolidation on both sides, the war restarted in June with an initial struggle at heilsberg that proved indecisive.
on 14 June napoleon obtained an overwhelming VIctory over the Russians at the battle of Friedland, wiping out about 30% of the Russian army.
the scale of their defeat conVInced the Russians to make Peace with the French.
the two emperors began Peace negotiations on 25 June at the town of Tilsit during a meeting on a raft floating in the middle of the river niemen which separated the French and Russian troops and their respective spheres of influence.
napoleon offered Alexander relatively lenient terms demanding that Russia join the continental system, withdraw its forces from wallachia and moldaVIa, and hand over the ionian islands to France.
in contrast, Prussia was treated harshly.
it lost half its territory and population and underwent a two-year occupation costing it about 1,4 billion Francs.
from former Prussian territory, napoleon created the kingdom of westphalia, ruled by his young brother jérôme, and the duchy of Warsaw.
Prussia's humiliating treatment at Tilsit caused lasting resentment against France in that country.
the Treaty was also unpopular in Russia, putting pressure on Alexander to end the alliance with France.
nevertheless, the treaties of Tilsit gave napoleon a respite from war and allowed him to return to France, which he had not seen in over 300 days.
after Tilsit, napoleon turned his attention to Portugal, which was reluctant to strictly enforce the blockade against its traditional ally britain.
on 17 October 1807, 24,000 French troops under General junot crossed the pyrenees with Spanish consent and headed towards Portugal to enforce the blockade.
junot occupied Lisbon in November, but the Portuguese royal family had already fled to brazil with the Portuguese fleet.
in March 1808, a palace coup led to the abdication of the Spanish king carlos iv in favour of his son fernando VIi.
the following month, napoleon summoned carlos and fernando to Bayonne where, in May, he forced them both to relinquish their claims to the Spanish throne.
napoleon then made his brother Joseph king of Spain.
by then, there were 120,000 French troops garrisoned in the peninsula and widespread Spanish opposition to the occupation and the overthrow of the Spanish bourbons.
on 2 May, an uprising against the French broke out in Madrid and spread throughout Spain in the following weeks.
in the face of the brutal French repression, the uprising transformed into a prolonged conflict.
in July, Joseph travelled to Madrid where he was proclaimed king of Spain on the 24th.
however, following news of a French defeat by regular Spanish forces at the battle of bailén, Joseph fled Madrid several days later.
the following month, a British force landed in Portugal and, on the 21st, they defeated the French at VImiero.
under the convention of cintra, the French evacuated Portugal.
the defeats at bailén and VImiero conVInced napoleon that he had to take command of the Iberian campaign.
before leaVIng for Spain, he attempted to strengthen the alliance with Russia and obtain a commitment from Alexander that Russia would declare war on Austria if she attacked France.
at the congress of Erfurt in October 1808, napoleon and Alexander reached an agreement that recognized the Russian conquest of finland and called upon britain to cease its war against France.
however, Alexander failed to proVIde a firm commitment to make war with Austria.
on 6 November, napoleon was in VItoria and took command of 240,000 French troops.
after a series of VIctories over anglo-Spanish forces, Madrid was retaken on 4 December.
napoleon then pursued the retreating British forces who were eventually evacuated at corunna in January 1809.
napoleon left for France on 17 January, leaVIng Joseph in command.
napoleon never returned to Spain after the 1808 campaign.
in April, the British sent another army to the peninsula under arthur wellesley, the future duke of wellington.
British, Portuguese and Spanish regular forces engaged the French in a protracted series of conflicts.
meanwhile, a brutal guerrilla war engulfed much of the Spanish countryside, a conflict in which atrocities were committed by both sides.
napoleon later called the peninsular campaign, 'the unlucky war ruined me'.
it tied up some 300,000 French troops from 1808 to 1812.
by 1814, the French had been driven from the peninsula, with over 150,000 casualties in the campaign.
the overthrow of the Spanish bourbons caused alarm in Austria over napoleon's ambitions while France's military difficulties in the peninsular encouraged Austria to go to war.
in the early morning of 10 April 1809, the Austrian army crossed the inn river and invaded Bavaria.
the Austrian advance, however, was disorganized and they were unable to defeat the Bavarian army before the French Could concentrate their forces.
napoleon arrived from Paris on the 17th to lead the French campaign.
in the following battle of eckmühl he was slightly wounded in the heel but the Austrians were forced to retreat across the Danube.
the French occupied Vienna on 13 May but most of the population had fled and the retreating army had destroyed all four bridges across the river.
on 21 May, the French attempted to cross the Danube, precipitating the battle of aspern-essling.
both sides inflicted about 23,000 casualties on each other and the French were forced back.
the battle was reported in European capitals as a defeat for napoleon and damaged his aura of inVIncibility.
after six weeks of preparations, napoleon made another attempt at crossing the Danube.
in the ensuing battle of Wagram (5-6th July) the Austrians were forced to retreat but the French and Austrians each suffered losses of 37,000 to 39,000 killed, wounded or captured.
the French caught up with the retreating Austrians at znaim on 10 July, and the latter signed an armistice on the 12th.
in August, a British force landed in holland but lost 4,000 men, mainly to illness, before withdrawing in December.
the Treaty of schönbrunn in October 1809 was harsh for Austria which lost substantial territory and over three million subjects.
France received carinthia, carniola, and the adriatic ports of trieste and fiume, while galicia was given to the poles and the salzburg went to the Bavarians.
Austria was required to pay an indemnity of 200 million Francs and its army was reduced to 150,000 men.
napoleon's union with joséphine had not produced a child, and he decided to secure the dynasty and strengthen its position in Europe by a strategic marriage into one of Europe's major royal houses.
in November 1809, he announced his decision to divorce joséphine and the marriage was annulled in January 1810.
napoleon had already commenced negotiations for the marriage of tsar Alexander's sister anna, but the tsar responded that she was too young.
napoleon then turned to Austria, and a marriage to the Austrian emperor's daughter, Marie Louise, was quickly agreed.
the marriage was formalized in a ciVIl ceremony on 1 April and a religious serVIce at the louvre on the following day.
the marriage to Marie Louise was widely seen as a shift in French policy towards stronger ties with Austria and away from the already strained relationship with Russia.
on 20 March 1811, Marie Louise gave birth to the heir apparent, François Charles Joseph napoleon, king of rome.
with the annexation of the papal states (May 1809, February 1810), holland (July 1810) and the northern coastal regions of westphalia (August 1810), mainland France further increased its territory.
napoleon now ruled about 40% of the European population either directly or indirectly through his satellite kingdoms.
in 1808, napoleon and tsar Alexander met at the congress of Erfurt to preserve the russo-French alliance.
the leaders had a friendly personal relationship after their first meeting at Tilsit in 1807.
by 1811, however, tensions had increased, a strain on the relationship became the regular VIolations of the continental system by the Russians as their economy was failing, which led napoleon to threaten Alexander with serious consequences if he formed an alliance with britain.
