13.1: The Rise of Napoleon's Empire

Napoleon Bonaparte was born on the island of Corsica in the Mediterranean. Since Corsica had been won by France as a prize in one of its many wars, Napoleon was a French citizen. Although his family was not rich, they did have a legitimate noble title, which made Napoleon eligible to join the officer corps of the French army. Thus, as a young man, his parents sent him to France to train as an artillery officer. There, he endured harassment and hazing from the sons of "real" French nobles, who belittled his Corsican accent and treated him as a foreign interloper. Already pugnacious and incredibly stubborn, he became determined to someday arrive at a position of unchallenged authority.

As of 1795, a five-man committee called the Directorate held power in revolutionary France. The war against the foreign coalition, which had grown to include Russia and the Ottoman Empire, ground on endlessly even as the economic situation in France kept getting worse. Into this picture arrived Napoleon, who put down a royalist insurrection in Paris. In 1796 and 1797, he led French armies to major victories in Northern Italy against the Austrians. He also led an attack on Ottoman Turkish forces in Egypt. While initially victorious, the French fleet was sunk by the British. This event led to his recall to France, which required leaving behind most of his army. Even in defeat, Napoleon proved brilliant at crafting a legend of his exploits through a large propaganda campaign.

In 1799, Napoleon was hand-picked to join a new three-man conspiracy that succeeded in seizing power in a coup d’etat. The new government was called the Consulate, and its members "consuls". Soon, Napoleon dominated the other two members completely. In 1802, he was declared Consul for Life, assuming total power. In 1804, as his forces pushed well beyond the French borders, he crowned himself (the first ever) emperor of France. In his mind, he was the spiritual heir to Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, declaring that, as a member of the “best race of the Caesars,” he was a founder of empires.

While cementing his hold on political power, Napoleon was leading the French armies to victory against the foreign coalition, paying for the wars and new troops with loot from his successful conquests. By 1812, he had control of a million soldiers, the largest armed force ever seen. From 1799 to 1802, he defeated Austrian and British forces and secured a peace treaty from both powers. This action provided time to organize a new grand strategy to conquer all of continental Europe and Britain. In 1805, the treaty fell apart, and a new coalition of Britain, Austria, and Russia formed.

In October 1805, at the Battle of Trafalgar, a British fleet destroyed a larger French and allied Spanish fleet. The British victory was so decisive that Napoleon was forced to abandon his hope of invading Britain and had to try to indirectly weaken it instead. Even the failed plan of invasion did not slow his momentum.

Despite the setback at Trafalgar, 1805 and 1806 saw stunning victories for Napoleon. In a series of major battles in 1805, Napoleon defeated first Austria and then Russia. The Austrians were forced to sign a treaty and Vienna was occupied by French forces for a short while, while the Russian Tsar Alexander I worked on raising a new army. In 1806, the last major continental power, Prussia, went to war. Its army was no match for Napoleon, who defeated the Prussians at the Battle of Jena and then occupied Berlin. An estimated 96% of the over 170,000 soldiers in the Prussian army were lost, the vast majority (about 140,000) taken prisoner by the French. In 1806, following his victories over the Austrians and Prussians, Napoleon formally dissolved the 1,000-year-old Holy Roman Empire, replacing it with a newly-invented puppet state he called the Confederation of the Rhine.

After another less successful battle with the Russians, Napoleon negotiated an alliance with Tsar Alexander in 1807. Although he controlled much of Europe, the powerful British navy continued to dominate the seas. His empire stretched from Belgium and Holland in the north to Rome in the south, covering nearly half a million square miles and boasting a population of 44 million. In some places, Napoleon simply expanded French borders and ruled directly. In other regions, he set up puppet states that ultimately answered to him or were ruled by an appointed family member. Despite some setbacks, Napoleon’s forces continued to dominate continental Europe through 1813.

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