Napoleon of France

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Reedited and given notes by Yapeng Chen(陈雅鹏)

Napoleon Bonaparte (15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), was a military and political leader of France. He was also Emperor of the French as Napoleon I. His actions shaped European politics in the early 19th century.

He was born in Corsica. His parents were of noble Italian birth. He trained as an officer in mainland France. Bonaparte became important under the First French Republic. He led successful campaigns against the First and Second Coalitions. In 1799, he staged a coup d'état. Through this, he became a First Consul. Five years later the French Senate declared him Emperor. In the first ten years of the nineteenth century, the French Empire under Napoleon went through a great number of wars. These were called the Napoleonic Wars. Every great European power joined in these wars. After a number of victories, France became very important in continental Europe. Napoleon kept up their influence. He did this by making many alliances. He also made friends and family members rule other European countries as French client states.

The French invasion of Russia in 1812 began a turning point in Napoleon's fortunes. His army was badly damaged in the campaign. It was never the same again. In 1813, the Sixth Coalition defeated his forces at Leipzig. The year after that, the Coalition attacked France. The Coalition also exiled Napoleon to the island of Elba. Less than a year later, he escaped Elba and became powerful again. However, he was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815. Napoleon spent the last six years of his life confined by the British on the island of Saint Helena. A doctor claimed he died of stomach cancer. However, Sten Forshufvud and other scientists have suggested that he was poisoned with arsenic.

Napoleon's campaigns are studied at military schools all over the world. He is remembered as a tyrant by the people who were against him. However, he is also remembered for making the Napoleonic code.

Birth and education

Napoleon Bonaparte was born in Casa Buonaparte in the town of Ajaccio, Corsica, on 15 August 1769. This was one year after the island was given to France by the Republic of Genoa.He was the second of eight children. He was named Napoleone di Buonaparte. He took his first name from an uncle who had been killed fighting the French.However, he later used the more French-sounding Napoléon Bonaparte.

The Corsican Buonapartes were from lower Italian nobility. They had come to Corsica in the 16th century.His father Nobile Carlo Buonaparte became Corsica's representative to the court of Louis XVI in 1777. The greatest influence of Napoleon's childhood was his mother, Maria Letizia Ramolino. Her firm education controlled a wild child. He had an older brother, Joseph. He also had younger siblings Lucien, Elisa, Louis, Pauline, Caroline and Jér^ome. Napoleon was baptized as a Catholic just before his second birthday, on 21 July 1771 at Ajaccio Cathedral.

Early Military Career

Napoleon was able to enter the military academy at Brienne in 1779. He was nine years old when he entered the academy. He moved to the Parisian 'Ecole Royale Militaire in 1784 and graduated a year later as a second lieutenant of artillery. Napoleon was able to spend much of the next eight years in Corsica. There he played an active part in political and military matters. He came into conflict with the Corsican nationalist Pasquale Paoli, and his family was forced to flee to Marsille in 1793.

Siege of Toulon

The French Revolution caused much fighting and disorder in France. At times, Napoleon was connected to those in power. Other times, he was in jail. He helped the French Republic from those royalist who supported the former king of France. In September 1793, he assumed command of an artillery brigade at the siege of Toulon, where royalist leaders had welcomed a British fleet and enemy troops. The British were driven out in December 17, 1793, and Bonaparte was rewarded with promotion to brigadier general and assigned to the French army in Italy in February 1794.

13 Vendémiaire

General Napoleon Bonaparte was later appointed by the republic to repel the royalist on October 5 1795. More than a 1400 royalists died and the rest fled. He had cleared the streets with "a whiff of grapeshot" according to the 19th-century historian Thomas Carlyle. He was then promoted to major general and mark his name on the French Revolution.

The defeat of the Royalist rebellions ended the threat to the Convention and earned Bonaparte sudden fame, wealth, and the patronage of the new Directory. In March 9, 1796, Napoleon married Josephine de Beauharnais,a widow older than him and a very unlikely wife to future ruler.

Italian Campaign

The campaign in Italy is the first time Napoleon led France to war. Late in March 1796, Bonaparte begins a series of operations to divide and defeat the Austrian and Sardinian armies in Italy. He defeated the Sardinians in April 21, adding Savoy and Nice to territories of France. Then, in a series of brilliant battles, he won Lombardy from the Austrians. Mantua, the last Lombard stronghold fell in February 1797.

