The Rise and Downfall of Napoleon I

1The source: a painting that edits the event

On 2 December 1804, in the cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris, Napoleon Bonaparte was crowned Emperor of the French. He asked his official painter, Jacques-Louis David, to record the day. David worked on the canvas from December 1805 to January 1808. It is almost 10 metres wide and hangs today in the Louvre. Look at it closely before you read on.

Analyse it. The painting looks like an eyewitness record, but it was arranged to send a message.

• What it adds. Napoleon's mother, Letizia, sits in a place of honour in the central box. In fact she did not attend: she stayed away in protest at Napoleon's quarrels with his brothers.
• What it changes. David first painted Napoleon crowning himself, which is what happened; the outline can still be seen under the paint. The finished picture shows the gentler moment when he crowns Joséphine. The pope was first painted with his hands resting; Napoleon had the picture changed so that Pius VII raises his hand in blessing.
• What it says. A soldier born in Corsica, who had seized power in a coup five years before, is shown as a lawful monarch blessed by the Church and surrounded by a loyal family and court.

The painting is excellent evidence of how Napoleon wanted to be seen, and weak evidence of what happened in the cathedral. That is the question of this lesson: how did a young artillery officer become master of Europe, and why did his empire collapse within ten years of this ceremony?

2From officer to emperor, 1793 to 1804

Napoleon was born on 15 August 1769 in Corsica, which France had just taken over. Without the Revolution he could never have risen so high: it drove out many noble officers, promoted men for their ability, and kept France at war.

• Toulon, 1793. As artillery commander he planned the capture of a hill fort above the harbour, forcing the allied forces occupying the port to leave. He was promoted to brigadier general at 24.
• 13 Vendémiaire, 5 October 1795. He used artillery to crush a royalist rising in Paris and saved the Convention, which made him useful to the politicians of the Directory.
• Italy, 1796 to 1797. His victories over Austria made him a national hero. He founded newspapers for his soldiers and for readers in France, which told his story his way.
• Egypt, 1798 to 1799. He landed at Alexandria on 1 July 1798 and defeated the Mamluk rulers at the Battle of the Pyramids on 21 July. But on 1 August the British admiral Nelson destroyed most of his fleet at the Battle of the Nile, trapping the army in Egypt. The 167 scientists who went with him studied Egypt; their finds included the Rosetta Stone, which later allowed scholars to read hieroglyphs. On 24 August 1799 Napoleon sailed back to France and left his army behind.
• 18 Brumaire, 9 November 1799. With Sieyès, Talleyrand and his brother Lucien he overthrew the weak, unpopular Directory. The new constitution of December 1799 made him First Consul with real power.
• Consul for life (1802) and Emperor (1804). Each step was approved by a plebiscite: in 1802 about 3.6 million voted yes and 8,374 no; in 1804 the official result was 3.5 million yes and 2,569 no.

3Ruling France: reforms that lasted

Was Napoleon the heir of the Revolution or its gravedigger? He kept equality before the law, the end of feudalism, the sale of Church lands and careers open to talent. He destroyed political liberty: censorship closed most opposition newspapers, elections became plebiscites, and on 20 May 1802 he reinstated slavery in the French colonies (lesson 2). Historians have called his regime a "dictatorship by plebiscite".

Rwanda connection. Napoleon's Civil Code travelled far beyond France. Belgium, ruled by France from 1794 to 1815, kept a civil-law system largely based on it, and Rwanda's own legislation developed from Belgian and German civil law. So a law book of 1804 is a distant ancestor of the legal tradition you live under.

4The empire at its height, 1805 to 1812

At Austerlitz (2 December 1805) Napoleon defeated Austria and Russia; at Jena (14 October 1806) he crushed Prussia; at Tilsit (July 1807) the Tsar of Russia made peace with him. He made his brothers kings of Naples, Holland and Spain, and grouped the German states into the Confederation of the Rhine (1806). Study the map: France itself stretched from Hamburg to Rome, and most of the rest of the continent was ruled by his allies or relatives.

5Downfall, 1805 to 1815

The end. At last his enemies united: Russia, Prussia, Austria and Sweden, paid and supplied by Britain, defeated him at Leipzig, "the Battle of the Nations", in October 1813. The allies entered Paris and in April 1814 Napoleon abdicated; by the Treaty of Fontainebleau (11 April 1814) he was sent to rule the small island of Elba. He escaped on 26 February 1815 and returned to power for the Hundred Days, until Wellington and Blücher beat him at Waterloo on 18 June 1815. The British held him on Saint Helena, an island in the South Atlantic 1,870 km off the coast of Africa, where he died on 5 May 1821.