Napoleon Sentence Examples

Impelled by his convictions and talent, supported by the emperor Napoleon III.

After looking at him Napoleon smiled.

The complete disregard shown by Napoleon for one of the chief conditions of the treaty of Lunville (February 1801)that stipulating for the independence of the Ligurian and Cisalpine Republicsbecame more and more apparent every year.

Prince Andrew understood that this was said of him and that it was Napoleon who said it.

Having said this, Napoleon rode on to meet Marshal Lannes, who, hat in hand, rode up smiling to the Emperor to congratulate him on the victory.

In 1858 he was sent to St Petersburg on a special mission to seek the support of Russia against Napoleon III.

This ambitious marshal, brother-in-law of Napoleon, foiled in his hope of gaining the crown of Spain, received that of Naples in the summer of 1808, Joseph Bonaparte being moved M

Napoleon sought to push matters to an extreme, and on the 2nd of April Annexa- he adopted the rigorous measure of annexing to the tion of the kingdom of Italy the papal provinces of Ancona, Papal Urbino, Macerata and Camerina.

The Roman territory was divided into two departmentsthe Tiber and Trasimenus; the Code Napoleon was introduced, public works were set on foot and great advance was made in the material sphere.

Suddenly on the 14th of January 1858 Napoleons life was attempted by Felice Orsini a Mazzinian Romagnol, who believed that Napoleon was the chief obstacle to the success of the revolution in Italy.

To this course Napoleon consented, to the despair of King Victor Emmanuel and Cavour, who saw in this a proof that he wished to back out of his engagement and make war impossible.

Urged by a peremptory message from Napoleon, Cavour saw the necessity of bowing to the will of Europe, of disbanding the volunteers and reducing the army to a peace footing.

On the fiat 29th Francis Joseph declared war, and the next day 1859 his troops crossed theTicino, a move which was followed, as Napoleon had stated it would be, by a French declaration of war.

Then Napoleon suddenly drew back, unwilling, for many reasons, to continue the campaign.

On a lower level as regards credibility stands the Memorial de SainteHelene, compiled by Las Cases from Napoleon's conversations with the obvious aim of creating a Napoleonic legend.

In the centre of this gallery stand the four colossal bronze horses which belonged to some Graeco-Roman triumphal quadriga, and were brought to Venice by the Doge Enrico Dandolo after the fall of Constantinople in 1204; they were carried off by Napoleon to Paris in 1797, and restored by Francis of Austria in 1815.

Mark Twain has said that the two most interesting characters of the nineteenth century are Napoleon and Helen Keller.

Napoleon went to St. Helena; Quoil came to Walden Woods.

It was Napoleon accompanied by two aides-de-camp.

Napoleon apparently remembered seeing him on the battlefield and, addressing him, again used the epithet "young man" that was connected in his memory with Prince Andrew.

This was said by the undersized Napoleon, looking up straight into Alexander's eyes.

We don't have any more idea it's Cleary than Napoleon!

In 1809 he was at Paris, and, in a remarkable interview, received from Napoleon's own lips an apology for the treatment he had received.

Santarosa entered the service of Napoleon during the annexation of Piedmont to France, and was sub-prefect of Spezia from 1812 to 1814.

His uncle was ennobled by King Louis XVI., and his father was made a count by Napoleon I.

These were removed to Paris, and when Napoleon was crowned emperor a century and a half later he chose Childeric's bees for the decoration of his coronation mantle.

He was created a baron of the empire in 1809, and, on the fall of Napoleon, was first secretary of the cabinet and confidential secretary.

Of still greater importance for the history of Napoleon are Fain's Memoires, which were published posthumously in 1908; they relate more particularly to the last five years of the empire, and give a detailed picture of the emperor at work on his correspondence among his confidential secretaries.

Dunbar attested his constancy and gave proof that Cromwell was a master of the tactics of all arms. Preston was an example like Austerlitz of the two stages of a battle as defined by Napoleon, the first flottante, the second foudroyante.

On Napoleon's deposition, the island was ceded to him with full sovereign rights, and he resided there from the 5th of May 1814 to the 26th of February 1815.

The close of Bonapartes victorious campaign against the Archduke Charles in 1797 enabled him to mature those designs respecting Venice which are detailed in the article NAPOLEON.

Piedmont was declared to be a military division at the disposal of France (April 21, r8oi); and on the 21st of September 1802, Bonaparte, then First Consul for life, issued a decree for its definitive incorporation in the French Republic. About that time, too, Elba fell into the hands of Napoleon.

Eugene soon found that his chief duty was to enforce the wifi of Napoleon.

It is more important to observe that under Joseph and his ministers or advisers, including the Frenchmen Roederer, Dumas, Miot de Melito and the Corsican Saliceti, great progress was made in abolishing feudal laws and customs, in reforming the judicial procedure and criminal laws on the model of the Code Napoleon, and in attempting the beginnings of elementary education.

The peace of Tilsit (July 7, 1807) enabled Napoleon to press on his projects for securing the command of the Mediterranean, thenceforth a fundamental axiom of his policy.

On the other hand, they suffered from the rigorous measures of the continental system, which seriously crippled trade at the ports and were not compensated by the increased facilities for trade with France which Napoleon opened up. The drain of men to supply his armies in Germany, Spain and Russia was also a serious loss.

Murat, left in command of the Grand Army at of ?VapoVilna, abandoned his charge and in the next year made Icons overtures to the allies who coalesced against Napoleon.

Very many of them, distrusting both of these kings, sought to act independently in favor of an Italian republic. Lord William Bentinck with an AngloSicilian force landed at Leghorn on the 8th of March 1814, and issued a proclamation to the Italians bidding them rise against Napoleon in the interests of their own freedom.

Parma and Piacenza were assigned to Marie Louise, daughter of the Austrian emperor and wife of Napoleon, on behalf of her son, the little Napoleon, but by subsequent arrangements (1816-1817) the duchy was to revert at her death to the Bourbons of Parma, then reigning at Lucca.

The pope, Pius VII., who had long been kept under restraint by Napoleon at Fontainebleau, returned to Rome in May 1814, and was recognized by the congress of Vienna (not without some demur on the part of Austria) as the sovereign of all the former possessions of the Holy See.

Lord William Bentinck finally took over large administrative powers, seeing that Ferdinand, owing to his dulness, and Maria Carolina, owing to her very suspicious intrigues with Napoleon, could never be trusted.

