Napoleon Bonaparte

Napoleon Bonaparte was born on 15th August 1769, in a small town Ajjacio in Corsica, off the coast of Italy. His parents hailed from families who had migrated from Italy, two hundred years ago, and made this island their home. His father was a lawyer who had studied at Pisa. At that time Corsica had been just conquered by the French. Napoleon was baptized according to the Italian custom.

As a boy Napoleon was frail of body, but bubbling with energy. He took to sports like a duck takes to water.. He used to fight with the other boys of his age, in the neighborhood. He was a passionate swimmer and loved climbing trees. His family owned a farm near Ajjacio, with olive trees and grape vines. It was a favorite place of Napoleon and he used to go there often to enjoy.

When Napoleon reached his ninth year he was admitted to a school in France. And later he joined the military school of Brienne, at Champagne, with a royal scholarship. There he studied for five years. At this military school, besides military sciences, he was taught other subjects, including philosophy. This school had a profound impact on Napoleon's thinking, which was to later mould him into a great military general. He often thought over what he had studied in the class room. He did not play or talk much, but focused his entire attention on his studies. He had an extraordinary memory, and a very sharp mind. He stored away all that was necessary, in his mind, which was like a computer. He remembered every bit of information worth remembering. Mathematics was his favorite subject in which he excelled. He had a passion for the ancient history and had all the details of the important events on his finger tips. He memorized the Greek and the Roman texts with ease. It would not be a matter of surprise if he was thrilled by the stories of the conquests and achievements of the great warriors, like Caesar and Alexander the great.

After completing his studies at the school, he was admitted to the military academy, Ecole Militaire, where he graduated in 1785, with flying colors. He started his military career as lieutenant at a garrison. He was a very enthusiastic officer, and wanted to put what ever he had studied at the academy, into practice. He was very fond of studying his favorite subjects and write about various topics, in his spare time. He was very much influenced by the great philosopher Rousseau, and wrote articles on history and politics.

At that time France was passing through a very critical period of its history. The monarchy had failed miserably to provide basic necessities to its subjects. The gulf between the haves and the have-nots had widened to the point of no return. France was sitting on a keg of dry gunpowder, waiting for a tiny spark. to explode.

Then in 1789, the incident which lead to the bloody revolution, threw the young Napoleon into its vortex, preparing the ground for his meteoric rise. In this fateful year, a furious mob of commoners, provoked by the arrest of some political activists, stormed the famous jail Bastille, where they were lodged, and set them free. This violent incident marked the beginning of the revolution, which had a profound impact on the other nations too. In the 1792, the lava of discontent erupted, the monarchy was overthrown. France was declared a republic, and the reign of terror started. King Louis and Queen Marie Antoinette were captured by the frenzied mobs and executed mercilessly. Thousands of royalists and those who were suspected to be their sympathizers were massacred. Blood flowed like water in the streets

Every where the royalists and their supporters were the target of the revolutionaries.. In Toulon the frenzied mobs had laid siege to the fort, but were unable to flush out the royalists, who had put up a tough fight to hold the fort. As luck would have it, Napoleon happened to be in the vicinity of the fort. The incident that follows was to mark him as a genius in the military affairs, who believed in innovation. He got the canons placed in such a tactical position, that the bombardment devastated the fort ramparts, and the besieged were forced to surrender. This victory elated the mood of the revolutionaries, and Napoleon was instantly promoted as brigadier. His next promotion as commander of the guards at Tuilieries, followed with in two years.

With the promotion, the status and prestige of the young military officer also changed in the society. His heroic deeds won for him the affection and respect of the people. From an unknown soldier, now he had become a celebrity and a hero in Paris. He got the attention of the elite too, and he was often an invitee to the salons. At one such salon he happened to meet, one beautiful lady, by name Josephine De Beauharnais, from the French West Indies. She was the widow of a noble, executed during the blood-letting days of the Reign of Terror.
At first sight the young man fell in love with her. She was senior to him by six years and a mother of two children. Napoleon could no longer live with out her. He proposed for marriage, which, she accepted with some hesitation. He was then a young man of 26 years,bitten by the love bug. This was a fresh chapter started in the life of Napoleon, which had a profound influence on the future events

In the year 1796, after his marriage, Napoleon took command of the the grand army in southern France and marched against the Austrians in northern Italy. .France was already at war with Austria after the
Revolution broke out. As a frenzied nation, France
was very much eager to inject the spirit of new ideas into the body of the whole Europe,where
kings believed they were the rulers by the Divine
decree,and the crowns were the gifts of God.
They scoffed at the "outrageous" concepts of the revolutionaries.They shuddered at the thought of
loosing their heads and the crowns.The new zealots
were eager to propagate the new ideas of equality,
freedom and justice.

