Napoleon Bonaparte is regarded as one of the greatest military commanders in history, changing the map of Europe and developing new laws, civil codes, and educational systems that continue to the present day. He is recognized as one of the most famous men in history, being the subject of countless biographies, with one writer suggesting that only Jesus and Adolf Hitler have had more biographical studies written about them.
Napoleone Buonaparte, as his name was known in Italian, was born on August 15, 1769, at Ajaccio, Corsica, shortly after the island was ceded to France by Genoa. He was the fourth child, and the second surviving one, of Carlo Buonaparte, a lawyer, and his wife, Letizia (née Ramolino). The Buonapartes were descended from Tuscan nobility who had moved to Corsica in the 16th century, with Carlo Buonaparte marrying his wife when she was 14. In an interesting twist, Carlo Buonaparte disliked the idea of French rule over Corsica and joined the nationalist resistance movement of Pasquale Paoli. When Paoli fled after his defeat at the Battle of Ponte Novo on May 8, 1769, ending Corsica’s brief experience of independence, the Buonapartes made an accommodation with the French, and Carlo became the assessor for the judicial district of Ajaccio in 1771. Seven years later, he managed to get his eldest two sons, Joseph and Napoleon, into the Collège d’Autun. Napoleon was nine years old.
Education And Early Career
Although Napoleon Bonaparte was a Corsican by birth and ancestry, in later life he never felt a huge affinity for the island; indeed he only visited it once after his rise to power. After the Collège d’Autun, Bonaparte spent five years at the Brienne Military College and then a year at the military academy in Paris. While he was at the military academy his father died, on February 24, 1785, leaving the family in difficult financial straits. Bonaparte graduated in September ranked 42nd in a class of 58, having assumed the position as head of the family, although he was not the oldest son. Bonaparte had become interested in mathematics and science.
His first military posting was as a second lieutenant in the artillery, being sent to Valence. There he became extremely interested in military strategy, writing his first book, Lettres sur la Corse, which expressed some of his early feelings for the island of his birth. He returned to Corsica soon afterward and in June 1788 rejoined his regiment. By this time he had also become fascinated by many of the ideas of the Enlightenment, especially those of Rousseau and Voltaire.
With the calling of the National Assembly in Paris in 1789, Pasquale Paoli had been allowed to return to Corsica, and Bonaparte wanted to go and join him. The Corsican nationalist, however, was upset that Bonaparte’s father had deserted his cause, and Bonaparte returned to France, where, in April 1791, he was appointed first lieutenant of the 4th Regiment of Artillery at Valence. He also became active in politics, joining the Jacobin Club.
However, his emotional attachment was still with Corsica, and he returned there but had a falling out with Paoli, returning to metropolitan France, where he had been briefly listed as a deserter. In April 1792 war with Austria broke out, and Bonaparte’s skills were needed by the artillery. Although he was promoted to captain, Bonaparte went back to Corsica yet again. There he sided with the Corsican Jacobins who were trying to prevent Paoli from getting Corsica to break away and become independent. Condemned by Paoli, the entire Buonaparte family fled to the French mainland, adopting the spelling “Bonaparte.”
Bonaparte went to Nice, where the Jacobins had gradually come to dominate the republican movement. The monarchy had been abolished, and Bonaparte went to Marseille with his soldiers from the National Convention. To get to Marseille, he took them to Toulon, where he was appointed commander of the National Convention’s artillery with the support of Antoine Saliceti, who was also from Corsica and a longtime family friend. In September Bonaparte was promoted to major and in October became adjutant general. He was involved in fighting at Toulon in December and forced the British troops there to evacuate the city. On December 22, 1793, at age 24, Bonaparte became a brigadier general, one of the youngest generals in modern history, a feat subsequently bettered only by Francisco Franco.