This result, accruing from British intervention, was in some respects similar to that exerted by Napoleon on the Italians of the mainland.

To the mass of the people the restoration of the old governments undoubtedly brought a sense of relief, for the terrible drain in men and money caused by Napoleon's wars had caused much discontent, whereas now there was a prospect of peace and rest.

The emperor Napoleon, almost alone among Frenchmen, had genuine Italian sympathies.

In exchange for French assistance Piedmont would cede Savoy and perhaps Nice to France; and a marriage between Victor Emmanuels daughter Clothilde and Jerome Bonaparte, to which Napoleon attached great importance, although not made a definite condition, was also discussed.

On the 23rd of May Prince Napoleon, with a French army corps, landed at Leghorn, his avowed object being to threaten the Austrian flank; and in June these troops, together with a Tuscan contingent, departed for Lombardy.

After the meetings at Villafranca Napoleon returned to France.

In August Marco Minghetti succeeded in forming a military league and a customs union between Tuscany, Romagna and the duchies, and in procuring the adoption of the Piedmontese codes; and envoys were sent to Paris to mollify Napoleon.

Constituent assemblies met and voted for unity under Victor Emmanuel, but the king could not openly accept the proposal owing to the emperors opposition, backed by the presence of French armies in Lombardy; at a word from Napoleon there might have been an Austrian, and perhaps a Franco-Austrian, invasion of central Italy.

Napoleon now realized that it would be impossible, without running serious risks, to oppose the movement in favor of unity.

The proposed congress fell through, and Napoleon thereupon raised the question of the cession of Nice and Savoy as the price of his consent to the union of the central provinces with the Italian kingdom.

The negotiations were long drawn out; for Cavour struggled to save Nice and Napoleon was anxious to make conditions, especially as regards Tuscany.

This proposal broke on the refusal of the peror Francis Joseph to cede Austrian territory except as the lIt of a struggle; and Napoleon, won over by Biswarck at famous interview at Biarritz, once more took.up the ides of Prusso-Italian offensive and defensive alliance.

On the of July the Prussians completely defeated the, ,, strians at Koniggrtz, and on the 5th Austria Led Venetia to Napoleon, accepting his, mediation gratz.

Their presence, however, was a sufficient excuse for Napoleon, under pressure of the clerical party, to send another expedition to Rome (26th of October).

At the same time Napoleon was making overtures both to Austria and to Italy, overtures which were favorably received.

Victor Emmanuel was sincerely anxious to assist Napoleon, for in spite of Nice and Savoy and Mentana he felt a chivalrous desire to help the man who had fought for Italy.

Austria would not join France unless Italy did the same, and she realized that that was impossible unless Napoleon gave way about Rome.

But the matter is now determined for all countries which have adopted codes, whether after the pattern of the Code Napoleon or otherwise.

These were removed by Napoleon to Paris, but restored to their original positions after the peace of 1815.

Prince Andrey Ivanovich (1768-1855), general in the Russian army, took a conspicuous part in the final campaigns against Napoleon.

Alexander Ivanovich (1769-1825) served with distinction under his relative Suvarov in the Turkish Wars, and took part as a general officer in the Italian and Swiss operations of 1799, and in the war against Napoleon in Poland in 1806-1807 (battle of Heilsberg).

The office was revived by Napoleon I., was abolished in 1830, and again created by Napoleon III.; it existed till 1870.

Under Napoleon he became a member of the council of state, and from 1812 to 1814 he governed Catalonia under the title of intendant-general, being charged to win over the Catalonians to King Joseph Bonaparte.

After proclaiming his intention of conferring on his subjects the blessings of peace, he joined in 1798 an Anglo-Austrian coalition against France; but when Austria paid more attention to her own interests than to the interests of monarchical institutions in general, and when England did not respect the independence of Malta, which he had taken under his protection, he succumbed to the artful blandishments of Napoleon and formed with him a plan for ruining the British empire by the conquest of India.

Alexander insisted still more strongly on this claim, and in the convention which he concluded with the First Consul in October 1801 it was agreed that the maintenance of a just equilibrium between Austria and Prussia should be Napoleon.

During 1803-4 the breach between the two rivals widened, because Napoleon became more and more aggressive and unceremonious in Italy and Germany.

Napoleon, who could brook no equal, was nourishing the secret hope that his confederate might be used as a docile subordinate in the realization of his own plans, and the confederate soon came to suspect that he was being duped.

At the same time Napoleon threatened openly to crush Austria, and in 180 9 he carried out his threat by defeating the Austrian armies at Wagram and elsewhere, and dictating the treaty of Schonbrunn (October 14).

They had fought for freedom in order to liberate themselves not only from the yoke of Napoleon but also from the tyranny of their own governments, whereas he expected them to remain submissively under the patriarchal institutions which their native rulers imposed on them.

In this way the development of Russian policy with regard to Turkey was checked for some years, but the project of confirming and extending the Russian protectorate over the Orthodox Christians was revived in 1852, when Napoleon III.

It was not without secret satisfaction, therefore, that Prince Gorchakov watched the repeated defeats of the Austrian army in the Italian campaign of 1859, and he felt inclined to respond to the advances made to him by Napoleon III.; but the germs of a Russo-French alliance, which had come into existence immediately after the Crimean War, ripened very slowly, and they were completely destroyed in 1863 when the French emperor wounded Russian sensibilities deeply by giving moral and diplomatic support to the Polish insurrection.

In 1814 he was chosen a member of the chamber of representatives, and in 1815 he urged the claim of Napoleon's son to the French throne and protested against the restoration of the Bourbons.

Napoleon, in making the road over the Simplon, deviated from the straight line in order to leave it standing.

In this capacity he attracted attention by wearing at the court of Napoleon III.

After the first defeat Francis Joseph hastened to Italy; he commanded in person at Solferino, and by a meeting with Napoleon arranged the terms of the peace of Villafranca.

Here preliminaries of peace were signed between Napoleon III.

In 1807 Napoleon convoked a Jewish assembly in Paris.

Napoleon, after the report of the assembly, established the consistorial system which remained in force, with its central consistory in the capital, until the recent separation of church and state.

It was not, however, till after the coup d'etat of the 2nd of December 1851, which made Louis Napoleon supreme in France, that he became conspicuous as a diplomat.

