The Rise Of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte | History Hit | Timeline

This channel is part of the historical successes network. He was the man who would define the beginning of the 19th century. He has more documented victories than any other battlefield commander in

history

. I guess you'd think you knew him in terms of people like Julius Caesar or Alexander. and I would say that in many ways he is greater, he is one of the most influential military leaders of all time. Napoleon was exceptional because his men genuinely loved him from a relatively humble background. He rose to become master of Europe. Someone like that was converted. ruling

emperor

of the largest empire Europe has really seen since the middle ages it is simply amazing this is the

rise

of

napoleon

this government feels obliged to inform you of this new crisis in its entirety what matters is that Russia has been wrong in its response With this faith we will be able to transform the pending discourse of our nation.

The foreigner Napoleon Bonaparte began his life in relatively modest circumstances. He was born on August 15, 1769 on the island of Corsica. France had only acquired the island of the Republic of Genoa the previous year. came under French rule before the French Revolution.

napoleon

is someone who is essentially condemned to mediocrity. He comes from the minor nobility of a part of France that was only incorporated into France shortly before his birth. His family has a moderate influence on a local level, he has a large number of siblings, many outdoor activities, not much luxury, a mother Leticia who is down to earth and a father who is involved in politics, but in many senses is a bit useless when it comes to things like you.

You know he handles the family finances, the game, you know he leaves the family impoverished, so Carlo probably isn't someone a kid would necessarily look up to. Carlo Bonaparte and his wife Letitia, pregnant by Napoleon, had resisted the French takeover along with the Corsican nationalist leader Pasquale Paoli. However, it ultimately failed and Carlo Bonaparte, reading the writing on the wall, decided to change course, the French took over because, according to the record, it takes them about a year to more or less assert their control and Carlo Bonaparte and, therefore, extension of the Bonaparte family, they stopped being friendly. from pro-powerful freedom fighters for causing an independence to being collaborators and I think that's something that worries Napoleon as he grows up, but the French monarchy is very interested in integrating Corsica, so it's a great way to integrate new territories so you can meet the prominent ones. families send their sons into the civil service or, in the case of Napoleon, the army.

He manages to become a military officer, but an artillery officer, which is not particularly socially distinguished because to be an artillery officer you have to know things. and knowing things is very low class as far as aristocracy is concerned, so in a world of France in the 1780s that is highly aristocratic in its outlook, Napoleon is the kind of person who is really cooking up his own ambitions in a society that is deeply hierarchical and will never allow someone like him to ascend to greatness. Napoleon, not satisfied with his position in the army, decided that he would return to Corsica instead.

He was still a fervent believer in Corsican independence and sought out Pascual Paulie, the leader of Corsican nationalism. Napoleon returns to Corsica but is not welcomed by the powerless. The hero worships mightily, but I probably guess possibly that kind of thing because he can. The clan mentality says that you are a

bonaparte

, you are a collaborator. I don't really trust you, so him. He comes across as very cold and I think that's pretty devastating for a teenager right now, to be rejected by his hero. If you are enjoying this documentary and want to see more, you can watch the rest. of the series'

rise

to historic success, including the new episode The Rise of Cleopatra, here's a sneak peek.

It is a great story of a great individual, no doubt, it is also absolutely fundamental in the

history

of Egypt and in the history of the ancient world, from Caesar to Shakespeare. to modern cinema her story has remained as popular as ever her name despised idolized and mythologized cleopatra start your free trial today by clicking the link in the description and there is a special introductory offer for

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payment code, it's pretty clear that he the

bonaparte

s don't have a great future in corsica Napoleon is ultimately a pragmatist if you want to make a career if you want a future if you want to do something big you do it the French route Corsica is not going to get you anywhere because paulie is that kind of buffer he is that obstacle what Napoleon needed would be a world-shaking political and social upheaval that would eliminate the existing system of power and allow him to quickly rise through the ranks of the french army, as it turned out he would get his wish the people of france were rising up disillusioned with their disconnected monarchy france was going to revolution so the revolution of 1789 has very deep roots it is rooted in the dysfunction of the french monarchy its inability to finance its ambitions of being a world power and at the same time having a very hierarchical internal social structure where being rich and powerful essentially means that you don't have to pay many taxes and this comes to a tremendous climax in the 1780s, ironically after the French were on the winning side. of the American War of Independence, but by that time they have accumulated a burden of state debt so enormous that their rickety tax collection mechanisms can no longer cope.

