Napoleon Bonaparte

ABOUT

Born: August 15, 1769, Ajaccio, France Died: 5 May 1821, Longwood House Museum, Longwood, St Helena Children: Napoleon II of France, Charles Léon, Charlotte Chappuis, Alexandre José Conde Colonna-Walewski Spouse: Maria Luísa de Austria (from 1810 to 1821), Josephine de Beauharnais (from 1796 to 1809) Siblings: Louis I of Holland, José Bonaparte, Paulina Bonaparte, Luciano Bonaparte, Jerônimo Bonaparte, Carolina Bonaparte, Elisa Bonaparte Parents: Carlo Maria Buonaparte, Maria Letícia Ramolino. Napoleon Bonaparte (Ajaccio, 15 August 1769 – Longwood, 5 May 1821) was a French statesman and military leader who rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led several successful military campaigns during the French Revolutionary Wars. He was Emperor of the French as Napoleon I from 1804 to 1814 and briefly in 1815 during the Hundred Days. Napoleon dominated European and global affairs for more than a decade as he led France against a series of coalitions in the Napoleonic Wars. He won most of these conflicts and the vast majority of his battles, building a large empire that ruled much of continental Europe before its final collapse in 1815. He is considered one of the greatest commanders in history and his wars and campaigns are studied in military schools around the world. Napoleon's political and cultural legacy has endured as one of the most celebrated and controversial leaders in human history.

Emperor of the French

1st Reign May 18, 1804 on April 11, 1814 Coronation December 2, 1804 Predecessor Louis XVI (deposed in 1792) Successor Louis XVIII 2nd Reign March 20, 1815 on June 22, 1815 Predecessor Louis XVIII Successor Louis XVIII Birth August 15, 1769 Ajaccio, Corsica, France Death May 5, 1821 (51 years old) Longwood, St. Helena Buried in Hotel des Invalides, Paris, France Full name Napoleon Bonaparte Wives Josephine de Beauharnais Maria Luisa of Austria Offspring Napoleon II of France Home Bonaparte Father Carlo Maria Bonaparte Mother Maria Letícia Ramolino Religion Catholicism

BIOGRAPHY

He was born in Corsica to a relatively modest Italian family of minor nobility. He was serving as an artillery officer in the French army when the French Revolution broke out in 1789. He quickly rose through the ranks, seizing the new opportunities presented by the Revolution and becoming a general at the age of 24. The French Directory eventually gave him command of the Army of Italy after he suppressed the 13 Vendémiaire revolt against the rule of the royalist insurgents. At the age of 26, he launched his first military campaign against the Austrians and the Habsburg-aligned Italian monarchs, winning virtually every battle and conquering the Italian peninsula within a year, while establishing "sister republics" with local support and becoming a war hero in France. In 1798, he led a military expedition to Egypt that served as a springboard to political power. He orchestrated a coup in November 1799 and became the First Consul of the Republic. In the first decade of the 19th century, the French Empire under Napoleon was involved in a series of conflicts with all the major European powers, the Napoleonic Wars. After a series of victories, France secured a dominant position in continental Europe, and Napoleon maintained France's sphere of influence by forming broad alliances and appointing friends and family members to rule the other European countries as dependents of France. Napoleon's campaigns are still studied in military academies throughout most of the world. The Russian Campaign of 1812 marked a turning point in Napoleon's fortunes. His Grande Armée was badly damaged in the campaign and never fully recovered. In 1813, the Sixth Coalition defeated his forces at Leipzig. The following year, the coalition invaded France, forced Napoleon to abdicate, and exiled him to the island of Elba.

BIOGRAPHY

Napoleon escaped from Elba in February 1815 and took control of France once again. The Allies responded by forming a Seventh Coalition that defeated him at the Battle of Waterloo in June. The British exiled him to the remote South Atlantic island of Saint Helena, where he died six years later at the age of 51. Napoleon's influence on the modern world brought liberal reforms to the various territories he conquered and controlled, such as the Netherlands, Switzerland, and large parts of modern Italy and Germany. He implemented fundamental liberal policies in France and throughout Western Europe. His Napoleonic Code influenced the legal systems of over 70 nations around the world. British historian Andrew Roberts states: "The ideas that underpin our modern world—meritocracy, equality before the law, property rights, religious toleration, modern secular education, sound finance, etc.—were championed, consolidated, codified, and geographically extended by Napoleon. In addition, he also added rational and efficient local administration, the end of rural brigandage, the encouragement of science and the arts, the abolition of feudalism, and the greatest codification of laws since the fall of the Roman Empire."