Egyptian Campaign

In May 1798, General Napoleon left for a campaign in Egypt. The French needed to threaten Britain's empire in India and the French Directory's concerns that Napoleon would take control of France. The French Army under Napoleon won an overwhelming victory in the Battle of Pyramids. Barely 300 French soldiers died, while thousand of Mamluks (an old power in the Middle East) lay dead. But his army is weakened by bubonic plague and poor supplies. The Egyptian campaign was a military failure but a cultural success, the Rosetta Stone was found by a French engineer Captain Pierre-Francois Bouchard, and French scholar Jean-Francois Champollion was able to decipher the code in the stone. Napoleon went back to France because of a change in the French government. Some believe that Napoleon should not have left his soldiers in Egypt. Napoleon helped lead the Brumaire coup of November 1799.

Ruler of France

Napoleon Bonaparte returned to Paris on October 1799. France's situation had been improved by a series of victories but Republic was bankrupt and the ineffective Directory was unpopular with the French population. He was approached by one of the Directors, Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, for his support in a coup to overthrow the constitutional government. The leaders of the plot included his brother Lucien Bonaparte, the speaker of the Council of Five Hundred, Roger Ducos, another Director, Joseph Fouché, and Charles Maurice Talleyrand. The deputies had realised they faced an attempted coup. Faced with their remonstrations, Bonaparte led troops to seize control and disperse them, which left a rump legislature to name Bonaparte, Sièyes, and Ducos as provisional Consuls to administer the government.

Though Sieyès expected to dominate the new regime, he was outmanoeuvred by Bonaparte, who drafted the Constitution of the Year VIII and secured his own election as First Consul. This made Bonaparte the most powerful person in France and he took up residence at the Tuileries.

In 1800, Napoleon assured his power by crossing the Alps and defeating the Austrians at Marengo. He then negotiated a general European peace that established the Rhine River as the eastern border of France. He also concluded an agreement with the pope (the Concordat of 1801), which contributed to French domestic tranquility by ending the quarrel with the Roman Catholic Church that had arisen during the French Revolution.

In France the administration was reorganized, the court system was simplified, and all schools were put under centralized control. French law was standardized in the Napoleonic Code, or civil code, and six other codes. They guaranteed the rights and liberties won in the Revolution, including equality before the law and freedom of religion.

Emperor of the French

In February 1804, a British-financial plot against Bonaparte was uncovered by the former police minister Joseph Fouche. It gave Napoleon a reason to start a hereditary dynasty. In December 2, 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte crowned himself "Emperor of the French" . People of the French did not see him as the monarch of the old regime because his holding a Roman position that has the glory related to it. He invited Pope Pius VII to see his coronation at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. During the ceremony, Napoleon I took the crown from the pope's hand and placed it on his own head. This had been agreed on between Napoleon and the Pope before the coronation. At Milan Cathedral on May 26 1805, Napoleon was crowned King of Italy with the Iron Crown of Lombardy.

Reforms

To restore prosperity, Napoleon modernizes finance. He regulated the economy to control prices, encourage new industry, and build roads and canals. To ensure well-trained officials and military officers, he promoted a system of public schools under firm government control. He also backed off from some social reforms of the revolution. He made peace with the Catholic Church in the Concordat of 1801. The Concordat kept the Church under state control but recognized religious freedom for Catholics.

Napoleon I won support across class lines. He encourage émigré to return, provided they oath of loyalty. Peasants were relieved when he recognized their right to lands they had bought from Church and nobles during the revolution. Napoleon's chief opposition came from royalists and republicans.

Napoleonic Code

Among Napoleon's most lasting reforms was a new law code, popularly called the Napoleonic Code. It embodied Enlightenment principles such as equality of all citizens before the law, religious toleration, and advancement based on virtue. But the Napoleonic Code undid some reforms of the French Revolution. Women, for example, lost most of their newly gained rights under the new code. the law considered women minors who could not exercise the rights of citizenship. Male heads of households regained full authority over their wives and children. Again, Napoleon valued order and authority over individual rights.

The Grand Empire

To legitimize his rule, he divorced his wife Joséphine and marry Marie Louise, duchess of Parma and daughter of the Emperor, under