The only way to reform the tax system is to reform the entire political and social structure. structure of France and it's, you know, I guess the analogy I would use is like if you're digging through a wool sweater, if you start pulling Fred, everything falls apart, so the French revolution starts with tremendous optimism, it starts with the belief that great changes can occur in society but it also begins with fear, paranoia and conspiracies the reason why the Parisians stormed the Bastille on July 14 is that three days before the king's brothers and other aristocrats of high ranking had fired the reformist government and were trying to put an end to the changes that had already been promoted and after July 1789 the national assembly that had met spent two years trying to write a monarchical constitution to have Lou on the 16th in the throne to have political participation, to have the right for everyone to pay their taxes and for everything to be good and great, but it continually encounters increasingly deeper problems and crises, that enlightened rationalism that told people that they could make reforms, too tells them that they can reform the Catholic church to For example, trying to reform the Catholic church clashes with the opinion of the upper echelons of society and this is one of the deep abysses that open within French society, so in 1791 and 1792 there is a truly latent state of civil war, all these tensions that have come to light during the previous three years are still brewing in the center of this civil war where the Jacobins led by Maximilian Robespierre were, well, the Jacobians are republicans and they are republicans of us, the radicals, these are people who wanted the execution of Louis XVI and are really looking for a very deep political transformation of France.

They not only want some kind of change at the top, but to keep the existing system practically as it is. They are very happy to use some form of violence and terror to drive evolution. Thereafter the Jacobins had a strong influence on Napoleon and when he returned to France and rejoined his regiment at Nice in June 1793, he wrote an account expressing his support for the radical republican group not long afterwards, perhaps as a result of this writing. pro-Jacobin. He was given his first big opportunity He was asked to lead the French artillery as Republican forces laid siege to the strategic port city of Toulon It is a natural port for this state It is still the main port of a French Mediterranean fleet So it is in 1793 Strategically immensely important For France, approximately a third of its fleet is stationed there in this period.

The problem is that, from a French revolutionary perspective, it is full of realists. It's full of people who don't like where France is going politically, so they give up the city. an allied force not only a British force but also a Spanish and Savoyard force that occupies that important strategic point that is then besieged by the French revolutionary forces of which the young Napoleon Bonaparte is a part and this is where Bonaparte really takes the stage as artillery. officer, he comes up with a plan to take one of the forts surrounding Toulon that has been resisting capture, but if they can take the fort they will be able to dominate the city and the poor people with their artillery and enemy doctor will become untenable. so he presents this, he presents it particularly to a civil politician named who is a nobleman of descent but is one of these radical Jacobin representatives and Napoleon is allowed to put this plan into action and Napoleon's contribution during the siege of Toulon happens. the 24 year old artillery officer a promotion to the rank of brigadier general however not everything was so simple the tide in france was turning and the people were rising again this time against the jacobins whose reign of terror was coming to an end on newly promoted General Bonaparte, whose connections with the Jacobins that helped him achieve this position were now on rocky ground, the Jacobins of course did not last, they attempted to promote the idea of ​​the republic and in doing so killed some 40,000 of their enemies and Naturally, people became very suspicious that they were going to be the next being, since the professional soldier is a bit dangerous in the period of the French armies because regimes come and go in Paris with increasing rapidity. increasingly, so if you bind yourself to a certain regime that regime at some point is more than likely to collapse and your career could possibly collapse along with it and Napoleon is associated with the Jacobins has published a pamphlet that gives him a note from Maximilian Robspeer's brother and so when the public security committee under Maximilian Robspia is overthrown in Thermador's coup Napoleon is almost dragged by that regime he is not dragged to his death but his career is put on hold and his meteoric rise is halting for a period the Fermidorian reaction as it became known introduced a new regime that hoped to unite the now fractured politicians of left and right, but achieving it was easier said than done after the fall of Rob Speer in July 1794, the survivors of terror they spent the next year actually deciding how to put France back together, dealing with vengeful impulses from both the left and the right, so these Thermadorians retreat towards a political center that is therefore always more right-wing than some of the other surviving Jacobins would like, but clearly much more left-wing.

