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
In politics, an absurdity in public business is going into it.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Politicians, Politics
What a delightful thing rest is!—The bed has become a place of luxury to me.—I would not exchange it for all the thrones in the world.
—Napoleon I
Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Glory
When I want any, good head work done; I always choose a man, if possible with a long nose.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Quality
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
War is the business of barbarians.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Business, War
You think you are too intelligent to believe in God.—I am not like you.—Not every one who wishes to be is an atheist.
—Napoleon I
The people to fear are not those who disagree with you, but those who disagree with you and are too cowardly to let you know.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Conflict, Fear
The greatest ornament of an illustrious life is modesty and humility, which go a great way in the character even of the most exalted princes.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Modesty
A revolution is an idea which has found its bayonets.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Revolution
Tragedy warms the soul, elevates the heart, and can and ought to create heroes. In this sense, perhaps, France owes a part of her great actions to Corneille.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Tragedy
Ability is of little account without opportunity.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Opportunity
Once you have made up your mind, stick to it; there is no longer any ‘if’ or ‘but’.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Decisions
All the scholastic scaffolding falls, as a ruined edifice, before one single word—faith.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Belief, Faith
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
Let the path be open to talent.
—Napoleon I
There are times when a battle decides everything, and there are times when the most insignificant thing can decide the outcome of a battle
—Napoleon I
Topics: Decision, Battle
You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Fighting, Competition
“Why” and “how” are words so important that they cannot be too often used.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Words, Questions
Great people are meteors designed to burn so that the earth may be lighted.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Greatness & Great Things, Greatness
When soldiers have been baptized in the fire of a battle-field, they have all one rank in my eyes.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Soldiers, Conflict
History is a set of lies agreed upon.
—Napoleon I
Topics: History
Let France have good mothers, and she will have good sons.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Mothers, Mother, Family
The future destiny of the child is always the work of the mother.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Mother, Future, The Future, Children
Genuine victories, the sole conquests yielding no remorse, are those gained over ignorance
—Napoleon I
Topics: Victory
I fear three newspapers more than a hundred thousand bayonets.
—Napoleon I
The French complain of everything, and always.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Nationality, Nations, Nation, Nationalism
The great proof of madness is the disproportion of one’s designs to one’s means.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Insanity
Public instruction should be the first object of government.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Government, Education
If you want a thing done well, do it yourself.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Control
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