YOUTH

Napoleon's ancestors were descended from minor Italian nobility of Tuscan origin who came to Corsica from Liguria in the 16th century. Napoleon boasted of his Italian heritage, saying, "I am of the race that founds empires" and he referred to himself as "more Italian or Tuscan than Corsican". His parents, Carlo Maria di Buonaparte and Maria Letizia Ramolino, maintained an ancestral home called "Casa Buonaparte" in Ajaccio. Napoleon was born there on 15 August 1769, their fourth child and third son. A boy and a girl were born first, but they died in infancy. He had an older brother, Joseph, and siblings Luciano, Elisa, Louis, Pauline, Caroline, and Jerome. Napoleon was baptized as a Catholic. Although he was born Napoleone di Buonaparte, he changed his name to Napoleon Bonaparte when he was 27 in 1796 after his first marriage. Napoleon was born the same year that the Republic of Genoa, a former commune of Italy, transferred Corsica to France. The state had sold sovereignty rights a year before his birth in 1768, and the island was conquered by France during the year of his birth and formally incorporated as a province in 1770, after 500 years under Genoese rule and 14 years of independence. Napoleon's parents fought the French to maintain independence, even when Marie was pregnant with him. His father was a lawyer who was appointed Corsica's representative at the court of Louis XVI in 1777. The dominant influence in Napoleon's childhood was his mother, whose firm discipline restrained an unruly child.

YOUTH

Later in life, Napoleon declared, "The future destiny of the child is always the work of the mother." Napoleon's maternal grandmother had married into the Swiss Fesch family in her second marriage, and Napoleon's uncle, Cardinal Joseph Fesch, would serve as protector of the Bonaparte family for some years. Napoleon's noble and moderately wealthy background afforded him greater opportunities for education than were available to a typical Corsican of the time. When he was nine years old, he moved to the French mainland and enrolled in a religious school in Autun in January 1779. In May, he transferred on a scholarship to a military academy in Brienne-le-Château. As a youth, he was an outspoken Corsican nationalist and supported the state's independence from France. Like many Corsicans, Napoleon spoke and read Corsican (as his mother tongue) and Italian (as the official language of Corsica). He began learning French at school around the age of ten. Although he became fluent in French, he spoke with a distinct Corsican accent and never learned to write French properly. However, he was not an isolated case, as it was estimated in 1790 that fewer than 3 million people, out of the French population of 28 million, could speak standard French, and those who could write it were even fewer. Napoleon was routinely bullied by his peers for his accent, birthplace, short stature, mannerisms, and inability to speak French quickly. Bonaparte became reserved and melancholic, applying himself to reading. One examiner noted that Napoleon "has always been distinguished by his application to mathematics. He is quite familiar with history and geography… This boy would make an excellent sailor." In early adulthood, he briefly intended to become a writer; he wrote about the history of Corsica and a romantic novel.

YOUTH

After completing his studies at Brienne in 1784, Napoleon was admitted to the École Militaire in Paris. He trained to become an artillery officer and, when his father's death reduced his income, was forced to complete the two-year course in one year. He was the first Corsican to graduate from the École Militaire and was examined by the famous scientist Pierre-Simon Laplace.