Many surviving monarchists would like it, and monarchism itself comes to express a whole spectrum of opinions, from outright counter-revolutionaries who would hang everyone to people who are starting to think well, maybe a constitutional monarchy wouldn't be such a bad idea, since we've been a disaster to have a republic, but all this is brewing in the mix until 1795, when these Thermadorians decide to have a new constitution, it causes what is always known as a royalist uprising of the western districts of Paris for Napoleon, this uprising offered him a chance at redemption in the eyes of the low french government, who is the main politician in paris at the time, chooses napoleon to have a role in fighting the royalist plot, not necessarily because he thought napoleon was a great guy, but because of the memory of Toulon and what Napoleon had been able to do there and Napoleon Bonaparte, who is a junior general at this time, with help manages to get some artillery again, someone who will be very important in Napoleon's later career as to develop, he is this cavalry commander, Napoleon Bonaparte ordered the 12th horse chaser to seize the nearby artillery and then the artillery is deployed very ruthlessly, using grape shot, which is essentially some basketballs and pieces of metal fragments and these are fired from artillery against a mass of realistic insurgents and you know.

The coup attempt is over and we have a very grateful French republican government that, if you will, owes Napoleon one that smells like a grape drink. Napoleon became a household name, winning him the favor of the Directorate, the new power in France, which reinstated the 26-year-old as a brigadier general and gave him his first real command in the army of Italy, but before embarking on his First campaign, Napoleon met Josephine de Boharne and married her.her at a ceremony on March 9, 1796. Josephine was a widow whose husband had been executed during the Reign of Terror Josephine is old as a Napoleon She is very much a bit of a bug in this regime that is known as ours directory is a regime that has been associated with corruption both financial and moral and josephine is elegantly charming and napoleon is by all accounts in love with her, i guess what is significant is that she is connected to the highest levels of the french regime, in particular something called baga which is within the directorial government and you really need that kind of connection for your career to progress and this, of course, is on the eve of possibly the most important breakthrough in Napoleon's career, which is his appointment as commanding general of the army of italy, so the army of italy is relatively small, 20 30 000 men poorly supplied, really neglected compared to some of the other fronts where there has been more fighting over the last year or two armies in the north They have won great victories in 1795.

So Napoleon goes to this army and presents himself in a sense as their savior, who is the man who will lead them to things greater than himself. famously tells them that you are new, you are here and you have nothing you have no boots you have no money you have no food there is Italy is full of wealth and we are going to go look for it and it will be glory for you glory for us glory for me and that is in great Depending on the spirit he adopts in the campaign, there is a kind of gratuitous plunder, an almost piratical mix of motifs, but in the end.

At the same time, it is also about France and glory and represents a broader ideal. His enemy was the Austrian Empire, whose forces vastly surpassed his. No one was intimidated by the task ahead. Napoleon immediately went on the offensive. He moves fast. He often moves unexpectedly. As far as the enemy is concerned, there is that vigor that is often lacking on the Austrian side. You have that great eye for geography. He can see where to advance, where to cut off the enemy's supplies, where to make the enemy feel like he can. They do not try, if necessary, along their own supply lines.

