Historia Napoleona

[Yolette Langevin]

Born on the island of Corsica to a family of Italian origin, Napoleon moved to mainland France in 1779 and was commissioned as an officer in the French Army in 1785. He supported the French Revolution in 1789, and promoted its cause in Corsica. He rose rapidly in the ranks after breaking the siege of Toulon in 1793 and firing on royalist insurgents in Paris on 13 Vendmiaire in 1795. In 1796, Napoleon commanded a military campaign against the Austrians and their Italian allies in the War of the First Coalition, scoring decisive victories and becoming a national hero. He led an expedition to Egypt and Syria in 1798 which served as a springboard to political power. In November 1799, Napoleon engineered the Coup of 18 Brumaire against the Directory, and became First Consul of the Republic. He won the Battle of Marengo in 1800, which secured French victory in the War of the Second Coalition, and in 1803 sold the territory of Louisiana to the United States, which doubled the latter's area. In December 1804, Napoleon crowned himself Emperor of the French, further expanding his power.

Napoleon is considered one of the greatest military commanders in history and Napoleonic tactics are still studied at military schools worldwide. His legacy endures through the modernizing legal and administrative reforms he enacted in France and Western Europe, embodied in the Napoleonic Code. He established a system of public education,[2] abolished the vestiges of feudalism,[3] emancipated Jews and other religious minorities,[4] abolished the Spanish Inquisition,[5] enacted the principle of equality before the law for an emerging middle class,[6] and centralized state power at the expense of religious authorities.[7] His conquests acted as a catalyst for political change and the development of nation states. However, he is controversial due to his role in wars which devastated Europe, his looting of conquered territories, and his mixed record on civil rights: he abolished the free press, ended directly elected representative government, exiled and jailed critics of his regime, reinstated slavery in France's colonies except for Haiti, banned the entry of blacks and mulattos into France, reduced the civil rights of women and children in France, reintroduced a hereditary monarchy and nobility,[8][9][10] and violently repressed popular uprisings against his rule.[11]

Napoleon's family was of Italian origin. His paternal ancestors, the Buonapartes, descended from a minor Tuscan noble family who emigrated to Corsica in the 16th century and his maternal ancestors, the Ramolinos, descended from a noble family from Lombardy.[12]

Napoleon's parents, Carlo Maria Buonaparte and Maria Letizia Ramolino, lived in the Maison Bonaparte home in Ajaccio, where Napoleon was born on 15 August 1769. He had an elder brother, Joseph, and, later, six younger siblings: Lucien, Elisa, Louis, Pauline, Caroline, and Jrme.[13] Five more siblings were stillborn or did not survive infancy.[14] Napoleon was baptized as a Catholic, under the name Napoleone di Buonaparte. In his youth, his name was also spelled as Nabulione, Nabulio, Napolionne, and Napulione.[15]

Napoleon was born one year after the Republic of Genoa ceded Corsica to France.[16][c] His father fought alongside Pasquale Paoli during the Corsican war of independence against France. After the Corsican defeat at the Battle of Ponte Novu in 1769 and Paoli's exile in Britain, Carlo became friends with the French governor Charles Louis de Marbeuf, who became his patron and godfather to Napoleon.[20][21] With Mabeuf's support, Carlo was named Corsican representative to the court of Louis XVI and Napoleon obtained a royal bursary to a military academy in France.[22][23]

The dominant influence of Napoleon's childhood was his mother, whose firm discipline restrained a rambunctious child.[22] Later in life, Napoleon said, "The future destiny of the child is always the work of the mother."[24] Napoleon's noble, moderately affluent background afforded him greater opportunities to study than were available to a typical Corsican of the time.[25]

In January 1779, at age 9, Napoleon moved to the French mainland and enrolled at a religious school in Autun to improve his French (his mother tongue was the Corsican dialect of Italian).[26][27][28] Although he eventually became fluent in French, he spoke with a Corsican accent and his French spelling was poor.[29]

In May, he transferred to the military academy at Brienne-le-Chteau where he was routinely bullied by his peers for his accent, birthplace, short stature, mannerisms, and poor French.[26] He became reserved and melancholic, applying himself to reading. An examiner observed that Napoleon "has always been distinguished for his application in mathematics. He is fairly well acquainted with history and geography ... This boy would make an excellent sailor".[d][31]

One story of Napoleon at the school is that he led junior students to victory against senior students in a snowball fight, which allegedly showed his leadership abilities.[32] But the story was only told after Napoleon had become famous.[33] In his later years at Brienne, Napoleon became an outspoken Corsican nationalist and admirer of Paoli.[34]

