Napoleon the Unlikely Emperor
Napoleon Bonaparte’s momentous life was composed of serendipity and an extraordinary degree of ambition and intelligence. By all accounts, he serves as a prime example of the Great Man Theory, an approach to history that claims it can be explained by the impact of individual leaders rather than contingencies of collective humanity. Some great men were shaped by the era they lived in, others shaped those eras themselves. Napoleon was the latter.
For example, Alexander the Great was the heir to an empire and the finest military on earth at the time. While undoubtedly a ‘great man,’ he was not by any means self-made. Napoleon was not born a noble nor French, yet he rose to the top of the Republic and crowned himself emperor. Some would call him a maniacal despot, yet others credit him with spreading French Revolutionary liberal ideals across Europe. The truth lies in between.
Revolutionary France
France beheaded King Louis XVI, and in his place, chaos and degeneracy sprouted. Jacobins, a far-left revolutionary faction led by the ironically nicknamed “incorruptible” Robespierre, beheaded nearly 40,000 people from all walks of life on suspicion of “being an enemy of liberty”. There was no due process, only anarchy. The revolutionaries had found that along with their liberty came this Reign of Terror, social instability, and endless war. Eventually, the ‘incorruptible’ Robespierre was himself beheaded on the same charge.
In an attempt to quell anarchy and appease both revolutionaries and aristocrats, a council of 500 was created dubbed ‘the Directory’. In practice, it was a politically moderate oligarchy, successful militarily but politically impotent, and was battling economic disaster. Quietly, the desire for a capable and strong leader to restore political, economic, and social order grew widespread. This was the backdrop in which Napoleon came to take power and change the course of European history.
Road to Power
Born in Corsica as neither French nor an aristocrat, Napoleon had a slim to none chance of entering the upper echelon of French society, let alone becoming its overlord. The social upheaval of the French Revolution changed all of this, however. After becoming an officer in the French artillery corps, he emerged from the volatile and complicated turmoil as a successful 24-year-old Brigadier General. After his campaign in Italy, through which he solidified his brilliance in an unlikely victory, he became a household name in France.
Through these military successes, Napoleon emerged on the political scene as a competent young leader. When a Royalist faction rose in Paris against the Directory, he was trusted with putting down the coup, which he did swiftly albeit gruesomely. Now, with military prestige and a sort of credit with the Directory, Napoleon devised an invasion of Egypt to counter British influence in the East. While he was successful in nearly every battle and, for the most part, had pacified Egypt. The expedition itself, however was overall considered a failure as England remained strong. Nonetheless, when he returned to France, he received a hero’s welcome.
The Directory-administered government had grown unpopular with the French population. While ending the Reign of Terror and preventing a royalist coup, the whole of monarchist Europe was motivated to put down revolutionary France. Despite repelling these offensives, the coffers of the nation had been emptied. The economic despair that followed the wars was a central source of diminished public approval.
Napoleon saw his chance and seized it; by using his popularity and the loyalty of the French military, he overthrew the Directory at gunpoint, had it dissolved, and installed himself as First Consul of France for a decade-long term. At 30 years old, as both a foreigner and political outsider, Napoleon had become the exclusive power of a nation that was hellbent on Republicanism.
Eventually, Napoleon held a referendum to elect himself dictator for life–mirroring an inspiration of his, Julius Caesar. It passed with 99% approval; of course, opposing it would be political suicide. The former royal family devised multiple assassination attempts after he assumed power. Napoleon used this to his advantage by holding another suspicious, successful referendum to install himself as the Emperor of France. He was only 35.
Unlike other Emperors and Kings, Napoleon did not draw on the legitimacy granted by the Catholic church. He was no ordinary man before he came to power, and his unorthodox approach to life translated into his rule.
Military Impact
Napoleon’s natural talent and affinity for military science, combined with the political impact of the French Revolution in Europe, provided a state of constant war that paved his path to power. He seized each opportunity to increase his standing in French political society, and once in power, he used his talent and experience to further expand French influence. Beyond his social and political impacts, Napoleon transformed warfare itself.
Before his rise to power, military officers could purchase their positions, and in general, only the upper class could attain officership. An unqualified, inexperienced, and impotent young son of an aristocrat could be commissioned as a general in command of thousands of men. This was a remnant of the feudalistic form of warfare. Napoleon removed the class-based commissioning of officers in favor of a meritocracy. Men were enrolled in officer schools and then assigned based on aptitude, regardless of their backgrounds. In turn, an immediate increase in the competency and efficiency of the officer corps followed.
