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Napoleon
born Aug. 15, 1769, Ajaccio, Corsica
died May 5, 1821, St. Helena Island
French in full Napoléon Bonaparte, original Italian Napoleone Buonaparte, byname The
Corsican, or The Little Corporal, French Le Corse, or Le Petit Caporal French general,
First Consul (1799–1804), and emperor of the French (1804–1814/15), 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 duringhis 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 Collège
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 Paristhat 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 Fère, 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 regimentuntil 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.
The revolutionary period
The Jacobin years
When in 1789 the National Assembly, which had convened to establish a constitutional
monarchy, allowed Paoli to return to Corsica, Napoleon asked for leave and in September
joined Paoli’s group. But Paoli had no sympathy for the young man, whose father had
deserted his cause and whom he considered to be a foreigner. Disappointed, Napoleon
returned to France; and in April 1791 he was appointed
first lieutenant to the 4th regiment of artillery, garrisoned at Valence. He at once joined
the Jacobin club, a debating society initially favouring a constitutional monarchy,
andsoon became its president, making speeches against nobles, monks, and bishops. In
September 1791 he got leave to go back to Corsica again for three months. Elected
lieutenant colonel in the national guard, he soon fell out with Paoli, its commander in
chief. When he failed to return to France, he was listed as a deserter in January 1792. But
in April France declared war against Austria and his offense was forgiven.
Apparently through patronage, Napoleon was promoted to the rank of captain but did not
rejoin his regiment. Instead he returned to Corsica in October 1792, where Paoli was
exercising dictatorial powers and preparing to separate Corsica from France. Napoleon,
however, joined the Corsican Jacobins, who opposed Paoli’s policy. When civil war
broke out in Corsica in April 1793, Paoli had the Buonaparte family condemned to
“perpetual execration and infamy,” whereupon they all fled to France.
Napoleon Bonaparte, as he may henceforth be called (though the family did not drop the
spelling Buonaparte until after 1796), rejoined his regiment at Nice in June 1793. In his
Souper de Beaucaire, written at this time, he argued vigorously for united action by all
republicans rallied round the Jacobins,who were becoming progressively more radical,
and the National Convention, the revolutionary assembly that in the preceding fall had
abolished the monarchy. At the end of August 1793, the National Convention’s troops
had taken Marseille but were halted before Toulon, where the royalists had called in
British forces. With the commander of the National Convention’s artillery wounded,
Bonaparte got the post through the commissioner to the army, Antoine Saliceti, who was
a Corsican deputy and a friend of Napoleon’s family. Bonaparte was promoted to major
in September and adjutantgeneral in October. He received a bayonet wound on December
16, but on the next day the British troops, harassed by his artillery, evacuated Toulon. On
December 22 Bonaparte, aged 24, was promoted to brigadier general in recognition of his
decisive part in the capture of the town.
Augustin de Robespierre, the commissioner to the army, wrote to his brother
Maximilien, by then virtual head of the government and one of the leading figures of the
Reign of Terror, praising the “transcendent merit” of the young republican officer. In
February 1794 Bonaparte was appointed commandant of the artillery in the French Army
of Italy. Robespierre fell from power in Paris on 9 Thermidor (July 27, 1794). When the
news reached Nice, Bonaparte, regarded as a protégé of Robespierre, was arrested on a
charge of conspiracy and treason. He was freed in September but was not restored to his
command. The following March he refused an offer to command the artillery in the Army
of the West, which was fighting the counter-revolution in the Vendée. The post seemed to
hold no future for him, and he went to Paris to justify himself. Life was difficult on half
pay, especially as he was carrying on an affair with Désirée Clary, daughter of a rich
Marseille businessman and sister of Julie,the bride of his elder brother, Joseph. Despite
his efforts in Paris, Napoleon was unable to obtain a satisfactory command because he
was feared for his intense ambition and for his relations with the “Montagnards,” the
more radical members of the National Convention. He then considered offering his
services to the sultan of Turkey.
The Directory
Bonaparte was still in Paris in May 1795 when the National Convention, on the eve of its
dispersal, submitted the new constitution of the year III of the First Republic to a
referendum, together with decrees according towhich two-thirds of the members of the
National Convention were to be reelected to the new legislative assemblies. The royalists,
hoping that they would soon be able to restore the monarchy, instigated a revolt in Paris
to prevent these measures from being put into effect. Vicomte Paul de Barras, who had
been entrusted with dictatorial powers by the National Convention, was unwilling to rely
on the commander of the troops of the interior; instead, knowing of Bonaparte’s services
at Toulon, he appointed him second in command. Thus, it was Napoleon who shot down
the columns of rebels marching against the National Convention (13 Vendémiaire, year
IV; October 5, 1795), thereby saving the National Convention and the republic.
Bonaparte became commander of the army of the interior and, consequently, was
henceforth aware of every political development in France. He also became
the respected adviser on military matters to the new government, the Directory. Lastly, he
came to know an attractive Creole, Joséphine Tascher de La Pagerie, the widow of Gen.
Alexandre de Beauharnais (guillotined during the Reign of Terror), the mother of two
children, and a woman of many love affairs.
From every point of view, a new life was opening for Bonaparte. Having proved his
loyalty to the Directory by dissolving a communist group led by François Babeuf and an
Italian, Filippo Buonarroti, whom Bonaparte had known in Corsica, he was appointed
commander in chief of the Army of Italy in March 1796. He had been trying to obtain
that post for several weeks so that he could personally conduct part of the plan of
campaign adopted by the Directory on his advice. He married Joséphine on March 9 and
left for the army two days later.
Arriving at his headquarters in Nice, Bonaparte found that his army, which on paper
consisted of 43,000 men, numbered scarcely 30,000 ill-fed, ill-paid, and ill-equipped
men. On March 28, 1796, he made his first proclamation to his troops:
Soldiers, you are naked, badly fed. . . . Rich provinces and great towns will be in your
power, and in them you will find honour, glory, wealth. Soldiers of Italy, will you be
wanting in courage and steadfastness?
He took the offensive on April 12 and successively defeated and separated the Austrian
and the Sardinian armies and then marched on Turin. King Victor Amadeus III of
Sardinia asked for an armistice; and, at the peace treaty in Paris on May 15, Nice and
Savoy, occupied by the French since 1792, were annexed to France. Bonaparte continued
the war against the Austrians and occupied Milanbut was held up at Mantua. While his
army was besieging this great fortress, he signed armistices with the duke of Parma, the
duke of Modena, and finally with Pope Pius VI.