In September 1784, Napoleon was admitted to the cole militaire in Paris where he trained to become an artillery officer. He excelled at mathematics, and read widely in geography, history and literature. However, he was poor at French and German.[35] His father's death in February 1785 cut the family income and forced him to complete the two-year course in one year. In September he was examined by the famed scientist Pierre-Simon Laplace and became the first Corsican to graduate from the cole militaire.[36][37]

Upon graduating in September 1785, Bonaparte was commissioned a second lieutenant in La Fre artillery regiment.[38] He served in Valence and Auxonne until after the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, but spent long periods of leave in Corsica which fed his Corsican nationalism.[39][40] In September 1789, he returned to Corsica and promoted the French revolutionary cause. Paoli returned to the island in July 1790, but he had no sympathy for Bonaparte, as he deemed his father a traitor for having deserted the cause of Corsican independence.[41][42]

Bonaparte plunged into a complex three-way struggle among royalists, revolutionaries, and Corsican nationalists. He became a supporter of the Jacobins and joined the pro-French Corsican Republicans who opposed Paoli's policy and his aspirations to secede.[43] He was given command over a battalion of Corsican volunteers and promoted to captain in the regular army in 1792, despite exceeding his leave of absence and a dispute between his volunteers and the French garrison in Ajaccio.[44][45]

In February 1793, Bonaparte took part in the failed French expedition to Sardinia. Following allegations that Paoli had sabotaged the expedition and that his regime was corrupt and incompetent, the French National Convention outlawed him. In early June, Bonaparte and 400 French troops failed to capture Ajaccio from Corsican volunteers and the island was now controlled by Paoli's supporters. When Bonaparte learned that the Corsican assembly had condemned him and his family, the Buonapartes fled to Toulon on the French mainland.[46][47]

Bonaparte returned to his regiment in Nice and was made captain of a coastal battery.[48] In July 1793, he published a pamphlet, Le souper de Beaucaire (Supper at Beaucaire), demonstrating his support for the National Convention which was now heavily influenced by the Jacobins.[49][50]

Toulon brought Bonaparte to the attention of powerful men including Augustin Robespierre, the younger brother of Maximilien Robespierre, a leading Jacobin. He was promoted to brigadier general and put in charge of defences on the Mediterranean coast. In February 1794, he was made artillery commander of the Army of Italy and devised plans to attack the Kingdom of Sardinia.[53][54]

The French army carried out Bonaparte's plan in the Second Battle of Saorgio in April 1794, and then advanced to seize Ormea in the mountains. From Ormea, it headed west to outflank the Austro-Sardinian positions around Saorge. After this campaign, Augustin Robespierre sent Bonaparte on a mission to the Republic of Genoa to determine the country's intentions towards France.[55][56]

After the Fall of Maximilien Robespierre in July 1794, Bonaparte's association with leading Jacobins made him politically suspect to the new regime. He was arrested on 9 August but released two weeks later.[57][58][59] He was asked to draw up plans to attack Italian positions as part of France's war with Austria and, in March 1795, he took part in an expedition to take back Corsica from the British, but the French were repulsed by the Royal Navy.[60]

In August, he obtained a position with the Bureau of Topography where he worked on military planning.[64] On 15 September, Bonaparte was removed from the list of generals in regular service for refusing to serve in the Vende campaign.[65] He sought a transfer to Constantinople to offer his services to Sultan Selim III. The request was eventually granted, but he never took up the post.[66][67]

Bonaparte's role in defeating the rebellion earned him and his family the patronage of the new government, the French Directory.[71] On 26 October, he was promoted to commander of the Army of the Interior, and in January 1796 he was appointed head of the Army of Italy.[72]

Within weeks of the Vendmiaire uprising, Bonaparte was romantically involved with Josphine de Beauharnais, the former mistress of Barras. The couple married on 9 March 1796 in a civil ceremony.[73] Bonaparte now habitually styled himself "Napoleon Bonaparte" rather than using the Italian form "Napoleone di Buonaparte."[74][75][76]

Two days after the marriage, Bonaparte left Paris to take command of the Army of Italy. He went on the offensive, hoping to defeat the Kingdom of Sardinia in Piedmont before their Austrian allies could intervene. In a series of victories during the Montenotte campaign, he knocked the Piedmontese out of the war in two weeks.[77] The French then focused on the Austrians, laying siege to Mantua. The Austrians launched offensives against the French to break the siege, but Bonaparte defeated every relief effort, winning the Battle of Castiglione, the Battle of Bassano, the Battle of Arcole, and the Battle of Rivoli. The French triumph at Rivoli in January 1797 led to the collapse of the Austrian position in Italy. At Rivoli, Austria lost 43% of its soldiers dead, wounded or taken prisoner.[78][79]

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