Napoleon

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) was emperor of France as Napoleon I from 1804-1814 and ruler over much of Europe.

Napoleon was born in Corsica, which had been occupied by the French. His father arranged for an education of Napoleon in France. Napoleon moved to France at the age of nine; he initially considered himself a foreigner and outsider and hated the French. He had become an officer in the French army when the French revolution began in 1789. Napoleon returned to Corsica, where a dictator was trying to separate from France. Civil war broke out, and Napoleon's family had to flee to France. Napoleon supported the revolution and quickly rose through the ranks. In 1795, when royalists marched against the National Convention, he had them shot.

Nicknamed "the Little Corporal", Napoleon was a brilliant military strategist. He attempted to gain control of Europe through military domination. His forces controlled for periods of time the following countries: Spain, Italy, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Germany, Prussia, Lithuania, Latvia, and a great part of Russia. His empire was lost primarily due to the fact that his forces were over-extended and virtually annihilated by adverse climatic conditions during the Retreat from Moscow.

After being defeated during the last-ditch defence of Paris, he was exiled to Elba, a small island in the Mediterranean that he could govern whilst maintaining the title of emperor as a soporific. He grew restless, and returned to the mainland, where the armies sent to stop him received him as leader, and arrived at Paris and governed for 100 days.

His final defeat by Wellington at Waterloo in what is now Belgium, in the year 1815, resulted in his imprisonment and exile by the British on Saint Helena. There he dedicated his last years to writing his memoires.