The Napoleonic War, which actually begins in this period, is characterized by rapid movements and in Italy, from 1796 to 97, consistently overpowers the Austrian enemy, expels them from a wide range of different territories and the Austrians. In the fall of 1797, something like knocking down the tower became easy for them because Napoleon Bonaparte again acts pragmatically and as a trade with them, so that the Austrians actually receive Venice in exchange for territories that they are forced to give up. France and I think what is significant there from the point of view of Napoleon's career is that he is beginning to act as both a statesman and a soldier.

He is making high-level geopolitical decisions without much reference to the government in Paris, you might say. basically they have to accept what he signed: Napoleon is a great leader on the battlefield, he is a great military leader in the strict sense, what he also begins to show during the years in Italy is his very strong conviction of himself as someone with the right to be a political leader as well as having the right to be treated almost like a monarch and while he is there in Milan he sets up shop in what is effectively a palace and in fact he expands it and puts up large tents in the palace gardens so that more people can come and court him so that it becomes the kind of place you have to come to if you want something from the French authorities and present yourself to Bonaparte, who is sitting there in a throne room waiting to have these audiences with you and him establishes himself very clearly and then, when he returns to Paris at the end of 1797, he very carefully leaves all that behind and enters Paris in an ordinary carriage, dressed in civilian clothes, and presents himself very humbly before his political masters because it is playing on both sides against the middle.

He likes to be in charge, to be the unquestionable leader and ruler, but he knows that if he is not careful he will be put in prison, so he is playing a power game very clearly since these days in Italy. Thereafter, Napoleon returned to Paris as a hero. The 28-year-old had defeated the Austrian empire while more experienced French generals had gained little ground on the battlefields of northern Germany. Now it was time to focus his attention on France's greatest enemy, the British, but instead of confronting each other. this enemy from the north with a direct attack looked east the idea of ​​looking east looking east for some kind of strategic advantage is not unusual it has been part of long term French strategic thinking what they are looking at in 1798 en An interesting amalgamation of ideas is that the confrontation with Britain in the northwest has really reached a stalemate and they are looking for another way to break away from that sort of simple army-navy dichotomy that they have there. the Mediterranean, of course, is much more difficult, at least in theory, for the British navy to operate in.

Napoleon persuades the politicians in Paris, who were easily persuaded because, after all, Napoleon is now quite popular, he is extremely good at advertising, organizes advertising and organizes influence networks. and he is spoken of as someone who should have more of a political role in paris, something that politicians, of course, the director does not want to know, which is why napoleon was allowed to leave for egypt following in the footsteps of two of his greatest idols of antiquity for napoleon, you know that he is going to operate this exotic place where julius caesar and alexander the great have been conquerors, you can see how it is going to trigger napoleon's imagination, napoleon wants to go east because, as he said, the This is where all the great glory comes from and he clearly wants great glory, it's not about what he can do for other people, it's very clearly about what he can do for himself to be greater and he will take Egypt.

Obviously, his army. strength and also this remarkable scientific force that he brings together, that several dozen hundreds of scientists and their associates will found something called the egypt institute, parallel to the national institute of sciences that has been created in paris, they are going to investigate egypt as a source of economic power as a source of raw materials, as well as a place where the French can have more influence going east, towards India, they go to Egypt, which has recently been, of course, part of a Muslim empire with a language that they didn't know I don't know, hardly anyone on those ships going to Egypt had any knowledge of Arabic and the knowledge they had was classical Arabic and what they were given to inform them about Egypt was what they had read when they were students, which was Herodotus and its absolutely brilliant. story of ancient Egyptian society and culture, most of them also had a dual purpose: these intellectuals, so they have a role in things like military logistics management, but in the other half of their professional life they are taking sketches of these wonderful ones. monuments that see cataloging, collecting and discovering objects like the rosetta stone and in many ways creating that modern subject area of ​​Egyptology the Egyptians had not really seen a military expedition on this scale certainly not the Egyptians were alive at the time It's a colossal military expedition in terms of number of ships and troops that the French bring, so I think you could talk about shock and awe in the initial phase, Napoleon makes all kinds of promises. he adopts language that he believes will be attractive to Egyptians as he observes how Napoleon reaches out to the contemporary population of Egypt.

