Napoleon I of France

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For other meanings, see Napoleon (disambiguation).

Napoléon Bonaparte (15 August 1769 – 5 May1821) 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 Napoléon I from May 18, 1804 until April 6, 1814, and again briefly from March 20 to June 22, 1815.

Napoléon, 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.

Napoléon appointed many members of the Bonaparte family as monarchs, but generally speaking, they did not survive his downfall. Napoléon was one of the "enlightened monarchs."

Early life and military career

He was born Napoleone Buonaparte in the city of Ajaccio on Corsica. He later adopted the more French-sounding Napoléon Bonaparte, the first known instance of which appears in an official report dated March 28, 1796.

His 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 Napoléon'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 Napoléon's education in France. He entered a military school at Brienne-le-Château, a small town near Troyes, on May 15, 1779. Napoléon 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, Napoléon 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, Napoléon returned to Corsica, where a nationalist struggle sought separation from France. Civil war broke out, and Napoléon's family fled to France. Napoléon 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).

Napoléon 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, Napoléon organized a coup in 1797 which removed several royalists from power in Paris.

Invasion of Egypt, rise to power

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 Napoléon'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. Napoléon's fleet in Egypt was largely destroyed by Nelson at The Battle of the Nile, so that Napoléon became land-bound.

According to an enduring myth, while in Egypt, Napoleon 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 Napoléon 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.

Napoléon 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.

Struggle in Europe, rise to emperor

In June 1800, the Austrians were routed at Marengo. Napoleon returned to Paris to disprove the rumors about his defeat and death. Joseph, Napoleons's brother 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 developed more and more into a farce, Napoleon gave orders to his general Moreau to strike Austria once more. Moreau led France to victory at Hohenlinden 1800. As a result the Treaty of Lunéville was signed in February 1801, under which the French gains of the Campo Formio treaty were reaffirmed and increased; the British also committed themselves to sign a peace treaty and finally signed the treaty of Amiens in March 1802, in which Malta was to be handed over to France. It was during this period that Napoleon tried to ensure peace in Europe. However his enemies had difficulties in recognizing a republic, as all the countries bordering France were kingdoms and were horrified 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 republic. Although France complied with some of the provisions of the treaty, for strategic reasons Britain did not cede Malta to France.

In 1803, Napoléon sold a large part of North America to the United States — the Louisiana Purchase — for less than three cents per acre; he had just faced a major setback when an army he sent to conquer Santo Domingo and establish a base was destroyed by a combination of yellow fever and fierce resistance led by Toussaint L'Ouverture. With his western forces diminished, Napoléon knew he would be unable to defend Louisiana and decided to sell it to finance the war against Britain, which at that time was more or less inevitable.

Coronation of Napoléon, memorialized by Jacques-Louis David

The dispute over Malta provided the pretext for Britain to declare war on France in 1803 to support French royalists. Napoléon, however, crowned himself Emperor on 2 December 1804 (illustration, right). 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; after the Imperial regalia had been blessed by the Pope, Napoléon crowned himself before crowning his wife Joséphine as Empress. Then at Milan's cathedral on 26 May 1805, Napoléon was crowned King of Italy, with the Iron Crown of Lombardy.

A plan by the French, along with the Spanish, to defeat the Royal Navy failed dramatically at the Battle of Trafalgar (21 October 1805), and Britain gained lasting control of the seas.

By 1805 the Third Coalition against Napoléon had formed in Europe; Napoléon attacked and secured a major victory against Austria and Russia at Austerlitz (2 December) and, in the following year, humbled Prussia at the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt (14 October 1806). As a result, Napoléon became the de facto ruler over most of Germany. Napoléon marched on through Poland and then signed a treaty with the Russian tsar Alexander I, dividing Europe between the two powers. In the French part of Poland, he established the restored Polish state of Grand Duchy de Varsovie with the Saxonian King as a ruler.

Then on 17 May 1809 Napoléon ordered the annexation of the Papal States to the French empire.

Battles in Spain, Austria, and Russia

Napoléon crossing the Alps, by Jacques-Louis David

Napoléon attempted to enforce a Europe-wide commercial boycott of Britain called the "Continental System". He invaded Spain and installed his brother Joseph Bonaparte as king there. The Spanish rose in revolt, which Napoléon was unable to suppress. The British invaded Spain through Portugal in 1808 and, with the aid of the Spanish nationalists, slowly drove out the French. While France was engaged in Spain, Austria attacked in Germany, but after initial success suffered defeat at the Battle of Wagram (6 July 1809).

Alexander I of Russia had become distrustful of Napoléon and refused to co-operate with him against the British. In 1812, Napoléon invaded Russia. Napoléon ignored the advice of the Poles, who predicted long-term war rather than a quick victorious campaign. They proposed to retrieve former Polish areas from Russian hands gradually and build a base for further war there. As the Poles predicted, the Russians under Kutuzov, who declared a Patriotic War, retreated instead of giving battle. Outside Moscow on 12 September, the Battle of Borodino took place. The Russians retreated and Napoléon was able to enter Moscow, assuming that Alexander I would negotiate peace. Moscow began to burn and within the month, fearing loss of control in France, Napoléon left Moscow. The French Grand Army suffered greatly in the course of a ruinous retreat; the Army had begun as over 600,000 men, but in the end fewer than 10,000 crossed the Berezina River (November 1812) to escape. Encouraged by this dramatic reversal, several nations again took up arms against France. The decisive defeat of the French came at the Battle of Leipzig, also called "The Battle of the Nations" (16-19 October 1813).

