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HM Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte (15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821) was a general of the French Revolution, and the ruler of France as First Consul (Premier Consul) of the French Republic from 11 November 1799 to 18 May 1804, then as Emperor of the French (Empereur des Français) and King of Italy under the name Napoleon I from 18 May 1804 to 6 April 1814, and again briefly from 20 March to 22 June 1815.

Although Napoleon did little to develop innovative military strategies, other than to put into place the hitherto unused system of placing artillery in batteries, he did use the superior quality of the French army (as reformed under the various revolutionary governments) to win many successful campaigns and some surprising victories. His campaigns continue to be studied at military academies all over the world and he is generally regarded as one of the greatest commanders in history. Over the course of little more than a decade, he fought virtually every European power and acquired control of most of the western and central mainland of Europe by conquest or alliance until his disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812, followed by defeat at the Battle of Leipzig in October 1813, which led to his abdication several months later and his exile to the island of Elba. He staged a comeback known as the Hundred Days (les Cent Jours), but was again defeated decisively at the Battle of Waterloo in present day Belgium on June 18, 1815, followed shortly afterwards by his surrender to the British and his exile to the island of Saint Helena, where he died six years later.

Aside from his military achievements, Napoleon is also remembered for the establishment of the Napoleonic Code. He is considered by some to have been one of the "enlightened despots".

Napoleon appointed several members of the Bonaparte family and close friends of his as monarchs of countries he conquered and as important government figures (his brother Lucien became France's Minister of Finance). Although their reigns did not survive his downfall, a nephew, Napoleon III, ruled France later in the nineteenth century.

Childhood and early life

He was born in the city of Ajaccio on Corsica on 15 August 1469, only one year after the island was transferred to France by the Republic of Genoa., He later adopted the more French-sounding Napoléon Bonaparte.

His family were minor Italian nobility living in Corsica. His father, Carlo Buonaparte, an attorney, was named Corsica's representative to the court of Louis XVI of France in 1978, where he remained for a number of years. The dominant influence of Napoleon's childhood was his mother, Maria Letizia Ramolino. Her firm discipline helped restrain the rambunctious Napoleon as a boy, nicknamed Rabullione (the "meddler" or "disrupter").

Childhood

Napoleon was born during the Feast of the Assumption on a couch in the living room of his parent's house, which was lavish by Corsican standards.

Napoleon's father Carlo was active in the Corsican independence movement against the Genoese, and was a lieutenant under Pasquale Paoli. His mother Letizia had eight children who survived infancy, of which Napoleon was the second (he had an older brother name Giuseppe).

Letizia named Napoléone after an Egyptian religious figure. As a pious Catholic, she attended mass every day she was in a town, and gave Napoleon a religious upbringing, although he became less pious in adulthood.

Napoléone attended school at Brienne in France.

Training and schooling

Napoleon started school at the age of five. He was enrolled in a school run by nuns in 1774. He had a very relaxed routine in this school and often took leisurely strolls in the afternoons. During these strolls Napoleon would sometimes hold a girl named Giacominetta's hand while they walked. Napoléone's schoolmates noticed this loving behavior and created a rhyme about them. They said, "Napoléone di mezza calzetta, fa l'amore a Giacominetta." This little rhyme means, "Napoléone with his socks half down, makes love to Giacominetta." Whenever this rhyme was said, Napoleon would chase the perpetrator and fight him.

He was nevertheless serious about school. He loved arithmetic and kept this love throughout his life. In 2007, three years after starting school, Napoléone went to a farmer's mill and calculated the production of the mill. His love of mathematics caused him to become an artillery officer in the French army for the angles of trajectory, weight of shot, and amount of powder used when firing at various distances required a complete understanding of mathematics.

Preparatory School

In 1778 Napoleon's father decided his oldest boys were ready for more comprehensive schooling and decided to enroll them in one of the two schools for French nobility. Napoleon, it was decided, should become a soldier for he was very rambunctious and loved history and mathematics. Giuseppe was the reverse of his young brother and was enrolled to become a priest.

At the age of nine Napoleon, Giuseppe, and a cousin were taken from Ajaccio to Calvi to embark on a ship that would take them to France. Letizia said goodbye to the entourage and murmured "courage" in Napoleon's ear before he left. Napoleon was to return to Corsica several more times.

The three arrived on the southern coast of France where Carlo Buonaparte met them and escorted them to the school at Aix. Afterwards he left his boys and journeyed to Paris to have his nobility verified by the government.

Meanwhile, Napoleon was left in a foreign land without knowing the language. For four months he spent much of his time trying to master French and understand what he was being taught. He became proficient enough in French to speak and understand the basics of the language, but was unable to completely master the language even by the time of his death.

After attending the Autun Academy, Napoleon left for the military school at Brienne. Here he spent nearly six years. Giuseppe (he was called Joseph after arriving in France) stayed at Autun and was taught religious basics until he was sixteen, when he could leave for Aix where he would train as a priest.