There are also some very deeply negative aspects. There they come in with this very superior enlightened attitude that you can just exploit Islam. Can. Can. Lie to people and say that you sympathize with Islam and then they will obey you and, particularly at the beginning of the French occupation, there were some very cynical attempts to persuade the general population that French republicanism, because it is anti-Catholic, is pro-Islamic. and it is always completely superficial, cynical and manipulative and also associated again with projecting Bonaparte as some kind of personal savior who is somehow involved in this syncretic image that they want to present not only as the leader of the army but as himself as a leader whose personal qualities will bring good things to the Egyptians but, of course, in practice, as many people will discover when they are occupied by a Napoleonic army, it is a matter of plunder, requisition, theft, physical abuse and In the end, it was a Completely unpleasant occupation experience for the Egyptians, but things quickly turned ugly for Napoleon, thinking he was beyond the reach of the British Royal Navy.

He was taken by surprise when Admiral Horatio Nelson destroyed the French fleet at the Battle of the Nile in In Napoleonic style, the French general did not sit still for long, but instead chose to go on the offensive in the hope of meeting the Ottomans. backed by the British who were marching towards him head on. The campaign that is finally carried out is a failure for the French. They don't achieve their goal, which is to stop the Ottoman advance, but there are a couple of episodes that are important to Napoleon's reputation and one is the massacre of Ottoman prisoners, which is a dark episode even by the low standards of the period. controversial and the other is where he is seen healing and touching plague victims.

The plague was still rife in that part of the world at the end of the 18th century and there is a very famous painting that shows Napoleon almost like a Christ. The figure that touches these people is affected by the plague, he is brave enough to do it, it is that kind of care that he shows to the common French soldier, at least that reputation he acquires is what makes him so popular among the common French soldiers , the Egyptian campaign was a The military campaign failed, but Napoleon managed to get him and his closest associates back to Paris quickly enough before the politicians in Paris realized it had been a failure.

What Napoleon does is abandon his army in Egypt and that again is one of those turning points. In his lifetime, we have to recognize that he had no orders to return to France, his army had partly successfully and partly unsuccessfully expanded the area under control, but it was becoming clear to him that a stalemate was going to occur and I had started hearing rumors. that things were happening in France that might open up other possibilities for him, so in mid-1799, ironically, he is welcomed back to France. All they heard is propaganda from him about how wonderfully things were going in Egypt instead of facing dismissal.

Napoleon's team received a hero's welcome upon his return to France at a time when the country's political situation seemed dire. France now faces a new coalition of enemies, not only Britain and the Ottomans, but also the Russians and the Austrians again, so from a geopolitical point of view it is not rosy and at the national level the directory is imploding ha been oscillating from left to right is unstable there is a group of politicians in France who say this has to stop we need a regime change but we need to have a general we need to have some military muscle to affect what is going to be a coup d'état, but these coup plotters who focus on the abbeys, who is a kind of wonderfully gentle intellectual who can be found at the heart of a coup plot that has been there since 1789. with good but slightly overly complicated ideas about how to govern a country, still is there in 1799 trying to find people to join him in overthrowing the directory and imposing a more authoritarian solution and this is the situation that Bonaparte intervenes in after they've considered several other military leaders, but once Barna Park stands up under his table, he clearly becomes the leader of what is going to happen, it doesn't go as planned because Napoleon is not a great public speaker and he.

