Biography of Napoleon Bonaparte

(1769/08/15 - 1821/05/05)
Napoleon I Bonaparte
Emperor of France (1804-1815)

He was born 15 August 1769 in Ajaccio (Corsica) and received the name of Napoleone.
Son of Letizia Ramolino and Carlos Bonaparte, a lawyer who fought for the independence of Corsica.
His training at Brienne and at the military school in Paris was subsidized by the King Louis XVI. He was Lieutenant in an artillery regiment and during the French Revolution was Lieutenant-Colonel of the Corsican National Guard (1791); However, when Corsica declared its independence in 1793, Bonaparte, decidedly partisan of the Republican regime, fled to France with his family.
He was named Chief of artillery of the army responsible for the recapture of Toulon, a naval base with the support of Great Britain (which along with Prussia, Austria, Netherlands and Spain, following the Declaration of French war to the latter, had formed the First coalition against France in 1793). Expelled from the port to the British ships and finally retook the position. Thanks to this action, they ascended him to the grade of brigadier general at the age of 24. In 1795, he saved the revolutionary Government restoring order after a realistic insurrection in Paris.
In 1796 he married civil marriage to Joséphine de Beauharnais, widow of an aristocrat guillotined during the revolution and mother of two children. In 1796 he was commander of the French army in Italy. He beat on four Austrian General whose troops were superior in numbers and forced Austria and its allies to sign peace. The Treaty of Campoformio stipulated that France could retain the conquered territories, in which Bonaparte, founded in 1797 the Cisalpine Republic (Venice), Italian Republic (Lombardy) and the Ligurian Republic (Genoa). In 1798 he led an expedition to Egypt, which was under Turkish rule, to cut the British route to India. His fleet was destroyed by the British Admiral Horatio Nelson and was isolated in North Africa after being defeated in the battle of the Nile. In 1799 he failed to do with the conquest of Syria, but he defeated the Turks in Abukir. Meanwhile, France was facing a new international situation: Austria, Russia, Naples and Portugal had allied with Great Britain, setting up the Second Coalition.
On his return to Paris he joined a conspiracy against the Government and along with his companions took power during the coup d ' état of 9-10 November 1799 (18-19 Brumaire according to the revolutionary calendar) and established a new regime, the Consulate. According to the Constitution of the year VIII, Napoleon, who had been appointed first consul, had almost dictatorial powers. The Constitution of the year X, he dictated in 1802, he provided life its Consulate and finally proclaimed himself Emperor in 1804. In 1800 he crossed the Alps defeating the Austrians at the battle of Marengo and signed the Concordat with the Pope Pius VII, who defused the atmosphere in the interior of the country for an end to the confrontation with the Catholic Church in 1801. Great Britain resumed the naval war with France in April 1803 and 1805, Russia and Austria joined the British in the third coalition. It was decided that all its armies were against the austro-rusas forces, who defeated at the battle of Austerlitz on 2 December 1805. He conquered the Kingdom of Naples in 1806 and appointed King to his older brother, Joseph; It was titled King of Italy (1805), broke up the old United Provinces (today the Netherlands), which in 1795 had been constituted as a Republic of Batavia, and founded the Kingdom of the Netherlands, at the head of which was his brother Luis, and established the Confederation of the Rhine which was under his protection. It was then when Prussia and Russia forged a new Alliance and attacked the Confederacy. It annihilated the Prussian army at Jena and Auerstedt (1806) and Russian in Friedland. In Tilsit (July 1807), established an agreement with Tsar Alexander I by which the territory of Prussia was greatly reduced and also new States joined the Empire: the Kingdom of Westphalia, ruled by his brother Jerome, and the Duchy of Warsaw, among others.
He imposed the Continental system in Europe, which consisted of a blockade on British goods in order to ruin the powerful trade of Great Britain. In 1807 he conquered Portugal and a year later appointed his brother José (Pepe Botella) King of Spain, after achieving the abdication of Ferdinand VII in Bayonne and invade the country, leaving Naples as a reward for his brother-in-law, Joachim Murat. The arrival in Spain of Jose Bonaparte worsened the war of Spanish independence. Napoleon spent some time in Spain and won several victories, but the fight was resumed after his departure, extending for five years the war between the French troops and the Spanish (supported by Great Britain), playing a key role the guerrillas fight.
He defeated the Austrians at Wagramin 1809, made the territories conquered in the Illyrian provinces (today part of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro) and conquered the Papal States. He remarried, in 1810 with Marie-Louise, Archduchess of Austria , and daughter of Emperor Francis I of Austria, belonging to the House of Habsburg. With this link linked his dynasty to the oldest of the Royal houses of Europe, with the hope that her son, born in 1811 and to which granted the title of King of Rome as heir to the Empire, was accepted by the reigning monarchs.
The Napoleonic code was implemented in all States created by the Emperor, feudalism and serfdom were eliminated, and established freedom of worship (except in Spain). He was awarded to each State a Constitution which granted male universal suffrage and a declaration of rights and the creation of a Parliament; was established in the administrative system and judicial French; the schools were subject to centralized management and expanded free education system. Each State had an Academy or Institute for the promotion of the arts and Sciences.
Its alliance with Tsar Alejandro I was cancelled in 1812 and undertook a campaign against Russia that ended with the tragic retreat from Moscow. After this failure, Europe joined to fight him. His marshals refused to continue fighting in April 1814. Being rejected his proposal to renounce their rights in favour of his son, had to abdicate, allowing him to retain the title of Emperor and giving the Government of the island of Elba. Maria Luisa and her son were in the custody of the father of the Emperor of Austria, Francisco I, and did not return to see them never. In 1815 he escaped from Elba, arrived in France and marched on Paris after defeating the troops sent to capture him, initiating the so-called Hundred daysperiod. The result was the campaign of Belgium, which ended with defeat at the battle of Waterloo on 18 June 1815.
He abdicated in favour of his son, Napoleón II and marched to Rochefort where capitulated to the captain of the British ship Bellerophon. An island in the South of the Atlantic Ocean was held then in Saint Helena.
Captive Englishmen and surrounded by a small group of followers, he began to suffer a pain on the right side that is identical to his father took shortly before his death, possibly because of a stomach cancer. The pain, which some experts have also pointed out that it could be caused by poisoning, was slowly consuming Bonaparte. Died May 5, 1821, at 17:49 Napoleone di Buonaparte at 51 years of age. According to people who were present at his deathbed, his last words were: "France, army, Josefina». Although he asked in his will to be buried in Paris, the British did not want to feed the myth and ordered the body not out of Santa Elena. Later, in 1840, at the request of the Government of Luis Felipe I, his remains were repatriated.