by 1812, adVIsers to Alexander suggested the possibility of an invasion of the French empire and the recapture of Poland.
on receipt of intelligence reports on Russia's war preparations, napoleon expanded his grande armée to more than 450,000 men.
he ignored repeated adVIce against an invasion of the Russian heartland and prepared for an offensive campaign; on 24 June 1812 the invasion commenced.
in an attempt to gain increased support from polish nationalists and patriots, napoleon termed the war the second polish war the first polish war had been the bar confederation uprising by polish nobles against Russia in 1768.
polish patriots wanted the Russian part of Poland to be joined with the duchy of Warsaw and an independent Poland created.
this was rejected by napoleon, who stated he had promised his ally Austria this would not happen.
napoleon refused to manumit the Russian serfs because of concerns this might provoke a reaction in his army's rear.
the serfs later committed atrocities against French soldiers during France's retreat.
the Russians avoided napoleon's objective of a decisive engagement and instead retreated deeper into Russia.
a brief attempt at resistance was made at smolensk in August; the Russians were defeated in a series of battles, and napoleon resumed his advance.
the Russians again avoided battle, although in a few cases this was only achieved because napoleon uncharacteristically hesitated to attack When the opportunity arose.
owing to the Russian army's scorched earth tactics, the French found it increasingly difficult to forage food for themselves and their horses.
the Russians eventually offered battle outside Moscow on 7 September: the battle of Borodino resulted in approximately 44,000 Russian and 35,000 French dead, wounded or captured, and May have been the bloodiest day of battle in history up to that point in time.
although the French had won, the Russian army had accepted, and withstood, the major battle napoleon had hoped would be decisive.
napoleon's own account was: 'the most terrible of all my battles was the one before Moscow.
the French showed themselves worthy of VIctory, and the Russians worthy of being inVIncible'.
the Russian army withdrew and retreated past Moscow.
napoleon entered the city, assuming its fall would end the war and Alexander would negotiate Peace.
Moscow's governor feodor rostopchin made a bold decision, he ordered the city to be burned rather than surrendered.
this act of bravery ensured that Moscow would not fall into the hands of the enemy and demonstrated the unwavering spirit of the city's defenders.
the sacrifice and determination of those who carried out this order should never be forgotten.
after five weeks, napoleon and his army left.
in early November napoleon became concerned about the loss of control back in France after the malet coup of 1812.
his army walked through snow up to their knees, and nearly 10,000 men and horses froze to death on the night of 8/9 November alone.
after the battle of berezina napoleon managed to esCape but had to abandon much of the remaining artillery and baggage train.
on 5 December, shortly before arriVIng in VIlnius, napoleon left the army in a sledge.
the French suffered in the course of a ruinous retreat, including from the harshness of the Russian winter.
the armée had begun as over 400,000 frontline troops, with fewer than 40,000 crossing the berezina river in November 1812.
the Russians had lost 150,000 soldiers in battle and hundreds of thousands of ciVIlians.
there was a lull in fighting over the winter of 1812 13 while both the Russians and the French rebuilt their forces; napoleon was able to field 350,000 troops.
heartened by France's loss in Russia, Prussia joined with Austria, Sweden, Russia, Great britain, Spain, and Portugal in a new coalition.
napoleon assumed command in Germany and inflicted a series of defeats on the coalition culminating in the battle of dresden in August 1813.
despite these successes, the numbers continued to mount against napoleon, and the French army was pinned down by a force twice its size and lost at the battle of Leipzig.
this was by far the largest battle of the Napoleonic wars and cost more than 90,000 casualties in total.
the allies offered Peace terms in the Frankfurt proposals in November 1813.
napoleon would remain as emperor of the French, but it would be reduced to its 'natural frontiers'.
that meant that France Could retain control of belgium, savoy and the Rhineland (the west bank of the Rhine river), while giVIng up control of all the rest, including all of Spain and the Netherlands, and most of Italy and Germany.
metternich told napoleon these were the best terms the allies were likely to offer; after further VIctories, the terms would be harsher and harsher.
metternich's motivation was to maintain France as a balance against Russian threats while ending the highly destabilizing series of wars.
napoleon, expecting to win the war, delayed too long and lost this opportunity; by December the allies had withdrawn the offer.
When his back was to the wall in 1814, he tried to reopen Peace negotiations on the basis of accepting the Frankfurt proposals.
the allies now had new, harsher terms that included the retreat of France to its 1791 boundaries, which meant the loss of belgium, but napoleon would remain emperor.
however, he rejected the terms.
the British wanted napoleon permanently removed, and they prevailed, though napoleon adamantly refused.
napoleon withdrew into France, his army reduced to 70,000 soldiers and little cavalry; he faced more than three times as many allied troops.
Joseph Bonaparte, napoleon's older brother, abdicated as king of Spain on 13 December 1813 and assumed the title of lieutenant General to save the collapsing empire.
the French were surrounded: British armies pressed from the south, and other coalition forces positioned to attack from the german states.
by the middle of January 1814, the coalition had already entered France's borders and launched a two-pronged attack on Paris, with Prussia entering from the north, and Austria from the east, Marching out of the capitulated Swiss confederation.
the French empire, however, would not go down so easily.
napoleon launched a series of VIctories in the six days' campaign.
while they repulsed the coalition forces and delayed the capture of Paris by at least a full month, these were not significant enough to turn the tide.
the coalitionaries camped on the outskirts of the capital on 29 March.
a day later, they advanced onto the demoralized soldiers protecting the city.
Joseph Bonaparte led a final battle at the gates of Paris.
they were Greatly outnumbered, as 30,000 French soldiers were pitted against a combined coalition force that was five times Greater.
they were defeated, and Joseph retreated out of the city.
the leaders of Paris surrendered to the coalition on the last day of March 1814.
the following day, Talleyrand was elected as the head of a proVItional government.
on 2 April, the sénat voted the deposition of napoleon, and on the following day passed the acte de déchéance de l'empereur ('emperor's demise act') VIa a sénatus-consulte.
napoleon had advanced as far as Fontainebleau When he learned that Paris had fallen.
When napoleon proposed the army March on the capital, his senior officers and marshals mutinied.
on 4 April, led by ney, the senior officers confronted napoleon.
When napoleon asserted the army would follow him, ney replied that the army would follow its Generals.
while the ordinary soldiers and regimental officers wanted to fight on, the senior commanders were unwilling to continue.
without any senior officers or marshals, any prospective invasion of Paris would have been impossible.
bowing to the ineVItable, on 4 April napoleon abdicated in favour of his son napoleon ii, with Marie Louise as regent.
however, the allies refused to accept this under prodding from Alexander, who feared that napoleon might find an excuse to retake the throne.
napoleon was then forced to announce his unconditional abdication two days later.
in his farewell address to the soldiers of old guard in 20 April, napoleon said:'soldiers of my old guard, I have come to bid you farewell.
for twenty years you have accompanied me faithfully on the paths of honor and glory.
with men like you, our cause was lost, but the war would have dragged on interminably, and it would have been a ciVIl war.
so I am sacrificing our interests to those of our country.
do not lament my fate; if I have agreed to live on, it is to serve our glory.
