NAPOLEON I

born Aug. 15, 1769, Ajaccio, Corsica died May 5, 1821, St. Helena Island French in full Napolon Bonaparte, original Italian Napoleone Buonaparte, byname The Corsican, or The Little Corporal, French Le Corse, or Le Petit Caporal French general, First Consul (17991804), and emperor of the French (18041814/15), one of the most celebrated personages in the history of the West. He revolutionized military organization and training; sponsored the Napoleonic Code, the prototype of later civil-law codes; reorganized education; and established the long-lived Concordat with the papacy. A brief account of the life and works of Napoleon I follows; for a full biography, see Napoleon. A Corsican by birth, Napoleon was educated in France, becoming an army officer in 1785. He fought during the French Revolution and was promoted to brigadier general in 1793. The threat of revolt brought him the command of the army of the interior in 1795; he then commanded the army of Italy in several victorious campaigns. His expedition to Egypt and Syria in 179899 ended in defeats at the hands of the British, however, and he returned to France. A coup in 1799 brought him to supreme power, and he instituted a military dictatorship, with himself as First Consul. In the early 1800s, Napoleon made numerous reforms in government and education. He defeated the Austrians in 1800, went to war against Great Britain in 1803, and had himself crowned emperor in the following year. His greatest victory, the Battle of Austerlitz, against Austria and Russia, came in 1805; thereafter, except for temporary setbacks in Spain, he was successful, consolidating most of Europe as his empire about 1810. His downfall began with his embroilments in Spain and Portugal in the Peninsular War (180814) and, especially, with his disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812. The Allied coalition revived, and in April 1814 he was forced to abdicate and was exiled to Elba. In March 1815 he returned to France for the Hundred Days and was decisively defeated at the Battle of Waterloo (June 18, 1815), resulting in his second abdication and final exile to St. Helena. born Aug. 15, 1769, Ajaccio, Corsica died May 5, 1821, St. Helena Island Napoleon in His Study, by Jacques-Louis David, 1812. In the National Gallery of Art, French in full Napolon Bonaparte, original Italian Napoleone Buonaparte, byname The Corsican, or The Little Corporal, French Le Corse, or Le Petit Caporal French general, First Consul (17991804), and emperor of the French (18041814/15), one of the most celebrated personages in the history of the West. He revolutionized military organization and training; sponsored the Napoleonic Code; the prototype of later civil-law codes; reorganized education; and established the long-lived Concordat with the papacy. Napoleon's many reforms left a lasting mark on the institutions of France and of much of western Europe. But his driving passion was the military expansion of French dominion, and, though at his fall he left France smaller than it had been at the outbreak of the Revolution in 1789, he was almost unanimously revered during his lifetime and until the end of the Second Empire under his nephew Napoleon III as one of history's great heroes. Napoleon was born on Corsica shortly after the island's cession to France by the Genoese. He was the fourth, and second surviving, child of Carlo Buonaparte, a lawyer, and his wife, Letizia Ramolino. His father's family, of ancient Tuscan nobility, had emigrated to Corsica in the 16th century. Carlo Buonaparte had married the beautiful and strong-willed Letizia when she was only 14 years old; they eventually had eight children to bring up in very difficult times. The French occupation of their native country was resisted by a number of Corsicans led by Pasquale Paoli. Carlo Buonaparte joined Paoli's party, but when Paoli had to flee, Buonaparte came to terms with the French. Winning the protection of the governor of Corsica, he was appointed assessor for the judicial district of Ajaccio in 1771. In 1778 he obtained the admission of his two eldest sons, Joseph and Napoleon, to the Collge d'Autun. A Corsican by birth, heredity, and childhood associations, Napoleon continued for some time after his arrival in Continental France to regard himself a foreigner; yet from the age of nine he was educated in France as other Frenchmen were. While the tendency to see in Napoleon a reincarnation of some 14th-century Italian condottiere is an overemphasis on one aspect of his character, he did, in fact, share neither the traditions nor the prejudices of his new country: remaining a Corsican in temperament, he was first and foremost, through both his education and his reading, a man of the 18th century. Napoleon was educated at three schools: briefly at Autun, for five years at the military college of Brienne, and finally for one year at the military academy in Paris. It was during Napoleon's year in Paris that his father died of a stomach cancer in February 1785, leaving his family in straitened circumstances. Napoleon, although not the eldest son, assumed the position of head of the family before he was 16. In September he graduated from the military academy, ranking 42nd in a class of 58. He was made second lieutenant of artillery in the regiment of La Fre, a kind of training school for young artillery officers. Garrisoned at Valence, Napoleon continued his education, reading much, in particular