At the same time, he took an interest in the political organization of Italy.
A plan for its “republicanization” by a group of Italian “patriots” led by Buonarroti had to
be shelved when Buonarroti was arrested for complicity in Babeuf’s conspiracy against
the Directory. Thereafter, Bonaparte, without discarding the Italian patriots altogether,
restricted their freedom of action. He set up a republican regime in Lombardy but kept a
close watch on its leaders, and in October 1796 he created the Cisalpine Republic by
merging Modena and Reggio nell’Emilia with the papal states of Bologna and Ferrara
occupied by the French Army. Finally he sent an expedition to recover Corsica, which the
British had evacuated.
Austrian armies advanced four times from the Alps to relieve Mantua but were defeated
each time by Bonaparte. After the last Austrian defeat, at Rivoli in January 1797, Mantua
capitulated. Next, he marched on Vienna. He was about 60 miles (100 kilometres) from
that capital when the Austrians suedfor an armistice. By the preliminaries of peace,
Austria ceded the southern Netherlands to France and recognized the Lombard republic
but received in exchange some territory belonging to the old Republic of Venice, which
was partitioned between Austria, France, and Lombardy. Bonaparte then consolidated
and reorganized the north Italian republics and encouraged Jacobin—radical
republican—propaganda in Venetia. Some Italian patriots hoped that these developments
would soon lead to the formation of a single and indivisible “Italian Republic” modeled
on the French.
Meanwhile, Bonaparte grew uneasy at the successes of the royalists in the French
elections in the spring of 1797 and advised the Directory to oppose them, if necessary, by
force. In July it attempted a coup d’état against the royalists and failed; thereupon
Bonaparte sent Gen. Pierre Augereau to Paris, along with several officers and men.
Augereau’s successful coup d’état of 18 Fructidor (September 4, 1797) eliminated the
royalists’ friends from the government and legislative councils and also
enhancedBonaparte’s prestige. Thus, Bonaparte could conclude the Treaty of Campo
Formio with Austria as he thought best. The Directory was displeased, however, because
the Treaty had ceded Venice to the Austrians and did not secure the left bank of the
Rhine for France. On the other hand, it raised Bonaparte’s popularity to its peak, for he
had gained victory for France after five years of war
on the Continent.
Only the war at sea, against the British, continued. The directors, who wanted to launch
an invasion of the British Isles, appointed Bonaparte to command the army assembled for
this purpose along the English Channel. After a rapid inspection in February 1798, he
announced that the operation could notbe undertaken until France had command of the
sea. Instead, he suggested that France strike at the sources of Great Britain’s wealth by
occupying Egypt and threatening the route to India. This proposal,seconded by
Talleyrand, the foreign minister, was accepted by the directors, who were glad to get rid
of their ambitious young general.
The expedition, thanks to some fortunate coincidences, was at first a great success:
Malta, the great fortress of the Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, was
occupied on June 10, 1798, Alexandria taken by storm on July 1, and all the delta of the
Nile rapidly overrun. On August 1, however, the French squadron at anchor in Ab? Q?r
Bay was completely destroyed by Adm. Horatio Nelson’s fleet in the Battle of the Nile,
so that Napoleon found himself confined to the land that he had conquered. He proceeded
to introduce Western political institutions, administration, and technical skills in Egypt;
but Turkey, nominally suzerain over Egypt, declared war on France in September. To
prevent a Turkish invasion of Egypt and also perhaps to attempt a return to France by
way of Anatolia, Bonaparte marched into Syria in February 1799. His progress northward
was halted at Acre, where the British withstood a siege, and in May Bonaparte began a
disastrous retreat to Egypt.
The Battle of the Nile showed Europe that Bonaparte was not invincible, and Great
Britain, Austria, Russia, and Turkey formed a new coalition against France. The French
armies in Italy were defeated in the spring of 1799 and had to abandon the greater part of
the peninsula. These defeats led to disturbances in France itself. The coup d’etat of 30
Prairial (June 18, 1799) expelled the men of moderate views from the Directory and
brought into it men who were considered Jacobins. Yet the situation remained confused,
and one of the new directors, Emmanuel Sieyès, was convinced that only military
dictatorship could prevent a restoration of the monarchy: “I am looking for a sabre,”
he said. Bonaparte did not take long to make up his mind. He would leave his army and
return to France—in order to save the republic, of course, but also to take advantage of
the new circumstances and to seize power. The Directory had, in fact, ordered his return,
but he had not received the order, so that it was actually in disregard of his instructions
that he left Egypt with a few companions on August 22, 1799. Their two frigates
surprisingly escaped interception by the British, and Bonaparte arrived in Paris on
October 14.
By this time French victories in Switzerland and Holland had averted the danger of
invasion, and the counter-revolutionary risings within France had more or less failed. A
coup d’etat could therefore no longer be justified by any need to save the republic.
Sieyès, however, had not given up his project, and now he had his “sabre.” From the end
of October he and Bonaparte were in league together planning the coup, and on 18–19
Brumaire, Year VIII (November 9–10, 1799), it was carried out: the directors were forced
to resign, the members of the legislative councils were dispersed, and a new government,
the Consulate, was set up. The three consuls were Bonaparte and two of the directors who
had resigned, Sieyès and Pierre-Roger Ducos. But it was Bonaparte who was henceforth
the master of France.
Napoleon I
The Consulate
Consolidation of power
Bonaparte, now 30 years old, was thin and short and wore his hair cut close—le petit
tondu, the “little crop-head,” as he was called. Not much was known about his
personality, but people had confidence in a man who had always been victorious (the
Nile and Acre were forgotten) and who had managed to negotiate the brilliant Treaty of
Campo Formio. He was expected to bring back peace, to end disorder, and to consolidate
the political and social “conquests” of the Revolution. He was indeed exceptionally
intelligent, prompt to make decisions, and indefatigably hardworking, but also insatiably
ambitious. He seemed to be the man of the Revolution because it was due to the
Revolution that he had climbed at so early an age to the highest place in the state. He was
not to forget it: but more than a man of the Revolution, he was a
man of the 18th century, the most enlightened of the enlightened despots, a true son of
Voltaire. He did not believe in the sovereignty of the people, in the popular will, or in
parliamentary debate. Yet he put his confidence more in reasoning than in reason and
may be said to have preferred “men of talent”—mathematicians, jurists, and statesmen,
for instance, however cynical or mercenary they might be—to “technicians” in the true
sense of the word. He believed that an enlightened and firm will could do anything if it
had the support of bayonets; he despised and feared the masses; and, asfor public opinion,
he considered that he could mold and direct it as he pleased. He has been called themost
“civilian” of generals, but essentially he never ceased to be a soldier.
