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Napoleon Bonaparte Biography (15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821) was a general and ruler of France. General of the French Revolution, he was the effective ruler of France starting in 1799: First Consul (Premier Consul) of the French Republic from November 11, 1799 until May 18. 1804, then Emperor of the French (Empereur des Français) under the name Napoleon I from May 18, 1804 until April 6, 1814, and again briefly from March 20 to June 22, 1815.
Napoleon Bonaparte, over the course of little more than a decade, acquired control of most or all of the western and central mainland of Europe by conquest or alliance until his defeat at the Battle of the Nations near Leipzig in October 1813. He later staged a comeback known as the Hundred Days (les Cent Jours), and was definitively defeated at the Battle of Waterloo in Belgium on June 18, 1815, followed shortly by his capture by the British and his exile to the island of Saint Helena where he died.
Napoleon appointed many members of the Bonaparte family as monarchs, but generally speaking, they did not survive his downfall. Napoleon was one of the "enlightened monarchs."
Early life and military career - Napoleon Bonaparte
He was born Napoleone Buonaparte in the city of Ajaccio on Corsica. He later adopted the more French-sounding Napoleon Bonaparte, the first known instance of which appears in an official report dated March 28, 1796.
Napoleon Bonaparte's family was of minor Corsican nobility. His father, Carlo Buonaparte, an Italian-born attorney, was named Corsica's representative to the court of Louis XVI in 1778, where he remained for a number of years. Biographers agree that the dominant influence of Napoleon's life was his mother, Laetitia. Ahead of her time, she had her 8 children bathe every other day -- at a time when even those in the upper classes took a bath perhaps once a month.
Carlo arranged for Napoleon's education in France. He entered a military school at Brienne-le-Château, a small town near Troyes, on May 15, 1779. Napoleon considered himself an outsider, not learning French until age 10; accusations of being a foreigner would dog him throughout his life, especially since he spoke French with an Italian accent. Due to Carlo's influence, Napoleon was admitted into the elite École Militaire in Paris, from which he graduated on October 28, 1784, receiving his commission as a 2nd lieutenant of artillery in January 1785, at the age of 16. He then attended the royal artillery school at Auxonne near Dole.
When the French Revolution began in 1789, Napoleon Bonaparte returned to Corsica, where a nationalist struggle sought separation from France. Civil war broke out, and Napoleon's family fled to France. Napoleon supported the Revolution and quickly rose through the ranks. In 1793, he helped free Toulon from the royalists and from the British troops supporting them. In 1795, when royalists marched against the National Convention in Paris, he had them shot.
He was nicknamed The Little Corporal (le petit caporal) after his victories at the Italian border. The name, roughly translated to "low ranking" or "unknown" corporal, was given to him by his soldiers in 1796 when Napoleon, then a very young and unknown corporal was in charge of the lackluster and demoralized French army at the Italian border. A heroic episode of crossing a bridge at the Battle of Lodi that year endeared him to the French and brought him recognition as a leader. Contrary to popular myth, the name 'little' was not in reference to his height (he was 5 foot 6.5 tall, taller than average for a Frenchman in his times).
Napoleon Bonaparte was a brilliant military strategist, able to absorb the substantial body of military knowledge of his time and to apply it to the real-world circumstances of his era. An artillery officer by training, he used artillery innovatively as a mobile force to support infantry attacks. When appointed commander-in-chief of the ill-equipped French army in Italy, he managed to defeat Austrian forces repeatedly. In these battles, contemporary paintings of his headquarters show that he used the world's first telecommunications system, the Chappe semaphore line, first implemented in 1792. Austrian forces, led by Archduke Charles, had to negotiate an unfavorable treaty; at the same time, Napoleon organized a coup in 1797 which removed several royalists from power in Paris.
Invasion of Egypt, rise to power - Napoleon Bonaparte
In 1798, the French government, afraid of Bonaparte's popularity, charged him with the task of invading Egypt to undermine Britain's access to India. An indication of Napoleon's devotion to the principles of the Enlightenment was his decision to take scholars along on his expedition: among the other discoveries that resulted, the Rosetta Stone was found. He was defeated by Cezzar Ahmet in Syria near the Castle of Saida. Napoleon's fleet in Egypt was largely destroyed by Nelson at The Battle of the Nile, so that Napoleon became land-bound.
According to an enduring myth, while in Egypt, Napoleon Bonaparte ordered his troops to use the Sphinx for target practice, destroying its nose in the process. Though the origin of this myth is unclear, it is thought to have been perpetuated by guides native to the region, and also, no doubt, by scholars who find in it an expression of the West's brutish and essentially myopic disregard for the culture of the rest of the world.
A coalition against France formed in Europe, the royalists rose again, and Napoleon abandoned his troops and returned to Paris in 1799; in November of that year, a coup d'état made him First Consul of France, making him the most powerful man in the nation. According to the French Revolutionary Calendar, the date was 18 Brumaire.
Napoleon Bonaparte instituted several lasting reforms in the educational, judicial, financial and administrational system. His set of civil laws, the Napoleonic Code or Civil Code, has importance to this day in many countries. The Code was largely the work of Jean Jacques Régis de Cambacérès, who held the office Second Consul under Bonaparte from 1799 to 1804.
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