Jenghiz Khan and Timur covered more ground than Napoleon, and no European has had such an effect on the world as Mahomet.

Before this time, however, he had become earl of Aberdeen on his grandfather's death in 1801, and had travelled over a large part of the con iinent of Europe, meeting on his journeys Napoleon Bonaparte and other persons of distinction.

Cagliari was bombarded by the French fleet in 1793, but Napoleon's attempt to take the island failed.

He was a prominent opponent of the oligarchical party in the revolution which took place on the approach of Napoleon; and he was one of the envoys sent to seek the protection of the French.

Napoleon Bonaparte (or Buonaparte, as he almost always spelt the name down the year 1796) was born at Ajaccio in Corsica on the i 5th of August 1769.

Recent research has, however, explained how it came about that a son born on the earlier date received the name Nabulione (Napoleon).

The father, Carlo Mariada Buonaparte (Charles Marie de Bonaparte), had resolved to call his three first sons by the names given by his great-grandfather to his sons, namely Joseph, Napoleon and Lucien.

This was done; but on the death of the eldest (Joseph) the child first baptized Nabulion received the name Joseph; while the third son (the second surviving son) was called Napoleon.

The father's literary tastes, general inquisitiveness, and powers of intrigue reappeared in Napoleon, who, however, derived from his mother Letizia (a descendant of the Ramolino and Pietra Santa families) the force of will, the power of forming a quick decision and of maintaining it against all odds, which made him so terrible an opponent both in war and in diplomacy.

What is equally noteworthy, as explaining the characteristics of Napoleon, is that his descent was on both sides distinctly patrician.

It was in the midst of the strifes resulting from those claims that Napoleon Bonaparte saw the light in 1769.

Napoleon's father at first sided with Paoli, but after the disaster of Ponte-Novo he went over to the conquerors, and thereafter solicited places for himself and for his sons with a skill and persistence which led to a close union between the Bonapartes and France.

From the French governor of Corsica, the comte de Marbeuf, he procured many favours, among them being the nomination of the young Napoleon to the military school at Brienne in the east of France.

In the large playroom of the house at Ajaccio, while the others amused themselves with ordinary games, Napoleon delighted most in beating a drum and wielding a sword.

After spending four months at Autun, Napoleon entered the school at Brienne in May 1779.

The pupils at Brienne, far from receiving a military education, were grounded in ordinary subjects, and in no very efficient manner, by brethren of the order, or society, of Minims. The moral tone of the school was low; and Napoleon afterwards spoke with contempt of the training of the "monks" and the manner of life of the scholars.

Napoleon applied himself with more zest to his studies, in the hope of speedily qualifying himself for the artillery.

The father having died of cancer at Montpellier in 1785, Napoleon felt added responsibilites, which he zealously discharged.

At Auxonne, as previously at Valence, Napoleon commanded a small detachment of troops sent to put down disturbances in neighbouring towns, and carried out his orders unflinchingly.

The plea of the last named on behalf of Corsica served to enlist the sympathy of Napoleon in his wider speculations, and so helped to bring about that mental transformation which merged Buonaparte the Corsican in Bonaparte the Jacobin and Napoleon the First Consul and Emperor.

Napoleon seconded his efforts, and soon they had the help of the third brother, Lucien, who proved to be most eager and eloquent.

Napoleon's admiration for the dictator also began to cool, and events began to point to a rupture.

In the intrigues for the command of this body Napoleon had his rival, Morati, carried off by force - his first coup d'etat.

Ultimately the Bonapartes had to flee from Corsica (11th of June 1793), an event which clinched Napoleon's decision to identify his fortunes with those of the French republic. His ardent democratic opinions rendered the change natural when Paoli and his compatriots declared for an alliance with England.

In our survey of the career of Napoleon, we have now reached the time of the Consulate (November 1799 - May 1804), which marks the zenith of his mental powers and creative activity.

The reader is referred to the article France (Law and Institutions) for the information respecting the various codes dating from this period, and to the article Concordat for the famous measure whereby Napoleon re-established official relations between the state and the church in France.

Napoleon intended it as a protest against the spirit of equality which pervaded revolutionary thought.

Napoleon (who now used his Christian name instead of the surname Bonaparte) thereupon sent proposals for various changes in the constitution, which were at once registered by the obsequious Council of State and the Senate on the 4th of August (16 Thermidor) 1802.

An equally significant hint, that the Ionian Isles might easily be regained by France, further helped to open the eyes of the purblind Addington ministry to the resolve of Napoleon to make the Mediterranean a French lake.

Napoleon's refusal to give this, and his complaint that Great Britain had neglected to comply with some of the provisions of the treaty of Amiens, brought Anglo-French relations to an acute phase.

To this also Napoleon demurred.

Napoleon wished to postpone the rupture for fully eighteen months, as is shown by his secret instructions to Decaen.

The British government did not know the whole truth; but, knowing the character of Napoleon, it saw that peace was as dangerous as war.

Disregarding the neutrality of the Germanic System, Napoleon sent a strong French corps to overrun Hanover, while he despatched General Gouvion St Cyr to occupy Taranto and other dominating positions in the south-east of the kingdom of Naples.

Exactions at the expense of Hanover and Naples helped to lighten the burdens of French finance; Napoleon's sale of Louisiana to the United States early in 1803 for 60,000,000 francs brought further relief to the French treasury; and by pressing hard on his ally, Spain, he compelled her to exchange the armed help which he had a right to claim, for an annual subsidy of 2,880,000.

England made short work of the French squadrons and colonies, particularly in the West Indies, while Napoleon became more than ever the master of central and southern Europe.

Napoleon's utter disregard of the neutrality of neighbouring states was soon to be revealed in the course of a royalist plot which helped him to the imperial title.

Failing through his police to lure the comte d'Artois to land in Normandy, Napoleon pounced on a scion of the House of Bourbon who was within his reach.

Before they passed the verdict, Napoleon came to see that his victim was innocent of any participation in the plot.

It is noteworthy that though Napoleon at times sought to shift the responsibility for this deed on Talley-rand or Savary, yet during his voyage to St Helena, as also in his will, he frankly avowed his responsibility for it and asserted that in the like circumstances he would do the same again.

The senate, as usual, took the lead in suggesting some such change in the constitution; and it besought Napoleon "to complete his work by rendering it, like his glory, immortal."

Napoleon thereupon invited the senate to "make known to him its thoughts completely."

