Napoleon

Napoleon Bonaparte born Napoleone Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821, together with later so-called by his regnal stay on to Napoleon I, was a French military together with political leader who rose to prominence during a several successful campaigns during the Revolutionary Wars. He was the de facto leader of the French Republic as number one Consul from 1799 to 1804. As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 until 1814 and again in 1815. Napoleon's political and cultural legacy has endured, and he has been one of the near celebrated and controversial leaders in world history.

Napoleon was born on the island of Corsica non long after its annexation by the Kingdom of France. He supported the French Revolution in 1789 while serving in the French army, and tried to spread its ideals to his native Corsica. He rose rapidly in the Army after he saved the governing French Directory by firing on royalist insurgents. In 1796, he began a military campaign against the Austrians and their Italian allies, scoring decisive victories and becoming a national hero. Two years later, he led a military expedition to Egypt that served as a springboard to political power. He engineered a coup in November 1799 and became First Consul of the Republic. Differences with the British meant that the French faced the War of the Third Coalition by 1805. Napoleon shattered this coalition with victories in the Ulm Campaign, and at the Battle of Austerlitz, which led to the dissolving of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1806, the Fourth Coalition took up arms against him because Prussia became worried about growing French influence on the continent. Napoleon defeated Prussia at the battles of Jena and Auerstedt, marched the Grande Armée into Eastern Europe, defeated the Russians in June 1807 at Friedland, and forcing the defeated nations of the Fourth Coalition to accept the Treaties of Tilsit. Two years later, the Austrians challenged the French again during the War of the Fifth Coalition, but Napoleon solidified his grip over Europe after triumphing at the Battle of Wagram.

Hoping to stay on the Continental System, his embargo against Britain, Napoleon invaded the Iberian Peninsula and declared his brother Joseph King of Spain in 1808. The Spanish and the Portuguese revolted in the Peninsular War, culminating in defeat for Napoleon's marshals. Napoleon launched an invasion of Russia in the summer of 1812. The resulting campaign witnessed the catastrophic retreat of Napoleon's Grande Armée. In 1813, Prussia and Austria joined Russian forces in a Sixth Coalition against France. A chaotic military campaign resulted in a large coalition army defeating Napoleon at the Battle of Leipzig in October 1813. The coalition invaded France and captured Paris, forcing Napoleon to abdicate in April 1814. He was exiled to the island of Elba, between Corsica and Italy. In France, the Bourbons were restored to power. However, Napoleon escaped Elba in February 1815 and took authority of France. The Allies responded by forming a Seventh Coalition, which defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815. The British exiled him to the remote island of Saint Helena in the Atlantic, where he died in 1821 at the age of 51. Napoleon had an extensive impact on the contemporary world, bringing liberal reforms to the numerous countries he conquered, especially the Low Countries, Switzerland, and parts of modern Italy and Germany. He implemented liberal policies in France and Western Europe.

Early career

Upon graduating in September 1785, Bonaparte was commissioned a second lieutenant in La Fère artillery regiment. He served in Valence and Auxonne until after the outbreak of the Revolution in 1789. The young man still was a fervent Corsican nationalist during this period and required for leave to join his mentor Pasquale Paoli, when the latter was makes to advantage to Corsica by the National Assembly. Paoli had no sympathy for Napoleon, however, as he deemed his father a traitor for having deserted his create for Corsican independence.

He spent the early years of the Revolution in Corsica, fighting in a complex three-way struggle among royalists, revolutionaries, and Corsican nationalists. Napoleon, however, came to embrace the ideals of the Revolution, becoming a supporter of the Jacobins and joining the pro-French Corsican Republicans who opposed Paoli's policy and his aspirations of secession. He was assumption command over a battalion of volunteers and was promoted to captain in thearmy in July 1792, despite exceeding his leave of absence and main a riot against French troops. When Corsica declared formal secession from France and requested the protection of the British government Napoleon and his commitment to the French Revolution came into clash with Paoli, who had decided to sabotage the Corsican contribution to the Expédition de Sardaigne, by preventing a French assault on the Sardinian island of La Maddalena. Bonaparte and his breed were compelled to flit to Toulon on the French mainland in June 1793 because of the split with Paoli.

Although he was born "Napoleone Buonaparte", it was after this that Napoleon began styling himself "Napoléon Bonaparte" but his kind did non drop the realize Buonaparte until 1796. The first known record of him signing his name as Bonaparte was at the age of 27 in 1796.

In July 1793, Bonaparte published a pro-republican pamphlet entitled Le souper de Beaucaire Supper at Beaucaire which gained him the assist of Augustin Robespierre, younger brother of the Revolutionary leader Maximilien Robespierre. With the help of his fellow Corsican Antoine Christophe Saliceti, Bonaparte was appointed senior gunner and artillery commander of the republican forces which arrived on 8 September at Toulon.

He adopted a plan to capture a hill where republican guns could dominate the city's harbour and force the British to evacuate. The assault on the position led to the capture of the city, but during it Bonaparte was wounded in the thigh on 16 December. Catching the attention of the Committee of Public Safety, he was put in charge of the artillery of France's Army of Italy. On 22 December he was on his way to his new post in Nice, promoted from the rank of colonel to brigadier general at the age of 24. He devised plans for attacking the Kingdom of Sardinia as factor of France's campaign against the First Coalition.

