“Soldiers of France! From the top of these pyramids, forty centuries behold you!”. This sentence, said by Napoleon Bonaparte to your soldiers during the Battle of the Pyramids, in Egypt, in June 1798, is one of the many catchphrases the French leader uttered throughout his life. Napoleon was one of the most iconic figures in human history.
Those who were his contemporaries, both enthusiasts and detractors, compared him to great conquerors likeAlexander the Great, of Macedonia, and Otávio Augusto, in Pomegranate. your genius as war strategist and his great skills as a politician are, today, something consensual among specialists in his biography.
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Military life and political rise of Napoleon Bonaparte
Napoleon was born in 1769 in Ajaccio, a town in French Corsica. He was the son of a couple of Italian aristocrats, subjects of the French absolutist monarchy. Like most young European aristocrats of the 18th century, Napoleon, after completing his basic studies,
opted for a military career and enrolled at the Military School in Paris, where he studied war strategies and specialized in artillery.when the French Revolution, in 1789, Napoleon was in Corsica, involved in conflicts between revolutionary republicans and royalists until 1792, when has explicitly positioned itself in favor of Convention installed by the Jacobins (the most radical wing of the French revolutionaries), which was characterized by the so-called “Revolutionary Terror”.
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In his military campaign in Italy, Napoleon, despite being very young, managed to become one of the most outstanding officers of the French army. However, when the Jacobin terror phase came to an end in 1794, Napoleon, being associated with that faction, was arrested. His arrest, however, did not take long, as those responsible for the end of the Convention needed the Napoleon's military knowledge for the military campaigns to be waged in North Africa, especially in the Egypt.
In 1798, Napoleon went with his troops to Egypt, where France was fighting the alliance between the Turkish-Ottoman Empire, Great Britain and the Mamluks. The famous Battle of the Pyramids, mentioned in the first paragraph of this text, took place during this phase. In the Egyptian campaign, Napoleon noted for capturing the city of Alexandria and for having stimulated several studies on the THEseniority ANDgyptian, taking many antique shops from France to document what was found. Among these findings is the Rosetta Stone, a stone block with inscriptions in Greek, hieroglyphic and demotic that would serve to decipher the Egyptian writing years later.
The Consulate Stage
In 1799, a new phase of the Revolution in France began, the Consulate. This phase resulted from a political coup engineered by members of the upper bourgeoisie, some nobles and members of the army who, together with Napoleon, sought a strong and centralizing government. The day of the coup was named by scholars on the subject as ‘The 18th Brumaire’ (Brumaire was one of the months of the year, after the change in the calendar during the French Revolution, and corresponded to the period from 22 September to 31 December).
This coup is considered as the start of Napoleonic era. At the Consulate, political power was divided between three: in addition to Napoleon, there were also Roger Ducos and Emmanuel Sieyès. This structure lasted until the year 1804, when, through a plebiscite, Napoleon managed to become emperor.
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the Napoleonic Empire
The phase of the Empire was characterized by the intense wars fought across the continent of Europe. These wars were seen by Napoleon and his followers as "liberators", given that their target The main issue was not the States, specifically, but a model of political support that permeated most of them to the season: the monarchical absolutism.
Another feature of the Napoleonic Empire was the deep social and political reforms implemented in France, such as those associated with the Napoleonic Civil Code, which dealt with fundamental rights such as freedom of expression and thought, the right to come and go, the right to property and several others that would constitute the democratic constitutions of Western nations from the XIX century.
As emperor, Napoleon “collected” enemies. The kingdoms of Austria, Prussia and Russia were among the main ones, given that they were those that still symbolized the absolutist structure in Europe. In addition to these kingdoms, England – which was already a historic enemy of France – also became one of the main obstacles to Napoleon's project of imperialist domination. It was against the English that Napoleon decreed the Continental Lock, that is, a series of economic sanctions that countries subordinate to the French Empire should apply to England. These sanctions were a strategy to weaken British power in a way other than the military, as that, being an island and possessing a navy more powerful than the French, England became an enemy Unbeatable.
End of Napoleonic Empire
the Napoleonic Empire started to face several problems from the year 1812. Napoleon, at this point, had two great battle fronts on the European continent: one to the West, in the Iberian Peninsula, against the Spaniards, and the other to the East, against the Austrians, Prussians and the German principalities.
Russia, which until then was following the sanctions of the Continental Blockade, broke with France and entered the war against Napoleon. THE war of Napoleonic troops against Russia it was one of the most fateful for the French Empire. The harsh winter appeased Napoleon's soldiers.
From then on, Napoleon began to lose his strength as emperor. Russia, Prussia and Austria managed to invade France in 1815. Napoleon surrendered and was exiled to the island of Elba. However, shortly thereafter, he was able to articulate his escape, reassemble his army, and regain power for a period of one hundred days.
This short period came to an end with the famous Battle of Waterloo, in which his army was defeated by the alliance between English, Austrian, Russian and Prussian. After this defeat, Napoleon was exiled again, but this time on the island of Santa Helena, in the South Atlantic, far from the European continent, remaining there under British custody until the year 1821, when he died.
It is noteworthy that many nineteenth-century novels had the figure of Napoleon as a background. Some examples are from Stendhal (the red and the black and The Charter of Parma), Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment) and Tolstoy (War and peace).
By Me. Cláudio Fernandes