The Senatus Consultum of the 18th of May 1804 awarded to Napoleon the title of emperor, the succession (in case he had no heir) devolving in turn upon the descendants of Joseph and Louis Bonaparte (Lucien and Jerome were for the present excluded from the succession owing to their having contracted marriages displeasing to Napoleon).

In this vote lay the justification of the acts of the First Consul and the pledge for the greatness of the emperor Napoleon.

Napoleon's powers as First Consul for Life were so wide as to render much extension both superfluous and impossible; but we may note here that the senate now gained a further accession of authority at the expense of the two legislative bodies; and practically legislation rested with the emperor, who sent his decrees to the senate to be registered as senatus consulta.

Napoleon's chief aversion, the tribunate, was also divided into three sections, dealing with legislation, home affairs and finance - a division which preluded its entire suppression in 1807.

More important were the titular changes Napoleon, as we have seen, did not venture to create an order of nobility until 1808, but he at once established an imperial hierarchy.

Meanwhile Napoleon was triumphing over the last of the republican generals.

Thereupon Napoleon, in order to grace the new regime by an act of clemency, pardoned Moreau, it being understood that he must leave France.

Victories in the field were not more effective in consolidating Napoleon's power than were his own coups d'etat and the supremely skilful use which he made of conspiracies directed against him.

Napcleon was now able by degrees to dispense with all republican forms (the last to go was the Republican Calendar, which ceased on the 1st of January 1806), and the scene at the coronation in Notre Dame on the 2nd of December 1804 was frankly imperial in splendour and in the egotism which led Napoleon to wave aside the pope, Pius VII., at the supreme moment and crown himself.

Napoleon, though he did not bar the door absolutely against such a proceeding, granted her her heart's desire by secretly going through a religious ceremony on the evening before the coronation.

It was performed by Fesch, now a cardinal; but Napoleon could afterwards urge the claim that all the legal formalities had not bten complied with; and the motive for the marriage may probably be found in the refusal of the pope to appear at the coronation unless the former civil contract was replaced by the religious rite.

As happened at every stage of Napoleon's advancement, the states tributary to France underwent changes corresponding to those occurring at Paris.

At first Napoleon desired to endow Joseph, or, on his refusal, Louis, with the crown of the new kingdom.

They, however, refused to place themselves out of the line of direct succession in France, as Napoleon required, in case they accepted this new dignity.

On the 7th of June he issued a decree conferring the dignity of viceroy on Eugene de Beauharnais, his stepson; but everything showed that Napoleon's will was to be law; and the great powers at once saw that Napoleon's promise to keep the crowns of France and Italy separate was meaningless.

These actions proclaimed so unmistakably Napoleon's intention of making Italy an annexe of France as to convince Francis of Austria and Alexander of Russia that war with him was inevitable.

But Napoleon's actions, especially the annexation of Genoa, at last brought the three powers to accord, with the general aim of re-establishing the status quo ante in Germany, Holland, Switzerland and Italy, or, in short, of restoring the balance of power which Napoleon had completely upset.

Military affairs in this period are dealt with under Napoleonic Campaigns; but it may be noted here that during the anxious days which Napoleon spent at the camp of Boulogne in the second and third weeks of August 1805, uncertain whether to risk all in an attack on England in case Villeneuve should arrive, or to turn the Grand Army against Austria, the only step which he took to avert a continental war was the despatch of General Duroc to Berlin to offer Hanover to Prussia on consideration of her framing a close alliance with France.

But in the case of a man so intensely ambitious, determined and egoistic as Napoleon, a decision on this interesting question is hazardous.

By the peace of Presburg (26th of December 1805) Napoleon compelled Austria to recognize all the recent changes in Italy, and further to cede Venetia, Istria and Dalmatia to the new kingdom of Italy.

The Swabian lands of the Habsburgs went to the South German states (allies of Napoleon), while Bavaria also received Tirol and Vorarlberg.

Napoleon pressed almost equally hard upon Prussia.

Anspach and Bayreuth were also to be handed over to Bavaria, it now being the aim of Napoleon to aggrandize the South German princes who had fought on his side in the late war.

The Bourbons of Naples had broken their treaty engagements with Napoleon, though in this matter they were perhaps as much sinned against as sinning.

A little later the emperor bestowed the two papal enclaves of Benevento and Ponte-Corvo on Talleyrand and Bernadotte respectively, an act which emphasized the hostility which had been growing between Napoleon and the papacy.

The duchy of Berg, along with the eastern part of Cleves and other annexes, now went to Murat, brother-in-law of Napoleon (March 1806); and that melodramatic soldier at once began to round off his eastern boundary in a way highly offensive to Prussia.

She was equally concerned by Napoleon's behaviour in the Dutch Netherlands, where her influence used to be supreme.

Napoleon determined that he, like all the Bonapartist rulers, should act merely as a Napoleonic satrap. They were to be to him what the counts of the marches were to Charlemagne, warlike feudatories defending the empire or overawing its prospective foes.

On the 17th of July Napoleon signed at Paris a decree that reduced to subservience the Germanic System, the chaotic weakness of which he had in 1797 foreseen to be highly favourable to France.

The logical outcome of this proceeding appeared on the 1st of August, when Napoleon declared that he no longer recognized the existence of the Holy Roman Empire.

This tame acquiescence of the House of Habsburg in the reorganization of Germany seemed to set the seal on Napoleon's work.

What was more, Prussia, finding that Napoleon had secretly offered to the British Hanover (that gilded hook by which he caught her early in the year), now resolved to avenge this, the last of several insults.

Napoleon was surprised by the news of Prussia's mobilization; he had come to regard her as a negligible quantity, and now he found that her unexpected sensitiveness on points of honour was about to revivify the Third Coalition against France.

The parallel extends even to the secret negotiations; for, if Austria could have been induced in May 1807 to send an army against Napoleon's communications, his position would have been fully as dangerous as before Austerlitz if Prussia had taken a similar step. Once more he triumphed owing to the timidity of the central power which had the game in its hands; and the folly which marked the Russian tactics at Friedland (14th of June 1807), as at Austerlitz, enabled him to close the campaign in a blaze of glory and shiver the coalition in pieces.

But before referring to its terms we must note an event which indicated the lines on which Napoleon's policy would advance.

This decree is often called the basis of the Continental System, whereby Napoleon proposed to ruin England by ruining her commerce.