works on strategy and tactics. He also wrote Lettres sur la Corse, in which he reveals his feeling for his native island. He went back to Corsica in September 1786 and did not rejoin his regiment until June 1788. By that time the agitation that was to culminate in the French Revolution had already begun. A reader of Voltaire and of Rousseau, Napoleon believed that a political change was imperative, but as a career officer he seems not to have seen any need for radical social reforms. Additional reading Sources An enormous mass of documents is dispersed throughout the archives of Europe, but the essential sources are Correspondance de Napolon Ier, 32 vol. (185869, reprinted 1974), published on command of Napoleon III; Oeuvres de Napolon Ier Sainte-Hlne, 4 vol. (1870); and Oeuvres littraires et crits militaires, 3 vol. (1967). In English are The Bonaparte Letters and Despatches, Secret, Confidential, and Official, 2 vol. (1846); The Confidential Correspondence of Napoleon Bonaparte with His Brother Joseph, 2 vol. (1855); and Unpublished Correspondence of Napoleon I, Preserved in the War Archives, 3 vol. (1913). The principal ideas of Napoleon may be found in the following works: R.M. Johnston (comp.), The Corsican: A Diary of Napoleon's Life in His Own Words, new ed. (1921); J.M. Thompson (trans. and ed.), Napoleon Self-Revealed (1934); J. Christopher Herold (ed. and trans.), The Mind of Napoleon (1955); Andr Palluel (ed.), Dictionnaire de l'empereur (1969); and Adrien Dansette (ed.), Penses politiques et sociales de Napolon (1969). Napoleon's itinerary is available in Albert Schuermans, Itinraire gnral de Napolon Ier, 2nd ed. (1911); and Louis Garros, Itinraire de Napolon Bonaparte (1947). Biographies General studies of his life and career include Pierre Lanfrey, The History of Napoleon the First, 2nd ed., 4 vol. (1886, reprinted 1973; originally published in French, 186775), a hostile work written at the end of the Second Empire; August Fournier, Napoleon I (1911, reissued 1930; originally published in German, 1886), an impartial study written by an Austrian historian; Frdric Masson, Napolon et sa famille, 13 vol. (18971919), which furnishes numerous details on the everyday life of Napoleon and his relationships with his relatives; John Holland Rose, The Life of Napoleon I, 11th ed., 2 vol. in 1 (1935), an apologetic work; J.M. Thompson, Napoleon Bonaparte: His Rise and Fall (1952, reissued 1969), an excellent rectification; Eugene Tarl, Bonaparte, trans. from Russian (1937), the point of view of a Soviet historian; Felix Maurice Hippisley Markham, Napoleon (1963), an objective study; Jean Mistler, Napolon et l'empire, 2 vol. (1968, reissued 1979), a magnificently illustrated work, each chapter written by a specialist; Andr Castelot, Napolon (1971; originally published in French, 1968), a vulgarized book that realized great success in France; and Jacques Godechot, Napolon (1969), an essay and an empirical study (in French).The following focus on specific aspects of Napoleon's personal life. Arthur Chuquet, La Jeunesse de Napolon, 3 vol. (189799), is a basic work on his youth. A revisionist history by Dorothy Carrington, Napoleon and His Parents (1988), explores Napoleon's first 16 years. The more intimate life of Napoleon is detailed in Arthur Lvy, Napolon intime, 7th ed. (1932); and Frdric Masson, Napoleon at Home, 2 vol. (1894; originally published in French, 1894). Theo Aronson, Napoleon and Josephine (1990), is a general account of their life together. James Kemble, Napoleon Immortal (1959), surveys Napoleon's health. The theory that Napoleon died of arsenic poisoning is explored in Ben Weider and David Hapgood, The Murder of Napoleon (1982). Specialized studies There are many studies of Napoleon's career. Donald D. Horward (ed.), Napoleonic Military History: A Bibliography (1986), contains more than 7,000 entries in 14 languages on military, social, political, economic, and other topics. David G. Chandler, The Illustrated Napoleon (1990); and Owen Connelly, Blundering to Glory: Napoleon's Military Campaigns (1987), focus on Napoleon's military career. Accounts of specific military maneuvers are James R. Arnold, Crisis on the Danube: Napoleon's Austrian Campaign of 1809 (1990); Curtis Cate, The War of the Two Emperors: The Duel Between Napoleon and AlexanderRussia, 1812 (1985); and Richard K. Riehn, 1812: Napoleon's Russian Campaign (1990). R.S. Alexander, Bonapartism and Revolutionary Tradition in France: The Fdrs of 1815 (1992), discusses the politico-military organizations that supported Napoleon during the Hundred Days. Paul Fregosi, Dreams of Empire: Napoleon and the First World War, 17921815 (1989), recounts how close Napoleon came to world domination. Stuart Woolf, Napoleon's Integration of Europe (1991), studies the modernization of Napoleonic Europe.Other works of interest include Mabel Emmerton Brookes, St. Helena Story (1960); Norman MacKenzie, The Escape from Elba: The Fall and Flight of Napoleon, 18141815 (1982), a popular account of his 10 months on Elba; Julia Blackburn, The Emperor's Last Island: A Journey to St. Helena (1991), an examination of Napoleon's last years in exile along with information on the island itself; Jean Lucas-Dubreton, Le Culte de Napolon, 18151848 (1960), a definitive study of the Napoleonic legend; Hugh Ragsdale, Dtente in the Napoleonic Era: Bonaparte and the Russians (1980); and Edward A. Whitcomb, Napoleon's Diplomatic Service (1979).