A conqueror who rose from revolutionary general to emperor
In the coup of 9–10 November 1799 (18 Brumaire), he conspired with Talleyrand and Sieyès and used troops with fixed bayonets to disperse the Council of Five Hundred and overturn the Directory, then took effective power as First Consul.
Born into an Italian-descended Corsican family, he was commissioned in the French royal artillery in 1785, supported the Revolution of 1789, and rose through his victories over royalists at Toulon in 1793 and Vendémiaire in 1795. The Italian campaign of 1796 made him a national hero, and in November 1799 the Brumaire coup overthrew the Directory and made him First Consul; in 1804 he became emperor of the First Empire. He won at Austerlitz in 1805 but was ruined by the Russian campaign of 1812 and Leipzig in 1813, was exiled to Elba in 1814, and after the Hundred Days lost at Waterloo and died on Saint Helena in 1821. His reforms such as the Napoleonic Code and public education endure, while the plunder of occupied lands, suppression of the press and deportation or imprisonment of critics, and the restoration of slavery in the colonies make him a contested figure.
Also known as: Napoleon I · Napoléon Bonaparte
Activities and affiliations
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1799–1815
Consulate and First Empire state institutionsFirst Consul, Emperor of the FrenchHeads of state and government of FranceMain
Government and administration- Provisional Consul1799
- First Consul1799–1804
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1804–1815
Consulate and First Empire state institutionsEmperor of the FrenchHeads of state and government of France
Monarchs and royalty
Career Timeline
- 1785Commissioned as an artillery second lieutenant in the French royal army.
- 1793Led the recapture of Toulon and was promoted to brigadier general.
- 1795Suppressed the royalist rising of Vendémiaire.
- 1796–1797Commanded the Army of Italy, defeating Austrian forces.
- 1798–1799Commanded the Egyptian and Syrian expedition.
- 1799Overthrew the Directory in the Brumaire coup and became First Consul.
- 1804.05.18–1814.04.06Ruled as emperor of the French First Empire.
- 1815Returned to power for the Hundred Days and was finally defeated at Waterloo.
Related historical events
- 1789–1799French RevolutionCoup leader who overthrew the DirectoryIn November 1799, he overthrew the Directory in the Brumaire coup and became First Consul.
- 1791–1804The Haitian RevolutionFirst Consul who ordered the expeditionAnswered Toussaint's constitution by sending the Leclerc expedition in 1801 with secret plans to restore slavery, and reinstated colonial slavery by the Law of 20 May 1802.
- 1792–1802French Revolutionary Warscommander of the Italian campaignHe won the Italian campaign, created sister republics through the Treaty of Campo Formio, and later seized power in the Brumaire coup.
Codifying civil law, 1800-1804
Napoleon's most durable legacy was not a battlefield victory but a civil code. Pre-revolutionary France had no single body of law: local customs, seigneurial privileges and royal charters were layered together, and even after the Revolution abolished the vestiges of feudalism, the demand to replace the many different bodies of law with a single code remained unresolved from the Constituent Assembly's vote of 5 October 1790. The drafts Cambaceres submitted in 1793, 1794 and 1796 were all rejected, and a fourth outline under the Directory was shelved. The turning point came in 1800. With his power consolidated by the victory at Marengo, Napoleon appointed a commission of four jurists on 12 August 1800: Maleville, Tronchet, Bigot de Preameneu and Portalis. Napoleon did not draft the code himself, but he chaired several of the commission's plenary sessions and was the political agent who forced it through. Sent to the Legislative Body as a preliminary bill in December 1801, it was rejected by 142 votes to 139; Napoleon responded on 2 January 1802 by announcing the suspension of all projects, effectively closing the assemblies' sessions and berating the Senate, and these tactics cowed the legislature into giving him the majority he needed. The code took effect on 21 March 1804 and was renamed the Code Napoleon in 1807. Its content cut both ways. It abolished the patchwork of feudal laws and established clearly written, accessible law, equality before the law, and norms of property and contract; in family law, at the same time, it fixed in statute the European status quo of the husband's supremacy over wife and children, left women with fewer rights than children, and abolished divorce by mutual consent in 1804. The legal forms of property and exchange served the development of bourgeois society, but the class and gender hierarchy of that society was inscribed in the same code.