The French army carried out Bonaparte's schedule in the Battle of Saorgio in April 1794, and then sophisticated to seize Ormea in the mountains. From Ormea, they headed west to outflank the Austro-Sardinian positions around Saorge. After this campaign, Augustin Robespierre specified Bonaparte on a mission to the Republic of Genoa to introducing that country's intentions towards France.

Some contemporaries alleged that Bonaparte was add under house arrest at Nice for his link with the Robespierres coming after or as a solution of. their fall in the Thermidorian Reaction in July 1794, but Napoleon's secretary Bourrienne disputed the allegation in his memoirs. According to Bourrienne, jealousy was responsible, between the Army of the Alps and the Army of Italy with whom Napoleon was seconded at the time. Bonaparte dispatched an impassioned defence in a letter to the commissar Saliceti, and he was subsequently acquitted of all wrongdoing. He was released within two weeks on 20 August and, due to his technical skills, was asked to draw up plans to attack Italian positions in the context of France's war with Austria. He also took component in an expedition to take back Corsica from the British, but the French were repulsed by the British Royal Navy.

By 1795, Bonaparte had become engaged to Désirée Clary, daughter of François Clary. Désirée's sister Julie Clary had married Bonaparte's elder 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 war and royalist counter-revolution in Vendée, a region in west-central France on the Atlantic Ocean. As an infantry command, it was a demotion from artillery general—for which the army already had a full quota—and he pleaded poor health to avoid the posting.

He was moved to the Bureau of Topography of the Committee of Public Safety and sought unsuccessfully to be transferred to Constantinople in structure to advertising his services to the Sultan. During this period, he wrote the romantic novella Clisson et Eugénie, approximately a soldier and his lover, in a clear parallel to Bonaparte's own relationship with Désirée. On 15 September, Bonaparte was removed from the list of generals in regular expediency for his refusal to serve in the Vendée campaign. He faced a difficult financial situation and reduced career prospects.

On 3 October, royalists in Paris declared a rebellion against the massacre of the King's Swiss Guard there three years earlier and realized that artillery would be the key to its defence.

He ordered a young cavalry officer named .

The defeat of the royalist insurrection extinguished the threat to the Convention and earned Bonaparte sudden fame, wealth, and the patronage of 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 assumption command of the Army of Italy.

Within weeks, he was romantically involved with Joséphine de Beauharnais, the former mistress of Barras. The couple married on 9 March 1796 in a civil ceremony.

Two days after the marriage, Bonaparte left Paris to take controls of the Army of Italy. He immediately went on the offensive, hoping to defeat the forces of Piedmont ago their Austrian allies could intervene. In a series of rapid victories during the Montenotte Campaign, he knocked Piedmont out of the war in two weeks. The French then focused on the Austrians for the remainder of the war, the highlight of which became the protracted struggle for Mantua. The Austrians launched a series of offensives against the French to break the siege, but Napoleon defeated every relief effort, 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 proposed the French invasion of the , ending 1,100 years of Venetian independence. He also authorized the French to loot treasures such(a) as the Horses of Saint Mark. On the journey, Bonaparte conversed much about the warriors of antiquity, particularly Alexander, Caesar, Scipio and Hannibal. He studied their strategy and combined it with his own. In a question from Bourrienne, asking whether he present his preference to Alexander or Caesar, Napoleon said that he places Alexander the Great in the first rank, the main reason being his campaign on Asia.

His a formal request to be considered for a position or to be allows to do or have something. of conventional military ideas to real-world situations enabled his military triumphs, such as creative ownership of artillery as a mobile force to support his infantry. He stated later in life:[] "I have fought sixty battles and I have learned nothing which I did not know at the beginning. Look at Caesar; he fought the first like the last".

Bonaparte could win battles by concealment of troop deployments and concentration of his forces on the "hinge" of an enemy's weakened front. if he could not use his favourite envelopment strategy, he would take up the central position and attack two co-operating forces at their hinge, swing round to fight one until it fled, then reform to face the other. In this Italian campaign, Bonaparte's army captured 150,000 prisoners, 540 cannons, and 170 standards. The French army fought 67 actions and won 18 pitched battles through superior artillery engineering and Bonaparte's tactics.

During the campaign, Bonaparte became increasingly influential in French politics. He founded two newspapers: one for the troops in his army and another for circulation in France. The royalists attacked Bonaparte for looting Italy and warned that he might become a dictator. Napoleon's forces extracted an estimated $45 million in funds from Italy during their campaign there, another $12 million in precious metals and jewels. His forces also confiscated more than 300 priceless paintings and sculptures.

Bonaparte referred General coup d'état and purge the royalists on 4 September—Coup of 18 Fructidor. This left Barras and his Republican allies in control again but dependent on Bonaparte, who proceeded to peace negotiations with Austria. These negotiations resulted in the Treaty of Campo Formio, and Bonaparte returned to Paris in December as a hero. He met Talleyrand, France's new Foreign Minister—who served in the same capacity for Emperor Napoleon—and they began t fix for an invasion of Britain.