Napoleon And Wellington Essay Research Paper The

Napoleon And Wellington Essay, Research Paper

The careers of Napoleon Bonaparte and Arthur Wellesley, 1st duke of Wellington,

contrasted in many different ways. The manner in which both rose to glory was

quite dissimilar. Napoleon Bonaparte was born in Corsica on August 15, 1769 and

was thought to be the most formidable military commander since Alexander the

great. He was a bright, charismatic child of noble background. As a boy, he was

described as good .willed and generous. At nine, through his father.s

influence, Napoleon went off to military school in Paris at the expense of King

Louis XVI. It was here that it was discovered that he had and amazing brain

capacity and was considered a genius, yet nobody could imagine his success and

all of the dead bodies he left in his wake for the sake of peace. Wellesley, on

the other hand, was born on May 1, 1769, in Dublin and was also of noble

background. As an adult, Wellesley would rise to rule the British empire, but as

a schoolboy his future looked grim and lacked the genius that Napoleon

possessed. His situation became so desperate that he was sent to military

school, where his metamorphosis was astonishing. He found that he enjoyed the

army and needed it to establish a career in life. He was given the title .1st

Duke of Wellington. due to his military successes. In school, Napoleon was

always the leader and could always win at games due to his strategies and his

impeccability at outwitting the other team. He was attracted to the military for

a number of reasons and he had secret weapons such as his extraordinary

intelligence. The military schools of Napoleon and Wellesley never engaged in

competition so they never met. Napoleon graduated military school in 1785, at

the age of 16, and joined the artillery as a second lieutenant. He studied

firepower and trained in the artillery, which would help Napoleon become a

genius in this field. Meanwhile, in 1787, Wellesley was commissioned to the

British army and, although he was extremely ambitious, his youth sometimes

showed. In 1790, Wellesley was elected to the Irish parliament and participated

in the unsuccessful campaign of 1794-95 against French forces in the

Netherlands. Upon returning to England in 1805, he was rewarded with knighthood.

After the Revolution began, Napoleon became a lieutenant colonel in the Corsican

National Guard but, in 1793, Corsica declared independence, and Bonaparte, a

French patriot and a Republican, fled to France with his family. He was

assigned, as a captain, to an army besieging Toulon, a naval base that, aided by

a British fleet, was in revolt against the republic. Replacing a wounded

artillery general, he drove the British fleet from the harbor, and Toulon fell.

Napoleon was then promoted to brigadier general at the age of 24 and in 1796 he

married Josephine de Beauharnais, the widow of an aristocrat guillotined in the

Revolution and the mother of two children. Also in 1796, Bonaparte was made

commander of the French army in Italy and due to his victories, he became quite

well known and respected by the French. In the same year, Wellesley, now holding

the rank of colonel in the army, went to India, where he received his first

independent command. Wellesley.s brother was appointed governor-general of

India in 1797, and Arthur took part in several military campaigns and returned

to England in 1805. In 1798, Bonaparte led an expedition to Turkish-ruled Egypt,

which he conquered yet his fleet was destroyed. Undismayed, he reformed the

Egyptian government and law, abolishing serfdom and feudalism and guaranteeing

basic rights. In 1799, he won a smashing victory over the Turks but failed to

capture Syria. Napoleon then decided to leave his army and return to save

France, where he joined a conspiracy against the government. He and his

colleagues seized power in the coup d.etat of November 1799, and established a

new regime called the Consulate. Under its constitution, Bonaparte, as first

consul, had almost dictatorial powers. In 1802 the constitution was revised to

make Bonaparte consul for life and then in 1804 it made him emperor. He

reorganized the administration, simplified the court system, and all schools in

France were put under centralized control. He standardized French law in the

Napoleon Code and they guaranteed the rights and liberties won in the

Revolution, including equality before the law and freedom of religion. In 1806,

Napoleon conquered the kingdom of Naples and the Dutch republic and destroyed

the Prussian army. Napoleon made an ally of Czar Alexander I and greatly reduced

the size of Prussia and added many new states to his empire. In all his new

kingdoms, the Napoleon Code was established as law, feudalism and serfdom were

abolished, and freedom of religion was established. Wellesley was involved in

the struggle against Napoleon and he

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