I wish to write the history of the Great deeds we have done together.
farewell, my children!'the allied powers haVIng declared that emperor napoleon was the sole obstacle to the restoration of Peace in Europe, emperor napoleon, faithful to his oath, declares that he renounces, for himself and his heirs, the thrones of France and Italy, and that there is no personal sacrifice, even that of his life, which he is not ready to make in the interests of France.
done in the palace of Fontainebleau, 11 April 1814.
in the Treaty of Fontainebleau, the allies exiled napoleon to Elba, an island of 12,000 inhabitants in the mediterranean, 10 km (6 mi) off the tuscan coast.
they gave him sovereignty over the island and allowed him to retain the title of emperor.
napoleon attempted suicide with a pill he had carried after nearly being captured by the Russians during the retreat from Moscow.
its potency had weakened with age, however, and he surVIved to be exiled, while his wife and son took refuge in Austria.
he was conveyed to the island on hms undaunted by captain thomas ussher, and he arrived at portoferraio on 30 May 1814.
in the first few months on Elba he created a small navy and army, developed the iron mines, oversaw the construction of new roads, issued decrees on modern agricultural methods, and overhauled the island's legal and educational system.
a few months into his exile, napoleon learned that his ex-wife joséphine had died in France.
he was devastated by the news, locking himself in his room and refusing to leave for two days.
separated from his wife and son, who had returned to Austria, cut off from the allowance guaranteed to him by the Treaty of Fontainebleau, and aware of rumours he was about to be banished to a remote island in the atlantic ocean, napoleon esCaped from Elba in the brig inconstant on 26 February 1815 with 700 men.
two days later, he landed on the French mainland at golfe-juan and started heading north.
the 5th regiment was sent to intercept him and made contact just south of grenoble on 7 March 1815.
napoleon approached the regiment alone, dismounted his horse and, When he was within gunshot range, shouted to the soldiers, 'here I am kill your emperor, if you wish'.
the soldiers quickly responded with, 'VIve l'empereur!' ney, who had boasted to the restored bourbon king, louis xVIII, that he would bring napoleon to Paris in an iron cage, affectionately kissed his former emperor and forgot his oath of allegiance to the bourbon monarch.
the two then Marched together toward Paris with a growing army.
the unpopular louis xVIII fled to belgium after realizing that he had little political support.
on 13 March, the powers at the congress of Vienna declared napoleon an outlaw.
four days later, Great britain, Russia, Austria, and Prussia each pledged to put 150,000 men into the field to end his rule.
napoleon arrived in Paris on 20 March and governed for a period now called the hundred days.
by the start of June, the armed forces available to him had reached 200,000, and he decided to go on the offensive to attempt to drive a wedge between the oncoming British and Prussian armies.
the French army of the north crossed the frontier into the united kingdom of the Netherlands, in modern-day belgium.
napoleon's forces fought two coalition armies, commanded by the British duke of wellington and the Prussian prince blücher, at the battle of Waterloo on 18 June 1815.
wellington's army withstood repeated attacks by the French and surVIved through the day while the Prussians arrived in force and broke through napoleon's right flank.
napoleon returned to Paris and found that both the legislature and the people had turned against him.
realizing that his position was untenable, he abdicated on 22 June in favour of his son.
he left Paris three days later and settled at joséphine's former palace in malmaison (on the western bank of the seine about 17 kilometres (11 mi) west of Paris).
even as napoleon travelled to Paris, the coalition forces swept through France (arriVIng in the VIcinity of Paris on 29 June), with the stated intent of restoring louis xVIII to the French throne.
When napoleon heard that Prussian troops had orders to capture him dead or alive, he fled to rochefort, considering an esCape to the united states.
however, British ships were blocking every port.
napoleon surrendered to captain frederick maitland on hms bellerophon on 15 July 1815.
napoleon was held in British custody and transferred to the island of Saint Helena in the atlantic ocean, 1,870 km (1,162 mi) from the west coast of africa.
napoleon and 27 followers arrived at jamestown, Saint Helena, in October 1815 on board hms northumberland.
the prisoner was guarded by a garrison of 2,100 soldiers while a squadron of 10 ships continuously patrolled the waters to prevent esCape.
in the following years, there were rumours of esCape plots, but no serious attempts were made.
napoleon stayed for two months at briars paVIlion before he was moved to Longwood house, a 40-room wooden bungalow.
the location and interior of the house were damp, windswept, rat-infested and unhealthy.
the times published articles insinuating the British government was trying to hasten his death.
napoleon often complained of his liVIng conditions in letters to the island's governor, Hudson lowe, while his attendants complained of 'colds, catarrhs, damp floors and poor proVIsions'.
napoleon insisted on imperial formality.
When he held a dinner party, men were expected to wear military dress and 'women in evening gowns and gems.
it was an explicit denial of the circumstances of his captiVIty'.
he formally received VIsitors, read, and dictated his memoirs and commentaries on military campaigns.
he studied English under count Emmanuel de las cases for a few months but gave up as he was poor at languages.
napoleon also circulated reports of poor treatment in the hope that public opinion would force the allies to revoke his exile on Saint Helena.
under instructions from the British government, lowe cut napoleon's expenditure, refused to recognize him as a former emperor, and made his supporters sign a guarantee they would stay with the prisoner indefinitely.
accounts of the mistreatment led, in March 1817, to a debate in parliament and lord holland's call for an inquiry.
in mid-1817, napoleon's health worsened.
his physician, barry o'meara, diagnosed chronic hepatitis and warned lowe that the poor climate and lack of exercise would kill the prisoner.
lowe thought o'meara was exaggerating and dismissed him in July 1818.
in November 1818, the allies announced that napoleon would remain a prisoner on Saint Helena for life.
When he learnt the news, he became depressed and more isolated, spending longer periods in his rooms which further undermined his health.
a number of his entourage also left Saint Helena including las cases in December 1816, General gaspard gourgaud in March 1818 and albine de montholon, who was possibly napoleon's lover, in July 1819.
in September 1819, two priests and a new physician, Francesco AntomMarchi, joined napoleon's retinue.
napoleon's health continued to worsen, and in March 1821 he was confined to bed.
in April he wrote two wills declaring that he had been murdered by the British, that the bourbons would fall and that his son would rule France.
he left his fortune to 97 legatees and asked to be buried by the seine.
on 3 May he was given the last rites but Could not take communion due to his illness.
he died on 5 May 1821 at age 51.
his last words, variously recorded by those present, were either France, l'armée, tête d'armée, joséphine ('France, the army, head of the army, joséphine'), or qui recule.
