Napoleon
Buonaparte
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Napoleon
Buonaparte was born on the island of Corsica in 1769 to a
relatively modest Italian family from minor nobility.
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He belonged to a
poor family.
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He was serving as an
artillery officer in the French army when the French Revolution erupted in
1789.
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He rapidly rose
through the ranks of the military, seizing the new opportunities presented by
the Revolution and becoming a general at age 24.
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The French Directory eventually gave him command of the Army of Italy after
he suppressed the 13 Vendémiaire revolt against the government from royalist
insurgents.
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At age 26, he began
his first military
campaign against the
Austrians and the Italian monarchs aligned with the Habsburgs—winning virtually
every battle, conquering the Italian Peninsula in a year while establishing
"sister republics" with local support, and becoming a war hero in
France.
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In 1798, he led
a military expedition to Egypt that served as a springboard to political power.
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He orchestrated
a coup in November 1799 and became First Consul of the Republic.
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After the Peace of
Amiens in 1802, Napoleon turned his attention to France's colonies.
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He sold the Louisiana Territory to the United States, and he attempted to restore
slavery to the French Caribbean colonies.
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However, while he
was successful in restoring slavery in the eastern Caribbean, Napoleon failed
in his attempts to subdue Saint-Domingue,
and the colony that France once proudly boasted of as the "Pearl of the
Antilles" became independent as Haiti in 1804.
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Napoleon's ambition
and public approval inspired him to go further, and he became the first Emperor
of the French in 1804.
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Intractable
differences with the British meant that the French were facing a Third Coalition by 1805.
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Napoleon shattered
this coalition with decisive victories in the Ulm Campaign and a historic triumph over the Russian Empire and Austrian Empire at the Battle of Austerlitz which led to the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire.
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Napoleon formed
the Franco-Persian alliance and wanted to re-establish the Franco-Indian alliances with the Muslim Indian
emperor Tipu Sultan by providing French-trained army during
the Anglo-Mysore
Wars, with the continuous aim of
having an eventual open way to attack the British in India.[4][5]
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In 1806, the Fourth Coalition took up arms against him because Prussia became
worried about growing French influence on the continent.
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Napoleon quickly
defeated Prussia at the battles of Jena and Auerstedt, then marched his Grande Armée deep into Eastern Europe and
annihilated the Russians in June 1807 at the Battle of Friedland. France then forced the defeated nations of the Fourth
Coalition to sign the Treaties of Tilsit in July 1807, bringing an uneasy peace to the
continent.
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Tilsit signified the
high-water mark of the French Empire.
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In 1809, the
Austrians and the British challenged the French again during the War of the Fifth Coalition, but Napoleon solidified his grip over Europe after
triumphing at the Battle of Wagram in July.
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Napoleon then occupied the Iberian Peninsula, hoping to extend the Continental System and choke off British trade with the European
mainland, and declared his brother Joseph Bonaparte the King of Spain in
1808.
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The Spanish and the
Portuguese revolted with British support.
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The Peninsular War lasted six years, featured extensive guerrilla
warfare, and ended in victory for
the Allies against Napoleon.
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The Continental
System caused recurring diplomatic conflicts between France and its client
states, especially Russia.
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The Russians were
unwilling to bear the economic consequences of reduced trade and routinely
violated the Continental System, enticing Napoleon into another war.
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The French launched
a major invasion of Russia in the summer of 1812.
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The campaign
destroyed Russian cities, but did not yield the decisive victory Napoleon
wanted.
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It resulted in the
collapse of the Grande Armée and inspired a renewed push against
Napoleon by his enemies.
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In 1813, Prussia and
Austria joined Russian forces in the War of the Sixth Coalition against France.
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A lengthy military
campaign culminated in a large Allied army defeating Napoleon at the Battle of
Leipzig in October 1813, but
his tactical victory at the minor Battle of Hanau allowed retreat onto French soil.
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The Allies
then invaded France and captured Paris in the spring of 1814, forcing
Napoleon to abdicate in April.
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He was exiled to the
island of Elba off the coast of Tuscany, and the Bourbon dynasty was restored to power.
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Napoleon escaped
from Elba in February 1815 and took control of France once again.
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The Allies responded
by forming a Seventh Coalition which defeated him at the Battle of Waterloo in June.
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The British exiled
him to the remote island of Saint Helena in
the South Atlantic, where he died six years later at the age of 51.
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Napoleon's influence
on the modern world brought liberal reforms to the numerous territories that he
conquered and controlled, such as the Low Countries, Switzerland, and large parts of modern Italy and Germany.
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He implemented
fundamental liberal policies in France and throughout Western Europe.
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His Napoleonic Code has influenced the legal systems of more than 70
nations around the world.
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British
historian Andrew Roberts states: "The ideas that underpin our modern
world—meritocracy, equality before the law, property rights, religious
toleration, modern secular education, sound finances, and so on—were
championed, consolidated, codified and geographically extended by Napoleon. To
them he added a rational and efficient local administration, an end to rural
banditry, the encouragement of science and the arts, the abolition of feudalism
and the greatest codification of laws since the fall of the Roman Empire".
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