CAREER BEGINNING

Upon graduating in September 1785, Bonaparte was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the artillery regiment. He served in Valence and Auxonne until after the outbreak of the Revolution in 1789, and took nearly two years' leave in Corsica and Paris during this period. By this time he was a fervent Corsican nationalist, and wrote to the Corsican leader Pasquale Paoli in May 1789: "While the nation was dying, I was born. Thirty thousand Frenchmen were vomited upon our shores, drowning the throne of liberty in waves of blood. This was the hateful sight that first struck me." He spent the early years of the Revolution in Corsica, fighting in a complex three-way conflict between royalists, revolutionaries, and Corsican nationalists. He was a supporter of the Jacobin republican movement, organizing clubs in Corsica, and was given command of a battalion of volunteers. He was promoted to captain in the regular army in July 1792, despite overstaying his leave and leading a revolt against French troops. He came into conflict with Paoli, who had decided to secede from France and sabotage Corsica's contribution to the Expédition de Sardaigne by preventing a French attack on the island of Sardinia at La Maddalena. Bonaparte and his family fled to the French mainland in June 1793 over the split with Paoli.

SIEGE OF TOULON

In July 1793, Bonaparte published a pro-republican pamphlet entitled Le souper de Beaucaire (Supper at Beaucaire) which won him the support of Augustin Robespierre, the younger brother of the revolutionary leader Maximilien Robespierre. With the help of his fellow Corsican Antoine Christophe Saliceti, Bonaparte was appointed commander of artillery for the republican forces at the siege of Toulon. He adopted a plan to capture a hill where republican guns could command the city's harbour and force the British to evacuate. The assault on the position led to the capture of the city, but during the assault Bonaparte was wounded in the thigh. He was promoted to brigadier general at the age of 24. Coming to the attention of the Committee of Public Safety, he was given charge of artillery for the Army of Italy in France. Napoleon spent some time as an inspector of coastal fortifications on the Mediterranean coast near Marseilles while awaiting confirmation of his post in the Army of Italy. He drew up plans to attack the Kingdom of Sardinia as part of France's campaign against the First Coalition. Augustin Robespierre and Saliceti were ready to listen to the newly promoted general of artillery. The French army carried out Bonaparte's plan at the Battle of Saorgio in April 1794, and then advanced to capture Ormea in the mountains. From Ormea, they moved west to outflank the Austro-Sardinian positions around Saorge. After this campaign, Augustin Robespierre sent Bonaparte on a mission to the Republic of Genoa to determine that country's intentions towards France.

13 VENDEMIA

Some contemporaries claimed that Bonaparte was placed under house arrest in Nice for his association with the Robespierres after the fall of the Thermidorian Reaction in July 1794, but Napoleon's secretary Bourrienne disputed the claim in his memoirs. According to Bourrienne, jealousy between the Army of the Alps and the Army of Italy (with which Napoleon was posted at the time) was responsible. Bonaparte sent an impassioned defense in a letter to Commissar Saliceti, and was subsequently cleared of any wrongdoing. He was released within two weeks and, because of his technical skills, was asked to draw up plans for attacking Italian positions in the context of France's war with Austria. He also took part in an expedition to recapture Corsica from the British, but the French were repulsed by the Royal Navy. In 1795, Bonaparte became engaged to Désirée Clary, the daughter of François Clary. Désirée's sister Julie Clary had married Bonaparte's older brother Joseph. In April 1795, he was assigned to the Army of the West, which was engaged in the War in the Vendée—a civil, counter-revolutionary, and royalist war in the Vendée, a region in western central France on the Atlantic Ocean. In command of the infantry, he was demoted from the rank of general of artillery—for which the army already had a full quota—and he pleaded ill health to avoid deployment. He was transferred to the Bureau of Topography of the Committee of Public Safety and sought unsuccessfully to be transferred to Constantinople to offer his services to the Turkish sultan.

