Napoleon I (1769–1821,) also called Napoléon Bonaparte, was the Emperor of France 1804–14 and 1815. One of the greatest military conquerors in history, he remade the map of Europe through his conquests. His significant administrative and legal reforms promoted the growth of liberalism.
Of racially Italian background, Napoleon was born Napoleone Buonaparte in Ajaccio in Corsica. He was educated in the military schools at Brienne (1779) and Paris (1784.) After a meteoric rise through the French Revolutionary Army, Napoleon took power in 1799 as First Consul and assumed the hereditary title of Emperor in 1804.
Napoleon’s many reforms left a lasting mark on the institutions of France and of much of Western Europe. He revolutionized military organization and training, established a French empire that stretched from Spain to Poland, dissolved the Holy Roman Empire, and instituted the long-lived Concordat with the papacy. He also sponsored the Napoleonic Code, the modern French legal, administrative, and educational systems.
Napoleon’s driving passion was the military expansion of French dominion. After his disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812, he was forced into exile in 1814, and, returning to power a year later, was defeated at Waterloo (1815) by the Duke of Wellington’s Anglo-allied army. The British government banished Napoleon to the distant island of St. Helena in the mid-Atlantic, where he died of a stomach illness and was buried in the Valley of the Willows there.
Napoleon’s remains were brought to Paris in 1840 and given a magnificent funeral. Since 1861, his tomb is located in the crypt under the dome at Les Invalides.
Notable biographies of Napoleon include the British historian Andrew Roberts’s Napoleon the Great (2014; USA: Napoleon: A Life) and Frank Kafker and James Laux’s Napoleon and His Times (1989.)
The Foundation Napoléon archives the Emperor’s 33,000 surviving letters.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Napoleon I
Vengeance has no foresight.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Vengeance, Revenge, One liners
Chance is the providence of adventurers.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Chance
America is a fortunate country; she grows by the follies of our European nations.
—Napoleon I
Topics: America
It is the cause and not merely the death that makes the martyr.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Heroes, Leadership, Leaders
The Empress is legitimate, my cousin is Republican, Morny is Orleanist, I am a socialist; the only Bonapartist is Persigny, and he is mad.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Politicians, Politics
Even in war moral power is to physical as three parts out of four.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Power
The conscience is the sacred haven of the liberty of man.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Conscience
Un croquis vaut mieux qu
—Napoleon I
Topics: Art
My dominion ends where that of conscience begins.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Conscience
When firmness is sufficient, rashness is unnecessary.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Leadership, Leaders
The strong man is the one who is able to intercept at will the communication between the senses and the mind.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Men, Self-Control, Control, Discipline
I love power. But it is as an artist that I love it. I love it as a musician loves his violin, to draw out its sounds and chords and harmonies.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Power
All the scholastic scaffolding falls, as a ruined edifice, before one single word—faith.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Faith, Belief
You medical people will have more lives to answer for in the other world than even we generals.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Doctors, Medicine
The art of the police is not to see what it is useless that it should see.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Control, Police
The torment of precautions often exceeds often exceeds the dangers to be avoided. It is sometimes better to abandon one’s self to destiny.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Caution
Men are led by trifles.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Leadership, Leaders, Trifles
Fashion condemns us to many follies; the greatest is to make ourselves its slave.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Fashion
The true wealth of a state consists in the number of its inhabitants, in their toil and industry.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Work
To become a good man, one must have faithful friends, or outright enemies.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Goodness, Friendship
The greatest general is he who makes the fewest mistakes.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Mistakes, Army, Navy, Failures, The Military
Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and myself founded empires; but what foundation did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ founded an empire upon love; and at this hour millions of men would die for Him.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Christianity, Religion
Power is founded upon opinion.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Public opinion
History is a myth that men agree to believe.
—Napoleon I
Topics: History, One liners
When I was happy I thought I knew men, but it was fated that I should know them only in misfortune.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Misfortune
Glory is fleeting,
but obscurity is forever.
—Napoleon I
A celebrated people lose dignity upon a closer view.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Respect, Respectability
In politics… never retreat, never retract… never admit a mistake.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Mistakes, Politics, Society, Politicians
Revolutions are like the most noxious dung-heaps, which bring into life the noblest vegetables.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Revolution
A man’s palate can, in time, become accustomed to anything.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Style, Taste
An order that can be misunderstood will be misunderstood.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Leaders, Leadership
I tell you Wellington is a bad general, the English are bad soldiers; we will settle this matter by lunch time.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Argument
The French complain of everything, and always.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Nationalism, Nationality, Nations, Nation
Do you wish to find out the really sublime? Repeat the Lord’s Prayer.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Christians, Christianity
It requires more courage to suffer than to die.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Bravery, Suffering, Courage
There is no place in a fanatic’s head where reason can enter.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Fanaticism
Courage is like love; it must have hope for nourishment.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Courage, Hope, Bravery
We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Humor
Medicine is a collection of uncertain prescriptions, the results of which, taken collectively, are more fatal than useful to mankind.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Medicine
Large legislative bodies resolve themselves into coteries, and coteries into jealousies.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Government
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