napoleon bonaparte biography book pdf

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History Books » Historical Figures

The best books on napoleon, recommended by andrew roberts.

Napoleon: A Life by Andrew Roberts

How did Napoleon Bonaparte, an upstart Corsican, go on to conquer half of Europe in the 16 years of his rule? Was he a military genius? And was he really that short? Historian Andrew Roberts , author of a bestselling biography of Napoleon , introduces us to the books that shaped how he sees l'Empereur —including little-known sources from those who knew Napoleon personally. Read more history book recommendations on Five Books

Interview by Charles J. Styles

The Campaigns of Napoleon by David G Chandler

Talleyrand by Duff Cooper

With Eagles to Glory: Napoleon and His German Allies in the 1809 Campaign by John H Gill

Private Memoirs Of The Court Of Napoleon by Louis François Joseph Bausset-Roquefort

With Napoleon in Russia: Memoirs of General de Caulaincourt, Duke of Vicenza by Armand de Caulaincourt

Napoleon Bonaparte

By: History.com Editors

Updated: April 24, 2023 | Original: November 9, 2009

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), also known as Napoleon I, was a French military leader and emperor who conquered much of Europe in the early 19th century. Born on the island of Corsica, Napoleon rapidly rose through the ranks of the military during the French Revolution (1789-1799). After seizing political power in France in a 1799 coup d’état, he crowned himself emperor in 1804. Shrewd, ambitious and a skilled military strategist, Napoleon successfully waged war against various coalitions of European nations and expanded his empire. However, after a disastrous French invasion of Russia in 1812, Napoleon abdicated the throne two years later and was exiled to the island of Elba. In 1815, he briefly returned to power in his Hundred Days campaign. After a crushing defeat at the Battle of Waterloo, he abdicated once again and was exiled to the remote island of Saint Helena, where he died at 51.

Napoleon’s Education and Early Military Career

Napoleon Bonaparte was born on August 15, 1769, in Ajaccio, on the Mediterranean island of Corsica. He was the second of eight surviving children born to Carlo Buonaparte (1746-1785), a lawyer, and Letizia Romalino Buonaparte (1750-1836). Although his parents were members of the minor Corsican nobility, the family was not wealthy. The year before Napoleon’s birth, France acquired Corsica from the city-state of Genoa, Italy. Napoleon later adopted a French spelling of his last name.

As a boy, Napoleon attended school in mainland France, where he learned the French language, and went on to graduate from a French military academy in 1785. He then became a second lieutenant in an artillery regiment of the French army. The French Revolution began in 1789, and within three years revolutionaries had overthrown the monarchy and proclaimed a French republic. During the early years of the revolution, Napoleon was largely on leave from the military and home in Corsica, where he became affiliated with the Jacobins, a pro-democracy political group. In 1793, following a clash with the nationalist Corsican governor, Pasquale Paoli (1725-1807), the Bonaparte family fled their native island for mainland France, where Napoleon returned to military duty.

In France, Napoleon became associated with Augustin Robespierre (1763-1794), the brother of revolutionary leader Maximilien Robespierre (1758-1794), a Jacobin who was a key force behind the Reign of Terror (1793-1794), a period of violence against enemies of the revolution. During this time, Napoleon was promoted to the rank of brigadier general in the army. However, after Robespierre fell from power and was guillotined (along with Augustin) in July 1794, Napoleon was briefly put under house arrest for his ties to the brothers.

In 1795, Napoleon helped suppress a royalist insurrection against the revolutionary government in Paris and was promoted to major general.

Did you know? In 1799, during Napoleon’s military campaign in Egypt, a French soldier named Pierre Francois Bouchard (1772-1832) discovered the Rosetta Stone. This artifact provided the key to cracking the code of Egyptian hieroglyphics, a written language that had been dead for almost 2,000 years.

Napoleon’s Rise to Power

Since 1792, France’s revolutionary government had been engaged in military conflicts with various European nations. In 1796, Napoleon commanded a French army that defeated the larger armies of Austria, one of his country’s primary rivals, in a series of battles in Italy. In 1797, France and Austria signed the Treaty of Campo Formio, resulting in territorial gains for the French.