Bonaparte imposed a military dictatorship on France, but its true character was at first
disguised by the Constitution of the Year VIII (4 Nivôse; December 25, 1799), drawn up
by Sieyès. This constitution did not guarantee the “rights of man” or make any mention
of “liberty, equality, and fraternity,” but it did reassure the partisans of the Revolution by
proclaiming the irrevocability of the sale of national property and by upholding the
legislation against the émigrés. It gave immense powers to the first consul, leaving only a
nominal role to his two colleagues. The first consul—namely, Bonaparte—was to appoint
ministers, generals, civil servants, magistrates, and the members of the Council of State
and even was to have an overwhelming influence in the choice of members for the three
legislative assemblies, though their members were theoretically to be chosen by universal
suffrage. Submitted to a plebiscite, the constitution won by an overwhelming majority in
February 1800.
Program of reforms
The Consulate’s work of administrative reform, undertaken at Bonaparte’s instigation,
was to be more lasting than the constitution and so more important for France. At the
head of the government was the Council of State, created by the first consul and often
effectively presidedover by him; it was to play an important part both as the source of the
new legislation and as an administrative tribunal. At the head of the administration of the
départements were the prefects, who carried on the tradition of the intendants of the
ancien régime, supervising the application of the laws and acting as the
instruments of centralization. The judicial system was profoundly changed: whereas from
the beginning of the Revolution judges had been elected, henceforth they were to be
nominated by the government, their independence assured by their irremovability from
office. The police organization was greatly strengthened. The financial administration
was considerably improved: instead of the municipalities, special officials were entrusted
with the collecting of direct taxes; the franc was stabilized; and the Banque de France,
owned partly by shareholders and partly by the state, was created. Education was
transformed into a major public service; secondary education was given a semi-military
organization, and the university faculties were re-established. Primary education,
however, was still neglected.
Bonaparte shared Voltaire’s belief that the people needed a religion. Personally, he was
indifferent to religion: in Egypt he had said that he wanted to become a Muslim. Yet he
considered that religious peace had to be restored to France. As early as 1796, when he
was concluding the armistice in Italy with Pope Pius VI, he had tried to persuade the
Pope to retract his briefs against the French priests who had accepted the Civil
Constitution of the Clergy, which in practice nationalized the church. Pius VII, who
succeeded Pius VI in March 1800, was more accommodating than his predecessor, and
ten months after negotiations were opened with him a concordat was signed reconciling
the church and the Revolution. The Pope recognized the French Republic and called for
the resignation of all former bishops; new prelates were to be designated by the First
Consul and instituted by the Pope; and the sale of the property of the clergy was officially
recognized by Rome. The concordat, in fact, admitted freedom of worship and the lay
character of the state.
The codification of the civil law, first undertaken in 1790, was at last completed under
the Consulate. The code promulgated on March 21, 1804, and later known as the Code
Napoléon, gave permanent form to the great gains of the Revolution: individual liberty,
freedom of work, freedom of conscience, the lay character of the state, and equality
before the law; but, at the same time, it protected landed property, gave greater liberty to
employers, and showed little concern for employees. It maintained divorce but granted
only limited legal rights to women.
The army received the most careful attention. The First Consul retained in outline the
system instituted by the Revolution: recruitment by forced conscription but with the
possibility of replacementby substitutes; the mixing of the conscripts with old soldiers;
and the eligibility of all for promotion to the highest ranks. Nevertheless, the creation of
the Academy of Saint-Cyr to produce infantry officers made it easier for the sons of
bourgeois families to pursue a military career. Moreover, the École Polytechnique,
founded by the National Convention, was militarized in order to provide officers for the
artillery and engineers. Yet Bonaparte was not concerned about introducing new
technical inventions into his army. He put his trust in the “legs of his soldiers”: his basic
strategic idea was a fast-moving army.
Military campaigns and uneasy peace
The First Consul spent the winter and spring of 1799–1800 reorganizing the army and
preparing for an attack on Austria alone, Russia having withdrawn from the anti-French
coalition. With his usual quick assessment of the situation, he saw the strategic
importance of the SwissConfederation, from which he would be free to outflank the
Austrian armies either in Germany or in Italy as he might see fit. His past successes made
him choose Italy. Taking his army across the Great St. Bernard Pass before the snow had
melted, he appeared unexpectedly behind the Austrian army besieging Genoa. The Battle
of Marengo in June gave the French command of the Po Valley as far as the Adige; and
in December another French army defeated the Austrians in Germany. Austria was forced
to sign the Treaty of Lunéville of February 1801, whereby France’s right to the natural
frontiers that Julius Caesar had given to Gaul, namely, the Rhine, the Alps, and the
Pyrenees, was recognized.
Great Britain alone remained at war with France, but it soon tired of the struggle.
Preliminaries of peace, concluded in London in October 1801, put an end to hostilities,
and peace was signed at Amiens on March 27, 1802.
General peace was re-established in Europe. The first Consul’s prestige increased still
more; and his friends—at his suggestion—proposed that a “token of national gratitude”
should be offered to him. In May 1802 it was decided that the French people should vote
in referendum on the following question: “Shall
Napoleon Bonaparte be consul for life?” In August an overwhelming vote granted him
the prolongation of his consulate as well as the right to designate his successor.
Bonaparte’s conception of international peace differed from that of the British, for whom
the Treaty of Amiens represented an absolute limit beyond which they were under no
circumstances prepared to go. The British even hoped to take back some of the
concessions they had been forced to make. For Bonaparte, on the other hand, the Treaty
of Amiens marked the starting point for a new French ascendancy. He was, first of all,
intent on reserving half of Europe as a market for France without lowering customs
duties—to the indignation of British merchants. To revive France’s expansion overseas,
he also intended to recover San Domingo (now Hispaniola, which had rebelled), to
occupy Louisiana (ceded to France by Spain in 1800), perhaps to reconquer Egypt, and at
any rate to extend French influence in the Mediterranean and in the Indian Ocean.
