Blackwell Reference Online

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The towering figure of his era, Napoleon Bonaparte (born Napoleone di Buonaparte) was a French army general who rose to prominence in the 1790s during the French Revolutionary Wars and became emperor of France in 1804. His success on the battlefield enabled him to dominate Europe for much of the early nineteenth century. Napoleon established constitutional monarchies and social reforms in the European states that he conquered, spreading the anti-aristocratic transformation wrought by the French Revolution, while establishing a strong centralized government – some would say dictatorial and anti-democratic – within France. Forced to abdicate in 1814, Napoleon returned briefly to power in 1815 but was then exiled from France for the rest of his life. Napoleon was born on August 15, 1769, in Ajaccio, Corsica, to Carlo Buonaparte and Maria Letizia Ramilino. Although the Buonapartes were minor nobles of Italian ancestry, the island of Corsica had recently become a French possession. Napoleon attended the Military Academy at Brienne-le-Château on a scholarship from 1779 to 1784, and then the Ecole Royale Militaire, where he studied artillery and emerged as a second lieutenant at age 16. At the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, Napoleon was a lieutenant colonel in the Corsican National Guard. After coming into conflict with Corsican nationalist leader Pasquale Paoli, Napoleon fled ... log in or subscribe to read full text