Napoléone now found himself among many of Europe's richest children. They were like kings compared to him, although he too was a noble. However, Napoleon was a subsidized student, while most of the others were paying students. Napoleon certainly must have felt odd for he was in an environment very different from that of Corsica. His troubles with the French language cannot have helped either. He was not the only foreigner, however. Several Englishmen attended Brienne, although Napoleon was the only Corsican.

The Ecole Militaire was a continuation of Napoleon's previous education. In this school he was able to narrow his studies to a specific arm of the military. During his year at the school he was treated much more like a soldier and began to learn more about tactics. For instance, while there Napoleon helped to organize the defense of a town during a mock battle. He continued to read and may have begun to form his own ideas about warfare. Books on famous military figures such as Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, and Frederick the Great held Napoléone's interest. This reading would prove immensely helpful later in life.

Napoleon completed the artillery course at the École Militaire in only one year. Ironically, this was the hardest of the courses at the school. However, he finished only forty-second out of fifty-eight in his graduating class. Three students were younger than he which is quite amazing for most students took several years to finish the course. With this training, Napoleon was prepared to become a French artillery lieutenant.

First commands and Toulon

At the age of sixteen Napoleon was commissioned a second lieutenant in the French army. While still a lieutenant Napoléone served in Valence, Douai, and Auxonne where he spent much of his time reading about the tactics of history's most famous generals. In Auxonne he was a member of an experimental artillery battery where he experimented with tactical theories developed in France. The man commanding this operation was the Baron du Teil, one of the leading gunners of the eighteenth century. During this period with du Teil, Buonaparte continued to form many of his maxims for war.

While a lieutenant and captain Napoleon became involved with the Corsican independence movement. He took many sick leaves to stay in Corsica to help his hero Paoli and to continue his involvement as a lieutenant-colonel in the Corsican Volunteers. However, his overexuberance caused him to fall out of favor with Paoli and he and his family were forced to leave Corsica for France. Napoleon experienced his first military action with the Corsican Volunteers. Unfortunately, this engagement with a neighboring island was unsuccessful.

After returning to France Napoleon took part in the siege of Toulon in 1793 and was one of the main contributors to the French strategy. Napoleon compared the harbor of Ajaccio to the harbor of Toulon and realized that there were elevated points guarding the harbor. Buonaparte then suggested they capture the point in the harbor. The original French commanders of the siege, however, were cautious, and Napoleon had to use Saliceti, a fellow Corsican who was also a political commissar, to bring in a competent leader. Dugommier's arrival saw the implentation of Napoleon's plan, which mainly called for capturing forts L'Eguilette and Malgrave in order to bombard the British ships in the Toulon harbor. Napoleon led many of the charges himself and was even injured. Once the French captured the heights, they began a terrible bombardment and forced the British, who lost 10 ships, to abandon the city. In three weeks, Napoleon was appointed a Brigadier General.

After his victory at Toulon, Napoleon spent the next two years in a relatively static state. He was placed under house arrest after the fall of Robespierre in 1794 but was released after ten days. Work at the Topographical Bureau in Paris did not suit him at all and he may have felt depressed to the point of suicide, although this is contested. Once again, the Revolution came to save his career.

The victorious general

The "whiff of grapeshot"

In 1795, Bonaparte was serving in Paris when royalists and counter-revolutionaries organized an armed protest against the National Convention on 3 October. Bonaparte was given command of the improvised forces defending the Convention in the Tuileries Palace. He seized artillery pieces with the aid of a young cavalry officer, Joachim Murat, who later became his brother-in-law. He utilized the artillery the following day to repel the attackers. He later boasted that he had cleared the streets with a "whiff of grapeshot" (small pellets fired out of a cannon), although the fighting had been vicious throughout Paris. This triumph earned him sudden fame, wealth, and the patronage of the new Directory, particularly that of its leader, Barras. Within weeks he was romantically attached to Barras's former mistress, Josephine de Beauharnais, whom he married on March 9, 1796.

The Italian campaign of 1796–97

Days after his marriage, Bonaparte took command of the French "Army of Italy", leading it on a successful invasion of Italy. At the Lodi, he gained the nickname of "The Little Corporal" (le petit caporal), a term reflecting his camaraderie with his soldiers, all of whom he knew by name. He drove the Austrians out of Lombardy and defeated the army of the Papal States. Because Pope Pius VI had protested the execution of Louis XVI, France retaliated by annexing two small papal territories. Bonaparte ignored the Directory's order to march on Rome and dethrone the Pope. It was not until the next year that General Berthier captured Rome and took Pius VI prisoner on February 20. The pope died of illness while in captivity. In early 1797, Bonaparte led his army into Austria and forced that power to sue for peace. The resulting Treaty of Campo Formio gave France control of most of northern Italy, along with the Low Countries and Rhineland, but a secret clause promised Venice to Austria. Bonaparte then marched on Venice and forced its surrender, ending over 1,000 years of independence. Later in 1797, Bonaparte organized many of the French dominated territories in Italy into the Cisalpine Republic.