He may be good at haranguing his troops, but he is not very good at functioning as a parliamentary esthetician, so, in effect, he is denounced as an outlaw and the coup almost succeeds if it were not for the intervention of his brother Lucian Bonaparte and His troops, who protect him from what he claims is an assassination attempt, but you know it's more of a bit of spitting and shoving, are no worse than that and in the end it's all decided quite brutally by armed troops who They push these legislators out of the assembly where they have gathered and tell them that everything is over, they already know that there is no turning back and having physically dissolved, so to speak, the legislature, the coup plotters are now in a position to think about what to put into effect.

In his place, Napoleon, now 30 years old, managed to seize power and declare himself first council supported by two other consuls, now found himself at the head of the French state, a position that was soon confirmed by something completely new for France: a plebiscite on the idea that all adult men, regardless of the tax theythey will pay getting a paid vote sounded extremely revolutionary, extremely liberating, extremely egalitarian, but of course the question they were asked is actually very narrow: are you going to take Napoleon Campbell, he says, and Lebron, like three consoles or not, no Is there another alternative besides Napoleon?

Brother Louis, who did the counting in the plebiscites, manipulated the figures. The point is that this regime wants almost unanimity, it wants to show that it has united all the French, that it is above the factions and you can't really demonstrate that if you simply get 51 of the vote instead of 49 votes, so I think the reason for the deception is not that you want to win but that you want to show unanimity so that the consulate is very successfully presented as a pacification regime as something that will pacify France. and there are different levels at which this is quite true: by the end of the 1790s public order had already broken down a lot and people no longer trusted authority in terms of judicial procedures, so the army already had to be widely used to combat banditry and other types of unrest, so an openly authoritarian regime is widely accepted as something that will simply stop the threats to property, the threats to individual security, the bloody vendettas that have swept the country for the 1790s, and a completely well-organized army.

The effort to suppress all that kind of problem is very successful in the years after 1799. What people wanted was security and stability and an end to the civil war and, along with that, a functioning legal and judicial system and it was talked about. of the reform, the reform was discussed, but nothing was completed and it was under napoleon as the first council that napoleon promoted first of all a new centralized judicial structure in paris where the judges were appointed directly by the minister of justice in paris and a codification of the laws that had been endlessly debated but not completed napoleon will negotiate a so-called concordat with the papacy, he will negotiate a return to an essentially collaborative relationship with the catholic church.

I'm ending the deepest-rooted conflict that lingered in the 1790s and at the same time I don't have to give the Catholic Church back any of its money, it's a very good deal for France in that sense and it's an even better deal for France. because Napoleon adds some extra articles to the document after the Catholic church left, so it's actually saying that they've gotten more out of it than the Catholic church knew they were giving in, but that again is a typically Napoleonic move. The Napoleonic regime is more conservative and begins to talk about reinstituting old institutions that help preserve a kind of stable France and that means a kind of patriarchal system. among other things, and that is bad news for those who had been advocating for things like the abolition of slavery, but also for equal rights for women, women as a result of the Napoleonic codes have virtually no civil rights, They almost cease to exist as people. the father has complete control over the children, over how they should be raised, where they should be raised, how they should be educated and married, he makes those decisions, he even makes the decision of where his wife will live and in what place.

In theory, he could insist in which his wife accepted a mistress who lived in the same house. The status of women is significantly reduced. Napoleon was now the de facto ruler of France, but his power was tenuous, to say the least. Austria had reoccupied northern Italy and a French garrison. was besieged in genoa napoleon had to act quickly and decisively to ensure his dominance over france he needed a quick victory over austria and so he followed in the footsteps of hannibal and marched his army over the alps napoleon's crossing of the alps is an action essentially Napoleonic attack that takes the Austrians by surprise means that the French have quickly positioned themselves in such a way that they threaten the Austrian lines of communication that you know back to Austria ultimately, thus forcing the Austrian commander to be called Michael von Miller to turn around and head towards the french army that has to neutralize napoleon met the austrian forces for a single decisive battle near the town of morengo moringo begins with an austrian numerical advantage of something like 28,000 outnumbered soldiers to the French force under Napoleon Bonaparte, which is closer to 20,000 soldiers.