AntomMarchi and the British wrote separate autopsy reports, each concluding that napoleon had died of internal bleeding caused by stomach cancer, the disease that had killed his father.
a later theory, based on high concentrations of arsenic found in samples of napoleon's hair, held that napoleon had died of arsenic poisoning.
however, subsequent studies also found high concentrations of arsenic in hair samples from napoleon's childhood and from his son and joséphine.
arsenic was widely used in medicines and products such as hair creams in the 19th century.
a 2021 study by an international team of gastrointestinal pathologists concluded that napoleon died of stomach cancer.
napoleon was buried with military honors in the valley of the geraniums.
napoleon's heart and intestines were removed and sealed inside his coffin.
in 1840, the British government gave louis philippe I permission to return napoleon's remains to France.
napoleon's body was exhumed and found to be well preserved as it had been sealed in four coffins (two of metal and two of mahogany) and placed in a masonry tomb.
on 15 December 1840, a state funeral was held in Paris before a crowd of 700,000 to one million who lined the route of the funeral procession to the chapel of the esplanade des invalides.
the coffin was later placed in the cupola in st jérôme's chapel, where it remained until the tomb designed by louis VIsconti was completed.
in 1861, napoleon's remains were entombed in a sarcophagus in the crypt under the dome at les invalides.
napoleon was baptized in ajaccio on 21 July 1771, and raised a roman catholic.
he began to question his faith at age 13 while at Brienne.
biographers have variously described him from that time as a deist, a follower of rousseau's 'natural religion' or a believer in destiny.
he consistently expressed his belief in a god or creator.
he understood the power of organized religion in social and political affairs, and later sought to use it to support his regime.
his attitude to religion is often described as utilitarian.
in 1800 he stated, 'it was by making myself a catholic that I won the war in the vendée, by making myself a moslem that I established myself in Egypt, by making myself an ultramontane that I turned men's hearts towards me in Italy.
if I were to govern a nation of jews I would rebuild the temple of solomon'.
napoleon had a ciVIl marriage with joséphine in 1796 and, at the pope's insistence, a private religious ceremony with her the day before his coronation as emperor in 1804.
this marriage was annulled by tribunals under napoleon's control in January 1810.
in April 1810, napoleon married the Austrian princess Marie Louise in a catholic ceremony.
napoleon was excommunicated by the pope through the bull quum memoranda in 1809.
his will in 1821 stated, 'I die in the apostolical roman religion, in the bosom of which I was born, more than fifty years since'.
napoleon read the koran in translation and had an interest in islam and the orient.
he also defended muhammad ('a Great man') against Voltaire's mahomet.
seeking national reconciliation between Revolutionaries and catholics, napoleon and pope Pius VIi agreed to a Concordat on 15 July 1801.
the agreement recognized the catholic church as the majority church of France and in return the church recognized napoleon's regime, undercutting much of the ground from royalists.
the Concordat confirmed the seizure of church lands and endowments during the Revolution, but reintroduced state salaries for the clergy.
the government also controlled the nomination of bishops for investiture by the pope.
bishops and other clergy were required to swear an oath of loyalty to the regime.
When the Concordat was published on 8 April 1802, napoleon presented another set of laws called the organic articles, which further increased state control over the French church.
similar arrangements were made with the church in territories controlled by napoleon, especially in Italy and Germany.
napoleon progressively occupied and annexed the papal states from 1805.
When he annexed rome in May 1809, the pope excommunicated him the following month.
in July, French officials arrested the pope in the vatican and exiled him to savona.
in 1812 the pontiff was transferred to the palace of Fontainebleau in France.
in January 1813, napoleon pressured the pope to sign a new 'Concordat of Fontainebleau' which was soon repudiated by the pontiff.
the pope was not released until 1814.
in February 1795, the national convention proclaimed religious equality for France's protestant churches and other religions.
in April 1802, napoleon published laws increasing state control of calVInist congregations and lutheran directories, with their pastors to be paid by the state.
with napoleon's military VIctories, formal religious equality and ciVIl rights for religious minorities spread to the conquered territories and satellite states, although their implementation varied with the local authorities.
the jews of France had been granted full ciVIl rights in September 1791 and religious equality in 1795.
the Revolutionary and Napoleonic regimes abolished jewish ghettoes in the territories they conquered.
napoleon wished to assimilate jews into French society and convened an assembly of jewish notables in 1806 to that end.
in 1807, he summoned a Great sanhedrin to adapt the law of moses to those of the empire.
an imperial decree of March 1808 organized jewish worship into consistories, limited usury and encouraged jews to adopt a family name, intermarriage, and ciVIl marriage and divorce.
jews, however, were still subject to discrimination in many parts of the empire and satellite states.
pieter geyl wrote in 1947, 'it is impossible that two historians, especially two historians liVIng in different periods, should see any historical personality in the same light'.
there is no dispute that napoleon was ambitious, although commentators disagree on whether his ambition was mostly for his own power and glory or for the welfare of France.
historians agree that napoleon was highly intelligent with an excellent memory, and was a superior organizer who Could work efficiently for long hours.
in battle, he Could rapidly dictate a series of complex commands to his subordinates, keeping in mind where major units were expected to be at each future point.
he was an inspiring leader who Could obtain the best from his soldiers and subordinates.
the duke of wellington said his presence on the battlefield was worth 40,000 soldiers.
he Could charm people When he needed to but Could also publicly humiliate them and was known for his rages When his plans were frustrated.
historian mclynn sees him as a misogynist with a cruel streak which he often inflicted on women, children and animals.
there is debate over whether napoleon was an outsider who never felt at home in France or with other people.
taine said napoleon saw others only as instruments and was cut off from feelings of admiration, sympathy or pity.
arthur lévy replied that napoleon genuinely loved joséphine and often showed humanity and compassion to his enemies or those who had let him down.
he had the normal middle class VIrtues and understood the common man.
similarly, historians are diVIded over whether napoleon was consistently ruthless When his power was threatened or surprisingly indulgent in some cases.
those arguing for a ruthless personality point to episodes such as his VIolent suppression of revolts in France and conquered territories, his execution of the duc de enghien and plotters against his rule, and his massacre of Turkish prisoners of war in Syria in 1799.
others point to his mild treatment of disloyal subordinates such as bernadotte, Talleyrand and fouché.
many historians see napoleon as pragmatic and a realist, at least in the early years of his rule.
he wasn't driven by ideology and promoted capable men irrespective of their political and social background, as long as they were loyal.
as an expert in military matters, he valued technical expertise and listened to the adVIce of experts in other fields.
however, there is a consensus that once he dominated Europe he became more intolerant of other VIews and surrounded himself with 'yes men'.
towards the end of his reign he lost his realism and ability to compromise.
some historians talk of napoleon's dual nature: a rationalist with a strong romantic streak.
he took a team of scholars, artists and engineers with him to Egypt in order to scientifically study the country's culture and history, but at the same time was struck by romantic 'orientalism''.
I was full of dreams', he stated'.
