Napoleon Bonaparte 2 Essay Research Paper Napoleon

Napoleon Bonaparte 2 Essay, Research Paper

Napoleon Bonaparte

Napoleon I was born in 1769 and lived until 1821. He was a French emperor, and, being one of the greatest military leaders of all time, subjugated a very large part of Europe and modernized the nations he ruled.

Napoleon was born on August 15, 1769, in Ajaccio, Corsica, and was originally named Napoleone (in French his name became Napoleon Bonaparte). He was the second of eight children of Carlo Buonaparte and Letizia Ramolino Buonaparte. No Buonaparte had ever been a professional soldier. Carlo was a lawyer, and had entered the French aristocracy as a count while serving as a prosecutor and judge following the French occupation of the island in 1768. Through his father s influence, Napoleon was educated at the expenditure of King Louis XVI, at Brienne and the +cole Militaire, in Paris. Napoleon graduated in 1785, when he was 16, and joined the artillery as a second lieutenant.

In 1791 after the Revolution began, he became a lieutenant colonel in the Corsican National Guard. However, in 1793, Corsica declared independence and the French patriot and Republican Napoleon fled to France with his family. There he was assigned as a captain to a naval base that was in revolt against the republic. Bonaparte was promoted to brigadier general at the age of 24 when he replaced a wounded artillery general and seized ground where his guns could drive the British fleet from the harbor. Two years later he saved the revolutionary government by disposing of an rebel mob in Paris. The next year he married Jos phine de Beauharnais, the widow of an aristocrat guillotined in the Revolution and the mother of two children.

Also in 1796, Napoleon Bonaparte was given the rank of the commander of the French army in Italy. He defeated four Austrian generals consecutively, each with superior numbers, and forced Austria and its allies to make peace. In northern Italy he founded the Cisalpine (Italian) Republic, later known as the kingdom of Italy, and intensified his position in France by sending millions of francs worth of treasure to the government. In 1798 he led an expedition to Turkish-ruled Egypt, which he conquered. However, his fleet was destroyed by a British admiral, leaving him stranded. Still fearless, he reformed the Egyptian government and law, ceasing serfdom and feudalism and promising basic rights. In 1799 he was unsuccessful in capturing Syria, but won a glorious victory over the Turks at Abukir. Meanwhile, France faced a new alliance; Austria, Russia, and lesser powers had allied with Britain.

Bonaparte, no humble person, decided to leave his army and return to save France. In Paris, he joined a conspiracy against the government. In the plot of etat of November 9-10, 1799, he and his associates seized power and established a new government the Consulate. Under its constitution, Bonaparte, as first consul, had almost dictatorial powers. The constitution was revised in 1802 to make Bonaparte consul for life and again in 1804 to make him emperor. Each change received enormous agreement from the voters.

In 1800, he assured his power by crossing the Alps and defeating the Austrians at Marengo. He then negotiated a general European peace that established the Rhine River as the eastern border of France. In France the administration was reorganized, the court system was simplified, and all schools were put under centralized control. French law was standardized in the Code Napol on or civil code, and six other codes. They guaranteed the rights and liberties won in the Revolution, including equality before the law and freedom of religion.

In April 1803 Britain, annoyed by Napoleon s aggressive behavior, resumed war with France on the seas; two years later Russia and Austria joined the British in a new alliance. Napoleon then rejected plans to invade England and turned his armies against the Austro-Russian forces, defeating them at the Battle of Austerlitz on December 2, 1805. In 1806 he seized Naples and made his older brother Joseph king, converted the Dutch Republic into the kingdom of Holland for his brother Louis, and created the Confederation of the Rhine of which he was protector. Prussia then allied itself with Russia and attacked the confederation. Napoleon destroyed the Prussian army at Jena and Auerst dt in 1806 and the Russian army at Friedland. At Tilsit in 1807, Napoleon made an ally of Czar Alexander I and greatly reduced the size of Prussia.

Napoleon had meanwhile instituted the Continental System, a French-imposed boycott of Europe against British goods, designed to bankrupt what he called the “nation of shopkeepers.” Britain retaliated with the Order in Council, which prevented all neutral nations from carrying on commerce with any and all French nations. In 1807 Napoleon seized Portugal. In 1808, he made his brother Joseph king of Spain, giving Naples to his brother-in-law, Joachim Murat. Joseph s arrival in Spain touched off a rebellion there, which became known as the Peninsular War. Napoleon appeared briefly and scored victories, but after his departure the fighting continued for five years, with the British backing Spanish armies and guerrillas. The Peninsular War cost France 300,000 casualties and untold sums of money and contributed to the eventual weakening of the Napoleonic empire.

In 1809 Napoleon divorced Jos phine, and in 1810