Finally, on the Continent of Europe, he advanced beyond France’s natural frontiers:
incorporating Piedmont into France; imposing a more democratic, decentralized
government on the Swiss Confederation; and in Germany compensating theprinces
dispossessed of territory on the Rhine under the Treaty of Lunéville with shares of the
secularized ecclesiastical states.
Great Britain was alarmed by this expansion of France in peacetime and found it scarcely
tolerable that one state should command the coastline of the Continent from Genoa to
Antwerp. The immediate occasion of Franco-British rupture, however, was the problem
of Malta. According to the Treaty of Amiens, the British, who had taken the island on
the collapse of the French occupation, should have restored it to the Knights Hospitallers;
but the British, on the pretext that the French had not yet evacuated certain Neapolitan
ports, refused to leave the island. Franco-British relations became strained, and in
May1803 the British declared war.
The empire
The peace settlement had brought about the life consulate; the return of war was to
stimulate the formation of the empire. The British government, which would have been
glad to see Bonaparte deposed or removed by assassination,
renewed its subsidies to the French royalists, who resumed their agitation and plotting.
When a British-financed assassination plot was uncovered in 1804, Bonaparte decided to
react vigorously enough to deter his opponents from any more such attempts. The police
believed that the real head of the conspiracy was the young Duc d’Enghien, a scion of the
royal house of Bourbon, who was residing inGermany, a few miles across the frontier.
Accordingly, with the agreement of Talleyrand and the police chief Joseph Fouché, the
Duc was kidnapped on neutral soil and brought to Vincennes, where he was tried and
shot (March 21). This action provoked a resurgence of opposition among the old
aristocracy but enhanced the influence of Fouché.
Founding the empire
In the hope of consolidating his own position, Fouché now suggested to Bonaparte that
the best way todiscourage conspiracy would be to transform the life consulate into a
hereditary empire, which, because of the fact that there would be an heir, would remove
all hope of changing the regime by assassination. Bonaparte readily accepted the
suggestion, and on May 28, 1804, the empire was proclaimed.
Though there was little change in the organization of the government of France,
Napoleon as emperor revived a number of institutions similar to those of the ancien
régime. In the first place, he wanted to be consecrated by the pope himself, so that his
coronation should be even more impressive than that of the kings of France. Pius VII
agreed to come to Paris, and the ceremony, which seemed equally outrageous to royalists
and to the old soldiers of the Revolution, took place in Notre-Dame on December2, 1804.
At the last moment, the Emperor took the crown from the Pope and set it on his own head
himself.
The imperial regime also instituted its symbols and titles. Princely titles were brought
back for the members of Napoleon’s family in 1804, and an imperial nobility was created
in 1808. As opposition was still lively, Napoleon intensified his propaganda and imposed
an increasingly strict censorship on the press. A dictatorial regime allowed him to carry
on his wars for years without worrying
about French public opinion. Having been president of the Italian Republic (as the
Cisalpine Republic was renamed) since January 1802, Napoleon in March 1805 was
proclaimed king of Italy and crowned in Milan in May.
War with Britain
From 1803 to 1805 Napoleon had only the British to fight; and again France could hope
for victory only by landing an army in the British Isles,whereas the British could defeat
Napoleon only by forming a continental coalition against him. Napoleon began to prepare
an invasion again, this time with greater conviction and on a larger scale. He gathered
nearly 2,000 ships between Brest and Antwerp and concentrated his Grande Armée in the
camp at Boulogne (1803). Even so, the problem was the same as in 1798: to cross the
Channel, the French had to have control of the sea.
Still far inferior to the British Navy, the French fleet needed the help of the Spanish; and
even then the two fleets together could not hope to defeat more than one of the British
squadrons. Spain was induced to declare war on Great Britain in December 1804, and it
was decided that French and Spanish squadrons massed in the Antilles should lure a
British squadron into these waters and defeat it, thus making the balance roughly equal
between the Franco-Spanish navy and the British. A battle in the entrance to the Channel
could then be fought with some chance of success.
The plan failed. The French squadron from the Mediterranean, under Adm. Pierre de
Villeneuve, found itself alone at the appointed meeting place in the Antilles. Pursued by
Nelson and not daring to attack him, it turned back toward Europe and took refuge in
Cádiz in July 1805; there the British blockaded it. Accused of cowardice by the angry
Napoleon, Villeneuve resolved to run the blockade, with the support of a Spanish
squadron; but on October 21, 1805, he was attacked by Nelson off Cape Trafalgar.
Nelson was killed in the battle, but the Franco-Spanish fleet was totally destroyed. The
Britishhad won a decisive victory, which eliminated the danger of invasion and gave
them freedom of movement at sea.
They had also succeeded in organizing a new anti-French coalition consisting of Austria,
Russia, Sweden, and Naples. On July 24, 1805, three months before Trafalgar, Napoleon
had ordered the Grande Armée from Boulogne to the Danube (thus ruling out an invasion
of England even if the French had won at Trafalgar). In the week preceding Trafalgar, the
Grande Armée won an outstanding victory over the Austrians at Ulm, and on November
13 Napoleon entered Vienna. On December 2, 1805, in his greatest victory he defeated
the combined Austrian and Russian armies in the Battle of Austerlitz. By the Treaty of
Pressburg, Austria renounced all influence in Italy and ceded Venetia and Dalmatia to
Napoleon, as well as extensive territory in Germany to his protégés Bavaria,
Württemberg, and Baden. The French then proceeded to dethrone the Bourbons in the
kingdom of Naples, which was bestowed on Napoleon’s brother Joseph. In July 1806 the
Confederation of the Rhine was founded—soon to embrace all western Germany in a
union under French protection.
In September 1806 Prussia entered the war against France, and on October 14 the
Prussian armies were defeated at Jena and at Auerstädt. The Russians put up a better
resistance at Eylau in February 1807 but were routed at Friedland in June. In Warsaw
Napoleon fell in love with Countess Marie Walewska, a Polish patriot who hoped that
Napoleon would resurrect her country. Napoleon had a son by her.
