Napoleon

Corsica officially became French in 1768 under the treaty of Versailles dated 15 May 1768¹. French troops subdued Paoli's men at Ponte Nuovo on 9 May 1769, and among Paoli's partisans was Charles Bonaparte, Napoleon's father¹. Napoleon was born on 15 August 1769 and baptised on 21 July 1771¹. In September 1771 the family's noble status was recognised — four degrees of nobility being the required measure — opening the way to the military college at Brienne on 15 May 1779¹.

He was educated at three schools: briefly at Autun, five years at Brienne, one year at the military academy in Paris². During that Paris year his father died of stomach cancer, in February 1785, and Napoleon, though not the eldest son, became head of the family before sixteen². In the École militaire examinations of September 1785, 58 of 137 candidates passed and Napoleon came 42nd; brevetted a second lieutenant, he joined the artillery regiment La Fère¹.

When civil war broke out in Corsica in April 1793, Paoli had the Buonaparte family condemned, and they fled to France². The family left Corsica on 11 June 1793, landed in Toulon on 13 June and settled soon afterwards in Marseilles¹.

On 16 September 1793 Napoleon was appointed commander of artillery in Carteaux's army¹. The British left Toulon on 18 December, and on 22 December Napoleon was promoted to brigadier general, at twenty-four, in recognition of his decisive part in the capture of the town¹².

Bonaparte first drew the regime's attention in Paris by suppressing a royalist insurrection on 13 Vendémiaire (5 October 1795) with a volley of grapeshot³. On 2 March 1796 the Directory appointed him commander of the Army of Italy³. His first proclamation to those soldiers was blunt: they were destitute and hungry, and the government, though it owed them much, could give them nothing³.

He beat far more experienced Austrian generals: Beaulieu at Montenotte (12 April 1796), Sebottendorf at Lodi (10 May), Alvinczy at Arcole (17 November) and again at Rivoli (15 January 1797)³. After the Treaty of Campo Formio, in October 1797, he returned to Paris in triumph; in March 1798 the Directory gave him command of the expedition to Egypt³.

Eluding Nelson's fleet, the expedition landed in Egypt during the night of 1-2 July 1798³. Bonaparte beat the Mamluks at the Battle of the Pyramids on 21 July 1798³, but during the night of 1-2 August the British sank most of the French fleet at Aboukir Bay and the situation in Egypt swiftly unravelled³. Before long he was back in France³.

The plot against the Directory needed a general: the veteran politician Sieyès sought a sword, and with Bonaparte available the negotiations began in mutual distrust³. The conspirators met at his apartment on Rue de la Victoire and fixed the date: 18 Brumaire An VIII (9 November 1799)³.

The coup began at 7am on 18 Brumaire³. The conspirators spread the rumour of a Jacobin plot, got the assemblies moved to the Château de Saint-Cloud, and put Bonaparte in charge of the army's 17th Division³. The directors resigned or were neutralised³.

On the second day the decisive scene was the Orangerie³. When the Council of Five Hundred resisted, the cavalryman Murat entered the assembly and made the dramatic declaration that the deputies had been dissolved³. The députés voted in favour, and the Directory was replaced by an executive commission made up of three Consuls³.

In Britannica's account, the coup exchanged a five-member Directory for a three-person Consulate, and the first consul — Napoleon — held all the real power². As first consul from 1799 to 1804 he reformed French education, developed the civil code and negotiated the Concordat of 1801².

The civil code began as a Consular bill passed on 18 August 1800⁴. The commission comprised Bigot de Préameneu and Tronchet, specialists in customary oral law, and Maleville and Portalis, specialists in written law⁴. The articles took only four months to compose, and went to the Tribunal de Cassation, the courts of appeal and the Conseil d'État, whose sittings began on 17 July 1801 with Napoleon in the chair when present⁴.

The result comprised 36 laws and 2,281 articles, in three parts consecrated to people, goods and property, and written in a clear and concise style so as to avoid any ambiguity⁴. It made all male citizens equal and extinguished primogeniture, hereditary nobility and class privileges, while freedom of person, freedom of contract and inviolability of private property became fundamental principles⁵.

Its limits were as deliberate as its principles: Bonaparte left his personal mark on the code by restoring the legal superiority of the husband and father in the family⁴. The code subordinated women to their fathers and husbands, who controlled all family property and were favoured in divorce proceedings, and many of those provisions were reformed only in the second half of the twentieth century⁵.

The code was enacted piecemeal through 36 statutes passed between 1801 and 1803 and consolidated on 21 March 1804 into a single body of law, the Code Civil des Français⁵. The title changed to Code Napoléon in 1807⁵, and the work was completed by the codes of civil procedure in 1806, commerce in 1807, criminal instruction in 1808 and penal law in 1810⁴.

