NAPOLEON I, Emperor of the French. - Napoleon Buonaparte, b. at Ajaccio on 15 Aug. 1769; his mother was Letizia Ramolino (d. 1836), his father, Carlo (d. 1785), of a family originally from Tuscany, a lawyer by profession. After having taken part in the resistance offered by Pasquale Paoli to the French invaders, the Buonapartes adhered after the battle of Pontenuovo (9 May 1769) to the new masters; as a reward the sons were admitted to the French military schools. N. entered the College of Autun in 1778, then attended the military schools of Brienne and of Paris. In 1785 he went as an artillery lieutenant to the regiment of La Fère at Valence and then to Auxonne; he greeted the Revolution of 1789 with sympathy, hoping for advantage to the autonomist aspirations of his island. His long stays at Ajaccio between 1789 and 1793 served however only to bring him into violent conflict with the party of the independents. In June 1793 he returned to France and took part in the siege operations of Toulon: rapidly promoted to battalion chief, to brigadier general, and, after the siege, to commander of the artillery of the army of Italy (Febr. 1794).
Dismissed for his good relations with the Robespierrists after Thermidor (28 July 1794), he also suffered arrest, although he disdained revolutionary doctrinarianism and demagogic disorder. Having returned to service, on 13 Vendémiaire (5 Oct. 1795) he served the Thermidorians to disperse in Rue St-Honoré the reactionary attempt. As a reward he was named commander of the garrison forces in Paris, then commander of the armée d'Italie (2 March 1796). He then married Josephine Tascher de la Pagerie, widow of General Beauharnais guillotined by the Jacobins (9 March 1796) and two days later he left for Nice to assume command of the army. The military operations of Italy were to flank Moreau's advance in the Danube Valley; N. instead addressed on 27 March a famous proclamation to his troops and soon began the advance. Having crossed the Col di Cadibona he broke through at the point of junction the Austro-Piedmontese deployment, defeating the Austrians at Montenotte, at Dego, the Piedmontese at Millesimo, at Ceva, at S. Michele (12-19 Apr. 1796), and forced Piedmont to the armistice of Cherasco (18 Apr.), then pursued the Austrians, defeated them at Lodi, at Borghetto and on 15 May occupied Milan. The resistance of the fortress of Mantua obliged him to renounce a rapid march on Vienna, he subsequently won, at Castiglione and at Rivoli, over the Austrian columns descending to the relief of Mantua, imposed armistices and war indemnities on the dukes of Parma and of Modena, on the king of Naples, on the Pope and organized a harsh system of requisition. After the capitulation of Mantua (2 Febr. 1797), through Friuli and the Tarvisio pass he advanced on Vienna forcing the Emperor to the preliminaries of Leoben (18 Apr. 1797) converted into peace at Campoformio on the following 18 Oct. Austria abandoned Belgium to France, recognized the independence of a new State of Lombardy and in exchange occupied the territories of the Republic of Venice cynically sacrificed by N. The latter at the same time organized in Emilia the Cisalpine Republic with Reggio, Modena, Bologna and Ferrara, and then united Lombardy to it (June 1797).
The Directory, ill tolerating the popularity of a general who already dared to speak of reforming the French government, gave him command of the army charged with operating on the Channel against England, then consented to his project of carrying the war into Egypt to make of it a base of operation against India. N. left Toulon on 19 May
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May 1798; on 11 June he took Malta from the Knights and on 1 July landed at Alexandria. The battle near the Pyramids gave N. possession of Egypt, but the English admiral Nelson destroyed his fleet in the bay of Abukir and organized the attack on the French by means of Turkish columns: having left the command of the army to Kléber, he hastened to return to France (9 Oct. 1799), where the Directory, after the coups d'état of fructidor and prairial, no longer had any prestige. N. negotiated with the various factions, on 18 brumaire (9 Nov. 1799) he attacked and forcibly dispersed the legislative Councils, imposed the resignation of the Directory and with Sieyès and Roger-Ducos constituted an executive consular commission, to organize a new government with the task of assuring France order and peace. The new Constitution designed by Sieyès was reshaped by N. according to his own interests and ambitions. In the Commission of the three consuls with ten-year powers he fashioned the figure of the first consul as almost omnipotent, above the other two with a purely consultative office. The legislative power was diluted among various Councils (Tribunate, Legislative Body, Senate, Council of State) with distinct functions and operating only at the impulse of the first consul. The citizens no longer elected deputies, but only took part in the formation of the lists of notables from which prudent choices of trusted people were made from above. Thus the principles of man and citizen of 1789 in practice disappeared with a constitution that sanctioned a bureaucratic-military dictatorship. The French people, after so much violence and so much blood, lost interest in liberty and equality, faced with the promise of peace. In reality, after a brief period of urgent reforms, N. was able to provide for the defense of France: the victories of Marengo (14 June 1800) and of Hohenlinden (3 Dec. 1800) flattered the country's self-esteem; the peaces of Lunéville with Austria (19 Feb. 1801), of Amiens with England (25 March 1802) gave it the long-awaited necessary tranquility.
