Small Beginnings Don’T Set The Stage For Napoleon

Napoleon was very different from former leaders of France. I remember when France was under the control of King Louis XVI. He was a very weak leader; her preferred to tinker with locks instead of ruling his country. His wife, Marie Antoinette spent lots of money on extravagant items. The women’s march to Versailles was when a bunch of women went to the versatile palace and asked for bread to feed their families and Marie Antoinette said, “Let them eat cake. ”

Napoleon was a very short man, who topped out at a whopping 5’3” tall. He would come to be recognized as one of the world’s greatest military geniuses. In October 1795 Napoleon got a chance to shine. Royalist rebels marched on the nations convention and a government official ordered Napoleon to defend the delegates. Napoleon and his gunners met the thousands of royalists with a cannonade. After that the rebels left within minutes. Napoleon was named hero of the hour. In 1796 the directory appointed Napoleon as a general. The young general swept into Italy and won a series of battles. One of Napoleon’s early defeats was when he was ordered to go to Egypt to protect the French trade interest and to disrupt British trade with India. His army was pinned down in Egypt and his naval forces were defeated by the British admiral Horatio Nelson. The action begins on November 9, 1799 when Napoleon was put in charge of the military. In 1800 a vote was taken to help to make a new constitution, which was the fourth one in eight years. The people voted in favor of Napoleon; which gave all real power to Napoleon. He supported laws that both strengthened the central government and achieved some of the goals of the revolution like stabilizing the economy and giving equal taxes to everybody. One of Napoleon’s first acts was to get the economy on a solid, standing ground. Then Napoleon established the national bank. He wanted to ensure that there was no government corruption. He provided schools that the government would pay for. He let go of corrupt officials and replaced them with trained officials. Students could then be appointed to public office on the bases merit rather than family connections. Napoleon also signed a new concordat with Pope Pius VII, which meant that there would be a new relationship between the church and the state. Napoleon felt that one of his greatest works was the creation of the Napoleonic code which gave the country a uniform set of laws but did take away some of the rights that women had won during the Revolution. In the year 1804 Napoleon decided to Crown himself as emperor and his people supported him.

Throughout the time that Napoleon led, he had lost only two major battles. One of them was the battle of Trafalgar; 1805, off the coast of Spain. The British navy defeated the French navy. In the early 1800s Napoleon had won so many battles that it gave him mastery over most of Europe. Twelve years later there were only four European countries which Napoleon did not control: Britain, the Ottoman Empire, Portugal, and Sweden. Napoleon had control over a lot of land such as Spain, the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, and a number of German kingdoms in central Europe.