The Russian emperor Alexander I could have continued the struggle, but he was tired of
the alliance with the British. He met Napoleon at Tilsit, in northern Prussia near the
Russian frontier. There, on a raftanchored in the middle of the Niemen River, they signed
treaties that created the Grand Duchy of Warsaw from the Polish provinces detached
from Prussia and, in effect, divided control of Europe between the emperors, Napoleon
taking the west and Alexander the east. Alexander even made a vague promise of a land
attack against the British possessions in India.
Napoleon I
Blockade and the peninsular campaign
As Napoleon could no longer think of invading England, he tried to induce
capitulation by stifling the British economy. By closing all of Europe to British
merchandise, he hoped to bring about a revolt of the British unemployed that could force
the government to sue for peace. Heforbade all trade with the British Isles, ordered the
confiscation of all goods coming from English factories or from the British colonies, and
condemned as fair prize not only every British ship but also every ship that had touched
the coasts of England or its colonies.
For the blockade to succeed, it had to be enforced rigorously throughout Europe. But
from the beginning, England’s old ally Portugal showed itselfreluctant to comply, for the
blockade would mean its commercial ruin. Napoleon decided to break down Portuguese
opposition by force. Charles IV of Spain let the French troops cross his kingdom, and
they occupied Lisbon; but the prolonged presence of Napoleon’s soldiers in the north of
Spain led to insurrection. When Charles IV abdicated in favour of his son Ferdinand VII,
Napoleon, seeing the opportunity to rid Europe of its last Bourbon rulers, summoned the
Spanish royal family to Bayonne in April 1808 and obtained the abdication of both
Charles and Ferdinand; they were interned in Talleyrand’s château. After the bloody
suppression of an uprising in Madrid, insurrection spread across the whole country, for
the Spaniards would not accept Joseph Bonaparte, king of Naples, as their new king.
The subsequent defeat of his forces in Spain and Portugal were sensational blows to
Napoleon’s prestige. Soon the Iberian Peninsula, up in arms, became a bridgehead on the
Continent for the British.Under the energetic Arthur Wellesley (later 1st duke of
Wellington), in command from 1809, the Anglo-Spanish-Portuguese forces were to
achieve decisive successes.
At the Congress of Erfurt (September–October 1808), a conference with Alexander I,
Napoleon assembled a great concourse of princes to impress the Russian emperor in an
attempt to extract promises of help. Whether impressed or not, Alexander would make no
definite commitment. Alexander’s refusal, furthermore, was partly prompted by
Talleyrand, who had become dismayed by Napoleon’s policies and was already
negotiating with the Russian emperor behind his master’s back.
By early 1809, however, with most of the Grande Armée thrown into Spain, Napoleon
seemed on the point of overcoming the revolt. Then, in April, Austria launched an attack
in Bavaria in the hope of rousing all Germany against the French. Napoleon once again
defeated the Habsburgs (July 6) and by the Treaty of Schönbrunn (October 14, 1809)
obtained the Illyrian Provinces, thus rounding out the continental system.
Consolidation of empire
In 1810 Napoleon’s fortunes were at their zenith, despite some failures in Spain and
Portugal. He considered himself Charlemagne’s heir. He repudiated Joséphine, who had
not given him a child, so that he could marry Marie-Louise, daughter of the Austrian
emperor Francis I. The birthof a son, the king of Rome, in March 1811 seemed to assure
the future of his empire—now at its greatest extent, including not only the Illyrian
Provinces but also Etruria (Tuscany), some of the Papal States, Holland, and the German
states bordering the North Sea. The empire was surrounded by a ring of vassal states
ruled over by the Emperor’s relatives: the Kingdom of Westphalia (Jérôme Bonaparte);
the Kingdom ofSpain (Joseph Bonaparte); the Kingdom of Italy (with Eugène de
Beauharnais, Joséphine’s son, as viceroy); the Kingdom of Naples (Joachim Murat,
Napoleon’s brother-in-law); and the Principality of Lucca and Piombino (Félix
Bacciochi, another brother-in-law). Finally, other territories were closely bound to the
empire by treaties: the Swiss Confederation (of which Napoleon was the mediator), the
Confederation of the Rhine, and the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. Even Austria seemed
bound to France by Napoleon’s marriage to Marie-Louise.
The political map of Europe, which had been so complicated before 1796, was now
greatly simplified. Yet the frontiers did not coincide either with geographical features or
with “nationalities.” Whatever he may later have said, Napoleon, while he was in power,
was not interested in realizing either German or Italian unity. Yet by reducing the number
of states, by pushing the frontiers about, by amalgamating populations, and by
propagating institutions like those that the Revolution and nationalism had created in
France, he prepared the ground for German and Italian unification. National feeling in
Europe, stirred by French ideas and by contact with Frenchmen, in turn gave rise to the
first
resistanceagainst French domination. From 1809 onward Spanish guerrillas, supported by
British troops, were harassing the French, and the national Cortes, convened at Cádiz by
the insurrectionaries, in 1812 promulgated a constitution inspired by the ideas of the
French Revolution of 1789 and by British institutions.
Disaster in Russia and its aftermath
Since the Congress of Erfurt, the Russian emperor had shown himself less and less
inclined to deal with Napoleon as a trusted partner. In the spring of 1812, therefore,
Napoleon massed his forces in Poland to intimidate Alexander. After some last attempts
at agreement, in late Junehis Grande Armée—about 600,000 men, including contingents
extorted from Prussia and from Austria—began to cross the Niemen River. The Russians
retreated, adopting a “scorched earth” policy. Napoleon’s army did not reach the
approaches to Moscow until the beginning of September. The Russian commander in
chief, Mikhail I. Kutuzov, engaged it at Borodino on September 7. The fight was
savage, bloody, and indecisive, but a week later Napoleon entered Moscow, which the
Russians had abandoned. On that same day, a huge fire broke out, destroying the greater
part of the town. Moreover, Alexander unexpectedly refused to treat with Napoleon.
Withdrawal was necessary,and the premature onset of winter made it disastrous. After the
difficult crossing of the Berezina River in November, fewer than 10,000 men fit
forcombat remained with Napoleon’s main force.