Nelson's crowning triumph rendered impossible for the present all other means of attack on those elusive foes; and Napoleon's sense of the importance of that battle may be gauged, not by his public utterances on the subject, but by his persistence in forcing Prussia to close Hanover and the whole coastline of north-west Germany against British goods.

Napoleon at Tilsit resembles Polyphemus seeking to destroy Ulysses.

The triumph won at Friedland marks in several respects the climax of Napoleon's career.

Napoleon, therefore, had Prussia completely at his mercy; and his conditions to that power bore witness to the fact.

At a later time he reproached himself for not having dethroned the Hohenzollerns outright; but it is now known that Alexander would have forbidden this step, and that he dissuaded Napoleon from withdrawing Silesia from the control of the House of Hohenzollern.

Even so, Prussia was bereft of half of her territories; those west of the river Elbe went to swell the domains of Napoleon's vassals or to form the new kingdom of Westphalia for Jerome Bonaparte; while the spoils which the House of Hohenzollern had won from Poland in the second and third partitions were now to form the duchy of Warsaw, ruled over by Napoleon's ally, the elector (now king) of Saxony.

The tsar acquired a frontier district from Prussia, recognized the changes brought about by Napoleon in Germany and Italy, and agreed by a secret article that the Cattaro district on the east coast of the Adriatic should go to France.

By it Napoleon brought the tsar to agree to make war on England in case that power did not accept the tsar's mediation for the conclusion of a general peace.

Failing the arrival of a favourable reply from London by the 1st of December 1807, the tsar would help Napoleon to compel Denmark, Sweden and Portugal to close their ports against, and make war on, Great Britain.

Napoleon also promised to mediate between Russia and Turkey in the interests of the former, and (in case the Porte refused to accept the proffered terms) to help Russia to drive the Turks from Europe, "the city of Constantinople and the province of Rumelia alone excepted."

This enterprise and the acquisition of Finland from Sweden, which Napoleon also dangled before the eyes of the tsar, formed the bait which brought that potentate into Napoleon's Continental System.

The terms last named indicate the nature of the aims which Napoleon had in view at Tilsit.

That compact was not, as has often been assumed, merely the means of assuring to Napoleon the mastery of the continent and the control of a cohort of kings.

The treaty of Tilsit, then, far from being merely a European event, was an event of the first importance in what may be termed the Welt-politik of Napoleon.

As usually happened in this strife of the land power and the sea power, Napoleon's continental policy attained an almost complete success, while the naval and oriental schemes which he had more nearly at heart utterly miscarried.

Further, owing to the carelessness of the Prussian negotiator, Napoleon was able to require the exaction of impossibly large sums from that exhausted land, and therefore to keep his troops in her chief fortresses.

Napoleon also suppressed the Tribunate; and in the year 1808 instituted an order of nobility.

The imperious terms in which this decree was couched and its misleading reference to the British maritime code showed that Napoleon believed in the imminent collapse of his sole remaining enemy.

The occupation of Lisbon, which led on to Napoleon's intervention in Spanish affairs, resulted naturally from the treaty of Tilsit.

The coercion of England's oldest ally had long been one of Napoleon's most cherished aims, and was expressly provided for in that compact.

Seeing that Godoy, the all-powerful minister at Madrid, had given mortal offence to Napoleon early in the Prussian campaign of 1806 by calling on Spain to arm on behalf of her independence, it passes belief how he could have placed his country at the mercy of Napoleon at the end of the year 1807.

The north of Portugal was to go to the widow of the king of Etruria (a Spanish Infanta); her realm now passing into the hands of Napoleon.

The situation was such as to tempt Napoleon on to an undertaking on which he had probably set his heart in the autumn of 1806, that of dethroning the Spanish Bourbons and of replacing them by a Bonaparte.

Here, then, were all the conditions which favoured Napoleon's intervention.

Godoy, having the prospect of the Algarve before him, likewise offered no opposition to the advance of Napoleon's troops to the capital; and so it came about that Murat, named by Napoleon his Lieutenant in Spain, was able to enter Madrid in force and without opposition from that usually clannish populace.

They prepared for flight to America - a step which Napoleon took care to prevent; and a popular outbreak at Aranjuez decided the king then and there to abdicate (19th of March 1808).

Napoleon journeyed to Bayonne and remained there.

As for Ferdinand, the emperor, on hearing the news of a rising in Madrid on the 2nd of May, overwhelmed him with threats, until he resigned the crown into the hands of his father, who had already bargained it away to Napoleon in return for a pension (5th of May 1808).

Princely abodes in France and annuities (the latter to be paid by Spain) - such was the price at which Napoleon bought the crown of Spain and the Indies.

This disaster, the most serious suffered by the French since Rossbach, sent a thrill through the Napoleonic vassal states and aroused in Napoleon transports of anger against Dupont.

The tsar saw his chance of improving on the terms arranged at Tilsit; and obviously Napoleon could not begin the conquest of Spain until he felt sure of the conduct of his nominal ally.

The sea power thus gained what had all along been wanting, a sure basis for the exercise of its force against the land power, Napoleon.

Napoleon's perfidy at Bayonne was so flagrant as to strip from him the mask of a champion of popular liberty which had previously been of priceless worth.

Napoleon desired to press on the partition of Prussia, Alexander that of Turkey.

Austria meanwhile had begun to arm as a precautionary measure; and Napoleon, shortly after his return from Bayonne to Paris, publicly declared that, if her preparations went on, he would wage against her a war of extermination.

For the present Napoleon's ire fell upon Prussia.

In that letter Stein urged the need of a national rising of the Germans similar to that of the Spaniards, when the inevitable struggle ensued between Napoleon and Austria.

Apart from this advantage, placed in his hands by the imprudence of Stein, Napoleon was heavily handicapped at the Erfurt interview.

Napoleon, on the other hand, had utterly failed in his Spanish enterprise; and the tsar felt sure that his rival must soon withdraw French garrisons from the fortresses of the Oder to the frontier of Spain.

He refused to join Napoleon in any proposal for the coercion of Austria or the limitation of her armaments.

Finally he agreed to join his ally if he (Napoleon) were attacked by the Habsburg power.

Napoleon on his side succeeded in adjourning the question of the partition of Turkey; but he awarded the Danubian provinces and Finland to his ally and agreed to withdraw the French garrisons from the Prussian' fortresses on the Oder.