The code travelled with French power: introduced from 1804 into Belgium, Luxembourg, western Germany, north-western Italy, Geneva and Monaco, and later into conquered territories, it is still in use in Belgium, Luxembourg and Monaco⁵. Britannica calls it the main influence on the civil codes of most of continental Europe and Latin America, and more than two centuries on it remains living law across a great part of the world⁵.

Contrary to a widely held belief, the Napoleonic Empire was not created by the coronation of 2 December 1804 but by a Sénatus-consulte adopted by the Sénat at its meeting of 18 May 1804⁶. The ceremony came to crown that law, by which the government of the French Republic had been entrusted to an emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul⁷.

On 2 December 1804, in the presence of Pope Pius VII, Notre-Dame de Paris was the stage for Napoleon's coronation⁶. The new emperor crowned himself, breaking with tradition, and swore an oath to preserve the gains of the Revolution⁶.

David's Coronation was commissioned in September 1804 without a fixed price or destination⁷. David estimated it at 100,000 francs in June 1806 but was paid 65,000 francs, and he painted it from 21 December 1805 to mid-November 1807⁷. The scene is peopled with about 190 figures, of which 93 are identified portraits — 59 men, 33 women and one child⁷.

Four figures were in reality absent: Letizia Bonaparte was in Rome, the cardinal-legat Caprara was ill, and the ambassadors of the Ottoman Sultan and the Holy Roman Emperor did not attend⁷. The canvas also carries a correction: David had painted the self-coronation before erasing it in August 1806 and replacing it with the figure visible today⁷.

The Italian victories of 1796-97 were won against four disciplined Austrian armies in only a few months³. Austerlitz, fought on the first anniversary of the coronation, secured the imperial regime⁸, and the Russian campaign ended with the remnants of the Grande Armée recrossing the Niemen on 13 December 1812⁹.

On 2 December 1805, north of Vienna, the Austro-Russian army was utterly destroyed; the Russians fell back to the east and the German campaign was closed¹².

The battle turned on the Pratzen Heights, which the French found left apparently undefended¹². Napoleon asked Soult how long his troops needed to reach the top; told no more than twenty minutes, he replied that they would wait another quarter of an hour, and fifteen minutes later gave the word to go¹².

On the eve of the battle his proclamation told the army that the positions it held were formidable, and that an enemy marching to turn his right would expose its flank to French blows⁸.

The allies lost 15,000 killed or wounded and 11,000 captured, while Napoleon lost 9,000, and the scattered remnants left more than 130 guns on the field⁸. Austria made peace, and Prussia stayed out of the coalition for a time¹². The victory reversed a dangerous military and political situation, secured the imperial regime and came on the one-year anniversary of Napoleon's coronation⁸.

The wider history of the period — the wars' international political dimensions together with the Empire's social, legal, political and economic structures — is the subject of Volume I of The Cambridge History of the Napoleonic Wars¹³. His reforms left lasting marks on French institutions and much of western Europe, but his driving passion remained military expansion².

The alliance that broke in 1812 had been sealed at Tilsit on 7 July 1807, with a peace treaty signed on a raft anchored in the middle of the Niemen, and Russia joined the Continental Blockade⁹. By 1812 the arrangement had soured: Russia's half-hearted blockade and the Polish question lay behind the break, and the invading force was an army of twenty nations⁹.

On 24 June 1812 Napoleon crossed the Niemen near Kovno with about 455,000 men, against a frontline Russian army of about 280,000, in three groups spread over 650 kilometres⁹. His proclamation of 22 June had framed the campaign as the second Polish war, the first having ended at Friedland and Tilsit⁹.

On 17 July the Russians destroyed the magazines of the Drissa camp and marched out south-east, abandoning the foundation of their defensive strategy only three weeks after the invasion⁹.

At Borodino on 7 September the Russians had 45,000 dead, wounded or missing, against Napoleon's 28,000-35,000⁹. Chief surgeon Larrey estimated about two hundred amputations, most from artillery fire, in the first twenty-four hours⁹. The 587 French guns fired about 60,000 times, and the Russians some 50,000 cannon shots⁹. Bagration was mortally wounded, and at Fili Kutuzov decided to abandon Moscow⁹.

Napoleon entered an almost deserted Moscow early on 15 September⁹. The population, about 262,000, had left, with only 10,000 remaining⁹. Fires raged until the rain came on 20 September; a third of the houses were destroyed and only 122 of 329 churches remained standing⁹.

After Tarutino the retreat began, and the winter's first significant snowfall came on 3 November; the winter turned unusually cold and bitter⁹. On 27 November some 50,000 men under Ney, Oudinot and Victor crossed the Berezina near Studienka, at a cost of between 25,000 and 40,000 men and most of their baggage⁹. On 5 December Napoleon left the army at Smorgon for Paris, covering some 2,500 km in thirteen days⁹. Kutuzov entered Vilna on 12 December; the day after, the remnants of the Grande Armée recrossed the Niemen⁹.