This catastrophe heartened all the peoples of Europe to defy Napoleon. In Germany the
news unleashed an outbreak of anti-French demonstrations. The Prussian contingents
deserted the Grande Armée in December and turned against the French. The Austrians
also withdrew their troops and adopted an increasingly hostile attitude, and in Italy the
people began to turn their backs on Napoleon.
Even in France, signs of discontent with the regime were becoming more frequent. In
Paris a malcontent general nearly succeeded in carrying out a coup d’etat after
announcing, on October 23, 1812, that Napoleon had died in Russia. This incident was a
major factor in Napoleon’s decision to hasten back to France ahead of the Grande Armée.
Arriving in Paris on December 18, he proceeded to stiffen the dictatorship, to raise
money by various expedients, and to
levy new troops.
Thus, in 1813 the forces arrayed against France were no longer armies of mercenaries but
were those of nations fighting for their freedom as the French had fought for theirs in
1792 and 1793; and the French themselves, for all their courage, had lost their former
enthusiasm. The Emperor’s ideal of conquest was no longer that of the nation.
In May 1813 Napoleon won some successes against the Russians and Prussians at the
battles of Lützenand Bautzen, but his decimated army needed reinforcements. The armed
mediation of Austria inducedNapoleon to agree to an armistice, during which a congress
was held at Prague. There, Austria proposed very favourable conditions: the French
Empire was to return to its natural limits; the Grand Duchy of Warsaw and the
Confederation of the Rhine were to be dissolved; and Prussia was to return to its frontiers
of 1805. Napoleon made the mistake of hesitating too long. The congress closed on
August 10 before his reply arrived, and Austria declared war.
The French were even worse off than in the spring. The allies were gaining new troops
every day, as oneGerman contingent after another left Napoleon to go over to the other
side. The greatest debacle since Napoleon came to power was the Battle of Leipzig, or
“Battle of the Nations” (October 16–19, 1813), inwhich the Grande Armée was torn to
shreds. That defeat degenerated fast into collapse. The French armies in Spain, forced to
retreat, had been defeated in June; and by October the British were attackingtheir
defenses north of the Pyrenees. In Italy the Austrians took the offensive, crossed the
Adige River, and occupied Romagna. Murat, now openly a traitor to the Emperor who
had made him king of Naples, entered into negotiations with the Viennese court. The
Dutch and the Belgians demonstrated against Napoleon.
Downfall and abdication
In January 1814 France was being attacked on all its frontiers. The allies cleverly
announced that they were fighting not against the French people but against Napoleon
alone, since in November 1813 he had rejected the terms offered by the Austrian foreign
minister Metternich, which would have preserved
the natural frontiers of France. The extraordinary strategic feats achieved by the Emperor
during the first three months of 1814 with the army of young conscripts were not enough;
he could neither defeat the allies, with their overwhelming numerical superiority, nor
arouse the majority of French people from their resentful torpor. The Legislative
Assembly and the Senate, formerly so docile, were now asking for peace and for civil and
political liberties.
By the Treaty of Chaumont of March 1814, Austria, Russia, Prussia, and Great Britain
bound themselves together for 20 years, undertook not to negotiate separately, and
promised to continue the struggle until Napoleon was overthrown. When the allied
armies arrived before Paris on March 30, Napoleon had moved east to attack their rear
guard. The Parisian authorities, no longer overawed by the Emperor, lost no time in
treating with the allies. As president of the provisional government, Talleyrand
proclaimed the deposition of the Emperor and, without consulting the Frenchpeople,
began to negotiate with Louis XVIII, the brother of the executed Louis XVI. Napoleon
had only reached Fontainebleau when he heard that Paris had capitulated. Persuaded that
further resistance was useless, he finally abdicated on April 6.
By the Treaty of Fontainebleau, the allies granted him the island of Elba as a sovereign
principality with an annual income of 2,000,000 francs to be provided by France and a
guard of 400 volunteers; also, heretained the title of emperor. After unsuccessfully trying
to poison himself, Napoleon spoke his farewell to his “Old Guard,” and after a hazardous
journey, during which he narrowly escaped assassination, he arrived at Elba on May 4.
Elba and the Hundred Days
“I want from now on to live like a justice of the peace,” Napoleon declaredon his little
island. But a man of such energy and imagination could hardly be expected to resign
himself to defeat at the age of 45.
In France, moreover, the Bourbon Restoration was soon exposed to criticism. Though in
1814 the majority of the French people were tired of the Emperor, they had expressed no
wish for the return of the Bourbons. They were strongly
attached to the essential achievements of the Revolution, and Louis XVIII had come back
“in the baggage train of the foreigners” with the last surviving émigrés who had “learnt
nothing and forgotten nothing” and whose influence seemed to threaten most of the
Revolution’s achievements. The apathy of April 1814 quickly gave way to mistrust. Old
hatreds were revived, resistance organized, and conspiracies formed.
From Elba, Napoleon kept a close watch on the Continent. He knew that some of the
diplomats at Vienna, where a congress was deciding the fate of Europe, considered Elba,
between Corsica and Italy, too close to France and to Italy and wanted to banish him to a
distant island in the Atlantic. Also, he accused Austria of preventing Marie Louise and
his son from coming to join him (in fact, she had taken a lover and had no intention of
going to live with her husband). Finally, the French government refused to pay
Napoleon’s allowance so that he was in danger of being reduced to penury.
All these considerations drove Napoleon to action. Decisive as ever, he returned to
France like a thunderbolt. On March 1, 1815, he landed at Cannes with a detachment of
his guard. As he crossed the Alps, the republican peasants rallied round him, and near
Grenoble he won over the soldiers dispatched to arrest him. On March 20 he was in Paris.
Napoleon was brought back to power as the embodiment of the spirit of the Revolution
rather than as the emperor who had fallen a year before. To rally the mass of Frenchmen
to his cause he should have allied himself with the Jacobins; but this he dared not do.
Unable to escape from the bourgeoisie whosepredominance he himself had assured and
who feared above all else a revival of the socialist experiments of 1793 and 1794, he
could only set up a political regime scarcely distinguishable from that of Louis XVIII.
Enthusiasm ebbed fast, and the Napoleonic adventure seemed a dead end.
To oppose the allied troops massing on the frontiers, Napoleon mustered an army with
which he marched into Belgium and defeated the Prussians at Ligny on June 16, 1815.