Clearly, then, Napoleon's desire for peace was conditional on his being allowed to dictate terms to the rulers and peoples concerned.

Napoleon was then in the midst of operations against Sir John Moore, whose masterly march on Sahagun (near Valladolid) had thwarted the emperor's plans for a general "drive" on to Lisbon.

Hoping to punish Moore for his boldness, Napoleon struck quickly north at Astorga, but found that he was too late to catch his foe.

Sir John Moore and the statesmen of Austria - the heroic Stadion at their head - failed in their enterprise; but at least they frustrated the determined effort of Napoleon to stamp out the national movement in the Iberian Peninsula.

The failure of the archduke John to arrive in time at Wagram (5th of July), the lack of support accorded by the Spaniards to Wellesley before and after the battle of Talavera (28th of July), and the slowness with which the British government sent forth its great armada against Flushing and Antwerp, a fortnight after Austria sued for an armistice from Napoleon, enabled that superb organizer to emerge victorious from a most precarious situation.

Two days later Napoleon, by means of unworthy artifices, hurried the Austrian plenipotentiaries into signing the treaty of peace at Schonbrunn.

The House of Habsburg now ceded Salzburg and the Inn-Viertel to Napoleon (for his ally, the king of Bavaria); a great portion of the spoils which Austria had torn from Poland in 1795 went to the grand duchy of Warsaw, or Russia; and the cession of her provinces Carinthia, Carniola and Istria to the French empire cut her off from all access to the sea.

After imposing these harsh terms on his enemy, the conqueror might naturally have shown clemency to the Tirolese leader, Andreas Hofer; but that brave mountaineer, when betrayed by a friend, was sentenced to death at Mantua owing to the arrival of a special message to that effect from Napoleon.

The same year witnessed the downfall of Napoleon's persistent enemy, Gustavus IV.

As happened in the years 1802-1803, Napoleon extended his "System" as rapidly in time of peace as during war.

In the case of King Louis, family quarrels embittered the relations between the two brothers; but it is clear from Napoleon's letters of November - December 1809 that he had even then resolved to annex Holland in order to gain complete control of its customs and of its naval resources.

In the next months Napoleon promulgated a series of decrees for effecting the ruin of British commerce, and in December 1810 he decreed the annexation of the northwest coast of Germany, as also of Canton Valais, to the French empire.

The Bonapartes had intrigued for it with their usual persistence, and Napoleon was careful never to make it impossible.

A marriage between Napoleon and a Russian princess would have implied the permanent subjection of Austria.

But why did Napoleon fix his choice on Vienna rather than St Petersburg?

Napoleon told him that he was now beginning to live, that he had always longed for a home and now at last had one.

Napoleon, though he never again worked as he had done, soon freed himself from complete dependence on Marie Louise; and he never allowed her to intrude into political affairs, for which, indeed, she had not the least aptitude.

This event seemed to place Napoleon's fortunes on a sure basis; but already they were being undermined by events.

The addition of large territories to the grand duchy of Warsaw after the war of 1809 aroused the fears of the tsar respecting the Poles; and he regarded all Napoleon's actions as inspired by hostility to Russia.

He, therefore, despite Napoleon's repeated demands, refused to subject his empire to the hardships imposed by the Continental System; at the close of the year 1810 he virtually allowed the entry of colonial goods (all of which were really British borne) and little by little broke away from Napoleon's system.

The campaign of 1812 may, therefore, be considered as resulting, fi-stly, from the complex and cramping effects of the Continental System on a northern land which could not deprive itself of colonial goods; secondly, from Napoleon's refusal to mitigate the anxiety of Alexander on the Polish question; and thirdly, from tie annoyance felt by the tsar at the family matters noticed above.

Napoleon undoubtedly entered on the struggle with reluctance.

Napoleon on his side coerced Prussia into an offensive alliance and had the support of Austria and the states of the Rhenish Confederation.

The military events of the years1812-1814are described under Napoleonic Campaigns; and we need therefore note here only a few details personal to Napoleon or some considerations which influenced his policy.

Another consideration which largely conduced to the disasters of the retreat was Napoleon's postponement of any movement back from Moscow to the date of October 19th, and this is known to have resulted from his conviction that the tsar would give way as he had done at Tilsit.

Napoleon's habit of clinging to his own preconceptions never received so strange and disastrous an illustration as it did during the month spent at Moscow.

Shortly before starting for the Russian expedition Napoleon vainly tried to reassure the merchants and financiers of France then face to face with a sharp financial crisis.

Now at the close of 1812 matters were worse, and Napoleon, on reaching Paris, found the nation preoccupied with the task of finding out how many Frenchmen had survived the Russian campaign.

In the old provinces of France Napoleon's indomitable will overcame all difficulties of a material kind.

Napoleon began to suspect his father-in-law, and still more the Austrian chancellor, Metternich; but instead of humouring them, he resolved to stand firm.

Napoleon would not hear of the terms. "I will not have your armed mediation.

Yet during the armistice which ensued (June 4th - July loth; afterwards prolonged to August loth) Napoleon did nothing to soothe the Viennese government, and that, too, despite the encouragement which the allies received from the news of Wellington's victory at Vittoria and the entry of Bernadotte with a Swedish contingent on the scene.

On the 27th of June she promised to join the allies in case Napoleon should not accept these terms.

These terms, it should be noted, would have kept Napoleon's empire intact except in Illyria; while the peace would have enabled him to reorganize his army and recover a host of French prisoners from Russia.

After the disastrous defeat of Leipzig (r 7th-19th Dctober 1813), when French domination in Germany and Italy -vanished like an exhalation, the allies gave Napoleon another opportunity to come to terms. The overtures known as the Frankfcrt terms were ostensibly an answer to the request for information which Napoleon made at the field of Leipzig.

Metternich persuaded the tsar and the king of Prussia to make a declaration that the allies would leave to Napoleon the "natural boundaries" of France - the Rhine, Alps, Pyrenees and Ocean.

The main object of the Austrian chancellor probably was to let Napoleon once more show to the world his perverse obstinacy.

Napoleon on his return to St Cloud inveighed against his ministers for talking so much about peace and declared that he would never give up Holland; France must remain a great empire, and not sink to the level of a mere kingdom.

Napoleon certainly believed that the offer was insincere.