After The French Revolution
When Maximilien Robespierre fell from power in Paris in July 1794, Bonaparte was arrested on a charge of conspiracy and treason. As a Jacobin, Bonaparte had been seen as a follower of Robespierre, and even though he managed to get his freedom, he was not restored to his command but, instead, in March 1795, he was sent to La Vendée, where he was placed in command of the artillery of the Army of the West. Bonaparte was unhappy at the demotion and sought military preferment and even considered, albeit briefly, leaving France altogether and serving under the sultan of the Ottoman Empire. However, Bonaparte decided to stay, and with a new constitution being introduced, royalists hoped that they would be able to seize power in Paris. The National Convention was worried but felt that they could trust Bonaparte. He was placed second in command of the troops in Paris and used them to shoot hundreds of royalists who were trying to storm the National Convention. This move earned him the gratitude of the politicians, and he was hailed as the savior of the French republic. He was immediately appointed commander of the army of the interior and an adviser to the Directory, as the new government was called.
It was during this period that Napoleon met Josephine Tascher de la Pagerie, the widow of General Alexandre de Beauharnais, who had been executed during the Reign of Terror. She was from Martinique in the Caribbean, and Bonaparte fell in love with her. Bonaparte was then involved in cracking down on a protocommunist conspiracy launched by François Babeuf and sought to get command of the Army of Italy, the French army that was about to invade the Italian Peninsula. Filippo Buonarroti, an Italian who had known Bonaparte in Corsica, was appointed commander in chief of the Army of Italy in March 1796. It was a great disappointment for Bonaparte, who married Josephine on March 9 and two days later had to leave home to lead the army on March 11.
Rise To Military Prominence
When Bonaparte took command of his soldiers in Nice, he found that there were only 30,000 soldiers instead of the 43,000 he had been promised. Their morale was low, as they had been badly fed and not paid properly. He managed to turn them around and inspire them in battle. At Lodi he was first given the nickname le petit caporal (the little corporal). In early 1797 Bonaparte led his men to victory over the Austrians, forcing them to evacuate Lombardy. He then crushed the troops of the Papal States but decided against following up the order from Paris to dethrone the pope. As it was, Pius VI, who had condemned the execution of Louis XVI, was to die in French captivity in the following year.
Bonaparte invaded Austria and forced the Austrians to sign the Treaty of Campo Formio. This gave France control of the Low Countries (modern-day Belgium and the Netherlands) and also northern Italy and the Rhineland. Bonaparte then captured the city of Venice and forcing the abdication of the doge, Lodovico Manin, on May 12, 1797, ending its independence, and reorganized the map of Europe to create the pro-French Cisalpine Republic in northern Italy. Bonaparte had taken 160,000 prisoners and had captured 2,000 cannons and 170 standards.
In March 1798 Bonaparte suggested putting together a military expedition to seize Egypt, then a part of the Ottoman Empire. The Directory were worried about the cost of this expedition but happy that it would take Napoleon a long way from France. On his way to Egypt, the French captured Malta on June 9, 1798, but were unable to find the great treasure they had expected to find. On July 1, the French reached Alexandria, after eluding the British navy.
In the Battle of the Pyramids, fought some four miles from the pyramids, a French force of 25,000 held off 100,000 Egyptians. By the end of the battle, the French had lost 300 men, and the Egyptians had lost 6,000. However, although the French were successful on land, the British under Admiral Horatio Nelson attacked the French at sea and destroyed the French navy. Napoleon then moved into Palestine and Syria, where the French captured Gaza, Jaffa, and Haifa. They killed large numbers of people in these attacks, but the French army itself was badly weakened.
Rise To Power
Bonaparte had his eye on developments at home, and on August 29, 1799, he suddenly left the Middle East for France. In October he returned to Paris, where people were beginning to be dissatisfied with the Directory. Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès, one of the members of the Directory, asked whether Bonaparte would support a coup d’état. On November 9 (18 Brumaire of the revolutionary calendar), Bonaparte led his soldiers into the Legislative Assembly and ejected the members, and Bonaparte, Sieyès, and Roger Ducos were declared the three provisional consuls. Sieyès hoped to run the new government but Bonaparte who had drafted a new constitution managed to make himself the First Consul, and then the First Consul for life. There was no mention in the new constitution of “liberty, equality, and fraternity.”
