Napoleon the Great summary

During his youth, Napoleon was always a proud Corsican. But as he began his military career, French politics were being turned on their head and he soon found himself pledging unconditional allegiance to France.

When the French Revolution began in 1789, Napoleon supported the ideals of the revolutionaries; yet, his position in the military meant that he was a part of the effort to stop the uprising against the monarchy. He supported the revolutionaries because he disliked the monarchy and the power it gave to the clergy, but he also believed in the ideas of the Enlightenment, including the writings of Rousseau and Voltaire, both of whom were proponents of liberty and opposed to monarchy.

Having been promoted to general, Napoleon became second-in-command of the Army of the Interior. During this charge, he was tasked with protecting Paris during a violent uprising on October 5th, 1795. His ability to boldly and mercilessly suppress the uprising prevented a civil war and further elevated his status.

It also won him command over a division called the Army of Italy, setting the stage for a military campaign that would soon earn his name legendary status.

Napoleon was winning battles left and right, earning the admiration of the French people. But the country’s new leadership wasn’t so keen on the young general – in fact, they saw his rise in popularity as a potential threat.

So, they sent Napoleon off to Egypt in a campaign to disrupt British power in the Mediterranean. He set sail on May 19, 1798 with about 38,000 Frenchmen and, while the campaign got off to a good start, it wouldn’t last.

Most people know Napoleon as an accomplished general. But he was also a prolific letter-writer, even during his military campaigns. Some of this correspondence was to ensure proper equipment and supplies for his troops, but during his Italian and Egyptian campaigns, he also wrote many letters to his wife, Josephine.

That’s right, Napoleon was married and it was quite a rocky relationship as well, especially in its early years.

Following his campaigns in the Middle East, Napoleon returned to Paris on October 16, 1799 where he received a hero’s welcome, cheered by a public who saw him as their savior. Indeed, one couldn’t have blamed the French people for wanting a savior. After all, while Napoleon was away, the political situation in France hadn’t improved.

The government was riddled with corruption, and economic inflation and pro-royalist uprisings were roiling the country. Not only that, but the military had suffered multiple other defeats while Napoleon’s forces were being beat back in the Middle East.

From his new position at the head of the government, Napoleon issued a series of popular reforms that centralized government, gave greater rights and protections to the people and reinvigorated French business, all while cutting taxes. The economy soared and things were going very well; that is, until April 19, 1800, when Austrians laid siege to a French fort in the northern Italian city of Genoa.

So, Napoleon would head back into battle.

In the early 1800s, following the battle of Marengo, France and Austria entered lengthy peace talks. At the same time, Napoleon continued to work on his Code Napoleon, a political project that included eliminating the privileges of royalty, separating the church from the state and standardizing education.

The peace talks lead to eventual alliances, albeit shaky ones, between European nations. On February 9, 1801, the Treaty of Luneville was officially signed, ending nine years of continuous war between Austria and France. But peace isn’t all the treaty secured for France – it also gave them additional territories in Italy, Belgium and the Rhineland, and made Britain the country’s last major enemy; that is, until Britain found new allies.

On September 25, 1805, Napoleon’s army crossed the Rhine and, on October 6, shifted its front 90 degrees to the south, planning to cut off the Austrian forces. This maneuver constituted the most massive change of front ever known and it would lead to a series of victories as Napoleon surrounded and secured Ulm, forcing another Austrian surrender.

But his work didn’t end there; two of Napoleon’s most impressive victories were still to come in Austerlitz and Jena.

Although Napoleon pushed back the Prussian forces at Jena, Frederick William wasn't ready to surrender just yet; instead, he retreated and hoped to receive Russian support. As a result, there would be more brutal fighting before Napoleon could finally reach a peace accord with Prussia and Russia.

In December of 1806, Napoleon was moving through Warsaw and the Russian army was retreating. But as the French forces moved east, the impending winter meant increasingly harsh conditions, with French soldiers trudging through snow and mud up to their knees, while suffering from hunger and exhaustion. The conditions were so bad that hundreds of French soldiers took their own lives.

Napoleon intended to exert further pressure on the British by capturing Portugal, but instead, the fighting that ensued in Spain spiralled into a deadly disaster known as the Peninsular War. This war might have turned out better if Napoleon had been more focused on it; but, unfortunately, he had other problems to handle in Europe, many of which related to his insistence on making the Continental System work.

The problem was that for this to happen, countries like Russia and Austria would need to resist the temptation to profit from illegal British trade – which they certainly did not. During this time Napoleon divorced Josephine, and married Marie Louise, the daughter of Austria’s emperor. But not even a royal wedding could overcome Austria’s issues with France and the Continental System.

It’s a truly shocking figure: Napoleon lost somewhere in the neighborhood of 524,000 men in Russia. Only 40 percent of those casualties were suffered in combat, while the rest were the result of disease, starvation and suicide.

Napoleon would never truly recover from what happened during that campaign in 1812, nor would he be able to keep the Coalition Forces, an alliance of all of the armies fighting against Napoleon, out of Paris. Upon returning to Paris on December 18, 1812, he tried to rally as many new troops as possible, but some of these soldiers were only 15 or 16 years old.

While confined to Elba, Napoleon was kept under the watchful eye of British Colonel Sir Neil Campbell. The two men actually got along quite well and Campbell admired Napoleon’s intelligence as well as his charm.

Nonetheless, on February 16, 1814, when Campbell left the island on a short trip, Napoleon jumped at the opportunity to reclaim his throne. He’d been following French affairs closely and knew that things were going back to the pre-revolutionary ways of the monarchy.

Napoleon’s return to power may have been swift, but it came to an end just as quickly. On May 15, 1815, following his return, the Coalition Forces declared war on France once again. And, by straying from some of his most effective strategies, Napoleon would come to suffer a decisive defeat at the battle of Waterloo.

He managed to put together an army of 280,000 men and, in contrast to his successful strategy of centralized troops, he divided his forces, sending one group after a retreating Prussian army. Then, at 11 in the morning on June 18, 1815, he began his attack on the allied forces, led by the Duke of Wellington.