13 VENDEMIA

During this period, he wrote the romantic novel Clisson et Eugénie, about a soldier and his lover, in a clear parallel to Bonaparte's relationship with Désirée. On 15 September, Bonaparte was removed from the list of generals in regular service for his refusal to serve in the Vendée campaign. He faced financial difficulties and reduced career prospects. On 3 October, the royalists in Paris declared a rebellion against the National Convention. Paul Barras, leader of the Thermidorian Reaction, knew of Bonaparte's military exploits at Toulon and gave him command of the improvised forces defending the Convention at the Tuileries Palace. Napoleon had seen the massacre of the king's Swiss Guard three years earlier and realized that artillery would be the key to his defense. He ordered a young cavalry officer named Joaquim Murat to confiscate large cannons and used them to repel the attackers on 5 October 1795 (13 Vendémiaire An IV in the French republican calendar)—1,400 royalists were killed and the rest fled. He had cleared the streets with "a smell of grapes", according to 19th-century historian Thomas Carlyle in The French Revolution: A History . The defeat of the royalist insurrection extinguished the threat to the Convention and brought Bonaparte sudden fame, wealth, and patronage from the new government, the Directory. Murat married one of Napoleon's sisters, becoming his brother-in-law; he also served under Napoleon as one of his generals. Bonaparte was promoted to commander of the Interior and given command of the army of Italy. Within weeks, he was romantically involved with Joséphine de Beauharnais, Barras's former mistress. The two were married on March 9, 1796 in a civil ceremony.

FIRST ITALIAN CAMPAIGN

Two days after the wedding, Bonaparte left Paris to take command of the Army of Italy. He immediately went on the offensive, hoping to defeat the Piedmontese forces before his Austrian allies could intervene. In a series of quick victories during the Montenotte Campaign, he knocked Piedmont out of the war within two weeks. The French then focused on the Austrians for the remainder of the war, the highlight of which was the prolonged struggle for Mantua. The Austrians launched a series of offensives against the French to break the siege, but Napoleon defeated all relief efforts, scoring victories at the battles of Castiglione, Bassano, Arcole, and Rivoli. The decisive French triumph at Rivoli in January 1797 led to the collapse of the Austrian position in Italy. At Rivoli, the Austrians lost up to 14,000 men, while the French lost about 5,000. The next phase of the campaign saw the French invade the Habsburg heartland. French forces in southern Germany had been defeated by the Austrian Archduke Charles in 1796, but the archduke withdrew his forces to protect Vienna after learning of Napoleon's method of attack. In the first meeting between the two commanders, Napoleon drove off his opponent and advanced deep into Austrian territory after winning at the Battle of Tarvis in March 1797. The Austrians were alarmed by the French push that reached as far as Leoben, about 100 km (60 mi) from Vienna, and eventually decided to negotiate for peace. The Treaty of Leoben, followed by the more comprehensive Treaty of Campo Formio, gave France control of most of northern Italy and the Low Countries, and a secret clause promised the Republic of Venice to Austria. Bonaparte marched on Venice and forced its surrender, ending the city's 1,100-year independence. He also authorized the French to plunder treasures such as the Horses of St. Mark.

FIRST ITALIAN CAMPAIGN

His application of conventional military ideas to real-world situations enabled his military triumphs, such as his creative use of artillery as a mobile force to support his infantry. He later stated, "I have fought sixty battles and have learned nothing that I did not know at the beginning. Look at Caesar; he fought the first as the last." Bonaparte could win battles by concealing his deployments of troops and concentrating his forces on the "hinge" of an enemy's weakened front. If he could not use his favored pincer strategy, he would take the central position and attack two cooperating forces at their hinges: he would swing to fight one until it fled, then turn to the other. In this Italian campaign, Bonaparte's army captured 150,000 prisoners, 540 cannon, and 170 flags. The French army fought 67 actions and won 18 battles with Bonaparte's superior artillery technology and tactics. During the campaign, Bonaparte became increasingly influential in French politics. He founded two newspapers: one for the troops in his army and the other for circulation in France. The royalists attacked Bonaparte for plundering Italy and warned that he could become a dictator. Napoleon's forces extracted about $45 million in funds from Italy during their campaign in the country, and another $12 million in precious metals and jewels. His forces also confiscated more than three hundred priceless paintings and sculptures. Bonaparte sent General Pierre Augereau to Paris to lead a coup d'état and purge the royalists on September 4—the coup of 18 Fructidor. This left Barras and his republican allies in control again, but dependent on Bonaparte, who began peace negotiations with Austria. These negotiations resulted in the Treaty of Campo Formio, and Bonaparte returned to Paris in December a hero. He met Talleyrand, the new French foreign minister, and they met in Paris.