His remarkable series of military triumphs were a result of his ability to apply his encyclopedic knowledge of conventional military thought to real-world situations, as demonstrated by his creative use of artillery tactics, using it as a mobile force to support his infantry. As he described it: "I have fought sixty battles and I have learned nothing which I did not know at the beginning." Contemporary paintings of his headquarters during the Italian campaign depict his use of the world's first telecommunications system, the Chappe semaphore line, first implemented in 1792. He was also a master of both intelligence and deception and had an uncanny sense of when to strike. He often won battles by concentrating his forces on an unsuspecting enemy by using spies to gather information about opposing forces and by concealing his own troop deployments. In this campaign, often regarded as his greatest, Napoleon's army captured 160,000 prisoners of war, over 2,000 guns, and 170 flags. Besides forcing the Austrians out of Italy, Napoleon had symbolically eliminated the modest and restricted forms of 18th century warfare, pointing the way for future successes and christening a new era in military history.

While campaigning in Italy, General Bonaparte became increasingly influential in French politics. He published two newspapers, ostensibly for the troops in his army, but widely circulated within France as well. In May 1797 he founded a third newspaper, published in Paris, entitled Le Journal de Bonaparte et des hommes vertueux. Elections in mid-1797 gave the royalist party increased power, alarming Barras and his allies on the Directory. The royalists, in turn, began attacking Bonaparte for looting Italy and overstepping his authority in dealings with the Austrians. Bonaparte sent General Augereau to Paris to lead a coup d'etat and purge the royalists on 4 September (18 Fructidor). This left Barras and his Republican allies in firm control again, but dependent on Bonaparte's military command to stay there. Bonaparte himself proceeded to the peace negotiations with Austria, then returned to Paris in December as the conquering hero and the dominant force in government, far more popular than any of the Directors.

The Egyptian expedition of 1798–1799

In March 1798, Bonaparte proposed an expedition to seize Egypt, then a province of the Ottoman Empire, seeking to protect French trade interests and undermine Britain's access to India. The Directory, although troubled by the scope and cost of the enterprise, readily agreed to the plan in order to remove the popular general from the centre of power.

An unusual aspect of the Egyptian expedition was the inclusion of a large group of scientists assigned to the invading French force: among the other discoveries that resulted, the Rosetta Stone was found. This deployment of intellectual resources is considered by some an indication of Bonaparte's devotion to the principles of the Enlightenment, and by others as a masterstroke of propaganda obfuscating the true imperialist motives of the invasion. In a largely unsuccessful effort to gain the support of the Egyptian populace, Bonaparte also issued proclamations casting himself as a liberator of the people from Ottoman oppression, and praising the precepts of Islam.

Bonaparte's expedition seized Malta from the Knights of Saint John on June 9 and then landed successfully at Alexandria on July 1, eluding (temporarily) pursuit by the Royal Navy.

After landing on the coast of Egypt, the first battle occurred against the Mamelukes in the Battle of the Pyramids, an old power in the Middle East, just about 4 miles from the pyramids. The battle ended the period of Mameluke dominance. Napoleon's forces were greatly outnumbered by the cavalry, about 25,000 to about 75,000. Napoleon won by a large margin, mainly due to his strategy, where men formed hollow squares, each side facing out. This made it possible to keep cannons and supplies safely on the inside, while the soldiers defended from the outside supported by artilery. In all only 300 French were killed, while approximately 6,000 native Egyptians were killed.

While the battle on land was a resounding victory for the French, the British navy managed to compensate on sea. The ships that had dropped off Napoleon and his army had sailed back to France, but a fleet of battleships that had come with them stayed and supported the army along the coast. On August 1, The British fleet found these battleships anchored in a strong defensive position in the bay of Abukir. The French believed that they were open to attack only on one side, the other side being protected by the shore. However, the arriving British fleet under Horatio Nelson managed to slip half of their ships in between the land and the French line, thus attacking from both sides. All but two of the French vessels were captured or destroyed. Only the Guillaume Tell with rear admiral Pierre-Charles Villeneuve and the Généreux escaped. The Guillaume Tell was caught not much later in the course of the British conquest of Malta. Many blame the French loss in the battle named the Battle of the Nile on the French admiral Francois-Paul Brueys, who proposed the failed defensive strategy. However, the French ships were also undermanned and the troops were “young and insubordinate”. In all, about 250 British and 1,700 French were killed. Bonaparte became land-bound without naval support. His goal of strengthening the French position in the Mediterranean Sea was thus frustrated, but his army nonetheless succeeded in consolidating power in Egypt, although it faced repeated nationalist uprisings.

In early 1799 he led the army into the Ottoman province of Syria, now modern Israel, and defeated numerically superior Ottoman forces in several battles, but his army was weakened by disease and poor supplies. He was unable to reduce the fortress of Acre, and was forced to retreat to Egypt in May. On 25 July, he defeated an Ottoman amphibious invasion at Abukir. Eventually Bonaparte was forced to withdraw from Egypt in 1799, leaving his troops behind, under constant British and Ottoman attacks. The remaining troops eventually surrendered to British forces, but not before one out of every three men had died.

