Napoleon

Equestrian statue representing Napoleon.

Napoleon Bonaparte (15 August 1769 - 5 May 1821) was a French general and statesman. He led France as First Consul and later as Emperor of the French from 1799 to 1815, except for a short period of royalist return in 1814.

He is widely known for his successful military campaigns against others European coalitions paid by the United Kingdom in order to restore the monarchy. France became the main power of Europe during his reign on continental Europe, from Rome to Berlin or from Madrid to Moscow. His Napoleonic Code remains the bases of the laws in many countries in the world.

He was exiled in 1814 but returned to France for one hundred days. His final defeat of Waterloo was the end of the French Empire. He was sent to Saint-Helena, in the Atlantic ocean where he died, maybe because of poison.

Biography

Education

There, Napoleon is sixteen years old.

Napoleon Bonaparte was born in Corsica, the son of Charles Bonaparte, a lawyer, and his wife, Letizia Molinelo. His family was of small local nobility. He had seven brothers and sisters. He studied in France, at the royal military schools of Brienne and Paris. He later became second lieutenant in the artillery. But since he didn't have the cultural background and the manners, he remained a little military. He was often absent during his service in Auxonne.

French Revolution

Napoleon crowned himself Emperor of the French in the Cathedral of Nôtre-Dame de Paris on December 2, 1804.

He was very enthusiastic when the French Revolution came. He might have considered that he could get chances to increase his conditions. He was engaged against the royalists. He was also connected to the brother of Maximilien de Robespierre, but he was not concerned by investigations after his fall and the end of the Terror, and also of Paul Barras. He married the mistress of Barras in 1796. He was send in Italy by the Directory and established a sister republic. He negotiated with the foreign authorities such as Austria. He also consolidated his stature of a victorious general by propaganda with his own newspaper Le Courrier de l'Armée d'Italie.

Since his popularity made the Directory afraid, they decided to send him in Egypt, far away from France, in order to cut the road of the British to India. He got to fight against the local forces coming from the Ottoman Empire. But the complications of his mission became a dilemma, and he left in August. He arrived in October and was chosen by Sieyès to be the military force of his coup d'état against the Directory. Sieyès wanted to rewrite the constitution to give more power to the executive part.

18 brumaire coup d'Etat (9 November 1799)

First Consul of France (1799-1804)

Emperor of the French (1804-1814)

The Hundred Days and Waterloo (1815)

Final years at Saint-Helena

Legacy

History Portal — All articles about history.