EGYPTIAN EXPEDITION

After two months of planning, Bonaparte decided that France's naval power was not yet strong enough to confront the British Royal Navy. He decided on a military expedition to capture Egypt and thereby undermine Britain's access to its commercial interests in India. Bonaparte wished to establish a French presence in the Middle East by tying himself up with Tipu, the Sultan of Mysore who had fought the four long Anglo-Maori Wars during the British invasion of India. Napoleon assured the Directory that "as soon as he had conquered Egypt, he would establish relations with the Indian princes and, together with them, attack the English in their dominions." The Directory agreed to secure a trade route to India. In May 1798, Bonaparte was elected a member of the French Academy of Sciences. His Egyptian expedition included a group of 167 scientists, including mathematicians, naturalists, chemists and geodesists. His discoveries included the Rosetta Stone, and his work was published in Description de l'Égypte in 1809. En route to Egypt, Bonaparte reached Malta on 9 June 1798, which was controlled by the Knights Hospitaller. Grand Master Ferdinand von Hompesch zu Bolheim surrendered without resistance, and Bonaparte captured an important naval base with the loss of only three men. General Bonaparte and his expedition eluded the pursuit of the British Royal Navy, and landed at Alexandria on 1 July.[37] He fought the Battle of Shubra Khit against the Mamluks, the ruling military caste of Egypt. This helped the French practice their defensive tactics for the Battle of the Pyramids, fought on 21 July, about 24 km (15 mi) from the Pyramids.

EGYPTIAN EXPEDITION

General Bonaparte's force of 25,000 was roughly equal to that of the Egyptian cavalry of the Mamluks. Twenty-nine French and about 2,000 Egyptians were killed. The victory boosted the morale of the French army. On 1 August 1798, the British fleet under Sir Horatio Nelson captured or destroyed all but two French ships in the Battle of the Nile, defeating Bonaparte's objective of strengthening the French position in the Mediterranean. His army achieved a temporary increase in French power in Egypt, despite facing repeated revolts. In early 1799, he transferred an army to the Ottoman province of Damascus (Syria and Galilee). Bonaparte led these 13,000 French troops in the conquest of the coastal cities of Arish, Gaza, Jaffa, and Haifa. The attack on Jaffa was particularly brutal. Bonaparte discovered that many of the defenders were former prisoners of war on parole, so he ordered the garrison and 1,400 prisoners to be executed by bayonet or drowning to save bullets. Men, women, and children were robbed and murdered over three days. Bonaparte started with an army of 13,000 men; 1,500 went missing, 1,200 died in action, and thousands died of disease—most notably the bubonic plague. He was unable to reduce the fortress of Acre, so he marched his army back to Egypt in May. To hasten the retreat, Bonaparte ordered the plague-stricken men to be poisoned with opium; the number of dead remains disputed, ranging from a low of 30 to a high of 580. He also brought back 1,000 wounded men. Back in Egypt on 25 July, Bonaparte defeated an Ottoman amphibious invasion at Aboukir.

RULER OF FRANCE

While in Egypt, Bonaparte kept himself informed of European affairs. He learned that France had suffered a series of defeats in the War of the Second Coalition. On 24 August 1799, he took advantage of the temporary departure of British ships from French coastal ports and set out for mainland France, despite having received no explicit orders from Paris. The army was under the command of Jean-Baptiste Kléber. Unknown to Bonaparte, the Directory had sent orders for him to return to prevent possible invasions of French soil, but poor lines of communication prevented the delivery of these messages. By the time he reached Paris in October, the situation in France had been improved by a series of victories. The Republic, however, was bankrupt, and the ineffective Directory was unpopular with the French population. The Directory discussed Bonaparte's "desertion" but was too weak to punish him. Despite his failures in Egypt, Napoleon returned to a hero's welcome. He formed an alliance with the Director Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, his brother Luciano Bonaparte, the President of the Council of Five Hundred, Roger Ducos, the Director Joseph Fouché, and Talleyrand; they overthrew the Directory in a coup d'état on 9 November 1799 ("the 18 Brumaire" according to the revolutionary calendar), closing the Council of Five Hundred. Napoleon became "First Consul" for ten years, with two consuls appointed by him who had only advisory voices. His power was confirmed by the new "Constitution of the Year VIII", originally created by Sieyès to give Napoleon a lesser role, but rewritten by Napoleon and accepted by direct popular vote (3 million in favor, 1,567 against). The constitution preserved the appearance of a republic, but in reality established a dictatorship.