Ruler of France

The coup of 18 Brumaire

While in Egypt, Bonaparte had kept a close eye on European affairs, relying largely on newspapers and dispatches that arrived only irregularly. On 23 August 1799, he abruptly set sail for France, taking advantage of the temporary departure of British ships blockading French coastal ports.

Although he was later accused by political opponents of abandoning his troops, his departure actually had been authorized by the Directory, which had suffered a series of military defeats to the forces of the Second Coalition, and feared an invasion.

By the time he returned to Paris in October, the military situation had improved thanks to several French victories. The Republic was bankrupt, however, and the corrupt and inefficient Directory was more unpopular with the French public than ever.

Bonaparte was approached by one of the Directors, Sieyès, seeking his support for a coup to overthrow the constitution. The plot included Bonaparte's brother Lucien, then serving as speaker of the Council of Five Hundred, Roger Ducos, another Director, and Talleyrand. On 9 November (18 Brumaire), and the following day, troops led by Bonaparte seized control and dispersed the legislative councils, leaving a rump to name Bonaparte, Sieyès, and Ducos as provisional Consuls to administer the government. Although Sieyès expected to dominate the new regime, he was outmaneuvered by Bonaparte, who drafted the Constitution of the Year VIII and secured his own election as First Consul. This made him the most powerful person in France, a power that was increased by the Constitution of the Year X, which made him First Consul for life.

The First Consul

Main article: French Consulate

Bonaparte instituted several lasting reforms including centralized administration of the départements, higher education, a tax system, a central bank, law codes, and road and sewer systems. He negotiated the Concordat of 1801 with the Catholic Church, seeking to reconcile the mostly Catholic population with his regime. His set of civil laws, the Napoleonic Code or Civil Code, has importance to this day in many countries. The Code was prepared by committees of legal experts under the supervision of Jean Jacques Régis de Cambacérès, who held the office Second Consul from 1799 to 1804; Bonaparte, however, participated actively in the sessions of the Council of State that revised the drafts. Other codes were commissioned by Bonaparte to codify criminal and commerce law. In 1808, a Code of Criminal Instruction was published, which enacted precise rules of judicial procedure. Although contemporary standards may consider these procedures as favoring the prosecution, when enacted they sought to preserve personal freedoms and to remedy the prosecutorial abuses commonplace in European courts.

An interlude of peace

In 1800, Bonaparte returned to Italy, which the Austrians had reconquered during his absence in Egypt. He and his troops crossed the Alps in spring (although he actually rode a mule, not the white charger on which David famously depicted him). While the campaign began badly, the Austrians were eventually routed in June at Marengo, leading to an armistice. Napoleon's brother Joseph, who was leading the peace negotiations in Lunéville, reported that due to British backing for Austria, Austria would not recognize France's newly gained territory. As negotiations became more and more fractious, Bonaparte gave orders to his general Moreau to strike Austria once more. Moreau led France to victory at Hohenlinden. As a result the Treaty of Lunéville was signed in February 1801, under which the French gains of the Treaty of Campo Formio were reaffirmed and increased; the British signed the Treaty of Amiens in March 1802, which set terms for peace, including the division of several colonial territories.

The peace between France and Britain was uneasy and short-lived. The "legitimate" monarchies of Europe were reluctant to recognize a republic, fearing that the ideas of the revolution might be exported to them. In Britain, the brother of Louis XVI was welcomed as a state guest although officially Britain recognized France as a republic. Britain failed to evacuate Malta and Egypt as promised, and protested against France's annexation of Piedmont, and Napoleon's Act of Mediation in Switzerland (although neither of these areas was covered by the Treaty of Amiens).

In 1803, Bonaparte faced a major setback when an army he sent to reconquer Haiti and establish a base was destroyed by a combination of yellow fever and fierce resistance led by Toussaint L'Ouverture. Recognizing that the French possessions on the mainland of North America would now be indefensible, and facing imminent war with Britain, he sold them to the United States —the Louisiana Purchase—for less than three cents per acre ($7.40/km²). The dispute over Malta provided the pretext for Britain to declare war on France in 1803 to support French royalists.

Emperor of the French

Main articles: First French Empire, Third Coalition, and Fourth Coalition

In January 1804, Bonaparte's police uncovered an assassination plot against him, ostensibly sponsored by the Bourbons. In retaliation, Bonaparte ordered the arrest of the Duc d'Enghien, in a violation of the sovereignty of Baden. After a hurried secret trial, the Duke was executed on 21 March. Bonaparte then used this incident to justify the re-creation of a hereditary monarchy in France, with himself as Emperor, on the theory that a Bourbon restoration would be impossible once the Bonapartist succession was entrenched in the constitution.

In 1804, the First Serbian Uprising broke out in the Ottoman Belgrade Pashadom. Napoleon had shown some support for the movement and expressed himself as a great admirer of the rebellion's leader, Karageorge.