The Consulate was a period when Bonaparte tried to introduce many long-lasting reforms, a number of which continue to the present day. In 1801 he negotiated the Concordat with the Roman Catholic Church, leading to a reconciliation between the church and the state. He also introduced the Napoleonic Code, whereby legal experts reformulated the entire legal system, codifying criminal and civil laws. There was also a meritocratic system by which Bonaparte himself appointed ministers, members of the Council of State, generals, and civil servants. It profoundly changed the nature of France forever.
Conquest Of Europe
While this was taking place, Bonaparte returned to Italy, which had been taken back by the Austrians while he had been preoccupied in Egypt. He entered Italy leading his men across the Alps, through the Great St. Bernard Pass. He met the Austrians at the Battle of Marengo and in one of his finest battles victory was eventually his. The Treaty of Lunéville of February 1801 not only confirmed the Treaty of Campo Formio but also extended French control. France was extended to cover the frontiers chosen by Julius Caesar in his creation of Gaul: the Pyrenees, the Alps, and the River Rhine. The Treaty of Amiens in March 1802 resulted in peace between the British and the French. The British withdrew some soldiers, but there was a disagreement over Malta, with Britain, in support of French royalists, declaring war on France in 1803. The French had used the period to sell the French possessions in North America to the United States. The Louisiana Purchase resulted in the United States’s doubling in size after paying less than 3 cents per acre.
In January 1804 Bonaparte discovered that the royalists were plotting his assassination. He sent his soldiers several miles over the French border into the German state of Baden, where the duc d’Enghien from the house of Bourbon was seized and brought back to France. He was quickly tried and then shot. By this time Napoleon seemed to have decided to confirm himself in power by becoming an emperor, and the Empire was proclaimed on May 28, 1804. On December 2 at Notre-Dame de Paris, the imperial regalia was blessed by the pope, and Napoleon then crowned himself and Josephine. On May 26, 1805, in Milan Cathedral, he was crowned king of Italy. There were no major changes in the way France was run, except that succession was not hereditary, and some princely titles were handed out to members of his family, with an imperial nobility created in 1808.
Napoleon was involved in fighting the British from 1803 until 1805, hoping to be able to land troops on the British mainland. Initially the French moved many troops to Boulogne but they did not have control of the sea, which had prevented their previous planned attack in 1798. The French managed to persuade the Spanish to declare war on the British, with the hope that the Franco-Spanish fleet might be a match for the British.
However, on October 21, 1805, at the Battle of Trafalgar, the British under Admiral Horatio Nelson defeated the Franco-Spanish fleet, ending any real chance of an invasion of the British Isles. Nelson himself was killed in the battle despite the Royal Navy’s victory.
With his failure at sea, the French decided to attack Austria again, and on November 13, 1805, Napoleon led his men into Vienna, the Austrian capital. On December 2 he defeated the combined Austrian and Russian forces at the Battle of Austerlitz, one of his greatest victories. The Treaty of Pressburg saw the Austrians give up all claims to influence in Italy and also cede Venetia and Dalmatia (Croatia) to the French, as well as giving land in Germany to France’s ally Bavaria. In July 1806 Napoleon established the Confederation of the Rhine, placing western Germany under French protection and control.
Napoleon then turned his attention to the Prussians, and he defeated them at the Battles of Jena and Auerstädt. He then defeated the Russians at Eylau, and took the city of Warsaw, where he met and fell in love with Countess Marie Walewska, a Polish woman who hoped that she might persuade Napoleon to re-create Poland. Soon after this the Russian czar Alexander I met with Napoleon at Tilsit in northern Prussia, and this summit led to the re-creation of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. Napoleon was developing his concept of the continental system that would strangle the British economy by forbidding Britain to export goods to any European country, and this in turn would result in mass unemployment, making Britain collapse from within.
