Napoleon Bonaparte History: Must Know Facts About the French Emperor

Start hereHis Civil Code of 1804 helped fix ideas such as equality and citizenship across continental Europe. Two years earlier, a law of 20 May 1802 kept slavery in France's returned colonies. So how should one man be judged for both?

01Napoleon at a glance

Napoleon Bonaparte was a Corsican-born artillery officer who took power in France in 1799 and was crowned Emperor in 1804. He changed French law and government in ways that are still visible. His wars also cost hundreds of thousands of French lives, and more again in the other armies of Europe, his enemies’ and his allies’.

Born	15 August 1769, Ajaccio, Corsica
Died	5 May 1821, Saint Helena, aged fifty-one
Ruled France	First Consul from 1799; Emperor from 1804 to 1814, and again in 1815
Married	Joséphine de Beauharnais in 1796; Marie-Louise of Austria in 1810
Buried	Les Invalides, Paris, since 1840

02Corsica, family and school

Corsica had only just become French when he was born. The Treaty of Versailles of 15 May 1768 passed the island from Genoa to France. French troops then defeated Paoli’s men at Ponte Nuovo on 9 May 1769, and his father, Charles, had been one of Paoli’s partisans.

Napoleon was born on 15 August 1769 to Charles Bonaparte and Letizia Ramolino. Of their twelve children, eight survived.

He came from a family of minor Corsican nobility, not from humble beginnings. His family’s noble status was officially recognised in September 1771. That recognition is what let him enter the royal military school at Brienne on 15 May 1779 as a king’s scholar. The school was meant for nobles short of money, and four degrees of nobility were required.

From Brienne he went to the École militaire in Paris on 22 October 1784. In the exams of September 1785, 58 of 137 candidates passed. Napoleon came 42nd and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the artillery.

03Revolution, Toulon and Paris

In 1793 his family sided with the revolutionary government in Paris against Corsican independence. They were forced to leave the island, and landed at Toulon on 13 June 1793.

Toulon itself surrendered to British forces on 27 August 1793. On 16 September Napoleon was made commander of artillery in the army sent against it. His plan was constant cannon fire on the British ships in the bay.

The British left Toulon on 18 December 1793. Four days later he was promoted to brigadier general.

In Paris, on 5 October 1795, he helped crush a royalist rising against the Convention, the revolutionary assembly. On 16 October 1795 he was named a general of division.

On 9 March 1796 he married Joséphine de Beauharnais in a civil ceremony in Paris.

04Italy and Egypt

On 2 March 1796 the Directory named him commander-in-chief of the Army of Italy. He beat Austrian armies at Lodi on 10 May 1796, at Arcole on 17 November 1796 and at Rivoli on 15 January 1797.

In 1798 the Directory sent him to Egypt, to strike at Britain’s growing trade in the region. He landed at Alexandria on 1 July and beat the Mamluk army near Cairo on 21 July, at the Battle of the Pyramids. On 1 August the British admiral Nelson destroyed the French fleet in Abukir Bay, and 1,700 sailors were killed.

The Egyptian campaign was also the scene of atrocities. At one point, several thousand Ottoman soldiers were shot or driven into the sea on his orders, rather than taken prisoner.

A push into Syria from January 1799 ended in defeat. Napoleon then went back to France, reaching Paris on 16 October 1799, while his army stayed on. About 160 scholars travelled with the expedition, by the Fondation’s count.

05Brumaire and the Consulate

By 1799 the Fondation describes the Directory as a government in decline, corrupt and hated by the French. Some of its own Directors wanted his help to overthrow it.

He took power in the coup of 18 Brumaire (9 November 1799). The two assemblies were moved to Saint-Cloud. The next day he walked into the Council of Five Hundred with armed grenadiers, to shouts of “down with the dictator!” from the deputies. His brother Lucien won over the soldiers, and Murat went in and declared the assembly dissolved.

Under the constitution of 13 December 1799 he became First Consul, with the power to name ministers, army officers and judges.