Two days later, at Waterloo, he met the British under Wellington, the victor of the
Peninsular War. A savage battle followed. Napoleon
was in sight of victory when the Prussians under Gebhard Blücher arrived to reinforce the
British, and soon, despite the heroism of the Old Guard, Napoleon was overthrown.
Back in Paris, Parliament forced Napoleon to abdicate; he did so, in favour of his son, on
June 22, 1815. On July 3 he was at Rochefort, intending to take ship for the United
States, but a British squadron prevented any French vessel from leaving the port.
Napoleon then decided to appeal to the British government for protection. His request
granted, he boarded the “Bellerophon” on July 15. The allies were agreed on one point:
Napoleon was not to go back to Elba. Nor did they like the idea of his going off to
America. It would have suited them if he had fallen a victim to the “White Terror” of the
returned counter-revolutionaries or if Louis XVIII had had him summarily tried and
executed. Great Britain had no choice but to send him to detention in a far-off island. The
British government announced that the island of Saint Helena in the southern Atlantic
had been chosen for his residence; because of its remote position Napoleon would enjoy
much greater freedom than would be possible elsewhere. Napoleon protested eloquently:
“I appeal to history!”
Exile on Saint Helena
On October 15, 1815, Napoleon disembarked in Saint Helena with those followers who
were voluntarily accompanying him into exile: Gen. Henri-Gratien Bertrand, grand
marshal of the palace, and his wife; the comte Charles de Montholon, aide-de-camp, and
his wife; Gen. Gaspard Gourgaud; Emmanuel Las Cases, the former chamberlain; and
several servants. After a short stay at the house of a wealthy English merchant, they
moved to Longwood, originally built for the lieutenant governor.
Napoleon settled down to a life of routine. He got up late, breakfasting about 10 AM, but
seldom went out. He was free to go anywhere on the island so long as he was
accompanied by an English officer, but he soon refused to comply with this condition and
so shut himself up in the grounds of Longwood. He wrote and talked much. At first Las
Cases actedas his secretary, compiling what was later to be the Mémorial de SainteHélène (first published in 1823). From 7 to 8 PM Napoleon had dinner, after which a part
of the evening was
spent in reading aloud—Napoleon liked to hear the classics. Then they played cards.
About midnight Napoleon went to bed. Some of his time was devoted to learning
English, and he eventually began reading English newspapers; but he also had a large
number of French books sent from Europe, which he read attentively and annotated.
Saint Helena has a healthful climate, and Napoleon’s food was good, carefully prepared,
and plentiful. His inactivity undoubtedly contributed to the deterioration of his health.
The man who for 20 years hadplayed so great a role in the world and who had marched
north, south, east, and west across Europe could hardly be expected to endure the
monotony of existence on a little island, aggravated by a self-imposed life of a recluse.
He had also more intimate reasons for unhappiness: Marie-Louise sent no word to him,
and he may have learned of her liaison with the Austrian officer appointed to watch over
her, Graf Adam von Neipperg (whom she eventually married in secret without waiting
for Napoleon’s death); nor did he have any news of his son, the former king of Rome,
who was now living in Vienna with the title of duke of Reichstadt. Finally, though the
severity of Sir Hudson Lowe has been much exaggerated, it is certain that this “jailer,”
who arrived as governor of Saint Helena in April 1816, did nothing to make Napoleon’s
life easier. Napoleon from the start disliked him as the former commander of the
Corsican rangers, a band of volunteers largely composed of enemies of the Bonaparte
family. Always anxious to carry out his instructions exactly, Lowe came into conflict
with Las Cases. He saw LasCases as Napoleon’s confidant and had him arrested and
expelled. Thenceforward, relations between the governor and Napoleon were limited
strictly to those stipulated by the regulations.
Napoleon showed the first signs of illness at the end of 1817; he seems to have had an
ulcer or a cancerof the stomach. The Irish doctor Barry O’Meara, having asked in vain
for a change in the conditions under which Napoleon lived, was dismissed; so also was
his successor John Stokoe, who was likewise thought to be well-disposed toward
Napoleon. The undistinguished Corsican doctor who took their place, Francesco
Antommarchi, prescribed a treatment that could do nothing to cure his patient. It is
uncertain, however, whether Napoleon’s disease was curable at all, even by 20th-century
methods.
From the beginning of 1821, the illness became rapidly worse. From March, Napoleon
was confined to bed. In April he dictated his last will:
I wish my ashes to rest on the banks of the Seine, in the midst of that French people
which I have loved so much. . . . I die before my time, killed by the English oligarchy and
its hired assassins.
On May 5 he spoke a few coherent phrases: “My God . . . The French nation . . . my son .
. . head of the army. . . . ” He died at 5:49 PM on that day, not yet 52 years old. His body
was dressed in his favourite uniform, that of the Chasseurs de la Garde, covered by the
gray overcoat that he had worn at Marengo.The funeral was conducted simply, but with
due propriety, in the Rupert Valley, where Napoleon had sometimes walked, beside a
stream in which two willows were reflected. The stone covering his tomb bore no name,
only the words “Ci-Gît” (“Here Lies”).
The Napoleonic legend
Napoleon’s fall had set loose a torrent of hostile books designed to sully his reputation.
One of the least violent of these was the pamphlet De Buonaparte, des Bourbons, et de la
nécessité de se rallier à nos princes légitimes (1814; On Buonaparte and the Bourbons,
and the Necessity of Rallying Around Our Legitimate Princes, for the Safety of France
and of Europe) by François de Chateaubriand, a well-known writer of royalist
sympathies. But this anti-Napoleonic literature soon died down, while the task of
defending Napoleon was taken up. Lord Byron had published his “Ode to Napoleon
Buonaparte” as early as 1814; the German poet Heinrich Heine wrote his ballad “Die
Grenadiere”; and in 1817 the Frenchnovelist Stendhal began his biography Vie de
Napoléon. At the same time, the Emperor’s most faithful supporters were working toward
his rehabilitation, talking about him, and distributing reminders of him, including
engravings. They idealized his life (“What a novel my life is!” he himself had said) and
began to create the Napoleonic legend.
