Napoleon I (1769–1821)

Emperor of the French 1804–14 and 1814–15. A general from 1795 in the Revolutionary Wars, in 1799 he overthrew the ruling Directory (see French Revolution) and made himself dictator. From 1803 he conquered most of Europe (the Napoleonic Wars) and installed his brothers as puppet kings (see Bonaparte). After the Peninsular War and retreat from Moscow in 1812, he was forced to abdicate in 1814 and was banished to the island of Elba. In March 1815 he reassumed power but was defeated by British and Prussian forces at the Battle of Waterloo and exiled to the island of St Helena. His internal administrative reforms and laws are still evident in France.

Napoleon, born in Ajaccio, Corsica, received a commission in the artillery in 1785 and first distinguished himself at the siege of Toulon in 1793. Having suppressed a royalist uprising in Paris in 1795, he was given command against the Austrians in Italy and defeated them at Lodi, Arcola, and Rivoli 1796–97. Egypt, seen as a halfway house to India, was overrun and Syria invaded, but his fleet was destroyed by the British admiral Horatio Nelson at the Battle of the Nile. Napoleon returned to France and carried out a coup against the government of the Directory to establish his own dictatorship, nominally as First Consul. The Austrians were again defeated at Marengo in 1800 and the coalition against France shattered, a truce being declared in 1802. A plebiscite the same year made him consul for life. In 1804 a plebiscite made him emperor.

While retaining and extending the legal and educational reforms of the Jacobins, Napoleon replaced the democratic constitution established by the Revolution with a centralized despotism, and by his concordat with Pius VII conciliated the Catholic Church. The Code Napoléon remains the basis of French law.

War was renewed by Britain in 1803, aided by Austria and Russia from 1805 and Prussia from 1806. Prevented by the British navy from invading Britain, Napoleon drove Austria out of the war by victories at Ulm and Austerlitz in 1805, and Prussia by the victory at Jena in 1806. Then, after the battles of Eylau and Friedland, he formed an alliance with Russia at Tilsit in 1807. Napoleon now forbade entry of British goods to Europe, attempting an economic blockade known as the Continental System, occupied Portugal, and in 1808 placed his brother Joseph on the Spanish throne. Both countries revolted, with British aid, and Austria attempted to re‐enter the war but was defeated at Wagram. In 1796 Napoleon had married Josephine de Beauharnais, but in 1809, to assert his equality with the Habsburgs, he divorced her to marry the Austrian emperor's daughter, Marie Louise.

When Russia failed to enforce the Continental System, Napoleon marched on and occupied Moscow, but his army's retreat in the bitter winter of 1812 encouraged Prussia and Austria to declare war again in 1813. He was defeated at Leipzig and driven from Germany. Despite his brilliant campaign on French soil, the Allies invaded Paris and compelled him to abdicate in April 1814; he was banished to the island of Elba, off the west coast of Italy. In March 1815 he escaped and took power for a hundred days, with the aid of Marshal Ney, but Britain and Prussia led an alliance against him at Waterloo, Belgium, in June. Surrendering to the British, he again abdicated, and was exiled to the island of St Helena in the south Atlantic, where he died in 1821. His body was brought back in 1840 to be interred in the Hôtel des Invalides, Paris.