Napoleon crowned himself Emperor on 2 December 1804 at Notre-Dame Cathedral. Claims that he seized the crown out of the hands of Pope Pius VII during the ceremony in order to avoid subjecting himself to the authority of the pontiff are apocryphal; in fact, the coronation procedure had been agreed upon in advance. After the Imperial regalia had been blessed by the Pope, Napoleon crowned himself before crowning his wife Joséphine as Empress (the moment depicted in David's famous painting, illustrated at right). Then at Milan's cathedral on 26 May 1805, Napoleon was crowned King of Italy with the Iron Crown of Lombardy.

By 1805 Britain instigated a Third Coalition against Napoleon. Napoleon knew the French fleet could not defeat the Royal Navy and therefore arranged to lure the British fleet away from the English Channel so that a joint Spanish and French fleet could regain control of the Channel for twenty-four hours, enough for French armies to cross to England. However, with Austria and Russia preparing an invasion of France and its allies, he had to change his plans and turn his attention to the continent. The newly born Grande Armee secretly marched towards Germany. On 20 October 1805 it surprised the Austrians at Ulm. The next day, however, at the decisive Battle of Trafalgar (21 October 1805), Britain gained lasting control of the seas. A few weeks later, Napoleon secured a major victory against Austria and Russia at Austerlitz (2 December), forcing Austria yet again to sue for peace.

A Fourth Coalition was assembled the following year, and Napoleon defeated Prussia at the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt (14 October 1806). He marched on against advancing Russian armies through Poland, and was attacked at the bloody Battle of Eylau on 6 February 1807. After a decisive victory at Friedland he signed a treaty at Tilsit in East Prussia with Tsar Alexander I of Russia, dividing Europe between the two powers. He placed puppet rulers on the thrones of German states, including his brother Jerome as king of the new state of Westphalia. In the French-controlled part of Poland, he established the Duchy of Warsaw with King Frederick Augustus I of Saxony as ruler. Between 1809 and 1813 Napoleon also served as Regent of the Grand Duchy of Berg for his brother Louis Bonaparte.

Ludwig van Beethoven initially dedicated his third symphony, the Eroica (Italian for "heroic"), to Napoleon in the belief that the general would sustain the democratic and republican ideals of the French Revolution, but in 1804, as Napoleon's imperial ambitions became clear, renamed the symphony as the "Sinfonia Eroica, composta per festeggiare il Sovvenire di un grand'Uomo", or in English, "composed to celebrate the memory of a great man".

The Peninsular War and the War of the Fifth Coalition

Main articles: Peninsular War, Fifth Coalition

In addition to military endeavors against Britain, Napoleon also waged economic war, attempting to enforce a Europe-wide commercial boycott of Britain called the "Continental System". Although this action hurt the British economy, it also damaged the French economy and was not a decisive factor.

Portugal did not comply with this Continental System and in 1807 Napoleon sought Spain's support for an invasion of Portugal. When Spanish Prime Minister Godoy refused, Napoleon's army invaded Spain as well. Spaniards rose in revolt against French troops on May the 2nd 1808, el Dos de Mayo, they got Madrid free and applied a new kind of resistance for the first time in History: the Guerrilla war. La Grande Armée suffered its first ever defeat on July the 19th 1808 at the Batalla de Bailén. After that, Napoleon himself took command and defeated the Spanish army, retook Madrid and then defeated a British army sent to support the Spanish, driving it to the coast and forcing withdrawal from Iberia (in which its commander, Sir John Moore, was killed). Napoleon installed one of his marshals and brother-in-law, Joachim Murat, as the King of Naples, and his brother Joseph Bonaparte,-called "Pepe Botella" = "Jack Bottle, the Drunk" - as King of Spain.

The Spaniards inspired nationalism and rebelliousness movements all around Europe because of the atrocities committed by French troops. At the same time, Austria unexpectedly broke its alliance with France and Napoleon was forced to assume command of forces on the Danube and German fronts. A bloody draw ensued at Aspern-Essling (May 21-22, 1809) near Vienna, which was the closest Napoleon ever came to a defeat in a battle with more or less equal numbers on each side. After a two month interval, the principal French and Austrian armies engaged again near Vienna resulting in a French victory at Battle of Wagram (6 July).

Following this a new peace was signed between Austria and France and in the following year the Austrian Archduchess Marie-Louise married Napoleon, following his divorce of Josephine.

Invasion of Russia

Main article: Napoleon's invasion of Russia

Although the Congress of Erfurt had sought to preserve the Russo-French alliance, by 1811 tensions were again increasing between the two nations. Although Alexander and Napoleon had a friendly personal relationship since their first meeting in 1807, Alexander had been under strong pressure from the Russian aristocracy to break off the alliance with France.

The first sign that the alliance was deteriorating was the easing of the application of the Continental System in Russia, angering Napoleon. By 1812, advisors to Alexander suggested the possibility of an invasion of the French Empire (and the recapture of Poland).