While most countries agreed to this, Portugal, Britain’s oldest ally, refused to cooperate, so Napoleon decided to invade Portugal. He sent General Junot against the Portuguese, with Charles IV of Spain allowing French troops to go through his country. The French quickly captured Lisbon, and the Portuguese monarchy fled to Brazil. However, many Spanish were unhappy about the presence of French soldiers, and, Charles IV abdicated in favor of his son, who became Ferdinand VII. Napoleon saw this move as a perfect opportunity to remove the Spanish Bourbon family, and both Charles and Ferdinand, under pressure, abdicated. Napoleon put his brother Joseph Bonaparte on the throne of Spain. Although Spanish revolutionaries welcomed this, it was very unpopular in most of Spain and guerrilla war broke out.
With the British aiding the Portuguese and now the Spanish royalists united under the command of Arthur Wellesley—later the first duke of Wellington—the French started losing what became known as the Penin sular War. Although Napoleon met with Czar Alexander I at the Congress of Erfurt from September to October 1808, the czar would give no firm commitment. However, it removed the prospect of war with Russia. Napoleon sent huge forces into Spain and was about to win the war when Austria attacked Bavaria. Napoleon had to send his armies against Austria, defeating them and forcing them to sign the Treaty of Schönbrunn on October 14, 1809.
First Exile
Napoleon was upset that Josephine had been unable to give him an heir, and he divorced her to marry Marie-Louise, the daughter of Austrian emperor Francis I. Their son was born on March 20, 1811, and was given the title the king of Rome. Napoleon was now at his most powerful. He controlled the French Empire, which included the Illyrian provinces, the Papal States, Tuscany, the Netherlands, and parts of Germany. It was surrounded by the Kingdom of Westphalia, ruled by his youngest brother, Jérôme Bonaparte; the Kingdom of Spain, ruled by older brother, Joseph Bonaparte; the Kingdom of Italy (ruled by Eugène de Beauharnais, Josephine’s son, as the viceroy); the Kingdom of Naples (ruled by Napoleon’s brother-in-law, Marshal Joachim Murat); and the Principality of Lucca and Piombino (ruled by another brother-in-law, Félix Bacciochi). With the Swiss Confederation linked to France by alliance, there were also two other French allies, the Confederation of the Rhine and the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. With Napoleon’s marriage to Marie-Louise, Austria was also an ally.
However, the fighting on the Iberian Peninsula continued, and in spring 1812, Napoleon moved his army to Poland to threaten Czar Alexander I of Russia. The Russians retreated, and Napoleon, intent on engaging them in battle, invaded Russia with 650,000 men. As the Russians retreated, the French were drawn further and further into Russia, with the French fighting an indecisive two-day battle at Borodino on September 7. A week later Napoleon entered Moscow, which had been abandoned by the Russians. However, a fire broke out later the same day destroying much of the city, and Napoleon had to withdraw. Harassed by Russian soldiers, Cossacks, and others, by the time Napoleon’s troops left Russia, there were scarcely 10,000 men left.
The Prussians and the Austrians suspected that the French army had been broken in Russia, and after a false report that Napoleon had died in Russia in October, morale declined. When Napoleon returned to Paris, he found France in a bad state, economically and militarily. He was still able to defeat the Russians and the Prussians, respectively, at the Battles of Lützen and Bautzen. Austria offered to allow the French to return to their original borders, but with the dissolution of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw and the Confederation of the Rhine. The Prussians offered to return to the frontiers of 1805.