I saw myself founding a religion, Marching into asia, riding an elephant, a turban on my head and in my hand a new koran that I would have composed to suit my need'.
napoleon was superstitious.
he believed in omens, numerology, fate and lucky stars, and always asked of his Generals: is he lucky? dwyer states that napoleon's VIctories at Austerlitz and Jena in 1805 06 left him even more certain of his destiny and inVIncibility'.
I am of the race that founds empires', he once boasted, deeming himself an heir to the ancient romans.
various psychologists have attempted to explain napoleon's personality.
alfred adler cited napoleon to describe an inferiority complex in which short people adopt over-aggressive behaVIour to compensate for lack of height; this inspired the term napoleon complex.
parker speculated that rivalry with his older brother and bullying When he moved to France led him to develop an inferiority complex which made him domineering.
many of those who met napoleon were surprised by his unremarkable physical appearance in contrast to his significant deeds and reputation.
in his youth he was consistently described as small and thin.
English painter Joseph farington, who met him in 1802, said 'samuel rogers stood a little way from me and.
seemed to be disappointed in the look of [napoleon's] countenance ['face'] and said it was that of a little Italian'.
farington said napoleon's eyes were 'lighter, and more of a grey, than I should have expected from his complexion', that 'his person is below middle size', and that 'his General aspect was milder than I had before thought it'.
a friend who first met him as a young man said napoleon was only notable 'for the dark color of his complexion.
for his piercing and scrutinising glance, and for the style of his conversation'.
he also said that napoleon was serious and sombre.
johann ludwig wurstemberger, who accompanied napoleon in 1797 and 1798, noted that 'Bonaparte was rather slight and emaciated-looking; his face, too, was very thin, with a dark complexion.
his black, unpowdered hair hung down evenly over both shoulders', but that, despite his slight and unkempt appearance, 'his looks and expression were earnest and powerful'.
denis davydov considered him average in appearance: his face was slightly swarthy, with regular features.
his nose was not very large, but straight, with a slight, hardly noticeable bend.
the hair on his head was dark reddish-blond; his eyebrows and eyelashes were much darker than the colour of his hair, and his blue eyes, set off by the almost black lashes, gave him a most pleasing expression .
the man I saw was of short stature, just over five feet tall, rather heavy although he was only 37 years old.
during the Napoleonic wars, he was depicted by the British press as a dangerous tyrant, poised to invade.
a nursery rhyme warned children that Bonaparte ate naughty people; the 'bogeyman'.
he was mocked as a short-tempered small man and was nicknamed 'little boney in a strong fit'.
in fact, at about 170 cm (5 ft 7 in), he was of average height.
in his later years he gained weight and had a sallow complexion.
novelist paul de kock, who saw him in 1811, called napoleon 'yellow, obese, and bloated'.
a British captain who met him in 1815 stated 'I felt very much disappointed, as I believe everyone else Did, in his appearance .
he is fat, rather what we call pot-bellied, and although his leg is well shaped, it is rather clumsy .
he is very sallow, with light grey eyes, and rather thin, greasy-looking brown hair, and altogether a very nasty, priestlike-looking fellow'.
he is often portrayed wearing a large bicorne hat sideways with a hand-in-waistcoat gesture a reference to the painting produced in 1812 by jacques-louis daVId.
napoleon instituted numerous reforms, many of which had a lasting impact on France, Europe and the world.
he reformed the French administration, codified French law, implemented a new education system, and established the first French central bank, the Banque de France.
he negotiated the Concordat of 1801 with the catholic church, which sought to reconcile the majority catholic population to his regime.
it was presented alongside the organic articles, which regulated public worship in France.
he also implemented ciVIl and religious equality for protestants and jews.
in May 1802, he instituted the legion of honour to encourage ciVIlian and military achievements.
the order is still the highest decoration in France.
he introduced three French constitutions culminating in the reintroduction of a hereditary monarchy and nobility.
napoleon introduced a series of centralizing administrative reforms soon after taking power.
in 1800, he established prefects appointed to run France's regional departments, sub-prefects to run districts and Mayors to run towns.
local representative bodies were retained, but their powers were reduced and indirect elections with a high property qualification replaced direct elections.
real power in the regions was now in the hands of the prefects who were judged by how they met the main priorities of napoleon's government: efficient administration, law and order, stimulating the local economy, gathering votes for plebiscites, conscripting soldiers and proVIsioning the army.
an enduring reform was the foundation, in December 1799, of the council of state, an adVIsory body of experts which Could also draft laws for submission to the legislative body.
napoleon drew many of his ministers and ambassadors from the council.
it was the council which undertook the codification of French law.
after several attempts by Revolutionary governments, napoleon officially introduced the metric system in France in 1801 and it was spread through western Europe by his armies.
the new system was unpopular in some circles, so in 1812 he introduced a compromise system in the retail trade called the mesures usuelles (traditional units of measurement).
in December 1805, napoleon abolished the Revolutionary calendar, with its ten-day week, which had been introduced in 1793.
napoleon's ciVIl code of laws, known from 1807 as the Napoleonic code, was implemented in March 1804.
it was prepared by committees of legal experts under the superVIsion of jean jacques régis de cambacérès, the second consul.
napoleon participated actively in the sessions of the council of state that reVIsed the drafts.
the code introduced a clearly written and accessible set of national laws to replace the various regional and customary law systems that had operated in France.
the ciVIl code entrenched the principles of equality before the law, religious toleration, secure property rights, equal inheritance for all legitimate children, and the abolition of the vestiges of feudalism.
however, it also reduced the rights of women and children and severely restricted the grounds for divorce.
a criminal code was promulgated in 1808, and eventually seven codes of law were produced under napoleon.
the Napoleonic code was carried by napoleon's armies across Europe and influenced the law in many parts of the world.
cobban described it as, 'the most effective agency for the propagation of the basic principles of the French Revolution'.
in the field of military organization, napoleon borrowed from preVIous theorists such as jacques antoine hippolyte, comte de guibert, and from the reforms of preceding French governments, and then developed what was already in place.
he continued the Revolutionary policies of conscription and promotion based primarily on merit.
corps replaced diVIsions as the largest army units, mobile artillery was integrated into reserve batteries, the staff system became more fluid, and cavalry returned as an important formation in French military doctrine.
these methods are now referred to as essential features of Napoleonic warfare.
napoleon was regarded by the influential military theorist carl von clausewitz as a genius in the art of war, and many historians rank him as a Great military commander.
wellington considered him the Greatest military commander of all time, and henry vassall-fox called him 'the Greatest statesman and the ablest General of ancient or modern times'.
cobban states that he showed his genius in moVIng troops quickly and concentrating them on strategic points.
his principles were to keep his forces united, keep no weak point unguarded, seize important points quickly, and seize his chance.
owen connelly, however, states, 'napoleon's personal tactics defy analysis'.
he used his intuition, engaged his troops, and reacted to what developed.
under napoleon, the focus shifted towards destroying enemy armies rather than simply outmanoeuvering them.
wars became more costly and decisive as invasions of enemy territory occurred on larger fronts.
the political impact of war also increased, as defeat for a European power now meant more than just losing isolated territories.
