Napoleon Bonaparte

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) was a French General and Emperor of France. He was one of the greatest military strategist and commander in history. He is also France’s greatest hero, who saved the French First Republic that had arisen from the French Revolution by defeating the Austrian forces. Under his command, the French Army’s cavalry returned as an important formation as the 18th century operational mobility underwent significant change. Napoleon was regarded as a genius in the operational art of war.

Napoleon Bonaparte was born in Ajaccio, Corsica, on August 15, 1769, to Carlo Buonaparte and Letizia Ramolino. He was the second of eight children. When he was ten years old, Napoleon left the island of Corsica for the mainland France to study French at a religious school in Autun. Then, he started his military education at Brienne military academy and later in 1784 at the Military School (Ecole Militaire) in Paris. Napoleon was a withdrawn and aloof student who spoke French with a strong Corsican accent. He was proficient at mathematics, science, history, and geography. In September 1785, he graduated and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in La Fere artillery regiment.

When the French Revolution broke out, he spent the first years in Corsica and supported the revolutionary Jacobin faction, being raised to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and command over a battalion of volunteers. He led a riot against a royalist French army in Corsica, convincing military authorities in Paris to promote him to captain in July 1792. Because of his military skills, Napoleon was rapidly promoted to higher ranks. In 1796, he was made commander of the French army in Italy, where he forced Austria and its allies to make peace. In 1798, during the Egyptian campaign, Napoleon conquered Ottoman-ruled Egypt in an attempt to strike at British trade routes with India. He was stranded when his fleet was destroyed by the British at the Battle of the Nile. By this time, France faced a new coalition composed of Britain, Austria, and Russia.

A political crisis in Paris forced Napoleon to return to France where he overthrew the Directory in a coup d’etat in November 1799 and became First Consul. In 1800, he defeated the Austrians at Marengo and negotiated a general European peace which established French power on the continent. In 1802, he was made consul for life and two years later, he was crowned Emperor of France. He oversaw the centralization of government, the creation of the Bank of France, the reinstatement of Roman Catholicism as the state religion and law reform with the Code Napoleon.

In 1803, Britain resumed war with France, later joined by Russia and Austria. Britain inflicted a naval defeat on the French at Trafalgar (1805) so Napoleon abandoned plans to invade England and turned on the Austro-Russian forces, defeating them at Austerlitz later the same year. He gained much new territory, including annexation of Prussian lands which ostensibly gave him control of Europe. The Holy Roman Empire was dissolved, Holland and Westphalia created, and over the next five years, Napoleon’s relatives and loyalists were installed as leaders in Holland, Westphalia, Italy, Naples, Spain and Sweden. In 1810, he had his childless marriage to Josephine de Beauharnais declared void to be able to marry the daughter of the Austrian emperor in the hope of having an heir. A son, Napoleon, was born a year later.

The Peninsular War against Spain began in 1808 when his army invaded the Iberian Peninsula to dethrone Maria I of Portugal. Costly French defeats over the next five years drained French military resources there. Also Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812 resulted in a disastrous retreat, as he was defeated at the Battle of Leipzig in 1813 by the coalition armies of four nations. Thus, the tide of war started to turn against him, in favor of the allies and in March 1814, Paris fell. As a result, Napoleon was forced to abdicate as an emperor and to go into exile on the Mediterranean island of Elba. However, in March 1815 he escaped and the French forces sent to take him prisoner joined him instead, marched on the French capital.

After organizing his army, he left Paris to confront the British Army, under the Duke of Wellington, and the Prussians on the plains of Waterloo. On June 18, 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte was thoroughly defeated at the Battle of Waterloo, ending his one hundred-day second reign. He was imprisoned on the remote Atlantic island of Saint Helena, where he died of stomach cancer, or perhaps of slow arsenic poisoning over a period of time, on May 5, 1821.

Below, Napoleon Bonaparte when he was a young General. Then, he was thin, in good shape, and full ambitions.