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WAR AND PEACE
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) began as an insignificant soldier from the occupied colony of Corsica, rose to become emperor of the French, drove military techniques into the modern age and continued many of the changes of the Revolution.
He was educated, thanks to a scholarship from King Louis XVI, at Brienne and the École Militaire, in Paris. He graduated in 1785, aged 16, to join the artillery as a second lieutenant. He was from the start aware of the importance of projecting the right image, and the power of propaganda. He read and wrote a huge amount.
As a byproduct of military victory, he sent millions of francs worth of booty back to France from his conquests. In 1799 he seized power and established a new regime called the Consulate. He was made first consul, and with the consent of the electorate the constitution was revised in 1802 to make Bonaparte consul for life and in 1804 to create him emperor.
He settled revolutionary scores with the Pope with the Concordat of 1801, restructured the French state, introduced a simplified court system and centralised state schools. Most famously he established the Civil Code, which later came to be called the Code Napoléon. Rights and liberties won in the Revolution, including equality before the law and freedom of religion, were guaranteed. Jews were released from ghettos. He inspired Beethoven to dedicate his Eroica symphony of 1804 to him until he became Emperor.
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His diminutive stature (5ft 2in tall), stiff pose, arm in his shirt and trademark hat have all become iconic. The changes he introduced still live on today, in the shape of Europe, in the rights and liberties inspired by the Enlightenment, in the law of the Continent, in the current debate about the rights and wrongs of European Union, close to one of Napoleon’s dreams. He wanted a European state – a 'federation of free peoples'.
The mutual antagonism of the French and British reached new heights under his leadership, when he notoriously described his adversaries across the Channel as a 'nation of shopkeepers', while establishing a blockade of Europe against British goods. Again this distrust lives on.
In the end the adventurousness and ambition that had led this one man from a humble backwater to a height of power not known in Europe since Caesar, was his downfall. He ended up believing his own propaganda, that he really was invincible. In his tragic battle with the elements in Russia in 1812, came the beginning of the end of his rule. It was a moment famously celebrated in Tchaikovsky's 1812 overture. Bonaparte died defeated and imprisoned on St Helena island.
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