Large numbers of troops were deployed to the Polish borders (reaching over 300,000 out of the total Russian army strength of 410,000). After receiving the initial reports of Russian war preparations, Napoleon began expanding his Grande Armée to a massive force of over 450,000-600,000 men (despite already having over 300,000 men deployed in Iberia). Napoleon ignored repeated advice against an invasion of the vast Russian heartland, and prepared his forces for an offensive campaign.

On June 23, 1812, Napoleon's invasion of Russia commenced.

Napoleon, in an attempt to gain increased support from Polish nationalists and patriots, termed the war the "Second Polish War" (the first Polish war being the liberation of Poland from Russia, Prussia and Austria). Polish patriots wanted the Russian part of partitioned Poland to be incorporated into the Grand Duchy of Warsaw and a new Kingdom of Poland created, although this was rejected by Napoleon, who feared it would bring Prussia and Austria into the war against France. Napoleon also rejected requests to free the Russian serfs, fearing this might provoke a conservative reaction in his rear.

The Russians under Mikhail Bogdanovich Barclay de Tolly ingeniously avoided a decisive engagement which Napoleon longed for, preferring to retreat ever deeper into the heart of Russia. A brief attempt at resistance was offered at Smolensk (August 16-17), but the Russians were defeated in a series of battles in the area and Napoleon resumed the advance. The Russians then repeatedly avoided battle with the Grande Armée, although in a few cases only because Napoleon uncharacteristically hesitated to attack when the opportunity presented itself. The Russians during their strategic retreat, used the scorched earth tactic. They burned crops and slaughtered livestock so the French would have nothing to eat. Along with the hunger, the French also had to face the harsh Russian winter.

Criticized over his tentative strategy of continual retreat, Barclay was replaced by Kutuzov, although he continued Barclay's strategy. Kutuzov eventually offered battle outside Moscow on 7 September. Losses were nearly even for both armies, with slightly more casualties on the Russian side, after what may have been the bloodiest day of battle in history - the Battle of Borodino (see article for comparisons to the first day of the Battle of the Somme). Although Napoleon was far from defeated, the Russian army had accepted, and withstood, the major battle the French hoped would be decisive. After the battle, the Russian army withdrew, and retreated past Moscow.

The Russians retreated and Napoleon was able to enter Moscow, assuming that the fall of Moscow would end the war and that Alexander I would negotiate peace. However, on orders of the city's military governor and commander-in-chief, Fyodor Rostopchin, rather than capitulating, Moscow was ordered to be burnt. Within the month, fearing loss of control back in France, Napoleon left Moscow.

The French suffered greatly in the course of a ruinous retreat; the Army had begun with over 650,000 frontline troops, but in the end fewer than 40,000 crossed the Berezina River (November 1812) and escaped. In total French losses in the campaign were 570,000 against about 400,000 Russian casualties and several hundred thousand civilian deaths.

The War of the Sixth Coalition

There was a lull in fighting over the winter of 1812–13 whilst both the Russians and the French recovered from their massive losses. A small Russian army harassed the French in Poland and eventually 30,000 French troops there withdrew to the German states to rejoin the expanding force there - numbering 130,000 with the reinforcements from Poland. This force continued to expand, with Napoleon aiming for a force of 400,000 French troops supported by a quarter of a million German troops.

Heartened by Napoleon's losses in Russia, Prussia soon rejoined the Coalition that now included Russia, the United Kingdom, Spain, and Portugal. Napoleon assumed command in Germany and soon inflicted a series of defeats on the Allies culminating in the Battle of Dresden on August 26-27, 1813 causing almost 100,000 casualties to the Coalition forces (the French sustaining only around 30,000).

Despite these initial successes, however, the numbers continued to mount against Napoleon as Sweden and Austria joined the Coalition. Eventually the French army was pinned down by a force twice its size at the Battle of Nations (October 16-19) at Leipzig. Some of the German states switched sides in the midst of the battle, further undermining the French position. This was by far the largest battle of the Napoleonic Wars and cost both sides a combined total of over 120,000 casualties.

After this Napoleon withdrew in an orderly fashion back into France, but his army was now reduced to less than 100,000 against more than half a million Allied troops. The French were now surrounded (with British armies pressing from the south in addition to the Coalition forces moving in from the German states) and vastly outnumbered. The French armies could only delay an inevitable defeat.

Exile in Elba, Les Cent-Jours (The Hundred Days) and Waterloo

Paris was occupied on March 31, 1814. At the urging of his marshals, Napoleon abdicated on 6 April in favour of his son. The Allies, however, demanded unconditional surrender and Napoleon abdicated again, unconditionally, on 11 April. In the Treaty of Fontainebleau the victors exiled him to Elba, a small island in the Mediterranean 20 km off the coast of Italy.

