Napoleon was born on August 15, 1769, in Ajaccio, Corsica, and was given the name Napoleone (in French his name became Napoleon Bonaparte). He was the second of eight children of Carlo (Charles) Buonaparte and Letizia Ramolino Buonaparte, both of the Corsican-Italian gentry. No Buonaparte had ever been a professional soldier. Carlo was a lawyer who had fought for Corsican independence, but after the French occupied the island in 1768, he served as a prosecutor and judge and entered the French aristocracy as a count. Through his father's influence, Napoleon was educated at the expense of King Louis XVI, at Brienne and the École Militaire, in Paris. Napoleon graduated in 1785, at the age of 16, and joined the artillery as a second lieutenant.

After the Revolution began, he became a lieutenant colonel (1791) in the Corsican National Guard. In 1793, however, Corsica declared independence, and Bonaparte, a French patriot and a Republican,

Napoleon I (1769-1821), emperor of the French, who consolidated and institutionalized many reforms of the French Revolution. One of the greatest military commanders of all time, he conquered the larger part of Europe and did much to modernize the nations he ruled.

See French Revolution; Napoleonic Wars. See also separate articles on individual battles mentioned.

first. The result was a campaign into Belgium, which ended in defeat at the Battle of Waterloo on June 18, 1815. In Paris, crowds begged him to fight on, but the politicians withdrew their support. Napoleon fled to Rochefort, where he surrendered to the captain of the British battleship Bellerophon. He was then exiled to Saint Helena, a remote island in the south Atlantic Ocean, where he remained until his death from stomach cancer on May 5, 1821.

Napoleon was a driven man, never secure, never satisfied. "Power is my mistress," he said. His life was work-centered; even his social activities had a purpose. He could bear amusements or vacations only briefly. His tastes were for coarse food, bad wine, cheap snuff. He could be charming-hypnotically so-for a purpose. He had intense loyalties-to his family and old associates. Nothing and no one, however, were allowed to interfere with his work.

In April 1803 Britain, provoked by Napoleon's aggressive behavior, resumed war with France on the seas; two years later Russia and Austria joined the British in a new coalition. Napoleon then abandoned 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 the kingdom of Naples and made his elder brother Joseph king, converted the Dutch Republic into the kingdom of Holland for his brother Louis, and established the Confederation of the Rhine (most of the German states) of which he was protector. Prussia then allied itself with Russia and attacked the confederation. Napoleon destroyed the Prussian army at Jena and Auerstädt (1806) and the Russian army at Friedland. At Tilsit (July 1807), Napoleon made an ally of Tsar Alexander I and greatly reduced the size of Prussia (see Tilsit, Treaty of). He also added new states to the empire: the kingdom of Westphalia, under his bro!

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