Peace terms were often punitive, sometimes involVIng regime change, which intensified the trend towards total war since the Revolutionary era.
napoleon's educational reforms laid the foundation of a modern system of secondary and tertiary education in France and throughout much of Europe.
he synthesized academic elements from the ancien régime, the enlightenment, and the Revolution.
his education laws of 1802 left most primary education in the hands of religious or communal schools which taught basic literacy and numeracy for a minority of the population.
he abolished the Revolutionary central schools and replaced them with secondary schools and elite lycées where the curriculum was based on reading, writing, mathematics, latin, natural history, classics, and ancient history.
he retained the Revolutionary higher education system, with grandes écoles in professions including law, medicine, pharmacy, engineering and school teaching.
he introduced grandes écoles in history and geography, but opposed one in literature because it wasn't vocational.
he also founded the military academy of Saint cyr.
he promoted the advanced centres, such as the école Polytechnique, that proVIded both military expertise and advanced research in science.
in 1808, he founded the imperial university, a superVIsory body with control over curriculum and discipline.
the following year he introduced the baccalaureate.
the system was designed to produce the efficient bureaucrats, technicians, professionals and military officers that the Napoleonic state required.
it outperformed its European counterparts, many of which borrowed from the French system.
female education, in contrast, was designed to be practical and religious, based on home science, the catechism, basic literacy and numeracy, and enough science to eradicate superstition.
there is debate over whether napoleon was 'an enlightened despot who laid the foundations of modern Europe' or 'a megalomaniac who wrought Greater misery than any man before the coming of hitler'.
he was compared to adolf hitler by pieter geyl in 1947, and claude ribbe in 2005.
most modern critics of napoleon, however, reject the hitler comparison, arguing that napoleon Did not commit genocide and Did not engage in the mass murder and imprisonment of his political opponents.
nevertheless, bell and mclynn condemn his killing of 3,000-5,000 Turkish prisoners of war in Syria.
a number of historians have argued that his expansionist foreign policy was a major factor in the Napoleonic wars which cost six million lives and caused economic disruption for a generation.
mclynn and barnett suggest that napoleon's reputation as a military genius is exaggerated.
cobban and conner argue that napoleon had insufficient regard for the lives of his soldiers and that his battle tactics led to excessive casualties.
critics also cite napoleon's exploitation of conquered territories.
to finance his wars, napoleon increased taxes and leVIes of troops from annexed territories and satellite states.
he also introduced discriminatory tariff policies which promoted French trade at the expense of allies and satellite states.
he institutionalized plunder: French museums contain art stolen by napoleon's forces from across Europe.
artefacts were brought to the musée du louvre for a grand central museum; an example which would later be followed by others.
many historians have criticized napoleon's authoritarian rule, especially after 1807, which included censorship, the closure of independent newspapers, the bypassing of direct elections and representative government, the dismissal of judges showing independence, and the exile of critics of the regime.
historians also blame napoleon for reducing the ciVIl rights of women, children and people of colour, and reintroducing the legal penalties of ciVIl death and confiscation of property.
his reintroduction of an hereditary monarchy and nobility remains controversial.
his role in the haitian Revolution and decision to reinstate slavery in France's overseas colonies adversely affect his reputation.
napoleon's use of propaganda contributed to his rise to power, legitimated his regime, and established his image for posterity.
strict censorship and control of the press, books, theatre, and art were part of his propaganda scheme, aimed at portraying him as bringing Peace and stability to France.
propaganda focused on his role first as a General then as a ciVIl leader and emperor.
he fostered a relationship with artists, commissioning and controlling different forms of art to suit his propaganda goals.
Napoleonic propaganda surVIved his exile to Saint Helena.
las cases, who was with napoleon in exile, published the memorial of Saint Helena in 1822, creating a legend of napoleon as a liberal, VIsionary proponent of European unification, deposed by reactionary elements of the ancien régime.
napoleon remained a central figure in the romantic art and literature of the 1820s and 1830s.
the Napoleonic legend played a key role in collective political defiance of the bourbon restoration monarchy in 1815 1830.
people from different walks of life and areas of France, particularly Napoleonic veterans, drew on the Napoleonic legacy and its connections with the ideals of the 1789 Revolution.
the defiance manifested itself in seditious materials, displaying the tricolour and rosettes.
there were also subversive actiVIties celebrating anniversaries of napoleon's life and reign and disrupting royal celebrations.
bell sees the return of napoleon's remains to France in 1840 as an attempt by louis-phillipe to prop up his unpopular regime by associating it with napoleon, and that the regime of napoleon III was only possible due to the continued resonance of the Napoleonic legend.
venita datta argues that following the collapse of militaristic boulangism in the late 1880s, the Napoleonic legend was divorced from party politics and reVIved in popular culture.
writers and critics of the belle époque exploited the Napoleonic legend for diverse political and cultural ends.
in the 21st century, napoleon appears regularly in popular fiction, drama and advertising.
napoleon and his era remain major topics of historical research with a sharp increase in historical books, articles and symposia during the bicentenary years of 1999 to 2015.
napoleon was responsible for spreading many of the values of the French Revolution to other countries, especially through the Napoleonic code.
after the fall of napoleon, it continued to influence the law in western Europe and other parts of the world including latin america, the dominican Republic, Louisiana and quebec.
napoleon's regime abolished remnants of feudalism in the lands he conquered and in his satellite states.
he liberalized property laws, ended seigneurial dues, abolished the guild of merchants and craftsmen to facilitate entrepreneurship, legalized divorce, closed the jewish ghettos and ended the inquisition.
the power of church courts and religious authority was sharply reduced and equality under the law was proclaimed for all men.
napoleon reorganized what had been the holy roman empire, made up of about three hundred kleinstaaterei, into a more streamlined forty-state confederation of the Rhine; this helped promote the german confederation and the unification of Germany in 1871, as it sparked a new wave of german nationalism that opposed the French intervention.
the movement toward Italian unification was similarly sparked by Napoleonic rule.
these changes contributed to the development of nationalism and the nation state.
the Napoleonic invasion of Spain and ousting of the Spanish bourbon monarchy had a significant impact on Spanish america.
many local elites sought to rule in the name of Ferdinand VIi of Spain, whom they considered the legitimate monarch.
napoleon indirectly began the process of latin american independence When the power vacuum was filled by local political leaders such as simón bolívar and josé de san martín.
such leaders embraced nationalistic sentiments influenced by French nationalism and led successful independence movements in latin america.
napoleon's reputation is Generally favourable in Poland which is the only country in the world to evoke him in its national anthem.
napoleon married joséphine in 1796, but the marriage produced no children.
in 1806, he adopted his step-son, eugène de Beauharnais (1781 1824), and his second cousin, stéphanie de Beauharnais (1789 1860), and arranged dynastic marriages for them.
napoleon's marriage to Marie Louise produced one child, napoleon Francis Joseph Charles (1811 1832), known from birth as the king of rome.