Napoleon hesitated, and Austria declared war. At the Battle of Leipzig on October 16–19, 1813, known also as the Battle of Nations, the French forces were badly mauled. With the French facing defeat in Spain, Napoleon ordered his troops to return to France, and he faced his opponents who declared that their war was not against the French people but specifically against Napoleon himself. While Napoleon wanted to continue fighting, he was forced to accept the Treaty of Fontainebleau, whereby he abdicated and moved to the island of Elba with 400 guards and an annual income of 2 million francs. Napoleon bid farewell to his old guard at Fontainbleau and went to Elba. Louis XVIII, brother of the executed Louis XVI, then became the king of France.
Return To France
Although Napoleon was initially quite happy to reform the government of Elba, he soon became bored, and some of the French were upset at the Bourbon Restoration, with Louis XVIII effectively put into power by foreign countries. With Napoleon worried about being sent into a more remote exile and without his allowance, which was supposed to have been paid by the French government, Napoleon decided to risk everything on returning to France and trying to regain power.
On March 1, 1815, he landed at Cannes with some guards and rapidly gained more and more support, reaching Paris on March 20. Louis XVIII announced that he would not hold the French command to their oaths of loyalty, in a great gesture to prevent a civil war, and Napoleon was back in power. Some of the men who had pressured Napoleon to abdicate at Fontainebleau and who had taken up appointments under Louis XVIII returned to support Napoleon, who magnanimously appointed Marshals Ney and Soult to senior command positions.
The British and the Prussians were angered by Napoleon’s return to Paris and immediately massed armies in the Netherlands (modern-day Belgium). Louis XVIII had ended conscription, and Napoleon was eager not to reintroduce the draft, so he mustered as many soldiers as he could and then marched them into the Netherlands, where he defeated the Prussians at the Battle of Ligny on June 16, 1815. At the same time the French under Ney drove back the British at Quatre Bras. Napoleon then made a crucial mistake in detaching a third of his army to cut off the Prussians, whom he thought had fled eastward. In fact they soon found that they were following the Prussians of Field Marshal Gebhard von Blücher.
When Napoleon and his soldiers met the British at Waterloo, Napoleon was ill but launched a series of attacks against the British lines before having to retire as his condition worsened. When he recovered, he found that the French cavalry had launched a number of futile charges against the British. He salvaged much of the situation by advancing the artillery. With the British forces driven back, and some of their allies having fled in disorder, Napoleon launched an all-out attack. However, at that moment the Prussians arrived on the battlefield, and the French were defeated, with Napoleon fleeing back to France. He abdicated on June 22, 1815, and tried to make for the United States but eventually surrendered to the British, who decided to send him into exile on the remote South Atlantic island of St. Helena.
Exile on St. Helena
Napoleon spent the last six years of his life on St. Helena, where he wrote his memoirs and amused himself with his small number of followers who went with him into exile. He was well looked after but soon became ill. It has been suggested that he was poisoned by arsenic given off by his wallpaper and, alternatively, even more bizarrely, that he had developed female characteristics. It also seems that he might have succumbed to cancer. He died on May 5, 1821, on St. Helena and was buried there, although his body was repatriated to France in 1840 and lies in the Hôtel des Invalides in Paris.
Many people have marveled at Napoleon’s military genius. He was a good tactician, but his strengths lay in campaigning strategies in which he often went into a war outnumbered by his opponents but was often able to match them on the battlefield. He also relied heavily on the artillery, most likely from his original background. His ability to risk much on single battles served him well until Borodino, with him making mistakes at both Leipzig and at Waterloo. At the latter battle he asked an aide how he would be remembered, and the man replied that Napoleon had “extended the boundaries of glory.” See also French Revolution; Napoleon III; Napoleonic conquest of Egypt.
Bibliography:
- Aronson, Theo. Napoleon and Josephine: A Love Story. London: John Murray, 1990;
- Cronin, Vincent. Napoleon. London: Collins, 1971;
- Kemble, James. Napoleon Immortal: The Medical History and Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte. London: Murray, 1959; Ludwig, Emil. Napoleon. Garden City, N.Y.: Boni & Liveright, 1927;
- Weider, Ben, and Hapgood, David. Assassination at St. Helena Revisited. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1982.
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