The following year, the Directory, the five-person group that had governed France since 1795, offered to let Napoleon lead an invasion of England. Napoleon determined that France’s naval forces were not yet ready to go up against the superior British Royal Navy. Instead, he proposed an invasion of Egypt in an effort to wipe out British trade routes with India. Napoleon’s troops scored a victory against Egypt’s military rulers, the Mamluks, at the Battle of the Pyramids in July 1798; soon, however, his forces were stranded after his naval fleet was nearly decimated by the British at the Battle of the Nile in August 1798. In early 1799, Napoleon’s army launched an invasion of Ottoman Empire -ruled Syria , which ended with a failed siege of Acre, located in modern-day Israel . That summer, with the political situation in France marked by uncertainty, the ever-ambitious and cunning Napoleon opted to abandon his army in Egypt and return to France.

The Coup of 18 Brumaire

In November 1799, in an event known as the coup of 18 Brumaire, Napoleon was part of a group that successfully overthrew the French Directory.

The Directory was replaced with a three-member Consulate, and 5'7" Napoleon became first consul, making him France’s leading political figure. In June 1800, at the Battle of Marengo, Napoleon’s forces defeated one of France’s perennial enemies, the Austrians, and drove them out of Italy. The victory helped cement Napoleon’s power as first consul. Additionally, with the Treaty of Amiens in 1802, the war-weary British agreed to peace with the French (although the peace would only last for a year).

Napoleon worked to restore stability to post-revolutionary France. He centralized the government; instituted reforms in such areas as banking and education; supported science and the arts; and sought to improve relations between his regime and the pope (who represented France’s main religion, Catholicism), which had suffered during the revolution. One of his most significant accomplishments was the Napoleonic Code , which streamlined the French legal system and continues to form the foundation of French civil law to this day.

In 1802, a constitutional amendment made Napoleon first consul for life. Two years later, in 1804, he crowned himself emperor of France in a lavish ceremony at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.

Napoleon’s Marriages and Children

In 1796, Napoleon married Josephine de Beauharnais (1763-1814), a stylish widow six years his senior who had two teenage children. More than a decade later, in 1809, after Napoleon had no offspring of his own with Empress Josephine, he had their marriage annulled so he could find a new wife and produce an heir. In 1810, he wed Marie Louise (1791-1847), the daughter of the emperor of Austria. The following year, she gave birth to their son, Napoleon François Joseph Charles Bonaparte (1811-1832), who became known as Napoleon II and was given the title king of Rome. In addition to his son with Marie Louise, Napoleon had several illegitimate children.

The Reign of Napoleon I

From 1803 to 1815, France was engaged in the Napoleonic Wars, a series of major conflicts with various coalitions of European nations. In 1803, partly as a means to raise funds for future wars, Napoleon sold France’s Louisiana Territory in North America to the newly independent United States for $15 million, a transaction that later became known as the Louisiana Purchase .

In October 1805, the British wiped out Napoleon’s fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar . However, in December of that same year, Napoleon achieved what is considered to be one of his greatest victories at the Battle of Austerlitz, in which his army defeated the Austrians and Russians. The victory resulted in the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire and the creation of the Confederation of the Rhine.

Beginning in 1806, Napoleon sought to wage large-scale economic warfare against Britain with the establishment of the so-called Continental System of European port blockades against British trade. In 1807, following Napoleon’s defeat of the Russians at Friedland in Prussia, Alexander I (1777-1825) was forced to sign a peace settlement, the Treaty of Tilsit. In 1809, the French defeated the Austrians at the Battle of Wagram, resulting in further gains for Napoleon.

During these years, Napoleon reestablished a French aristocracy (eliminated in the French Revolution) and began handing out titles of nobility to his loyal friends and family as his empire continued to expand across much of western and central continental Europe.

Napoleon’s Downfall and First Abdication

In 1810, Russia withdrew from the Continental System. In retaliation, Napoleon led a massive army into Russia in the summer of 1812. Rather than engaging the French in a full-scale battle, the Russians adopted a strategy of retreating whenever Napoleon’s forces attempted to attack. As a result, Napoleon’s troops trekked deeper into Russia despite being ill-prepared for an extended campaign.

In September, both sides suffered heavy casualties in the indecisive Battle of Borodino. Napoleon’s forces marched on to Moscow, only to discover almost the entire population evacuated. Retreating Russians set fires across the city in an effort to deprive enemy troops of supplies. After waiting a month for a surrender that never came, Napoleon, faced with the onset of the Russian winter, was forced to order his starving, exhausted army out of Moscow. During the disastrous retreat, his army suffered continual harassment from a suddenly aggressive and merciless Russian army. Of Napoleon’s 600,000 troops who began the campaign, only an estimated 100,000 made it out of Russia.

