He consolidated the administrative system based on departments and prefects. He initiated the Council of State, which still vets the laws of France, and the Court of Audit, which oversees its public accounts. Not least, Napoleon negotiated the sale to the nascent United States of the vast territory called the Louisiana Purchase.
But the French averted war with the United States over its inevitable expansion westward, and the 80 million francs they received allowed Napoleon to rebuild France, especially its army. Napoleon crowned himself emperor on December 2, , turning the French Republic into the French Empire, with a Bonaparte line of succession. He felt that this provision for continuity was prudent, given that the Bourbons launched a series of assassination attempts on him—30 in all.
Napoleon swiftly won the ensuing War of the Third Coalition with his finest victory, at Austerlitz in The Austrians declared war on France once more in , but were dispatched at the Battle of Wagram and signed yet another peace treaty.
Napoleon started none of those wars, but he won all of them. Shortly before their marriage, in March , he was appointed commander in chief of the Army of Italy, where he won an astonishing series of more than a dozen victories against Austria, the papacy and local states, all the while writing her scores of erotic, emotionally needy love letters, even while under enemy fire.
But within weeks his bride took a lover in Paris—the dandyish cavalry officer Lt. She quickly bore a son, the king of Rome.
Napoleon later said he greatly regretted not marrying instead the sister of Czar Alexander I of Russia, believing—probably wrongly—that he would not have had to invade Russia in In any event, after he retreated from Moscow, the Continental powers and the British pursued his army into France.
Napoleon abdicated rather than plunge France into a civil war. He was exiled to the tiny Mediterranean island of Elba in May.
As Napoleon adjusted to life ruling a much-reduced domain, he kept a close eye on what was happening in France. They had not learned from the French Revolution and Napoleonic Empire that the French people had changed profoundly and now took for granted meritocracy, low direct taxation, secular education and a certain degree of military glory. Nor had the Bourbons forgotten the expropriations and executions suffered by the royal family, the aristocracy and the Catholic Church during the Reign of Terror in the s.
As a result, they returned to France ill-prepared to effect a grand settlement that could reconcile the contesting demands of the army, clergy, aristocracy, peasantry, merchants, Bonapartists, liberals, ex-revolutionaries and conservatives.
Napoleon was emboldened to take the last and greatest gamble of his life. On February 26, , he secretly boarded the largest ship in his tiny fleet and sailed to Golfe-Juan, on the south coast of France. Landing on March 1, Napoleon struck north with the Imperial Guardsmen he had brought with him, over mountain passes and through tiny villages, sometimes on foot when the paths were too steep and narrow to ride down.
The route he took from Cannes to Grenoble—today mapped out as the Route Napoleon for tourists, hikers and cyclists—is one of the loveliest if more vertiginous trails in the country. But the commanders, Marshals Nicolas Soult and Michel Ney, and their men switched sides the moment they came into contact with the charisma of their former sovereign.
On March 20, Napoleon reached the Tuileries Palace in Paris—on the site of the Louvre today—and was acclaimed by the populace.
The carriages enter, we all rush around them and we see Napoleon get out. The Allies reacted with shocked disbelief. They were gathered at a congress in Vienna when news of his escape reached them on March 7, but initially the representatives of Austria, Russia, Britain and Prussia had no idea where he had gone.
The Powers consequently declare that Napoleon Bonaparte has placed himself beyond the pale of civil and social relations, and that as an enemy and disturber of the tranquility of the world, he has delivered himself up to public vengeance. Kraehe later put it. The Austrian chancellor, Prince Klemens von Metternich, softened the wording because Napoleon was still the son-in-law of the emperor of Austria, and the Duke of Wellington denounced the language as encouraging the assassination of monarchs.
Nonetheless, the declaration clearly foreclosed any negotiation. Thus they made the Waterloo campaign as inevitable as it was ultimately unnecessary. Napoleon well knew that after 23 years of almost constant war, the French people wanted no more of it.
And so he resumed building various public works in Paris, including the elephant fountain at the Bastille, a new marketplace at St. At a concert at the Tuileries he kindled a romance with the celebrated year-old actress and beauty Anne Hippolyte Boutet Salvetat whose stage name was Mademoiselle Mars. All that Napoleon achieved in just 12 weeks after he returned to Paris—even as he prepared for the war the Allies had declared on him. Like the Bourbons, they were in no mood to forgive or forget.
In addition to their declared distrust, they had less-public motives for moving against him. The autocratic rulers of Russia, Prussia and Austria wanted to crush the revolutionary ideas for which Napoleon stood, including meritocracy, equality before the law, anti-feudalism and religious toleration. Essentially, they wanted to turn the clock back to a time when Europe was safe for aristocracy. At this they succeeded—until the outbreak of the Great War a century later. The British had long enjoyed most of the key Enlightenment values, having beheaded King Charles I years before the French guillotined Louis XVI, but they had other reasons for wanting to destroy Napoleon.
More gravely, Britain and France had fought each other for no fewer than 56 years in the preceding , and Napoleon himself had posed a threat of invasion before Lord Nelson destroyed the French and Spanish fleets at Trafalgar in They were a homogeneous national force, and their morale was high, since they believed their commander was the greatest soldier since Julius Caesar. The first stages of the Waterloo campaign also saw Napoleon returning to the best of his strategic abilities.
A promising political career that could have led all the way to him being prime minister would suffer without the upsurge of patriotic enthusiasm that followed a victory at Waterloo.
The prestige of Britain rested on the outcome of that battle, too. Defeat may have meant Britain was not taken as seriously as a military power on land in Europe — although, it would have remained the supreme naval power — and may have reduced its influence at future talks. Napoleon would have faced battle after battle, with the other powers of the Seventh Coalition keeping on coming and closing in until he eventually lost.
The peace may have taken a different form if Waterloo had gone differently, but Napoleon was always going to be on the losing side. He would have had no reason to think that Prussia, Russia or Austria — where his wife and son were living at the imperial court — would treat him benignly. The worst outcome, however, would have been to surrender to the French themselves. He was a usurper, a traitor to his king — many called for the death penalty.
Instead of seeing out his days in exile on a remote island , Napoleon could have faced a firing squad. In , he declared himself emperor. A military mastermind, Napoleon seemed close to invincible on the battlefield until his disastrous Russian campaign in , from which he never recovered.
Forced to abdicate in , Napoleon was exiled to the Mediterranean island of Elba. In , he staged a remarkable comeback, returning to France and taking power once more. A coalition of European powers — led by Austria, Prussia, Russia and Britain — formed against him as he prepared to go on campaign. Napoleon was forced into exile again , this time on the remote Atlantic island of St Helena. He was speaking to freelance writer Jonny Wilkes.
This article was first published in the September edition of History Revealed. Sign in. Back to Main menu Virtual events Masterclasses. What if… Boudica had defeated the Romans? What if… the Spanish Armada had landed in England?
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