As soon as the Emperor was dead, the legend grew rapidly. Memoirs, notes, and
narratives by those who had followed him into exile contributed substantially to it. In
1822 Dr. O’Meara, in London, had his Napoleon in Exile, or a Voice from Saint Helena
published; in 1823 the publication of the Mémoires pourservir à l’histoire de France sous
Napoléon, écrits à Sainte-Hélène sous sa dictée (Memoirs of the History of France during
the Reign of Napoleon, Dictated by the Emperor at St. Helena) by Montholon and
Gourgaud, began; Las Cases, in his famous Mémorial, presented the Emperor as a
republican opposed to war who had fought only when Europe forced him to fight in
defense of freedom; and in 1825 Antommarchi published his Derniers moments de
Napoléon. Thereafter the number of works in Napoleon’s honour increased continually;
among them were Victor Hugo’s “Ode à la Colonne,” the 28 volumes of the Victoires et
conquêtes des Français, and Sir Walter Scott’s Life of Napoleon Buonaparte, Emperor of
the French. Neither police action nor prosecutions could prevent books, pictures, and
objects evoking the imperial saga from multiplying in France.
After the July Revolution of 1830, which created the bourgeois monarchy under LouisPhilippe, thousands of tricolour flags appeared in windows, and the government had not
only to tolerate the growth of the legend but even to promote it. In 1833 the statue of
Napoleon was put back on the top of the column in the Place Vendôme in Paris; and in
1840 the King’s son François, prince de Joinville, was sent in a warship to fetch the
Emperor’s remains from Saint Helena to the banks of the Seine in accordance with his
last wishes. A magnificent funeral was held in Paris in December 1840, and Napoleon’s
body was conveyed through the Arc de Triomphe in the Place de l’Étoile to entombment
under the dome of the Invalides.
Napoleon’s nephew Louis-Napoleon exploited the legend in order to seize power in
France. Though his attempts at Strasbourg in 1836 and at Boulogne in 1840 were failures,
it was chiefly because of the growth of the legend that he won election to the presidency
of the Second Republic with an overwhelming majority in 1848 and was able to carry out
the coup d’etat of December 1851 and make himself emperor in 1852.
The disastrous end of the Second Empire in 1870 damaged the Napoleonic legend and
gave rise to a new anti-Napoleonic literature, best represented by Hippolyte Taine’s
Origines de la France contemporaine (1876–94). World Wars I and II, however, together
with the experience of the 20th-century dictatorships, made it possible to judge Napoleon
more fairly. Any comparison with Stalin or Hitler, for instance, can only be to
Napoleon’s advantage. He was tolerant, he released the Jews from the ghettoes, and he
showed respect for human life. Brought up on the rationalist Encyclopédie and onthe
writings of the Philosophes of the Enlightenment, he remained above all a man of the
18th century, the last of the “enlightened despots.” One of the gravest accusations made
against Napoleon is that he was the “Corsican ogre” who sacrificed millions of men to his
ambition. Precise calculations show that the Napoleonic Wars of 1800–15 cost France
itself about 500,000 men; i.e., about one-sixtieth of the population. The loss of these
young men, furthermore, seems to have had a notably adverse effect on the birth rate.
The social structure of France changed little under the First Empire. It remained roughly
what the Revolution had made it: a great mass of peasants comprising three-quarters of
the population—about half of them working owners of their farms or sharecroppers and
the other half with too little land for their own subsistence and hiring themselves out as
labourers. Industry, stimulated by the war and the blockade of English goods, made
remarkable progress in northern and eastern France, whence exportscould be sent to
central Europe; but it declined in the south and west because of the closing of the
Mediterranean and the Atlantic. The great migrations from rural areas toward industry in
the towns began only after 1815. The nobility would probably have declined more swiftly
if Napoleon had not restored it; but it could never recover its former privileges.
Above all, Napoleon left durable institutions, the “granite masses” on which modern
France has been built up: the administrative system of the prefects, the Code Napoléon,
the judicial system, the Banquede France and the country’s financial organization, the
universities, and the military academies. Napoleon changed the history of France and of
the world.
Jacques Godechot
Sources
An enormous mass of documents is dispersed throughout the archives ofEurope, but the
essential sources are Correspondance de Napoléon I er , 32 vol. (1858–69, reprinted
1974), published on command of Napoleon III; Oeuvres de Napoléon I er à SainteHélène, 4 vol. (1870); and Oeuvres littéraires et écrits 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
BrotherJoseph, 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 SelfRevealed (1934); J. Christopher Herold (ed. and trans.), The Mind of Napoleon (1955);
André Palluel (ed.), Dictionnaire de l’empereur (1969); and Adrien Dansette (ed.),
Pensées politiques et sociales de Napoléon (1969). Napoleon’s itinerary is available in
Albert Schuermans, Itinéraire général de Napoléon I er , 2nd ed. (1911); and Louis
Garros, Itinéraire de Napoléon Bonaparte (1947).
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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, 1867–75), 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; Frédéric Masson, Napoléon et sa famille, 13 vol. (1897–1919),
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 Tarlé, Bonaparte, trans. from
Russian (1937), the point of view of a Soviet historian; Felix Maurice Hippisley
Markham, Napoleon (1963), an objective study; Jean Mistler, Napoléon et l’empire, 2
vol. (1968, reissued 1979), a magnificently illustrated work, each chapter written by a
specialist; André Castelot, Napoléon (1971; originally published in French, 1968), a
vulgarized book that realized great
success in France; and Jacques Godechot, Napoléon (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 Napoléon, 3 vol. (1897–99), 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 Lévy, Napoléon intime, 7th ed. (1932); and Frédéric 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), focuson 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 Alexander—Russia, 1812 (1985); and Richard K. Riehn,
1812:Napoleon’s Russian Campaign (1990). R.S. Alexander, Bonapartism and
Revolutionary Tradition in France: The Fédérés of 1815 (1992), discussesthe politicomilitary organizations that supported Napoleon during the Hundred Days. Paul Fregosi,
Dreams of Empire: Napoleon and the First World War, 1792–1815 (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, 1814–1815 (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 Napoléon, 1815–1848
(1960), a definitive study of the Napoleonic legend; Hugh Ragsdale, Détente in the
Napoleonic Era: Bonaparte and the Russians (1980); and Edward
A. Whitcomb, Napoleon’s Diplomatic Service (1979).