In his work of internal reorganization N. immediately understood, although his religiosity was very superficial, that a rapprochement with the Church was necessary for him. The negotiations were not easy; advised by Talleyrand, he accepted only the formula: «religion of the majority of the French and of the Consuls». The question of the refractory and the constitutional bishops was overcome with the request made to both to submit or to resign. For the future it was agreed that the bishops would be elected by the government and that the Pope would grant canonical investiture; worship was declared public subject to police regulations; the bishops would swear fidelity to the government and would appoint the curates; to the bishops and curates the State would grant a financial allowance in substitution for the goods confiscated by the Revolution. This agreement, officially called Convention between the French government and His Holiness Pius VII, was signed in Paris by Card. Consalvi and by Joseph Bonaparte on 15 July 1801 (26 messidor, year IX) and promulgated on 18 Apr. 1802 with the addition of the Organic Articles or Police Regulation for the disciplining of public manifestations of worship: which went into effect despite the protests of the Pope.
For a more complete pacification he granted amnesty to the emigrated nobles who recognized the consular Constitution by oath. The senatus consultum of 10 May 1802 proposed to the popular plebiscite the conferral of the consulate for life: however, of the seven and a half million voters only half took part in the vote, almost all favorable to N. A subsequent organic senatus consultum of 4 Aug. 1802, whose text however was drafted by Bonaparte himself, renewed the Constitution by extending the powers of the first consul. The gospel of the new society that N. wanted to create is the Civil Code promulgated on 27 March 1804. The principles of 1789, personal liberty, equality of citizens, secularity of the State, freedom of conscience, are in theory acclaimed in it, but the spirit of the Code is clearly bourgeois and in it the principle of property is proclaimed, as a natural, personal right, limited only by the rights of the State. More than for primary education N. was much concerned of the secondary schools, a seedbed of government personnel; fundamental organs were the lycées based on the teaching of Latin, but semi-militarized. To control intellectual life, he reorganized the Institut de France in 1803 and excluded from it the moral and political sciences; to provide an incentive for the faithful service of civil and military officials he instituted the Legion of Honor, not without protests in circles loyal to the egalitarian revolution.
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Around N. a skillful propaganda was being carried on so that a demonstration of national gratitude might be given to the First Consul. The intrigues of the pure republicans on one side, of the royalists on the other, led first to ferocious repressions (execution of the Duke of Enghien), then to the demonstration that it was necessary to save the Revolution incarnated in a providential man, giving him the task of governing the Republic with the title of emperor. The senatus consultum of 18 May 1804 approved by popular plebiscite (again only three and a half million voters out of seven and a half million electors), founded the Empire supported by the Senate and by a High Court of Justice, and public acts from then on bore the double wording: «French Republic - N. emperor». At the coronation (performed in Paris by Pope Pius VII) N. swore fidelity to the principles of the Revolution (2 Dec. 1804). Thus there came about a sumptuous court, an imperial nobility, formed of marshals of the Empire, prefects, officials, to whom titles of hereditary nobility fortified by primogeniture were granted (princes, dukes, counts, barons); of officials N. demands absolute obedience, zealous interpretation of his requirements of discipline, of order. For education he organizes the Imperial University, a body of professors charged with teaching and civil education throughout the Empire, with political obligations before scientific ones, presided over by a grand master directly dependent on the Emperor; for religious instruction, the young generations must study the principles of the faith in the Imperial Catechism in which they learn that Christians owe fidelity to the Emperor, since he is the minister of divine power and the image of God on earth. Press, theater, literature were watched over, controlled, steered to be weapons of dominion.
Inevitably the peace of Amiens and of Lunéville could not last. In 1805 N. begins the war of defense of the conquests made against a new European coalition (III). France follows him, convinced that its existence is at stake: N. wins at Ulm (15 Oct. 1805), at Austerlitz (2 Dec. 1805), and forces Austria to the peace of Pressburg, which marks the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire (26 Dec. 1805).
N. organizes Italy, transforming the Italian Republic, created in 1802 (Consulta of Lyon) and of which he held the presidency, into the Kingdom of Italy and assumes its crown at Milan (25 May 1806), placing at Naples as king his brother Joseph; at Lucca his sister Elisa Baciocchi; at Guastalla his other sister Paolina Borghese. In Germany he creates the Confederation of the Rhine; in Holland he makes his brother Louis king.
