Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) was a French general during the Revolution, then proclaimed himself First Consul from 1800 to 1804, before becoming Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1815, under the name of Napoleon Ier . Having become very popular after his campaigns in Italy and Egypt, he put an end to the Revolution with the coup d'etat of 18 Brumaire. The emperor endeavors to reorganize the administration of France, restores finances, develops public education and promulgates the Civil Code . At the same time, he devoted most of his time to war:chaining numerous military victories, he reigned over continental Europe for a time. After the failure of the Russian campaign, he had to abdicate for the first time in 1814 and then in 1815 after the defeat at Waterloo . Exiled to Saint Helena, a small island off the coast of Africa, he died there in 1821.
Napoleon Bonaparte:from studious student to general
Napoleone di Buonaparte, son of Carlo Maria Buonaparte, lawyer at the Superior Council of Corsica and Maria Letizia Ramolino, was born in Ajaccio in 1769. This island was ceded to France by Genoa a year before his birth. Bonaparte arrives in France at the age of 9 thanks to the help of a friend of the family:Count Marbeuf, governor of Corsica. Five years left at Brienne Military Academy . Unloved by his comrades in the aristocratic elite because of his origins and his Genoese accent, little Napoleon Bonaparte devoted most of his free time to writing, reading (tragedies by Corneille and Racine, works of law and military history) and gardening.
He explains his situation in a letter of April 1781 addressed to his father, asking him to withdraw him from school or to grant him an allowance:“ My father, if you or my protectors do not give me the means to support myself more honourably, call me back to you, I am tired of flaunting poverty and seeing the smiles of insolent scholars, who do not 'have only their fortune above me .
He successfully passed examinations in October 1784 and was admitted at the age of 15 to the Military School of Paris where he chooses the artillery as a military branch. He is very interested in History and Mathematics, subjects in which he excels. He graduated in one year instead of two and was appointed second lieutenant of the general artillery. During the French Revolution he joined the Jacobins and it was in 1793 after having distinguished himself in the recovery of Toulon against the British that he was promoted Brigadier General. The fall of Robespierre in 1794 could have put an end to his career. He made a short stay in prison, but the Directory quickly found an interest in using the brilliant soldier.
At the age of 25, Bonaparte married Joséphine de Beauharnais March 9, 1796, less than 48 hours before leaving for the Italian campaign. He met Joséphine in 1795 at a society salon. According to a letter he wrote in December 1795 to his future companion, we understand that he was already very much in love “I wake up full of you. Your portrait and the memory of yesterday's intoxicating evening have given my senses no rest. Sweet and incomparable Josephine, what strange effect do you have on my heart? ". Nevertheless, this one, six years his senior, does not share the same passion, will be unfaithful and above all cold according to her husband:“You yourself! Wow how could you write that letter! That she's cold .
The Italian campaign against Piedmont and Austria was a victory that resulted in the Treaty of Campo Fornio in 1797 . His tactic of attacking two enemy forces, one after the other, proved successful. Lover of art and culture, he will send Italian works to France. After his victory at the Battle of the Pyramids, General Bonaparte brought back from the Egyptian campaign (1798-1799), the famous Rosetta Stone which was deciphered by Jean-François Champollion, a French Egyptologist, in 1822.
From Napoleon Bonaparte to Napoleon I
The parliamentary coup of 18 brumaire (November 9-10, 1799) organized against the Directory by Sieyès and supported by Bonaparte, gives birth to the Consulate. The latter is led by Bonaparte, Sieyès and Ducos. On December 13, a new constitution was put in place and stipulated that Bonaparte dominated the executive and left little room for maneuver to the two chambers. Three years later, he was appointed consul for life by obtaining 3,500,000 votes against 8,400. On March 25 of the same year, he achieved diplomatic success by concluding the Peace of Amiens with the United Kingdom, which put an end to to the second coalition against France.