Napoleon adopted new strategies and made new
rules in the warfare.
He resorted to unorthodox tactics to the bafflement of his opponents.
He believed the old ethics of war had lost their relevance. He had no qualms in using brutal methods
in crushing his enemies. He was not averse to fight
at night,or in the falling rain. He was in the battlefield on Sundays,
instead of attending the church services. But his gambling with his innovative
ideas paid him well. He destroyed the powerful armies of Europe one by one, in a systematical manner.

His first encounter with the Austrians army was at Lodi. He personally lead
his army ,a rare feat at that time, and with his fiery speech, sent a column of
his soldiers across the bridge , held by the Austrian army. The enemy could
not withstand the charge of these fanatical revolutionaries , and fled ,leaving
the town at the mercy of the victors. This personal bravery of Napoleon
cemented the bond between him and his soldiers for ever, and was the
key to his success in his future campaigns in Europe and the Middle East.
He was now their idol and a source of inspiration. They were ready to lay
down their lives even if he moved his little finger. Not surprisingly Napoleon
could drove away the Austrians out of northern Italy within a year, and like a hurricane, was
almost at the gates of Vienna. The panicked Austrians sued for peace. Historians say wagon loads of treasures were brought
to Paris from this campaign.
This Austrian war marked the beginning of a new chapter in the life of the young hero

After this Austrian campaign, Napoleon planned to attack the ancient land of Egypt.His aim was to
cripple the British interests in the Middle East.
Like Alexander the great, he had set his eyes on India, called as the gold sparrow because of it's rich land and immense wealth.
He, as a great military general knew the importance of the strategic location of Egypt. For his
military expansion in Asia it was essential for him to have control over this land of the pharaohs .
At that time it was under the rule of the Mamluk dynasty, whose rulers had stopped the onslaught of
the Mongols of the Golden Horde,in the 13th century AD in the Egyptian desert, by inflicting a crushing blow
on them, after they destroyed Baghdad and , arrived on the Egyptian territory.
On July 21,1798 the Egyptian and the French
armies met in the Egyptian desert to decide
their fate.

The Mamluk army was no match against the modernized French Army, they fought with their
medieval weapons and were routed in the battle with thousands dead on the battlefield. . The French lost less than forty.But within days the one-eyed British
Admiral Nelson completely destroyed the French navy
in 1798,in the historic naval battle, remembered
as The Battle Of The Nile.
shattering the dream of Napoleon,of ruling Egypt.
Napoleon's Achilles heel was his weak navy

After his unsuccessful Egyptian campaign Napoleon did not sit idle, but marched with his grand
army to meet a new threat in the north. The Austrians and the Russians had amassed a combined
army of 1,58,000 men with 400 cannons. They had modern weapons and fully trained soldiers.
The two powerful armies met on December 2,1805 at Austerlitz, now in the present Czech Republic.
They fought a savage war, killing and maiming each other, spilling the blood,and turning the green
field into a pond of blood. The battle field looked like an abattoir. By evening the combined
armies of Austria and Russia were crushed into pulp. The setting sun saw some 11,000
Russians and 2000 Austrians lying dead on the
battlefield , and thousands injured .

The Tzar had to flee toward Russia, and
the Austrian Emperor pleaded for a treaty.
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Napoleon had a deep and burning ambition to conquer
and rule the whole of Europe.He considered the British as the stumbling block and wanted to tackle them first.As a first step in this direction he planned to close all the ports of Spain to them,
whom he called as the "the nation of the shopkeepers".
He had a grand design in Spain and wanted to first
invade Portugal and Spain.