As a result of multiple wars of resentment by neighboring monarchies, Napoleon greatly increased the size of the French military. This growth necessitated organizational change to manage the larger force. Napoleon’s solution to this was implementing what is known as the ‘corps system’. Divisions–once the largest units in the army–were merged together to form corps. Artillery was integrated into its own unit, and calvary was restored as a key part of the French tactical approach.
This era of warfare, which began around the start of the 19th century and ended at the start of the First World War, was eponymously known as Napoleonic warfare. Defined by fast-moving maneuver tactics focused on indirect fire followed by focused attacks against select portions of an opponent rather than the whole force. He combined speed, protection, and firepower with great lethality and intelligence, superior to all his contemporaries.
He was, however, more than a talented organizer; he was obsessed over battlefield terrain and all the potential contingencies and outcomes. Napoleon had an extremely effective system of communications which kept him informed on the movement and size of the enemy force.
Through his successes, he controlled nearly all of continental Europe from Spain, to Oslo, to Warsaw, even reaching Moscow– something even the Nazi war machine was incapable of accomplishing. In his 20-year military career, Napoleon fought 60 battles, losing only 7. Duke Wellington, his most competent adversary and the commander who defeated him at the famous Battle of Waterloo, considered him “the greatest military commander of all time”.
Social and Political Impact
Despite becoming a monarch, he remained a revolutionary in many ways. He did not simply want to occupy the vacant Bourbon throne and restore its institutions; rather, he wanted to shape the nation of France to match his vision. To do this, he implemented the Napoleonic Code, a set of universal and accessible laws that would be universal in his Empire. Today, this seems an obvious, even boring development. However, France had never been unified under one set of laws and instead had many asymmetrical and localized legal systems. The major impacts of this code include the abolishment of feudalism, installing individual civil liberties, and the removal of Catholic influence over the state's administrational function. This post-feudalistic civil law helped to break down the division between social classes and freed serfs to live of their own volition.
Regarding education, Napoleon established four levels of public schooling, as well as the Imperial University. While this did not extend to women, elementary forms of education were virtually unprecedented at the time for females.
He spread the Revolutionary ideals throughout Europe with these reforms, namely Italy, Germany, Austria, and parts of Spain. Nations that were subject to Napoleon, and even his enemies, imitated his method of civil administration as best they could, in awe of its efficiency. Incidentally, in nations that did not appreciate being subjects to the French, local delineations in identity were broken down–especially in Germany and the Holy Roman Empire. These citizens began to identify with one another on a cultural and a macrolinguistic level rather than by arbitrary medieval borders, thus unifying these principalities and provinces into what we now know as the nations of Europe.
Conclusion
Napoleon Bonaparte is undoubtedly a historical anomaly and helped inspire the Great Men theory of historical study. A Corsican emperor of France, a revolutionary-turned-absolute monarch, was equally talented as a statesman and a tactician. The same traits which saw him rise to power facilitated his downfall. He endlessly yearned for power, renown, status, influence, and military victory. This ambition allowed him to become emperor and dominate Europe, yet it also led him to the disastrous invasion of Russia, and it antagonized a series of multinational coalitions. Overall, the wars in which he fought, half of which he instigated, killed between 3 to 6 million people. However, he also brought much of Europe out of feudalism and into the modern age endlessly.
He was sent into exile at the Mediterranean island of Elba after an Anglo-Russo alliance stormed into Paris in November of 1814. Relentless and undeterred, he escaped, reclaimed his crown, and once again waged war on his enemies. 100 days later, at Waterloo, he was defeated for the final time. Again, in exile, but this time in the more remote location of Saint Helena in the Atlantic Ocean.
Despite dying in his exile from Europe, the residue of Napoleon Bonaparte’s life never left the continent, and it never will.
Works Cited
Chavous, MAJ Jon. “Saddles and Sabers: Napoleon Bonaparte’s Contributions to Modern Warfare.” eARMOR Saddles and Sabers: Napoleon Bonaparte’s Contributions to Modern Warfare,www.moore.army.mil/armor/earmor/content/issues. Accessed 6 Feb. 2024.
Mark, Harrison W. “French Revolution.” World History Encyclopedia, https://www.worldhistory.org#organization, 13 Jan. 2023, www.worldhistory.org/French_Revolution/.
Napoleon Bonaparte | OSU EHISTORY, ehistory.osu.edu/biographies/napoleon-bonaparte. Accessed 7 Feb. 2024.
Scalise, Ronald. “Napoleonic Code (French Civil Code).” 64 Parishes, 28 June 2023, 64parishes.org/entry/napoleonic-code-adaptation.