May 18, 1804, the Empire was proclaimed and Napoleon Bonaparte gets crowned Emperor by Pope Pius VII at Notre Dame de Paris, December 2, 1804. The famous painting representing this scene, entitled "the coronation" was painted by Jacques Louis David and can currently be seen in the Louvres museum. In 1805, the French Emperor Napoleon also found himself at the head of the Kingdom of Italy, since he was crowned king in Milan May 26. As he prepares to invade England, the French fleet is sent to Trafalgar by Admiral Nelson. This stinging setback will make impossible any possibility of landing, which Napoleon will compensate with the continental blockade, which will aim to stifle the economy of perfidious Albion.
He later distinguished himself in a battle ending a third war against the coalition. This is Napoleon Bonaparte's most famous victory:the battleof Austerlitz December 2, 1805. The latter, which will confirm his talents as a military strategist, is also nicknamed the Battle of the Three Emperors:between Napoleon, the Tsar and the Emperor of Austria. The French are outnumbered but by provoking the enemy offensive and hiding part of his troops, Napoleon emerges victorious.
Napoleon I's reforms and the role of the family
Napoleon Bonaparte is the author of several reforms. As First Consul, he centralized the administration and placed prefects at the head of each department. In 1800, he created the Bank of France, the legion of honor two years later and the franc germinal in 1803 which will keep its value until 1814. He writes the civil code in 1804 which simplifies the application of the laws because the latter were different according to the French regions.
This civil code, completed in four years, consists of 36 laws and 2,281 articles. He abolishes the feudal order, advocates individual freedom and the secularization of society. This code also governs the relationship between spouses and children by placing the wife under the authority of the husband:“Art.213:the husband owes protection to his wife, the wife owes obedience to her husband ". Subsequently, Napoleon founded in 1808 the Imperial University controlling the education given in faculties and high schools and created the same year the baccalaureate.
Struggling Europe is a family affair . In 1810, the Empire consisted of 130 departments and a Kingdom of Italy, i.e. a total territory of 2.1 million km
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, shared between Napoleon and his siblings. On the side of the brothers, Joseph becomes King of Naples then King of Spain, Lucien ambassador in Spain, Louis former aide-de-camp obtains the Kingdom of Holland and Jérôme that of Westphalia. As for the sisters, Elisa is Duchess of Tuscany, Pauline Princess of Italy and Caroline Queen of Naples.
In particular, he maintains a regular correspondence with his brother Joseph to communicate his orders to him. Evidenced by the extract from the letter of September 6, 1807 :“To Joseph Napoleon, King of Naples. My Brother, I receive your letter of August 23. I do not believe that M. Nardon can fulfill the functions of prefect of police in Naples, because for this post a man would be needed who had worked for several months in the prefecture; that the profession of prefect of police can only be learned by practicing [...]”.
Desiring to found a family in his turn and above all to have a legitimate successor, Napoleon I st decides to divorce Josephine on December 15, 1809 because of her infertility. Two days later, he wrote her a letter and expressed his unchanged feelings to her:"You cannot question my constant and tender friendship, and you would not know very well all the feelings that I have for you, if you supposed that I can be happy if you are not happy, and happy if you do not calm down. Farewell, my friend; sleep well; think i want it ". He married on April 2, 1810, the daughter of Emperor Francis II of Austria:Marie-Louise . She gave birth on March 20, 1811 to Napoleon François Joseph Charles Bonaparte known as Aiglon and titledKing of Rome.
Towards the end of the Emperor's reign
Over the span of five years, Napoleon's reign evolved from peak to fall. The campaigns are very heavy in human losses and the victories of yesteryear are no more. In 1810,Russia decides to reverse the alliances and sides with Austria. In December, Tsar Alexander I taxes French imports and opens its ports to English ships.
In the summer of 1812, Napoleon decided to attack Russia, taking with him more than 600,000 men:the result of a coalition of twenty nations . When he arrived in Moscow in September he did not encounter an army to fight and found himself confronted with the arson of the city ordered by the governor of Moscow and later with the Russian winter. Only a few thousand men will manage to leave the territory.
In February 1813, Napoleon Bonaparte faced a new coalition attack. Despite the victories at Lutzen, Bautzen and Wurschen, the final Battle of Leipzig from October 16 to 19, 1813 is a defeat. The Emperor withdrew to Fontainebleau at the very moment when the Senate and the Legislative Body voted for his forfeiture. He was forced into exile on the island of Elba where he became sovereign. He reconstituted a government and a court although the population consisted of only 13,000 peasants, whereas in France the Bourbons were restored for the first time with Louis XVIII .
