In this grippingly Gallic instalment of ‘Engineering an Empire’, we return to nineteenth century Europe in order to inspect the towering technological legacy of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Napoleon, who was the French Emperor between 1804 and 1815, began his career as an artillery officer in the French Army. During the Revolutionary Wars, which raged at the turn of the century between France, and the combined armies of England, Austria and Prussia, he established his reputation as the first great General of the Republican Armies; Napoleon himself dictated peace terms to the Austrians at Campo-Formo.

During France’s revolutionary summer of 1798-1799, Napoleon returned from an abortive campaign in Egypt to overthrow the ruling directory. In the bloody and confused ‘Reign of Terror’ which followed the French Revolution, he became First Consul. Bonaparte was declared Consul for life in 1802; a plebiscite in 1804 made him Emperor. He would be the autocrat of France until 1814.

Napoleon retained and extended the legal and educational reforms of the Jacobins, but replaced the democratic constitution established by the Revolution with his own brand of centralised despotism. His period in power was marked by a series of wars against an alliance of Britain, the German states, Spain, Portugal and Russia. Bonaparte brought almost all of Europe under his domination, but would be finally and decisively defeated at the 1815 Battle of Waterloo.

We outline the myriad majestic monuments which were constructed during the Napoleonic era. The erection of the Arc de Triomphe, which began in 1806 following Napoleon’s victory at Austerlirz, was a monumental project; the foundations alone took two years to lay. We also examine the Emperor’s profound influence upon the nature of modern warfare, and his alleged invention of the mathematical ‘Napoleon’s Theorem’.