Defeat, exile in Elba, return and Waterloo

In 1814 Britain, Russia, Prussia and Austria formed an alliance against Napoléon. Although the defence of France included many battles which the French won, the pressure became overwhelming. Paris was occupied on 31 March 1814. The marshals asked Napoléon to abdicate, and he did so on 6 April in favour of his son. The Allies, however, demanded unconditional surrender and Napoléon abdicated again, unconditionally, on 11 April. In the Treaty of Fontainebleau the victors exiled the Corsican to Elba, a small island in the Mediterranean 20 km off the coast of Italy. They let him keep the title of "Emperor" but restricted his empire to that tiny island.

Napoléon tried to poison himself and failed; on the voyage to Elba he was almost assassinated. In France, the royalists had taken over and restored King Louis XVIII to power. On Elba, Napoléon became concerned about his wife and, more especially, his son, in the hands of the Austrians. The French government refused to pay his allowance and he heard rumours that he was about to be banished to a remote island in the Atlantic. Napoléon escaped from Elba on 26 February 1815 and returned to the mainland on 1 March 1815. The French armies sent to stop him received him instead as leader. He arrived in Paris on 20 March with 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

Napoléon on the Bellerophon at Plymouth, before his exile to Saint Helena.

Napoléon 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. There, with a small cadre of followers, he dictated his memoirs and criticized his captors. In the last half of April 1821, he wrote out his own will and several codicils (a total of 40-odd pages). When he died, on 5 May 1821, his last words were: "France, the Army, Joséphine."

In 1955 the diaries of Louis Marchand, Napoléon's valet, appeared in print. He describes Napoléon in the months leading up to his death, and led many, most notably Sten Forshufvud and Ben Weider, to conclude that he had been killed by arsenic poisoning. Arsenic was at the time sometimes used as a poison undetectable when administered over a long period of time. 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 Napoléon's hair preserved after his death: they were seven to thirty-eight times higher than normal.

Cutting up hairs into short segments and analysing each segment individually provides a histogram of arsenic concentration in the body. This analysis on hair from Napoléon suggests that large but non-lethal doses were absorbed at random intervals. The arsenic severely weakened Napoléon and remained in his system. There, it could have reacted with calomel- and mercury-based compounds -- common medicines at the time -- and thus been the immediate cause of his death.

Napoléon's tomb in Les Invalides

More recent analysis on behalf of the magazine Science et Vie showed that similar concentrations of arsenic can be found in Napoléon's hair in samples taken from 1805, 1814 and 1821. The lead investigator, Ivan Ricordel (head of toxicology for the Paris Police), stated that if arsenic had been the cause, Napoléon would have died years earlier. Arsenic was also used in some wallpaper, as a green pigment, and even in some patent medicines, and the group suggested that the most likely source in this case was a hair tonic. Prior to the discovery of antibiotics, arsenic was also a widely used, but ineffective, treatment for syphilis. (This has led to speculation that Napoléon might have suffered from syphilis.) Controversy remains as the Science et Vie analysis has not addressed all points of the arsenic poisoning theory.

Marriages and children

Napoléon was twice married:

• First on March 9, 1796 to Joséphine de Beauharnais. He later crowned her as Empress Joséphine. She had no heirs for him, leading to a divorce.
• Second on March 11, 1810 (by proxy) to Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria, who became his second empress. They had one child.
  • Napoléon Francis Joseph Charles Bonaparte (March 20, 1811- July 22, 1832), King of Rome. He is known as Napoléon II of France although he never ruled.

Napoléon also had at least two illegitimate children who both had descendants:

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

Other information points to Napoléons's having had further illegitimate children:

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

Burial

Napoléon had asked in his will to be buried on the banks of the Seine, but when he died in 1821 he was buried on Saint Helena. This final wish was not executed until 1840, when his remains were taken to France in the frigate Belle-Poule and entombed in Les Invalides, Paris.

Legacy

Napoleon is credited with introducing the concept of the modern professional conscript army to Europe, an innovation which other states were forced to follow. The Code Napoleon was adopted through much of Europe and remained after Napoleon's defeat. Professor Dieter Langewiesche of the University of Tuebingen 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 Second Reich in 1871.

His marshals

Napoléon's marshals included:

• Pierre François Charles Augereau
• Jean Baptiste Bernadotte
• Louis Alexandre Berthier
• Jean Baptiste Bessières
• Guillaume Brune
• Louis Nicolas Davout
• Nicolas Jean de Dieu Soult
• Emmanuel Grouchy
• Jean Baptiste Jourdan
• François Christophe Kellermann
• Jean Lannes
• François Lefebvre
• Jacques Macdonald
• Auguste Marmont
• Laurent, Marquis de Gouvion Saint-Cyr
• André Masséna
• Bon Adrien Moncey
• Édouard Mortier
• Joachim Murat
• Michel Ney
• Nicolas Oudinot
• Dominique Perignon
• Józef Poniatowski
• Jean Mathieu Serrurier
• Louis Gabriel Suchet
• Claude Perrin Victor

See also

• Napoleonic Code
• Napoleonic Era
• Napoleonic medal
• Napoleonic wars
• Napoleon and the Jews
• Napoleon in popular culture (esp. as a by-word for mental ill health)

External links

Wikimedia Commons has multimedia related to Napoleon I of France.

• Wikiquote - Quotes by Napoleon
• Bonaparte (Napoléon Ier)
• The Napoleon Series - volunteer educational project with over 800 pages of content.
• Full text of Memoirs of Napoleon from Project Gutenberg
• Napoleon's family genealogy
• A profile focusing in his years serving in the French army
• "The Strange Story of Napoleon's Wallpaper" - discussing the possibility of arsenic poisoning

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