FRENCH EMPIRE

During the Consulate, Napoleon faced several assassination plots by royalists and Jacobins, including the Conspiracy des Poignards (Dagger Plot) in October 1800 and the Plot of the Rue Saint-Nicaise (also known as the Infernal Machine) two months later. In January 1804, his police uncovered an assassination plot against him that involved Moreau and was ostensibly sponsored by the Bourbon family, former rulers of France. On Talleyrand's advice, Napoleon ordered the kidnapping of the Duke of Enghien, violating the sovereignty of Baden. The Duke was quickly executed after a secret military trial, even though he had not been involved in the plot. To expand his power, Napoleon used these assassination plots to justify the creation of an imperial system based on the Roman model. He believed that a Bourbon restoration would be more difficult if his family's succession was entrenched in the constitution. Calling yet another referendum, Napoleon was elected Emperor of the French by a vote of over 99%. As with the Perpetual Consulate two years earlier, this referendum produced a strong turnout, bringing nearly 3.6 million voters to the polls. Madame de Rémusat, a close observer of Bonaparte's rise to absolute power, explained that "men worn out by the turbulence of the Revolution […] sought the rule of an able ruler" and that "the people sincerely believed that Bonaparte, whether as consul or emperor, would exercise his authority and save them from the dangers of anarchy." Napoleon's coronation, officiated by Pope Pius VII, took place at Notre Dame de Paris on 2 December 1804. Two separate crowns were brought to the ceremony: a gilded laurel wreath reminiscent of the Roman Empire, and a replica of Charlemagne's crown.

PERSONALITY

Historians emphasize the power of ambition that propelled Napoleon from an obscure village to rule most of Europe. In-depth scholarly studies of his early life conclude that until the age of two he had a "gentle disposition". His older brother, Joseph, often received attention from their mother, which made Napoleon more assertive and motivated by approval. During his early school years, he was severely bullied by his peers for his Corsican identity and fluency in French. To cope with the stress, he became domineering, developing an inferiority complex. George F. E. Rudé emphasizes his "rare combination of will, intellect, and physical vigor". In one-on-one situations, he often exerted a hypnotic effect on people, seemingly bending the strongest leaders to his will. He understood military technology, but was not an innovator in that sense. He was an innovator in the use of France's financial, bureaucratic, and diplomatic resources. He could quickly dictate a series of complex commands to his subordinates, keeping in mind where the main units should be at each future point and, like a chess master, "seeing" the best moves ahead. Napoleon maintained rigorous and efficient work habits, prioritizing what needed to be done. He cheated at cards, but he paid his losses; he had to win everything he tried. He kept relays of clerks and secretaries at his work. Unlike many generals, Napoleon did not look to history to ask what Hannibal, Alexander, or anyone else would have done in a similar situation. Critics have said that he won many battles simply because of luck;

PERSONALITY

Napoleon replied, "Give me lucky generals", arguing that "luck" comes to leaders who recognize opportunity and seize it. Dwyer argues that Napoleon's victories at Austerlitz and Jena in 1805–06 increased his sense of self-grandiosity, making him even more certain of his destiny and invincibility. In terms of his influence on events, it was more than Napoleon's personality that came into play. He reorganized France itself to provide the men and money needed for the wars. He inspired his men—the Duke of Wellington said that his presence on the battlefield was worth 40,000 soldiers, as he inspired confidence in them. He also unnerved the enemy. At the Battle of Auerstadt in 1806, King Frederick William III of Prussia outnumbered the French by 63,000 to 27,000; however, when he was mistakenly told that Napoleon was in command, he ordered a hasty retreat which turned into a rout. The force of his personality neutralized the material difficulties, while his soldiers fought with the confidence that with Napoleon in command they would certainly win.