After the defeats of 1812-13 Napoleon was forced to abdicate on 6 April 1814². The Congress of Vienna (autumn 1814) set about reorganising Europe, while the Peace of Paris and the Treaty of Fontainebleau granted Napoleon sovereignty over the tiny kingdom of Elba¹¹. He had been exiled to the island in May 1814¹⁰.

He landed near Cannes with 1,000 men on 1 March 1815 and marched on Paris, winning the support of the rural peasantry as he went¹⁰. Louis XVIII left the country before Napoleon reached the capital on 20 March¹⁰. The interlude is the Hundred Days, from Napoleon's escape from exile to the return of Louis XVIII¹⁰. In a treaty signed on 25 March, each power — Great Britain, Prussia, Austria and Russia — pledged 150,000 men until Napoleon was overthrown, and allied armies of about 794,000 troops were to assemble along the French frontier¹⁰.

Waterloo was fought on 18 June 1815, three miles south of Waterloo village, between Napoleon's 72,000 troops and Wellington's allied army of 68,000 with about 45,000 Prussians under Blücher¹⁰. A Fondation Napoléon account gives Napoleon around 65,000 men, roughly equal to his opponent, and records that nothing unfolded as he expected¹¹. A terrible storm broke during the night, the rain-soaked ground delayed the start until 11am, and Napoleon was ill¹¹.

By 10 o'clock in the evening it was all over: the field counted 10,800 dead — 6,800 of them French — and around 35,000 injured, two thirds of them French¹¹. Prussian losses reached 7,000¹¹. Between 9 and 10 pm Blücher met Wellington near the Belle-Alliance farm and used the only French he knew¹¹. Napoleon abdicated for the second time on 22 June 1815¹¹.

In October 1815 Napoleon was exiled to the remote island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic, where he remained until his death on 5 May 1821 at age 51². The island, chosen in 1815 as his place of exile, later held nearly 5,000 Boer prisoners of war¹⁴.

On 17 March 1821 he took to his bed and stayed there, apart from a few occasions, until the end on 5 May¹⁵. A new holograph will, dictated to Montholon and written between 15 and 27 April 1821, is conserved in the Armoire de fer of the Archives nationales since 1860¹⁶. He died at 5.49pm on 5 May 1821 at Longwood; an autopsy followed on 6 May, a death mask was cast in preliminary form on 7 May, and he was buried on 9 May before French and English witnesses¹⁵.

The autopsy was performed on 6 May 1821 at 2pm at Longwood House, before a French and a British delegation¹⁷. The five British doctors who signed the official report reported sound lungs and nothing unhealthy in the liver¹⁸, while Antommarchi refused to sign that one-page report¹⁸. His own account described a liver grossly enlarged and distended with blood, affected by chronic hepatitis, and a stomach pierced at its centre, sealed by the liver's adhesion and filled with matter like coffee sediment¹⁸.

The second autopsy report Antommarchi published in 1825 was found in 2006 to resemble closely an article of 1823 in a French medical journal, and it was excluded from the review as a plagiarism¹⁷. An elevated arsenic concentration in Napoleon's hair had raised the poisoning hypothesis¹⁷, confirmed again by 1995 analyses at Saclay and Toronto¹⁵. Macé's update concludes that none of the speculation about criminal intoxication of the past forty years stands up to scientific scrutiny¹⁵.

Napoleon's words in the record stretch from the first proclamation to the Army of Italy to the will written at Longwood between 15 and 27 April 1821¹⁶. Between them stand the declaration in the assembly at Brumaire, the address on the eve of Austerlitz, the proclamation of 22 June 1812 and the exchange between the two commanders on the night of Waterloo³.

Despite Bertrand's petitions to the British government and to Louis XVIII, Napoleon's body lay in an unmarked grave on Saint Helena for twenty more years after his death in 1821¹⁹.

In 1840 King Louis-Philippe decided to have his remains transferred to Les Invalides in Paris²⁰. After a journey of more than 7,200 km from Saint Helena, the coffin arrived at the Hôtel des Invalides on 15 December 1840¹⁹. To fit the imperial tomb inside the Dome, the architect Visconti undertook major excavation work, and the body of the Emperor was finally laid to rest there on 2 April 1861²⁰.

The relic of his death has itself become a puzzle: ever since his death on Saint Helena on 5 May 1821, the attribution of Napoleon's death masks has presented one of the most complex and fascinating mysteries¹⁹. The cult had formed in his lifetime: he was revered almost unanimously during his lifetime and until the end of the Second Empire under his nephew Napoleon III as one of history's great heroes². Britannica records that he is today widely held to be one of the greatest military generals in history². The monument he trusted has held best: more than two centuries on, the Napoleonic Code remains living law across a great part of the world⁵.