Peace, however, eludes N.: England at Trafalgar (21 Oct. 1805) has destroyed the French fleet and dominates the seas. A new coalition is formed against the hegemony of France; N. prostrates Prussia at Jena and Auerstädt (14 Oct. 1806), Russia at Eylau (8 Feb. 1807), at Friedland (14 June 1807). On 25 June 1807 N. meets with Alexander I of Russia at Tilsit: the partition of Europe into two spheres of influence takes shape. Now England is isolated; by bringing down its economy N. will be able to dominate it. From Berlin on 21 Nov. 1806 he promulgates the first decree for the continental blockade; other decrees issue from Fontainebleau (13 Oct. 1807), from Milan on 23 Nov. and 17 Dec. 1807. Europe, however, seeks to escape the enforcement of the blockade and N. feels the necessity of occupying all the ports of the continent. Hence the occupation of Portugal (Nov. 1807), the occupation of Rome (Feb. 1808), the invasion of Spain, where N.'s brother, Joseph, goes as king, replaced at Naples by his brother-in-law
Joachim Murat (June 1808). But Spain rises up; in Portugal the English columns gravely threaten the French occupation; insurrections occur in the Tyrol, in Westphalia. At Rome the semi-imprisoned Pope protests and launches excommunication against the Emperor, who in 1809 has him conducted to Savona.
A general impatience in France in 1809 causes Austria to take up arms again in agreement with England (V Coalition). N. drives back the Austrians who had entered Bavaria, occupies Vienna, but the battles of Aspern and Essling mark a bloody setback for N. and the victory of Wagram (6 July) is won only at a very grave cost. N. forces Austria to the peace of Schönbrunn (14 Oct. 1809) and takes from it the Illyrian provinces. At this moment N. thinks of resolving the problem of the succession; he divorces Josephine, by whom he had had no children, and decides on marriage with Maria Luisa of Austria offered to him by Metternich. The first religious marriage having been dissolved by the Curia of Paris, on the ground of nullity deriving from the two parties having been forced to consent by external (political) circumstances, and the civil one annulled by a senatus consultum (16 Dec. 1809), on 2 Apr. 1810 N. married Maria Luisa, and on 20 March 1811 was born N.'s son, who was called the King of Rome.
During 1810-11 N. developed a prodigious activity to face the terrible difficulties that arose on every side. Apparently he is always the master of the West, but the crisis of industries, the deficient agricultural production, the economic distress increase the moral distress. N.'s relations with the Pope, confined at Savona, are harsh, and the application of the Concordat is paralyzed. N. elects bishops and forces them to enter their sees without canonical investiture. In 1811 he convokes a national council and has it decreed that investiture may be given by the metropolitan or by the senior bishop. To the Pope's protests he responds by prosecuting those who defend the Roman conception and has the Pope transported to Fontainebleau where he hopes to subdue him. To resolve the latent conflict with Russia he organizes an expedition: Russian strategy forces him to commit himself to the utmost. He crosses the Niemen on 24 June 1812, on 14 Sept. enters Moscow, but the attempt to destroy the Russian forces fails, and so does that of coming to an agreement. On 13 Oct. the retreat begins: the great French army disappears. At Smorgoni he dictates the famous 29th bulletin which reveals the catastrophe and rushes to Paris to face the secret internal enemies and provide for the defense. At Fontainebleau he seeks an agreement with Pius VII and extracts from him a new system of concordat (25 Jan. 1813) which approves the decisions of the National Council, but at the protests of the cardinals the Pope on 24 March retracts.
N. with great skill sought to defend France against the new European coalition in German territory, but the Saxon campaign ended with the defeat of Leipzig (16-18 Oct. 1813) and N. had to withdraw for the defense of the frontier. The campaign of Feb.-March 1814 did not save France from invasion. On 4 April N. abdicated in favor of his son Napoleon II; two days later he abdicated definitively and without reservations. The Treaty of Fontainebleau (11 April 1814) imposed on him as a residence the island of Elba with an allowance of two million and the retention of the imperial title. On 20 April N. departed. On 6 May he landed at Portoferraio. Taking advantage of the general discontent of France with the policy of the Bourbons, he landed on 1 March in the gulf of Jouan and on the 20th was again at the Tuileries. He then sought to organize a new regime of a constitutional type with the Additional Act of 22 April. But France, weary of wars, abandoned him: the plebiscite gave him only a million and a half votes and abstention was enormous. The military campaign against the European powers ended with the defeat of Waterloo (18 June 1815). N., isolated, abdicated again (22 June) and withdrew to Rochefort thinking of going to America; on 15 July, however, he appealed to English hospitality and boarded the ship Bellerophon. Transported to St. Helena, there he wrote in his own defense the history of his wars, the Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de France, the Commentaires and other works. He died on 5 May 1821, perhaps of cancer. His remains were returned by England to France in 1840: on 15 Dec. they were transported to the Hôtel des Invalides in triumph.