Murat now joined the allies; Germany, Switzerland and Holland were lost to Napoleon; but when the allies began to invade Alsace and Lorraine, they found the French staunch in his support.

Never did Napoleon and France appear more united than in the campaign of 1814.

For this Napoleon cared little, provided that he had the army behind him.

To continue the strife when Wellington was firmly established on the line of the Garonne, and Lyons and Bordeaux had hoisted the Bourbonfleur de lys, was seen by all but Napoleon to be sheer madness; but it needed the pressure of his marshals in painful interviews at Fontainebleau to bring him to reason.

Meanwhile Napoleon, after narrow escapes from royalist mobs in Provence, was conducted in the British cruiser "Undaunted" to Elba.

Thus, everything portended a renewal of Napoleon's activity.

Ney, who had said that Napoleon ought to be brought to Paris in an iron cage, joined him with 6000 men on the 14th of March; and five days later the emperor entered the capital, whence Louis XVIII.

Napoleon was not misled by the enthusiasm of the provinces and Paris.

On the whole it seems safe to assert that it was the change in France far more than the change in his [Napoleon's] health which brought about the manifest constraint of the emperor in the Hundred Days.

At Lyons, on the 13th of March, Napoleon had issued an edict dissolving the existing chambers and ordering the convocation of a national mass meeting, or Champ de Mai, for the purpose of modifying the constitution of the Napoleonic empire.

Other causes of offence arose, and Napoleon in his last communication to them warned them not to imitate the Greeks of the later Empire, who engaged in subtle discussions when the ram was battering at their gates.

If ever a man was condemned by his past, Napoleon was so in 1815.

The career of Napoleon, which had lured France far away from the principles of 1789, now brought her back to that starting-point; just as, in the physical sphere, his campaigns from1796-1814had at first enormously swollen her bulk and then subjected her to a shrinkage still more portentous.

Napoleon himself at last divined that truth.

It was on this understanding (which Las Cases afterwards misrepresented) that Napoleon on the 15th of July mounted the deck of the "Bellerophon."

The first governor of the island, General Wilks, was soon superseded, it being judged that he was too amenable to influence from Napoleon; his successor was Sir Hudson Lowe.

The memoirs (which may be accepted as mainly Napoleon's, though Montholon undoubtedly touched them up) range over most of the events of his life from Toulon to Marengo.

The folly of the monarchs of the Holy Alliance in Europe gained for the writings of Montholon and Las Cases (that of Gourgaud was not published till 1899) a ready reception, with the result that Napoleon reappeared in the literature of the ensuing decades wielding an influence scarcely less potent than that of the grey-coated figure into whose arms France flung herself on his return from Elba.

It was this perversion of fact which rendered possible the career of Napoleon III.

The great source for Napoleon's life is the Correspondance de Napoleon I.

Though garbled in several places by the imperial commission appointed by Napoleon III.

Talleyrand (Prince de Benevento), Lettres inedites a Napoleon, 1800-1809 (Paris, 1889).

Many of the works relating to Napoleon's detention at St Helena are perversions of the truth, e.g.

Among the churches of this period we may mention San Geminiano, designed by Sansovino, and destroyed at the beginning of the 19th century to make room for the ball-room built by Napoleon for Eugene Beauharnais.

The grey column is surmounted by a fine bronze lion of Byzantine style, cast in Venice for Doge Ziani about 1178 (this was carried off to Paris by Napoleon in 1797, and sent back in pieces in 1816; but in 1893 it was put together again); and in 1329 a marble statue of St Theodore, standing upon a crocodile, was placed on the other column.

Side by side with these changes has proceeded the reorganization of the Royal Gallery of Ancient Art, which, created by Napoleon I.

Napoleon was determined to destroy the oligarchical government, and seized the pretext that Venice was hostile to him and a menace to his line of retreat while engaged in his Austrian campaign of 1797.

On the 17th of October Napoleon handed Venice over to Austria by the peace of Campo Formio, and between 1798 and 1814 she passed from France to Austria and Austria to France till the coalition of that latter year assigned her definitely to Austria.

In 1810 it was divided by Napoleon between the grand duchy of Berg and France, but was, in 1815, restored to the duke of Arenberg as a fief under Prussian sovereignty.

In 1803, having formally surrendered the part of Hesse on the left bank of the Rhine which had been taken from him in the early days of the Revolution, Louis received in return a much larger district which had formerly belonged to the duchy of Westphalia, the electorate of Mainz and the bishopric of Worms. In 1806, being a member of the confederation of the Rhine, he took the title of Louis I., grandduke of Hesse; he supported Napoleon with troops from 1805 to 1813, but after the battle of Leipzig he joined the allies.

The great political events which occurred during his boyhood and youth seem to have had less effect on him than on many of his contemporaries, and he was not carried away either by enthusiastic admiration for Napoleon or by the patriotic fervour of 1813.

It is impossible here to describe in detail his relations to Napoleon, and the part which he played in the drawing up of the Civil Code, later on called the Code Napoleon.

He was a celebrated gourmet, and his dinners were utilized by Napoleon as a useful adjunct to the arts of statecraft.

The Empire heaped favours upon him, but in 1814 he abandoned Napoleon, and voted for his deposition.

The mortuary chapel attached to the Roman Catholic church of St Mary was built to receive the body of Napoleon III., who died at Camden Place in 1873; and that of his son was brought hither in 1879.

The house was the residence not only of Napoleon III., but of the empress Eugenie and of the prince imperial, who is commemorated by a memorial cross on Chislehurst Common.

In any case the proposal was well received at Paris both by Napoleon and by his ministers; and though there were difficulties respecting the divorce, of Josephine, yet these were surmounted in a way satisfactory to the emperor and the prelates of Austria.

His joy was complete when on the 10th of March 1811 she bore him a son who was destined to bear the empty titles of "king of Rome" and "Napoleon II."

The regard of Napoleon for his consort was evidenced shortly before the birth of this prince, when he bade the physicians, if the lives of the mother and of the child could not both be saved, to spare her life.

Before the campaign of 1812 she accompanied the emperor to Dresden; but after that scene of splendour misfortunes crowded upon Napoleon.

At the time of Napoleon's first abdication (April 11, 1814), Joseph and Jerome Bonaparte tried to keep the empress under some measure of restraint at Blois; but she succeeded in reaching her father the emperor Francis while Napoleon was on his way to Elba.