The French armies invaded Portugal in 1807,and
entered the Spanish territory in 1808.He made his
brother Joseph, the king of Spain.But Napoleon
had misjudged the Spaniards.He thought they were
just like the other nations, whom he had subjugated.
He did not know the Spaniards were fiercely
independent and loathed slavery more than anything
else.The people started waging their own small wars
called in Spanish the guerrilla warfare.
When the regular armies were defeated by the French
the people took the arms and fought in the country
side,in the mountains and the streets.They waged a psychological war too.The clergy delivered secret
sermons to the people to say that killing the
French was not a sin,but an act of piety.They
circulated small documents,urging them to drive
away the hated French,by adopting all means
at their disposal.The spirit of nationalism was
ignited by the leaders and the clergy, alike.
This type of irregular warfare was unknown during
those times,and baffled a military genius like
Napoleon.He had deployed 80'000, troops,believing it sufficient to hold Spain.But when the war came to an end in 1814,there
were nearly 3,20,2000 troops,stationed in the various parts of Spain,but were unable to exercise
any control over the conquered people.
The Britishers too joined the Portuguese and the
Spaniards in fighting against the French.
The war in the Iberian peninsula continued till
1814,when the French army was finally defeated and
lay down the arms.

The next fatal mistake committed by Bonaparte was his ambition of conquering the Russian territory.
For him, annexing Russia was the "greatest and the most difficult enterprise" which he undertook
with all preparedness and care.
He had drawn the soldiers of the other satellite countries too. In all, the strength
of the army swelled to a staggering figure of 6,00,000 soldiers ,with 30,000 artillery pieces, 80,000 cavalry. There were thousands of cattle,
to meet the needs of the huge army.

Besides, the army had gunsmiths, shoemakers, carpenters, tailors, bakers and other service
providers. The idea was to be self sufficient
in all respects, as Napoleon visualized the
campaign would be a long drawn one.
He did not leave any thing to chance, and
planned minutely for the success of his
dream project.

He launched his attack on the Russian kingdom
in June ,1812, and crossed the River Neman.
Napoleon expected the Russian army to fight a conventional war.
But the Russians too fought a guerrilla war
like the Spaniards did in Spain.
They harried the invaders and attacked them
from left and right , in small bands.
They would retreat before the advancing army
and fall on them with lightening speed
when they were least expected.
It was like a bee biting the elephant with
it's deadly sting.
In this war the people too took to arms and
fought shoulder to shoulder with the army.
Napoleon and his soldiers were bewildered
by this strategy of the Russians.
They were just like the sitting ducks.
The French army found the country side
deserted,the villages and the farms were
empty .People had fled to the mountains
and forests. They did not leave any thing
for the use of the French.

After long, grueling and frustrating marches,
the French army sighted the Russian army
camped at a place called Borodino, some 70
miles from Moscow. The defenders fought
bravely , but lost 40,000 soldiers on the battlefield,which looked like an ocean
of blood, with mutilated limbs and bodies.
It was a terrible defeat for the Russians.
At last Napoleon reached Moscow in September
,and from a nearby hill saw the copulas of
Moscow. But the city was as silent as the
as the graveyard. The French did not find a
single human being to receive them.
The Muscovites had abandoned their beautiful
city, and had set it afire.
They did not want it to fall into the hands
of the enemy as a place to enjoy.

Napoleon waited for five weeks for the Tsar Alexander to turn up for negotiation, but
there was no sign of him or his generals.
A dejected man, Napoleon ordered the army to
retreat.The frustrated and a exhausted army
followed the same route it had come by.
On way back it was frequently raided by
the partisans and the cossacks.
The other terrible enemy was the Russian
winter, with 30 and 40 degrees below
zero temperature,which took a heavy toll
of the French. Thousands of people were
frozen to death.The corpses were littered
all over the way.The grand army of 6,00,000
which had set out to conquer Russia,was
reduced to a mere 30,000 stragglers.

This was the greatest misadventure Napoleon
embarked in his life.