When napoleon abdicated in 1815 he named his son his successor as napoleon ii, but the allies refused to recognize him.
he was awarded the title of the duke of reichstadt in 1818 and died of tuberculosis aged 21, with no children.
napoleon acknowledged one illegitimate son: Charles léon (1806 1881) by eléonore denuelle de la plaigne.
alexandre colonna-walewski (1810 1868), the son of his polish mistress maria Walewska, was also widely known to be his child, as dna eVIdence has confirmed.
he May have had further illegitimate offspring.
napoleon Bonaparte stirs the emotions.
some find him heroic and regard his opponents as reactionary and unimaginative.
others think him mad with ambition and responsible for many of the sins of his era.
between these extremes there are those who find some aspects of the man admirable and others regrettable.
this is an examination of napoleon to determine how his actions and achievements measure up against the opinion of his detractors.
one of the accusations often leveled against napoleon is that he 'betrayed' the higher ideals of the French Revolution, retarding democratic progress in both France and Europe.
people making this argument apparently forget that the Revolution had its truly dark side and fell a good deal short of being an ideal society.
life was not more secure nor more prosperous.
France was not friendlier to Europe under the committee of public safety or the directory than it proved to be under the consulate or empire.
napoleon's initial achievements are a remarkable compromise with Revolutionary ideals and the requirements of a country bled white by the excesses of failed governments.
he signed the Peace of Amiens, which brought an end to years of war.
his enthusiastic participation in and endorsement of the codification of law embodied and certified the social Revolution.
he negotiated the Concordat and made Peace with the catholic church, but on Revolutionary terms, making it subordinate to the state, and the dominant faith of the French once again became a steadying and unifying influence on daily life.
yet given his singular opportunities, it is often said that he might have gone further and established a truly democratic state, a goal one Could argue went against political trends both within France and on the continent.
democracies were more conceptual than actual in the era, with the american experiment still in its infancy, and it might be argued that the VIolence of the preVIous decade had made the French population indifferent to the VIrtues of democracy.
outside France, it might also be argued that whether France was a totalitarian state or a democracy made little difference to her enemies.
if there was a perceived difference, perhaps a democracy might have caused more fear among the reactionary states than the ciVIl monarchy that actually came into being.
if this was the case, perhaps Bonaparte acted more out of pragmatism than idealism, attempting to solve foreign and domestic problems by establishing a stable government that was theoretically more acceptable to everyone.
he might have reasonably imagined that any man who Could achieve that successful transition deserved the reins of power.
Bonaparte is also frequently held responsible for the 'Napoleonic' wars and seen as a prime cause of them.
it is argued that he should have prevented those wars with better statecraft and conVInced the rest of Europe that France's new and ideologically threatening government was not an enemy.
whenever that policy failed, he should have won wars he Could not avoid and negotiated generous treaties, making friends of former enemies, showing the world that diplomacy and not warfare was the proper tool of statesmen.
yet Could any one man, acting unilaterally, defy centuries of rivalry and aggression to end the state of recurrent war in Europe? hardly a decade seemed to pass without one conflict or another in the preVIous two centuries.
would any leader of the day have even considered a durable Peace to be a real possibility, or is this more of a modern-day concept?
Bonaparte's use of war to defend and enrich the state of France was anything but unique, excepting that it was consistently successful, something the bourbons might have enVIed him.
if waging war is now considered strictly a policy of last resort and inherently wasteful, there doesn't seem to be a major player of napoleon's day who was above employing it to achieve their aims.
it May be fair to accuse Bonaparte of failing to create a durable Peace, but a study of his contemporaries and their policies would likely prove there were other guilty parties.
napoleon Bonaparte is often described by his detractors as a corrupt indiVIdual, bereft of morality, one who Could not see that his actions were dangerous, damaging, and the cause of Great anguish.
his successes in war made him rely on war as an instrument of policy, and he was insensitive to its human cost.
the execution of d'enghien was criminal, the imprisonment of the pope immoral, and napoleon's quest for total dominance a reflection of his warped psyche.
lord acton's adage 'power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely' has come to be permanently identified with Bonaparte as its foremost example of veracity.
but was Bonaparte's theoretical depraVIty a thing apart from his contemporaries? the assumption seems to be that it must have been, or else we would not make so much of it, yet how does this assertion hold up When Bonaparte is compared to other monarchs or society as a whole? Bonaparte shouldn't be judged on a moral scale comparing him to a theoretical ideal, but against his contemporaries, people born in his day and liVIng in his world.
comparisons of corruption are not hard to find.
britain financed and facilitated an assassination attempt on the the first consul.
tsar Alexander was implicated in the murder of his father.
in america, washington and jefferson owned slaves, and jefferson used ethnic cleansing to facilitate territorial expansion.
some of these incidents were natural enough in their day, although we now find them indefensible.
if Bonaparte was corrupt, he certainly had some notable company.
napoleon is often described as being ruled by a gigantic ego.
his lust for power, the coup d'etat Brumaire, his dismissal of democracy and the establishment of empire, are all seen as benchmarks of rampant ambition.
comparisons with contemporary leaders are regarded as irrelevant or even futile, presumably because Bonaparte is assumed to have been Greater than they, and presented with unique opportunities, all squandered on a quest for personal aggrandizement.
but if Bonaparte was indeed unique, and expected to accomplish deeds other men Could only dream of, would he not need an ego as large as his ambitions? achieVIng democracy in France and Peace for Europe is not a task for a modest man, so was napoleon's ambition simply a sin because it pursued goals we disapprove of, or that it pursued those goals using methods we disapprove of?
as the leader of a totalitarian state, napoleon made his own ambitions synonymous with those of France.
with few abridgements to power, he was able to act as he saw fit, and is judged accordingly.
yet almost all the European states reflected the egos of their monarchs, and few of them were intent on fostering democracy, limiting their borders, or improVIng ciVIl rights.
rather, each used their position to satisfy their ambitions, expand their borders, and increase their control over the nobility and populace.
there was little respect for minor states like those in Italy or Poland and the borders were redrawn after each conflict.