During the Hundred Days she remained in Austria and manifested no desire for the success of Napoleon in France.

Long before the tidings of the death of Napoleon at St Helena reached her she was living in intimate relations with Neipperg at Parma, and bore a son to him not long after that event.

Napoleon on the other hand spoke of her in his will with marked tenderness, and both excused and forgave her infidelity to him.

In 1832, at the time of the last illness of the duke of Reichstadt, she visited him at Vienna and was there at the time of his death; but in other respects she shook off all association with Napoleon.

Here, on the 20th of April 1809, Napoleon gained a signal victory over the Austrians under the Archduke Louis and General Hiller.

During the struggle of Spain against Napoleon, the island, in common with the other American dominions, was represented in the Spanish Cortes and had its first legislative assembly.

But he is remembered chiefly in connexion with the "caseshot attack" which was the central feature of Napoleon's matured tactical system, and which Senarmont put into execution for the first time at Friedland.

For this feat he was made a baron, and in 1808 he was promoted general of division by Napoleon on the field of battle in front of Madrid.

He attempted, though vainly, to use his influence to moderate Napoleon's policy, especially in the matter of Spain and the treatment of the pope.

His family was Sienese in origin, and his father, Colonel Domenico Pecci, had served in the army of Napoleon.

In the district between the Grand Square and the western harbour, one of the poorest quarters of the city, is an open space with Fort Caffareli or Napoleon in the centre.

The project of the Code Napoleon, however - the code itself not being available in Louisiana, though promulgated in France in 1804 - was used by the compilers in the arrangement and substance of their work; and the French traditions of the colony, thus illustrated, were naturally introduced more and more into the organic commentaries and developments that grew up around the Code Napoleon.

But the sultan could not bend his pride to suffer foreign intervention in a matter that touched his honour, and the return of Napoleon from Elba threw the Eastern Question into the background.

By his action during Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion, and later when the British fleet after leaving Constantinople in 1807 proceeded to Egypt, he had to some extent acquired the goodwill of the Turkish government.

Commercial and criminal codes, as well as codes of procedure, were drawn up, largely on the basis of the Code Napoleon.

The quarrels of these monks might have been left to the contempt they deserved, had not Napoleon III.

But neither Napoleon nor Nicholas desired a settlement.

In the present article are described the campaigns in central and eastern Europe, directed by Napoleon - no longer one amongst many French generals,.

Napoleon's short Spanish Campaign of 1809 is dealt with under Peninsular War (this article covering the campaigns in Spain, Portugal and southern France 1808-1814), and for the final drama of Waterloo the reader is referred to Waterloo Campaign.

Napoleon's determination to undertake the invasion of England has often been disputed, but it is hard to imagine what other operation he contemplated, for the outbreak of hostilities with his continental enemies found him ill-supplied with intelligence as to the resources of the country he had then to traverse.

The outbreak of the campaign was hastened by the desire of the Austrian government to feed their own army and leave a bare country for Napoleon by securing the resources of Bavaria.

In the former, however, they were successful, and the destitution they left in their wake almost wrecked Napoleon's subsequent combinations.

By constructing an entrenched camp at Ulm and concentrating all the available food within it, he expected to compel Napoleon to invest and besiege him, and he anticipated that in the devastated country his adversary would be compelled to separate and thus fall an easy prey to the Russians.

It was on the 21st that Napoleon learnt of Mack's presence in Ulm.

On the 26th of September, its deployment beyond the mountains was complete, and as Napoleon did not know of Mack's intention to stay at Ulm and had learned that the Russian advance had been delayed, he directed his columns by the following roads on the Danube, between Donauworth and Ingolstadt, so as to be in a position to intervene between the Austrians and the Russians and beat both in detail.

Bernadotte in his turn became an army of observation, and Napoleon joining Murat with the main body marched rapidly westward from the Lech towards the Iller.

Mack's intentions were not what Napoleon supposed.

He had meanwhile received (false) information of a British landing at Boulogne, and he was seriously deceived as to the numbers of Napoleon's forces.

To this Napoleon consented, but hardly had the agreement been signed than he succeeded in introducing a number of individual French soldiers into the fortress, who began rioting with the Austrian soldiery.

Napoleon now hastened to rejoin the group of corps he had left under Bernadotte in observation towards the Russians, for the latter were nearer at hand than even Mack had assumed.

But hearing of his misfortune they retreated before Napoleon's advance along the right bank of the Danube to Krems, where they crossed the river and withdrew to an entrenched camp near Olmi tz to pick up fresh Austrian reinforcements.

The severe actions of Diirrenstein (near Krems) ors the iith, and of Hollabriinn on the 26th of November, in which Napoleon's marshals learned the tenacity of their new opponents, and the surprise of the Vienna bridge (November 14) by the French, were the chief incidents of this period in the campaign.

About the 10th of November this force commenced its advance, and Napoleon concentrated in such a manner that within three days he could bring over 80,000 French troops into action around Briinn, besides 17,000 or more Bavarians under Wrede.

Napoleon's object being surprise, all the cavalry except a few vedettes were kept back behind the leading infantry columns and these latter were ordered to advance, on the signal being given, in " masses of manoeuvre, " so as to crush at once any outpost resistance which was calculated upon the time required for the deployment of ordinary marching columns.

In the meanwhile, however, the Saxons had been moving from Naumburg through Gera on' Jena, Hohenlohe was near Weimar, and all the other divisions of the army had closed in a march eastwards, the idea of an offensive to the southward which Napoleon had himself attributed to them having already disappeared.

The traces of the Saxons were lost, and Napoleon, little satisfied with his cavalry, authorized Lasalle to offer up to 6000 frs.

During the early morning of the 13th the reports brought to Napoleon at Gera partially cleared up the situation, though the real truth was very different from what he supposed.

On the road from Gera to Jena Napoleon was met by intelligence from Lannes announcing his occupation of Jena and the discovery of Prussian troops to the northward.

At this moment the Prussians were actually on parade and ready to move off to attack, but just then the " evil genius " of the Prussian army, von Massenbach, an officer of the Headquarter Staff, rode up and claiming to speak with the authority of the king and commander-in-chief, induced Hohenlohe to order his troops back to camp. Of all this Napoleon saw nothing, but from all reports he came to the conclusion that the whole Prussian army was actually in front of him, and at once issued orders for his whole army to concentrate towards Jena, marching all night if need be.