Napoleon, with the humiliating defeat suffered at the hands of the Russians, did not think he was finished .He did not mind the loss of thousands of his soldiers lying dead in the snowy fields of the Russian steppes. He thought that he was destined to rule the world, and the reverses in the wars were mere temporary setbacks, the next stepping stone to his ultimate success. He recruited and raised new armies with a new zeal, but only to be defeated. His forces were crushed at Leipzig in 1813, and again in 1814.by the allied armies of Austria, Great Britain, Prussia and Russia. He had no other option but to surrender. Paris was occupied, and Napoleon was exiled to the island of Elba, a small island near the coast of Italy. He was given possession of the island with full powers to rule it as he liked. Napoleon pretended to be engaged in setting the island's administration in order, for about ten months. Internally he was busy in contacting his loyal commanders for rallying his scattered army to drive out the enemy out of Paris, In one dark night he made his escape and returned to Paris.

After his escape from the island of Elba, Napoleon appealed to his loyal generals and soldiers to rally around him to drive out the aliens from the French soil. He started recruiting armed personnel for the purpose. His friends and supports had immense faith in Napoleon's leadership and they thought it was a golden opportunity for them to bring the glory back to France. They remembered the days of triumphs the French had witnessed in Europe and the Middle East. They responded wholeheartedly to his call and frenzied groups began to gather under the banner of the new French army.

His adversaries were not keeping quite. They too realized that if they did not give a fatal blow to Napoleon now they would never find a chance to do it again. The countries which had been defeated or subjugated by Napoleon formed an alliance called the "seventh coalition", and starting raising huge armies, with new vigor and zeal. The first two armies were recruited, one Prussian army under the command of Gerhard Von Blucher and the other one an Anglo-allied army under the command of the Duke of Wellington. The Duke was destined to play a very important role, later in India, in consolidating the interests of the East India Company.

It was June 18,1815 ,a fateful day which was to decide the fate of a great emperor, who had put every thing at his disposal to make a final attempt to regain his crown .The two armies stood on two ridges, waiting for the orders from their commanders. Wellington waited for Napoleon to attack, but the latter was not the same Napoleon who was a master of churning new strategies in the battlefield on the tip of the moment. He was a shadow of his past. He lacked the sense of making correct judgment, which is vital in winning or losing a war. He had no consistency in his thinking, and often acted on impulse. There were a lot of changes in his physical and mental constitution.

The other day it had rained making the ground damp. Napoleon waited for the sun to dry the ground. Wellington took advantage of the situation and his artillery started pounding the French. The cannon balls were bouncing in the wet ground only to inflict injuries and death among the French soldiers, stationed on dry ground. The French cavalry charged Wellington's army, which was formed in twenty great squares. The French had no infantry or artillery to penetrate the allied forces. They were as helpless as the waves which dash against the rocks in the ocean. The French reinforcements under the command of Marshal Grouchy had missed the main battle, due to some misunderstanding. So Napoleon had no choice but to lead his elite army; the imperial guard. When the French drew near, the British army hidden under standing crops was ordered to fire at them. The French were taken by surprise and began to flee. Napoleon's dream of returning to power lay shattered: After three weeks he surrendered to the British forces, seeking asylum.
..

After his surrender Napoleon was to experience a shock, which he had never expected from the victors. He never imagined even in his wild dream that he would be deported to a place where hardened criminals feel the chill in their bones to just imagine it. His last abode was the tiny island of St.Helena., some 1200 miles from Africa, and 2000 miles from South America. It was a totally isolated land, cut off from the civilization and the world. He was lodged in a big shack, full of rats, located on the unhealthiest part of the island. There was chronic shortage of water, and he had to share the toilet with his servants. More often than not he was supplied with rotten mutton. He so short of money that some times he had to sell his house hold silver ware to meet his expenses. The living conditions were very horrible for an emperor who had lived a luxurious life.

For the first few years Napoleon faced the situation rather well, by keeping himself busy in writing on his favorite topics, but as time passed he became bored. He began to feel the burden of this miserable life. He was always under surveillance. There were soldiers round the clock to keep watch on his movements. There were only a few places in the island where he could ride his horse. He was so disgusted that for many a years he did not stir out his shack, and did not allow any body to meet him, except his doctor. This deteriorating environment had a devastating affect on his life.

So Napoleon died on May 5,1821,after living in this hellish conditions for more than 5 years, a frustrated man who could not see his dream come true