At the same time as the catastrophic Russian invasion, French forces were engaged in the Peninsular War (1808-1814), which resulted in the Spanish and Portuguese, with assistance from the British, driving the French from the Iberian Peninsula. This loss was followed in 1813 by the Battle of Leipzig , also known as the Battle of Nations, in which Napoleon’s forces were defeated by a coalition that included Austrian, Prussian, Russian and Swedish troops. Napoleon then retreated to France, and in March 1814 coalition forces captured Paris.

On April 6, 1814, Napoleon, then in his mid-40s, was forced to abdicate the throne. With the Treaty of Fontainebleau, he was exiled to Elba, a Mediterranean island off the coast of Italy. He was given sovereignty over the small island, while his wife and son went to Austria.

HISTORY Vault: Napoleon Bonaparte: The Glory of France

Explore the extraordinary life and times of Napoleon Bonaparte, the great military genius who took France to unprecedented heights of power, and then brought it to its knees when his ego spun out of control.

Hundred Days Campaign and Battle of Waterloo

On February 26, 1815, after less than a year in exile, Napoleon escaped Elba and sailed to the French mainland with a group of more than 1,000 supporters. On March 20, he returned to Paris, where he was welcomed by cheering crowds. The new king, Louis XVIII (1755-1824), fled, and Napoleon began what came to be known as his Hundred Days campaign.

Upon Napoleon’s return to France, a coalition of allies–the Austrians, British, Prussians and Russians–who considered the French emperor an enemy began to prepare for war. Napoleon raised a new army and planned to strike preemptively, defeating the allied forces one by one before they could launch a united attack against him.

In June 1815, his forces invaded Belgium, where British and Prussian troops were stationed. On June 16, Napoleon’s troops defeated the Prussians at the Battle of Ligny. However, two days later, on June 18, at the Battle of Waterloo near Brussels, the French were crushed by the British, with assistance from the Prussians.

On June 22, 1815, Napoleon was once again forced to abdicate.

Napoleon’s Final Years

In October 1815, Napoleon was exiled to the remote, British-held island of Saint Helena, in the South Atlantic Ocean. He died there on May 5, 1821, at age 51, most likely from stomach cancer. (During his time in power, Napoleon often posed for paintings with his hand in his vest, leading to some speculation after his death that he had been plagued by stomach pain for years.) Napoleon was buried on the island despite his request to be laid to rest “on the banks of the Seine, among the French people I have loved so much.” In 1840, his remains were returned to France and entombed in a crypt at Les Invalides in Paris, where other French military leaders are interred.

Napoleon Bonaparte Quotes

• “The only way to lead people is to show them a future: a leader is a dealer in hope.”
• “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”
• “Envy is a declaration of inferiority.”
• “The reason most people fail instead of succeed is they trade what they want most for what they want at the moment.”
• “If you wish to be a success in the world, promise everything, deliver nothing.”

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Napoleon Bonaparte

Napoleon Bonaparte, also known as Napoleon I, was a French general and emperor who conquered large parts of Europe in the 19th century. 

Famed for his tactical brilliance and quick thinking in desperate situations, he went down in European history as one of the foremost military strategists of the time.

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Early Life of Napoleon Bonaparte

Napoleon Bonaparte was born in Corsica, an island located on the Mediterranean Coast, on August 15, 1768,  to Carlo Bonaparte and Letizia Romalino Bonaparte. Despite being part of the Corsican nobility, Napoleon’s family were of modest means. 

Napoleon did his schooling in mainland France, graduating from the military academy in 1785. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant of an artillery detachment in the French Army. He was on leave when the French Revolution broke out in 1789, during which he became involved with the Corsican branch  of the Jacobins , one of many pro-democratic parties in France at the time. At the time, the Bonaparte family had gotten into a dispute for their pro-democratic leanings with the monarchy supporting the governor of Corsica. The result was them fleeing Corsica for mainland France in 1793, where Napoleon returned to active military duty

Napoleon came into contact with Augustine Robespierre, the brother of the infamous Maximilien Robespierre. Maximilien Robespierre would herald the Reign of Terror, a period of anarchy marked by violence against and execution of those considered the enemies of the French revolution .

But when the Robespierre brothers fell from power and were guillotined in July 1794, Napoleon was placed under house arrest for a brief period of time due to his association with them. In 1795, he suppressed a monarchy-backed uprising against the revolutionary government, being promoted to a major general as a result.

Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte

The French government was fighting against other European monarchies since 1792. In a series of battles taking place in Italy during 1796, Napoleon led a French army to victory over the much better equipped and larger armies of Austria. The Treaty of Campo Formio signed between France and Austria led to territorial gains for France.

The Directory, a five-member group that governed France since the Reign of Terror ended in 1795, directed Napoleon to lead an invasion of Great Britain. Knowing the French Navy was inadequate to deal with the far more superior British Royal Navy, Napoleon instead proposed an expedition to Egypt, then a British Protectorate. Taking Egypt from the British would effectively cut them off from their vital trade with India, causing widespread economic hardship on the British Isle. Landing in Egypt in 1798, the French army won the Battle of the Pyramids in June of that year.

But during the Battle of the Nile in August, the French Navy was nearly wiped out following the engagement with the British Navy. Later, Napoleon would launch an invasion of Syria in 1798. Syria was then a province of the Ottoman Empire. This campaign would be a failure as well.

With the political situation in France deteriorating, Napoleon decided to return to France. He then became part of the group that overthrew the Directory in 1799.

Now a three-member group called the Consulate ruled France with Napoleon becoming first consul, a position consolidated by his victory over Austria at the Battle of Marengo in June 1800.

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Napoleon I, Emperor of France

A constitutional amendment made in 1802 made Napoleon first consul for life. In 1804, he crowned himself, emperor of France, during a lavish ceremony at the Cathedral of Notre Dame

Seeking to restore stability in post-revolutionary France, he centralized the government by introducing reforms in banking and education, supporting science and art. His most significant accomplishment was the creation of the Napoleonic Code, which transformed the French legal system and continues to be the be basis of the legal system in France and most of Western Europe to this day.

The Napoleonic Wars broke out in 1803, lasting until 1815. It was a series of conflicts between the French Empire and a coalition of European nations.

On October 1805, the French fleet was annihilated during the battle of Trafalgar, nullifying the threat of invasion of the British Isles. The Battle of Austerlitz in December of that year, however, solidified his reputation as one of the greatest generals in European History.  A combined army of Austrians and Russians was defeated by the French and the termination of the Holy  Roman Empire that resulted would be a catalyst for the unification of Germany in 1871

Seeking to defeat his British rivals through economic means, Napoleon devised the Continental System in 1806, which blockaded Europeans ports from British Trade. Subsequent victories in 1807 and 1809 against the Russians and Austrians resulted in French territorial gains in central and Eastern Europe

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Fall of Napoleon Bonaparte

The Russian withdrawal from the continental system gave Napoleon  casus belli for Napoleon to launch an invasion of Russia in the summer of 1812. It proved to be a costly mistake as the Russians switched to scorched-earth tactics to deny the French army any hope of preparing for the brutal winter that would follow. By September of that year, both sides had suffered enormous casualties.

The French Army did eventually take Moscow but all they found was an empty city, with its population having evacuated further east. Seeing little point in residing in Moscow, Napoleon retreated back towards the west under constant attack by the Russians. Only 100,000 of the original 600,000 managed to reach the safety of the empire.

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Further setbacks for Napoleon awaited him with the defeat of his armies in Spain. Napoleon’s forces were again defeated in 1813 during the Battle of Leipzig by a coalition force of Austrian, Prussian, Russian and Swedish troops. He was forced to abdicate his throne when the coalition forces captured Paris. He was exiled to the island of Elba off the coast of Italy while his wife and son were sent to Austria

On February 26, 1815, Napoleon escaped to mainland France, where he was welcomed to Paris by cheering crowds. He began a campaign to reconquer lost French possessions in Europe shortly after. 

The French Army invaded Belgium in 1815 in order to defeat a combined British and Prussian army. In the engagement that followed the Prussians were defeated at Ligny but on June 18, at the Battle of Waterloo, the  French were crushed by the British through Prussian support. The battle permanently ended Napoleon’s threat to Europe.

In June 1815, Napoleon was dethroned once again.

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Final years of Napoleon Bonaparte

In October 1815, Napoleon was exiled to Saint Helena, a remote island in the South Atlantic Ocean. He passed away while there on May 5, 1821. He was 51 at the time. The likely cause of his demise is said to be stomach cancer, although it was speculated with no sufficient evidence that he was poisoned. Although his last wish was to be buried on the banks of the Seine, he was buried on the island. In 1840 his remains were returned to France and given a state funeral. 

Frequently Asked Questions  about Napoleon Bonaparte

Why is napoleon famous, who defeated napoleon.

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