Napoleon
Napoleon Bonaparte (15 August 1769, Ajaccio, Corsica — 5 May 1821, Longwood, Saint Helena) was a French general and statesman: first consul of France from 1799 to 1804 and emperor of the French from 1804 to 1814/15. Born in Corsica a year after its cession to France, he emerged from the Revolutionary army — artillery commander at Toulon in 1793 and commander of the Army of Italy in 1796 — and took power in the coup of 18 Brumaire (9 November 1799), which replaced the Directory with a three-person Consulate. His civil code was promulgated on 21 March 1804 and became the main influence on the civil codes of most of continental Europe and Latin America. The Empire, created by a Sénatus-consulte of 18 May 1804, was consecrated by his self-coronation at Notre-Dame on 2 December 1804 and secured by Austerlitz a year later. The Russian campaign of 1812 — about 455,000 men crossing the Niemen against some 280,000 Russians, and 45,000 Russian casualties at Borodino — destroyed his army. He abdicated in 1814, returned from Elba for the Hundred Days, and was finally defeated at Waterloo on 18 June 1815. On Saint Helena he shaped his legend in memoirs and in a will asking to rest on the banks of the Seine; his death on 5 May 1821 has been debated for two centuries, and a consortium of gastrointestinal pathologists concluded that the autopsy reports point to advanced gastric cancer with upper gastrointestinal bleeding.