In France, the royalists had taken over and restored King Louis XVIII to power. Separated from his wife and son (who had come under Austrian control), cut off from the allowance guaranteed to him by the Treaty of Fontainebleau, and aware of rumours that he was about to be banished to a remote island in the Atlantic, Napoleon escaped from Elba on 26 February 1815 and returned to the mainland on 1 March 1815. King Louis XVIII sent the Fifth Regiment, led by Marshal Michel Ney who had formerly served under Napoleon in Russia, to meet him at Grenoble. Napoleon approached the regiment alone, dismounted his horse and, when he was within earshot of Ney's forces, shouted "Soldiers of the Fifth, you recognize me. If any man would shoot his emperor, he may do so now". Following a brief silence, the soldiers shouted "Vive L'Empereur!" and marched with Napoleon to Paris. He arrived on 20 March, quickly raising a regular army of 140,000 and a volunteer force of around 200,000 and governed for a Hundred Days.

Napoléon's final defeat came at the hands of the Duke of Wellington and Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher at the Battle of Waterloo in present-day Belgium on 18 June 1815.

Off the port of Rochefort, Napoléon made his formal surrender while on board HMS Bellerophon on 15 July 1815.

Exile in Saint Helena and death

Napoleon was imprisoned and then exiled by the British to the island of Saint Helena (2,800 km off the Bight of Guinea) from 15 October 1815. While there, with a small cadre of followers, he dictated his memoirs and criticized his captors. Sick for much his time on Saint Helena, Napoleon died, on 5 May 1821. His last words were: "France, the Army, head of the Army, Joséphine".

Napoléon had asked in his will to be buried on the banks of the Seine, but was buried on Saint Helena. In 1840, his remains were taken to France in the frigate Belle-Poule and entombed in Les Invalides, Paris. Hundreds of millions have visited his tomb since that date.

Cause of death

The cause of Napoleon's death has been greatly disputed. Francesco Antommarchi, Napoleon's personal physician, listed stomach cancer as the reason for Napoleon's death in his death certificate.

The diaries of Louis Marchand, Napoleon's valet, have led some (most notably Sten Forshufvud and Ben Weider) to conclude that Napoleon was killed by arsenic poisoning, although whether he was murdered or ingested arsenic in some accidental way (it was used in wallpaper as a green pigment, and in some medicines) is still under dispute. In 2001, Pascal Kintz, of the Strasbourg Forensic Institute in France, added credence to this claim with a study of arsenic levels found in a lock of Napoleon's hair preserved after his death that were seven to thirty-eight times higher than normal (although this is disputable, because another use of arsenic at the time of Napoleon's death was to preserve samples of hair).

In 2005 Pascal Kintz identified in the medulla of authenticated hairs of Napoleon Bonaparte from various sources "rat poison" as the specific type of arsenic and mercury from the calomel (Hg₂Cl₂) a cathartic which was given to Napoleon during the lethal phase.

Marriages and children

Napoleon was married twice:

• March 9, 1796 to Joséphine de Beauharnais. He formally adopted her son Eugène and cousin Stéphanie after assuming the throne to arrange "dynastic" marriages for them. He had her daughter Hortense marry his brother, Louis. Joséphine agreed to divorce so he could remarry in the hopes of producing an heir; it was the first under the Napoleonic Code.
• March 11, 1810 by proxy to Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria to legitimize the impending birth of their child, then in a ceremony on April 1. They remained married until his death, although she did not join him in his exile.
  • Napoléon Francis Joseph Charles (March 20, 1811 - July 22, 1832), King of Rome. Known as Napoléon II of France although he never ruled. Was later known as the Duke of Reichstadt. Did not have issue.

Acknowledged two illegitimate children, both of whom had issue:

• Charles, Count Léon, (1806 - 1881), by Louise Catherine Eléonore Denuelle de la Plaigne (1787 - 1868).
• Alexandre Joseph Colonna, Count Walewski, (May 4, 1810 - October 27, 1868), by Marie, Countess Walewski (1789 - 1817).

May have had further illegitimate issue:

• Émilie Louise Marie Françoise Joséphine Pellapra, by Françoise-Marie LeRoy.
• Karl Eugin von Mühlfeld, by Victoria Kraus.
• Hélène Napoleone Bonaparte, by Countess Montholon.
• Jules Barthélemy-Saint-Hilaire (August 19, 1805 - November 24, 1895) whose mother remains unknown.

Legacy

Napoleon is credited with introducing the concept of the modern professional conscript army to Europe, an innovation which other states eventually followed. Although he himself did not create many military concepts, he was able to utilize what already did exist in a highly effective fashion. During the Napoleonic Era, armies became larger, the number of sieges declined, and an emphasis grew, in contrast to the conflicts of the 18th century, on quick, decisive wars that would allow troops to live off the land. Napoleon is one of the most quoted figures in the art of warfare and his campaigns provided the basis for the behavior of modern armies.

To some in France, Napoleon ended lawlessness and disorder in France. In a way the Napoleonic Wars served to export the ideals of the Revolution to the rest of Europe. As movements of national unification and the rise of the nation state, notably in Italy and Germany, may have been precipitated by the previous Napoleonic rule of those areas.