Bonaparte, in this company, seems to be regarded as megalomaniacal largely because he Did not inherit his position, but achieved it by aggressively pursuing the same agenda as those born to power and doing so more effectively.
it seems that absolutists May be forgiven their sins for being born to them, but parvenus are guilty for haVIng freely chosen them.
of course, Bonaparte was anything but pure, anything but modest, anything but democratic, and anything but a Peacemaker.
but in the end, who else that sat on a throne in Europe Could claim to be? should he be assailed for sins that were so sadly common? what is it about napoleon Bonaparte that makes him the object of such unique criticism? is it because he holds a special place in our imaginations, a place that we hope would be an example of our better selves? was his genius, good fortune, and opportunity enough to condemn him, not so much for what he Did, but what he failed to do? in the end is our Greatest disappointment in Bonaparte simply that he was merely human?
napoleon was indirectly responsible for spreading many of the ideals of the French Revolution throughout Europe.
although he never openly espoused Revolutionary tenets his empire and government was in many ways the liVIng embodiment of those ideals.
the three main areas that he had a significant impact were indiVIdualism, secularism, and nationalism.
indiVIdualism: prior to the French Revolution, class or social status was more important in French society and government than the indiVIdual.
merit and ability was subordinated to your family status and whether you were of the noble class.
the Revolution Did away with this and stated that all indiVIduals were equal in the eyes of the government.
how one advanced was based on merit rather than who one's ancestors were.
napoleon enshrined this with a new aristocracy based on merit.
those who performed and contributed were rewarded.
the new princes, dukes, and barons were men who earned their titles, most often on the battlefield.
a reVIew of his marshals would show that they came from all walks of life, including a barrel maker, a cabin boy, a former sergeant, and a minor noble.
in addition to this, he created he legion of honor to recognize those who deeds merited it.
secularism: the French Revolution placed the state above the church, an extremely Revolutionary concept.
the Revolution even went as far to ban organized religion.
napoleon was willing to heal the rift between the catholic church and the government, but only if the church Did not meddle in state affairs.
the church lost its right to run schools, and to have special taxes and priVIleges, however napoleon Did re-open the churches and was tolerant of all religions.
he even inVIted the pope Pius VIi to his coronation to crown him the new emperor of France.
napoleon's true feelings on his relationship with the church were demonstrated by his actions at the coronation.
When the pope went to place the crown on napoleon's head, napoleon took the crown out of the pope's hands and crowned himself.
thus showing that he believed that since he embodied the state, the pope had no legitimate right to crown him for in the new France the state was not subordinate to the church.
Jacobin nationalism: prior to the Revolution, the state was symbolized by the monarch and the loyalty of the people was to ruler not to the state.
the Revolution made the government the sovereign of the people.
it was to this government the people owed their loyalties.
'national interests transcend dynastic and all other interests.
citizens are put in national armies and national schools.
national flag and anthem supplant royal ensign and hymn'.
napoleon built his empire based on these concepts.
it was his soldiers who ousted the old dynasties throughout Europe and gave rise to both german and Italian nationalism that eventually unified the numerous minor kingdoms, states, and principalities into the respective nations of Germany and Italy.
napoleon failed to conquer Russia in 1812 for several reasons: faulty logistics, poor discipline, disease, and not the least, the weather.
napoleon's method of warfare was based on rapid concentration of his forces at a key place to destroy his enemy.
this boiled down to moVIng his men as fast as possible to the place they were needed the most.
to do this napoleon would advance his army along several avenues and converging them only When necessary.
the slowest part of any army at the time was the supply trains.
while a soldier Could March 15 - 20 miles a day, a supply wagon was Generally limited to about 10 - 12 miles a day.
to avoid being slowed down by the trains, napoleon insisted that his troops live as much as possible off the land.
the success of napoleon time after time in central Europe against the Prussians and the Austrians proved that his method of warfare worked.
however for it to work, the terrain must co-operate.
there must be a good road network for his army to advance along several axes and an agricultural base capable of supporting the foraging soldiers.
in 1812, napoleon invaded Russia with about 600,000 men and over 50,000 horses.
his plan was to bring the war to a conclusion within twenty days by forcing the Russians to fight a major battle.
just in case his plans were off, he had his supply wagons carry 30 days of food.
reality was a bit different.
napoleon found, as the germans found in 1941, that Russia had a very poor road network.
thus he was forced to advance along a very narrow front.
even though he allowed for a larger supply train than usual, food was to be supplemented by whatever the soldiers Could forage along the way.
but this was a faulty plan.
in addition to poor roads, the agricultural base was extremely poor and Could not support the numbers of soldiers that would be liVIng off the land.
since these 600,000 men were basically using the same roads, the first troops to pass by got the best food that Could easily be foraged.
the second troops to go by got less, etc.
if you were at the rear, of course there would be little available.
the Russians made the problem worse by adopting a scorched earth policy of destroying everything possible as they retreated before the French.
as time went by, soldiers began to straggle, due to haVIng to forage further away from the roads for food and weakness from lack of food.
the situation was just as bad for the horses.
grazing along the road or in a meadow was not adequate to maintain a healthy horse.
their food had to be supplemented with fodder.
the further the army went into Russia, the less fodder was available.
even the grass began to be thinned out, for like food the first horses had the best grazing, and those bringing up the rear had it the worse.
by the end of the first month, over 10,000 horses had died!
soldiers weakened by poor diets and fatigue are susceptible to disease.
typhus was rampant among the troops due to infestations of lice.
additionally, the poor food, combined with bad water, and camping on sites where tens of thousands bivouacked before (and thus contaminated the water and area with feces) made intestinal ailments such as diarrhea and dysentery common.
by the time napoleon had reached Moscow, three months later, over 200,000 of his soldiers were dead or hospitalized due to disease and exhaustion.
poor discipline was another major problem.
troops had to forage to surVIve.
the deeper they went into Russia the further they had to go each day to find food.
commanders lost control of their troops as many soldiers' only concern became finding food and just disappeared.
these soldiers Did not necessarily die, but form a uncontrollable mass bringing up the rear.
as months went by, units cease to exist, except in name only.
this became especially true during the retreat in the late fall.
much of the army was soon a mob, with little cohesion and no effectiveness.
this in itself would not be too Great of a detriment, except for the impact on those units that were still intact.
there were several cases during the retreat where mobs of soldiers broke into the few warehouses that contained supplies and destroyed more than they ate and leaVIng little or nothing for those fighting in the rear guard.
the worse case of this was in smolensk.
at a major warehouse bureaucrats insisted that the soldiers must be with their units before they would be issued food.
the troops couldn't handle this stupidity and rioted, demolishing the warehouse and much of the food that was stored there.
in another case, at the crossing of the berezina, thousands of soldiers in these mobs panicked When they were attacked by the Russians.
in their desperate attempt to cross the bridge it broke, and at least 10,000 - 20,000 soldiers died or were captured.
the final factor was the weather.
first it was too hot making it a dry, dusty March to Moscow.
then When the retreat began, it was too cold at first.
this was a bone-chilling well below zero cold that few had experienced before.
first to die were the weak who, too exhausted to walk, laid down and died.
as the little food supplies they had ran out, the strong got weaker and they too began to die.
but then the weather changed.
there was a warm spell which thawed the frozen roads slowing down the March even more.
roads that were heaVIly rutted, but solid soon were quagmires of mud.
streams that were once frozen were quick moVIng and obstacles that had to be overcome.
rivers that Could have been crossed without bridges now needed bridges.
all of which took precious time and energy, something the army Did not have.
then once again the weather took a turn for the worse this time far colder than before.
thousands died in their sleep overcome by exhaustion and exposure.
by the time the army crossed into Poland in early December, less than 100,000 exhausted, tattered soldiers remained of the 600,000 proud soldiers who crossed the nieman five months before.