In February 1815, he embarked for France, it was the beginning of the hundred days . He arrived on March 1, 1815 at Golf Juan, marched on Paris to the cheers of the peasants and accompanied by the troops who joined him. He moved to the capital on March 20 and prepared to fight once again the coalition (British, German and Dutch) which ended in defeat at Waterloo June 18, 1815.
The exile and death of Napoleon
This defeat pushes him to abdicate and surrender to the English hoping to find exile in England. Considered a prisoner, he was eventually exiled to the island of Sainte-Hélène where it will be guarded by 2000 soldiers and two warships. On this austere island in the South Atlantic, the outlaw had to suffer, in addition to a detestable climate, the low and useless vexations of the English governor, Hudson Lowe.
In his residence in Longwood, surrounded by a last square of faithful (Bertrand, Gourgaud, Montholon and Las Cases), Napoleon lived the last years of his life in an existence of loneliness and extreme moral deprivation. On May 5, 1821, the Emperor died on this same island at the age of 51 from an affection of the hepato-gastric sphere.
What assessment for the Napoleonic epic?
Institutions and economy
Napoleon set in stone certain principles of the bourgeois revolution of 1789:equality, promotion by merit, property, the concept of the nation-state. Similarly, he consecrated the legal nature of the institutions and perpetuated the legislation which still exists today:Council of State, Senate, Civil Code... But in practice, Napoleon's France was organized around a highly centralized and authoritarian executive .
The newspapers are suppressed, there is no more freedom of expression and the theoretical checks and balances do not play their role. Having become Emperor, he hastens to restore a noble aristocracy, transforms the sister republics into kingdoms on which he places the not always very inspired members of his family, imposes a new absolute and hereditary power. We are very far from the revolutionary ideal. Alongside Napoleon, Louis XVIII, with his constitutional charter, is a republican.
On an economic level , Napoleon can be credited with having accompanied the formation of industrial capitalism by adopting legislation favorable to free enterprise and finance, with having encouraged private initiative and industrial innovation, with having created a powerful administration composed of competent executives, and to have proceeded, to counterbalance the effects of the continental blockade, to the opening of the European market with great bayonet thrusts.
But after the fall of the emperor, France was a country ruined in 1815 . The cost of wars has been exorbitant, public finances are on their knees, the debt colossal. After Napoleon's defeat, France must also pay the allies a staggering war indemnity and maintain an army of occupation. The country is sinking into a serious economic crisis, it will take twenty years to recover.
Diplomatic weakening and territorial losses
On the territorial level , Napoleon Bonaparte made France smaller in 1815 than he found it in 1799 when he took power. Between 1814 and 1815, France lost Savoy, Belgium and the left bank of the Rhine, conquests of the Revolution. The famous left bank of the Rhine. However questionable this pseudo "natural border" described by Danton may be, its loss in 1814 opened up a boulevard in the north of the country which the Germanic neighbor would take three times in 1870, 1914 and 1940, with the consequences that the we know.
To these continental losses due to the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte are added the colonial losses :the immense but sparsely populated Louisiana in North America, sold in 1803 to the United States by Napoleon Bonaparte to finance his wars, many sugar-producing Caribbean islands as well as the Seychelles.
Already greatly reduced by the disastrous Treaty of Paris in 1763, France's first colonial empire disappeared in favor of England. The latter can say thank you to the Emperor. At the end of its showdown with Napoleon, the "perfidious Albion" definitively establishes its domination over the seas and world trade, becomes the only colonial power, and takes France's place as the first European power.
On the international level , the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte marginalized French diplomacy. The return from the island of Elba and the episode of the hundred days only aggravate the already very fragile French position. Represented at the Congress of Vienna by the skilful and very opportunistic Talleyrand, the restored Bourbon monarchy barely manages to limit the consequences of the defeat.
While the European monarchies planned to carve up France to annihilate its revolutionary and annexationist tendencies, the final act of the congress does not provide for sanctions against France, but the belt of a myriad of buffer states. Surrounded by the "holy alliance", France must be discreet to make people forget the previous tumult. It will take a lot of time and patience to regain its place, and it will never again be able to act alone in the European concert.