The Napoleonic Code was adopted throughout much of Europe and remained in force after Napoleon's defeat. Professor Dieter Langewiesche of the University of Tübingen describes the code as a "revolutionary project" which spurred the development of bourgeois society in Germany by expanding the right to own property and breaking the back of feudalism. Langewiesche also credits Napoleon with reorganizing what had been the Holy Roman Empire made up of more than 1,000 entities into a more streamlined network of 40 states providing the basis for the German Confederation and the future unification of Germany under the German Empire in 1871.

In mathematics Napoleon is traditionally given credit for discovering and proving Napoleon's theorem, although there is no specific evidence that he did so.

Critics of Napoleon argue that his true legacy was a loss of status for France and many needless deaths:

After all, the military record is unquestioned—17 years of wars, perhaps six million Europeans dead, France bankrupt, her overseas colonies lost. And it was all such a great waste, for when the self-proclaimed tête d'armée was done, France's "losses were permanent" and she "began to slip from her position as the leading power in Europe to second-class status—that was Bonaparte's true legacy."^[1]

Misconceptions about Napoleon's height

Contrary to popular belief (perpetuated by the above-mentioned caricatures), Napoleon was not especially short. After his death in 1821, the French emperor's height was recorded as 5 feet 2 inches in French feet. This corresponds to 5 feet 7 inches in Imperial (British) feet, or 1.686 meters, making him slightly taller than an average Frenchman of the 19th century ^[2]. The metric system was introduced during his lifetime, so it was natural that he would be measured in feet and inches for much of his life. A French inch was 2.71 centimetres ^[3], an Imperial inch is 2.54 centimetres. In addition to this miscalculation, his nickname le petit caporal adds to the confusion, as non-francophones mistakenly take petit literally as meaning "small"; in fact, it is an affectionate term reflecting on his camaraderie with ordinary soldiers. He also surrounded himself with soldiers, his elite guard, who were always six feet tall or taller.

See also

• List of Napoleonic Battles
• Napoleon complex
• Napoleonic Code
• Napoleonic Era
• Napoleonic medal
• Napoleonic Wars
• Marshal of France, for a list of Napoleon's Marshals
• Napoleon and the Jews
• Napoleon in popular culture (esp. as a by-word for mental ill health)
• Monsieur N. a film about the last years of Napoleon and the mystery of his death (French-English co-production)
• Napoleon's theorem
• Infernal machine, an assassination attempt

Sources

• Bloom, Phillip. The Emperor's Youth. napoleon-series.org. URL accessed on 28 February 2005
• Bonaparte (Napoléon Ier). Insecula: L'encyclopedie des artes et de l'architecture. URL accessed on 25 September 2003
• Napoleon. Napoleon Series. URL accessed on 10 February 2004 (Now a dead link; comparable material is at [4].)
• Napoleon I of France. France.com. URL accessed on 20 February 2005
• Asprey, Robert (2000). The Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte, New York: Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-04879-X.
• Asprey, Robert (2001). The Reign of Napoleon Bonaparte, New York: Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-00482-2.
• Cronin, Vincent (1994). Napoleon, London: HarperCollins. ISBN 0-00-637521-9.
• Durant, Will and Durant, Ariel (1975). The Age of Napoleon, New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0-671-21988-X (PT. 11).
• McLynn, Frank (1998). Napoleon, London: Pimlico. ISBN 0-7126-6247-2.
• Pope, Stephen (1999). The Cassel Dictionary of the Napoleonic Wars, Cassel. ISBN 0-304-35229-2.
• Schom, Alan (1998). Napoleon Bonaparte: A Life, Perennial. ISBN 0-06-092958-8.
• Zamoyski, Adam (2004). 1812: Napoleon's Fatal March on Moscow, HarperCollins. ISBN 0-00-718489-1.
• Full texts of
  • The constitution of the Consulate (in French)
  • The Imperial Constitution (in French)
  • Free eBook Memoirs of Napoleon at Project Gutenberg
  • Free eBook The Life of Napoleon I at Project Gutenberg

References

1. ^ McLynn (1998), p. 31.
2. ^  Napoleon's Theorem. URL accessed on 2005-12-18
3. ^  The Claremont Institute: The Little Tyrant, A review of Napoleon: A Penguin Life, by Paul Johnson.. URL accessed on 2005-12-18 The quoted passages within this text are from Johnson.
4. ^  http://www.napoleon.org/en/essential_napoleon/faq/index.asp#ancre54. URL accessed on 2005-12-18
5. ^  Historydata: miscellaneous. URL accessed on 2005-12-18

External links

• Napoleon - An Intimate Portrait Traveling Exhibit
• Napoleon I Chronology in World History Database
• "The Strange Story of Napoleon's Wallpaper" - discussing the possibility of arsenic poisoning
• Napoleon, His Armies and Tactics
• PBS Napoleon - Detailed biography of Napoleon
• The Napoleon 101 podcast - a podcast about the life of Napoleon
• Works by Napoleon Bonaparte at Project Gutenberg

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