Napoleon was taken by surprise. He managed to surprise the Austrians by marching from the Alps, but on this occasion he does not believe that he is facing the main Austrian force and what Napoleon has been doing is perhaps unwise. distributing his own troops to try to cover various types of lines of communication, so he dispersed his forces, so the battle initially doesn't go very well for the French, they are forced to retreat, so the Austrian commander basically thinks that there is one and he actually retreats to communicate that success to his superiors, but he did it a little before the end of the game, the French managed to call reinforcements, Napoleon launches his consular guard and plugs some gaps in the French line and then Dese arrives , which comes, it's a pivotal moment and it really catches, I think, the Austrians who really believe they've won, by surprise and brings them back to where they started and inflicts, you know, a substantial number. number of casualties on the Austrian side in terms of dead, wounded but above all captured, so it really sinks.

Napoleon's Austrian army is again saved from possible defeat by General Desai, who storms the Morengo battlefield and kills himself to save. The day it allows Boeing to claim all the credit, France will find itself in 1801 able to be at peace and even able to bring the British to the peace table for the first time in this entire period because the British now have no allies. continentals no sense of how they could continue the war and so the emir's part was initially agreed at the end of 1801 and formally signed in 1802 and during the following year Napoleon really appears as the peacemaker of Europe.

He has established an agreement where France is. As dominant as a nation might want to be in that Western European sphere, it will prove to be just a pause in broader military history, as a consequence the regime becomes increasingly secure, something no regime has been since 1789. It is important He realizes that there are three years of relative stability compared to previous years, so Napoleon risks a new plebiscite that makes him a council for life, in which again there is a victory of about three million yes and a few thousand no that I was never going to lose. any of these votes and it is simply a matter of deciding how much you want to earn them and this is a pattern that carries over from the life consulship to your appointment as

emperor

which will occur a year after the war has restarted the argument that Napoleon uses and his Supporters say you eliminate Napoleon, you know, by an assassin's bullet or a bomb and our various assassination attempts against Napoleon period, the only way to stop that is to create a predatory system where it doesn't really matter if you eliminate.

Napoleon because he had a clear line of succession, without a doubt, when he was proclaimed emperor he was going to be the top and particularly for a nation of men educated in the classics, having an emperor was better than having a council and that was ratified by plebiscite in the spring of 1804, which led to the famous coronation in early December, where Napoleon very famously crowned himself and would not give anyone else the right to place the crown on his head, so he took it out of the hands of the Dad. and he puts it in his head and at that point it crystallizes into a very deliberate propaganda choice.

You can see exactly who Napoleon Bonaparte thought he was. I mean, Napoleon knew the story of him and he knows the story of Charlemagne, who had been crowned by the Pope at Christmas. day 800 and of course that relationship implies that the Western emperor owes his authority and legitimacy to the church as a mediator between God and secular power. Napoleon really doesn't want to make that kind of impression in just 10 years. Bonaparte went from being an unknown artillery officer to being the emperor of the largest empire Europe had seen in a thousand years. His ambition did not stop there and would lead Europe through a near-constant state of war for the next decade, an era aptly named the Napoleonic Wars. he had the opportunity, as he had had before, to become a great power again, but the future would show that that was never enough for him, there is always more to strive for and of course after 1804 he embarks on most of of his territorial conquests that will take him to Spain after 1808 and to Russia in 1812.

It is a regime founded ultimately not on democracy but on military victory and it really is necessary to provide military victory after military victory and of course that means truly a route to conquest. limitless, although napoleon's military successes ultimately failed and his rule over europe proved to be short-lived, his legacy has endured to this day if we look at france, it is truly under napoleon's direction and encouragement that the institutions of modern France are really created its creation is promoted up to all legal codes in all directions, you can say that it is the hand of Napoleon.