An exorbitant human cost
Finally, it's hard not to talk about the human cost of Napoleon's mad escapade. According to the sources, the balance of these fifteen years would be about 1 million deaths in France, 3 million for the whole of Europe. If these figures are very controversial, we are nevertheless in the order of magnitude of the losses of 14-18. The Russian campaign alone claimed more casualties than any battle of World War II. For some countries like Spain, it is a real bloodletting left by the passage of the Napoleonic armies.
For France, which has experienced a simultaneous decline in mortality since the end of the 18th century and the beginning of self-control of births, the consequences on demography will however be less than those of the First World War. It was only from the middle of the 19th century that France began a demographic decline compared to other European countries. Be that as it may, it is a notable fraction of the active male population that disappears during the Napoleonic wars and will be lacking in the country.
1815. It is an occupied and weakened France, financially ruined and with reduced borders that Napoleon Bonaparte leaves behind. A highly contrasting assessment that the post-revolutionary gains will find it difficult to hide. But Napoleon and the literature of the 19th century knew how to magnify this adventure into a national legend so well that France, which would "often be bored after him", would become intoxicated with nostalgia for this glorious and romantic epic...
The legend and posterity of Napoleon Bonaparte
The legend of Napoleon Bonaparte was created and maintained by the person concerned during his lifetime thanks to propaganda. He wove his popularity around his military victories with the help of the press and art. In particular, he created newspapers:Le Courrier de l’armee d’Italie and France View of the Army of Italy . We can read on the last "Bonaparte flies like lightning and strikes like lightning . He invented the war press releases and through the Bulletin de la grande Armée , minimizes casualties and exaggerates his victories. In 1810, there were only four official journals left. In addition to the press, there are also works and paintings that develop and maintain the myth.
In 1823, the work written by Las Cases was published under the dictation of Napoleon, entitled “Le Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène” , evoking the past glory of France. It has been reissued 8 times in twenty years. The Emperor comes back to life through numerous writings:memorials, testimonies of former grognards, works of writers and poets:Balzac, Musset or even philosophers like Hegel. More than 300,000 books will be written about him.
The body of the Emperor currently rests at Les Invalides, near the Army Museum in the Church of the Dome . As a reminder, it was in 1840 that Louis Philippe, King of the French, decided to transfer the body, brought back by sea aboard the ship “La Belle Poule”. National funerals celebrate the return of the Emperor transferred to the invalids December 15 of the same year. The Tomb will be realized later by the architect Visconti. The body of Napoleon I is laid in the church April 2, 1861 . It also contains the graves of two of his brothers:Jérôme and Joseph and his son. The bronze door located in front of the stairs leading to the tomb contains the following inscription, Napoleon's wish:"I wish that my ashes rest on the banks of the Seine, in the midst of these French people whom I loved it so much .
Theinheritance of Napoleon Bonaparte manifests itself both on the legal, architectural and ideological levels. The civil code has been maintained in many countries. Many institutions have been preserved:Court of Accounts, prefectures, Court of Cassation, Council of State, Legion of Honor... It is to Napoleon that we owe the foundation of several buildings and infrastructures; the Paris Stock Exchange, the Obelisk brought back from Egypt and located on Place de la Concorde or even several bridges in Paris. Many tourist sites celebrate and present the life of the Emperor.
The city of Ajaccio is full of museums and statues bearing his likeness. The birthplace is the subject of visits allowing to see the room where Napoleon was born. His great battles are presented through paintings, films but also reconstructions in the Museum. You can watch a reconstruction of the Battle of Austerlitz, through an on-screen explanation of the different strategies in place, at the Army Museum located at Les Invalides. The establishment also includes personal memories of the Emperor (bicorn, sword...) as well as portraits.
Bibliography
- Bonaparte, by André Castelot. Perrin Biographies, 2019.
- Napoleon, biography of Thierry Lentz. Perrin, 2015.
- Tulard Jean, Napoleon or the myth of the savior, Fayard, Paris, 1987
- Teyssier Arnaud, The First Empire:1804-1815, Pygmalion, 2000