Synopsis
Military general and first emperor of France, Napoleon
Bonaparte was born on August 15, 1769, in Ajaccio, Corsica. One of the
most celebrated leaders in the history of the West, he revolutionized
military organization and training, sponsored Napoleonic Code,
reorganized education and established the long-lived Concordat with the
papacy. He died on May 5, 1821, on St. Helena Island.
Early Years
Considered one of the world's greatest military leaders,
Napoleon Buonaparte was born August 15, 1769, in Ajaccio, Corsica. He
was the fourth, and second surviving, child of Carlo Buonaparte, a
lawyer, and his wife, Letizia Ramolino.
At the time around Napoleon's birth Corsica's occupation by the
French had drawn considerable local resistance. Carlo Buonaparte had at
first supported the nationalists siding with their leader, Pasquale
Paoli. But after Paoli was forced to flee the island, Carlo switched his
allegiance to the French. After doing so he was appointed assessor of
the judicial district of Ajaccio in 1771, a plush job that eventually
enabled him to enroll his two sons, Joseph and Napoleon, in France's
College d'Autun.
Eventually, Napoleon ended up at the military college of Brienne, where
he studied for five years, before moving on to the military academy in
Paris. In 1785, while Napoleon was at the academy, his father died of
stomach cancer. This propelled Napoleon to take the reins as the head of
the family. Graduating early from the military academy, Napoleon, now
second lieutenant of artillery, returned to Corsica in 1786.
Back home Napoleon got behind the Corsican resistance to the French
occupation, siding with his father's former ally, Pasquale Paoli. But
the two soon had a falling-out, and when a civil war in Corsica began in
April 1793, Napoleon, now an enemy of Paoli, and his family relocated
to France, where they assumed the French version of their name:
Bonaparte.
Rise To Power
For Napoleon, the return to France meant a return to service
with the French military. Upon rejoining his regiment at Nice in June
1793, the young leader quickly showed his support for the Jacobins, a
far-left political movement and the most well-known and popular
political club from the French Revolution.
It had certainly been a tumultuous few years for France and its
citizens. The country was declared a republic in 1792, three years after
the Revolution had begun, and the following year King Louis VXI was
executed.
Ultimately, these acts led to the rise of Maximilien Robespierre and
what became, essentially, the dictatorship of the Committee of Public
Safety. The years of 1793 and 1794 came to be known as the Reign of
Terror, in which many as 40,000 people were killed. Eventually the
Jacobins fell from power and Robespierre was executed. In 1795 the
Directory took control of the country, a power it would it assume until
1799.
All of this turmoil created opportunities for ambitious military
leaders like Napoleon. After falling out of favor with Robespierre, he
came under the good graces of the Directory in 1795 after he saved the
government from counter-revolutionary forces. For his efforts, Napoleon
was soon named commander of the Army of the Interior. In addition he was
a trusted advisor to the Directory on military matters.
When in 1796 France attacked Austria, Napoleon took the helm of the Army of Italy, a post he'd been coveting. The army, just 30,000 strong, disgruntled and underfed, was soon turned
around by the young military commander. Under his direction the rebuilt
army won numerous crucial victories against the Austrians, greatly
expanded the French empire and helped make Napoleon the military's
brightest star.
His national profile was enhanced by his marriage to Joséphine Tascher de La Pagerie,
widow of General Alexandre de Beauharnais (guillotined during the
Reign of Terror) and the mother of two children. The two were married in
a civil ceremony on March 9, 1796.
squashing an internal threat by the royalists, who wished to
return France to a monarchy, Napoleon was on the move again, this time
to the Middle East to undermine Great Britain's empire by occupying
Egypt and disrupting English trade routes to India.
But his military campaign proved disastrous. On August 1, Admiral
Horatio Nelson's fleet in the Battle of the Nile decimated his forces.
Napoleon's image was greatly harmed by the loss, and in a show of
newfound confidence against the commander, Britain, Austria, Russia and
Turkey formed a new coalition against France. In the spring of 1799,
French armies were defeated in Italy, forcing France to give up much of
the peninsula.
Inside France itself, unrest continued to ensue, and in June of 1799 a
coup resulted in the Jacobins taking control of the Directory. In
October, Napoleon returned to France. Working with one of the new
directors, Emmanuel Sieyes, he hatched plans for a second coup that
would place the two men, and another, Pierre-Roger Ducos, atop a new
government, called the Consulate.
First Consul
Napoleon's great political skills soon led to a new
constitution that created the position of First Consul, which amounted
to nothing less than a dictatorship. Under the new guidelines the first
consul was permitted to appoint ministers, generals, civil servants,
magistrates and even members of the legislative assemblies. Napoleon
would of course be the one who would fulfill the first consul's duties,
and in February 1800 the new constitution was easily accepted.
Under his direction Napoleon turned his reforms to other areas of the
country, including its economy, legal system and education, and even
the Church, as he reinstated Roman Catholicism as the state religion. He
also instituted the Napoleonic Code, which forbade privileges based on
birth, allowed freedom of religion and stated that government jobs must
be given to the most qualified. Internationally, he negotiated a
European peace.
Napoleon's reforms proved popular. In 1802 he was elected consul for life, and two years later he was elected emperor of France.
More War
Napoleon's negotiated peace with Europe lasted just three
years. In 1803 Britain again returned to war with France, followed by
Russia and Austria. The British registered an important naval victory
against Napoleon in 1805 at Trafalgar, which led Napoleon to scrap his
plans to invade England. Instead he set his sights on Austria and
Russia, and beat back both militaries in Austerlitz.
Other victories soon followed, allowing Napoleon to greatly expand
the French empire, paving the way for loyalists to his government to be
installed in Holland, Italy, Naples, Sweden, Spain and Westphalia.
Changes were also afoot in Napoleon's personal life. In 1810 he
arranged for the nullification of his marriage to Joséphine, who was
unable to give him a son, so that he could marry Marie-Louise, the
18-year-old daughter of the emperor of Austria. The couple had a son,
Napoleon II (a.k.a. the King of Rome) on March 20, 1811.
Napoleon's military success, however, soon gave way to broader
defeats, beginning in 1810, when France suffered a string of losses that
tapped the country's military budget. In 1812 France was devastated
when its invasion of Russia turned out to be a colossal failure in which
scores of soldiers in Napoleon's Grand Army were killed or badly
wounded. Out of an original fighting force of some 600,000 men, just
10,000 soldiers were still fit for battle.
News of the defeat reinvigorated Napoleon's enemies, both inside and
outside of France. A failed coup was attempted while Napoleon led his
charge against Russia, while the British began to advance through French
territories.
With international pressure mounting and his government lacking the
resources to fight back against his enemies, Napoleon surrendered to
allied forces on March 30, 1814. He went into exile on the island of
Elba.
Later Years
On June 22, 1815, he abdicated his powers. In an effort to
prolong his dynasty, Napoleon pushed to have his young son, Napoleon II,
named emperor, but the coalition rejected the offer. Additionally,
fearing a repeat of his earlier return from exile, the British
government sent him to the remote island of St. Helena in the southern
Atlantic.
For the most part Napoleon was free to do as he pleased at his new
home. He had leisurely mornings, wrote often and read a lot. But the
routine of life soon got to him, and he often shut himself indoors.
His health began to deteriorate, and by 1817 he showed the early
signs of a stomach ulcer or possibly cancer. By early 1821 he was
bedridden and growing weaker by the day. In April of that year he
dictated his last will:" I wish my ashes to rest on the banks of the
Seine, in the midst of that French people which I have loved so much. I
die before my time, killed by the English oligarchy and its hired
assassins."
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