Napoleon Bonaparte

Napoleon Bonaparte was born Napoleone Buonaparte on August 15, 1769, in Ajaccio, Corsica, the year the island came under French rule. His father, Carlo Buonaparte, was a lawyer, and his mother was Letizia Ramolino. His father died of stomach cancer in February 1785.⁠[1][2]

On January 1, 1779, he entered the college at Autun, and on May 15 that year he moved to the military college of Brienne, where he studied for five years; in October 1784 he entered the École militaire in Paris. He left on October 28, 1785, ranked 42nd of 58, was commissioned a second lieutenant of artillery and joined his post at Valence on November 3.⁠[3][1]

During the French Revolution Bonaparte sided with the revolutionaries and joined the Jacobin Club. On June 13, 1793, he arrived at Toulon with his family. He was wounded on December 16; the British evacuated the port on December 18, and on December 22 he was promoted to brigadier general for his part in the capture of the town.⁠[1][3]

On October 5, 1795, at Paul Barras’s request, he helped crush a royalist uprising against the Convention. That year a new constitution created the five-member Directory, to which Bonaparte became a respected military adviser.⁠[3][2]

On March 9, 1796, Bonaparte married Joséphine de Beauharnais, and two days later he left to take command of the Army of Italy. He won the battles of Montenotte (April 12, 1796), Lodi (May 10, 1796) and Arcole (November 17, 1796), and the Treaty of Campo Formio was concluded on October 17, 1797.⁠[3]

On May 19, 1798, Bonaparte sailed on the expedition to Egypt and won the Battle of the Pyramids on July 21; on August 1 a British fleet under Horatio Nelson destroyed the French fleet at Aboukir. He left Egypt for France on August 23, 1799.⁠[3]

Bonaparte carried out the coup of Brumaire on November 9–10, 1799. A new constitution was proclaimed on December 15, under which he became first consul; he moved into the Tuileries on February 19, 1800, and won the Battle of Marengo on June 14 that year.⁠[3][1]

On July 15, 1801, France and the Holy See signed the Concordat.⁠[3]

Spain had held Louisiana since 1762; France acquired it from Spain in 1800 and took possession in 1802. The State Department’s Office of the Historian notes that Bonaparte had hoped to revive a French empire in the New World, retake the sugar colony of St. Domingue from a slave rebellion and use Louisiana to feed it; after yellow fever decimated his army in St. Domingue and war with Britain loomed, he gave up these plans.⁠[4]

Thomas JeffersonThomas JeffersonThomas Jefferson (1743–1826) was the author of the Declaration of Independence and the third president of the United States, serving from 1801 to 1809. He had earlier been governor of Virginia, minister to France, secretary of state and vice president.Open the full entry sent James MonroeJames MonroeJames Monroe (1758–1831) was an American politician and diplomat who served as President of the United States from 1817 to 1825; his administration proclaimed the Monroe Doctrine.Open the full entry to join Robert R. Livingston in France with authority to pay up to $10 million for New Orleans and the Floridas. Bonaparte instead offered the whole Louisiana territory for $15 million, and the two envoys accepted, exceeding their instructions. On April 30, 1803, Livingston, Monroe and François Barbé-Marbois for France signed the treaty in Paris, by which the United States acquired some 828,000 square miles west of the Mississippi River for $15 million, roughly 4 cents an acre; the treaty states that the First Consul acted from a desire “to give to the United States a strong proof of his friendship.”⁠[4][5]

The French Civil Code (Code civil des Français) was promulgated on March 21, 1804. Comprising 36 laws and 2,281 articles in three parts covering persons, goods and property, it was written to be clear and concise and to direct the social, family and commercial relations between people of the same city.⁠[6]

Also known as the Code Napoléon, it remains in force with revisions and was the main model for 19th-century civil codes in most of continental Europe and Latin America. Before it, Roman law governed southern France, while customary law rooted in feudal Frankish and Germanic institutions governed the north, including Paris.⁠[7]

The French Empire was proclaimed on May 18, 1804, with Bonaparte as Napoleon I, emperor of the French; he was crowned on December 2 that year. He also reformed the French education system.⁠[3][2]

Napoleon won at Ulm on October 19, 1805; on October 21 the British fleet under Horatio Nelson defeated the French navy at Trafalgar, after which Napoleon concentrated on land warfare. He went on to fight the battles of Austerlitz (December 2, 1805), Jena and Auerstedt (October 14, 1806), Eylau (February 8, 1807) and Friedland (June 14, 1807).⁠[3][2]

The Treaties of Tilsit, signed on July 7, 1807, and the Treaty of Schönbrunn of 1809 left much of Europe under French control or allied with France.⁠[2][3]

On December 15, 1809, the Senate approved Napoleon’s divorce from Joséphine. On April 2, 1810, he and Marie-Louise of Austria were married in a religious ceremony. Their son, the King of Rome, was born on March 20, 1811.⁠[3][2]

Napoleon crossed the Niemen into Russia on June 24, 1812, and entered Moscow on September 14. After the crossing of the Berezina on November 27, he left the army on December 5.⁠[3]

The Battle of Leipzig on October 16–19, 1813, destroyed what remained of French power in Germany and Poland. Allied forces captured Paris on March 30, 1814. Under pressure from his marshals, Napoleon abdicated on April 4 and unconditionally on April 6, made his farewells at Fontainebleau on April 20 and landed on Elba, his place of exile, on May 4.⁠[2][3]

Napoleon left Elba on February 26, 1815, landed at Golfe-Juan on March 1 and reached Paris on March 20, restoring himself as emperor. Defeated at Waterloo on June 18, he abdicated for the second time on June 22 and was exiled to Saint Helena in the South Atlantic, arriving on October 16.⁠[3][2]

Napoleon died on Saint Helena on May 5, 1821, aged 51. The Fondation Napoléon’s chronology records his last words as “à la tête de l’armée.”⁠[1][3]

A French law of June 10, 1840, ordered a tomb for Napoleon to be built beneath the Dôme des Invalides. In July 1840 the king’s son, the Prince de Joinville, set out for Saint Helena to bring back the remains, and a national funeral was held at Saint-Louis-des-Invalides on December 15, 1840.⁠[8]

The architect Louis Visconti won the design competition, and work began in 1843; after Visconti’s death in 1853 it was completed by Jules Bouchet and then Alphonse-Nicolas Crépinet. On April 2, 1861, in the presence of Napoleon III, the coffin was moved into the circular crypt, in a red quartzite sarcophagus on a green granite base.⁠[8]

Fondation Napoléon: Official website: https://www.napoleon.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[3]