He narrowly beat the Austrians at Marengo on 14 June 1800.

In 1802 he was made Consul for life. In March 1804 he suspected the Duc d’Enghien, the godson of Louis XVI, of being behind a royalist plot. The duke was arrested and, after a quick trial, executed on 21 March, on Napoleon’s orders. Every royal court in Europe protested.

06Emperor of the French

The Empire was proclaimed by a vote of the Senate on 18 May 1804. On 2 December 1804 he was crowned at Notre-Dame in Paris, before over 12,000 people. The Pope came from Rome for it. The Fondation gives the ceremony as three hours on one page and more than four on another.

Did he snatch the crown from the Pope? The Fondation describes it differently: he picked up the crown from the altar and put it on his own head, “following the agreed order of service”. He then crowned Joséphine.

In December 1809 he divorced Joséphine, who had not given him a son. On 1 April 1810 he married Marie-Louise, daughter of the Austrian emperor. Their son was born on 20 March 1811.

07The wars, 1805 to 1809

In our reading, his run of great victories came in 1805 to 1807. He won at Ulm on 20 October 1805, and on 2 December 1805 he crushed the Russian and Austrian armies at Austerlitz. At sea it went the other way: the French suffered a bitter defeat at Trafalgar in 1805.

Prussia was beaten at Jena and Auerstedt on 14 October 1806, and Russia at Friedland on 14 June 1807. At Tilsit on 8 July 1807, Russia and Prussia were forced to make peace.

He could not attack the British navy directly, so from 1806 he tried to weaken Britain’s economy with a continental blockade.

In 1808 he put his brother Joseph on the throne of Spain. Madrid rose on 2 May, and the French repression on 3 May fuelled opposition. French troops were finally defeated at Vitoria on 21 June 1813.

In 1809 Austria went to war again. Napoleon lost the battle of Essling on 20–21 May, then won at Wagram on 6 July. Each battle, with its numbers and who counted them, is covered in Napoleon’s Battles: Toulon to Waterloo.

08Russia, 1812

Napoleon expected a short war. On 1 June 1812 he told Marie-Louise it “will be over in three months”.

How big was his army? The figures depend on what is counted.

• In June 1812 nearly 440,000 men were lined up along the Niemen, ready to invade Russia, in Marie-Pierre Rey’s preface to his letters.
• The first invasion force numbered about 455,000 men, in a Fondation timeline using Thierry Lentz’s figures.
• The Fondation’s timeline for young readers gives a force of 480,000, with another 120,000 kept in reserve.

In our reading, the gap comes mostly from whether reserves and later reinforcements are counted.

He crossed the Niemen near Kovno (Kaunas) on 24 June 1812. The army suffered long before winter. At Vitebsk in late July the heat was averaging 28–30 °C, and his troops could not keep up the chase.

On 3 September he wrote that “we continue to lose many men every day”, because supplies were gathered without order.

At Borodino on 7 September the Russians had about 45,000 dead, wounded or missing. French losses are put at 25,000 to 28,000 by Rey, and at 28,000 to 35,000 in the Fondation’s timeline.

He entered an almost deserted Moscow on 15 September, and fires broke out. Who started them is still argued.

• One Fondation timeline calls what followed uncertain. It cites evidence that Governor Rostopchin gave the order, and names Russian scorched-earth policy and looting as other possible causes. It adds that neither Napoleon nor Alexander gave any such order.
• Another Fondation timeline is firmer: the first fires were lit “doubtless under the supervision of Moscow’s governor Rostopchin”.
• Rostopchin denied it in a pamphlet of 1823.

Our reading: the evidence leans towards fires set on Rostopchin’s side. Our page on the 1812 campaign weighs each account.

Alexander had said he would not negotiate while a single French soldier remained in Russia. The army left Moscow on 19 October.

The first significant snow fell in early November, and the winter of 1812 became an unusually cold and bitter one. The crossing of the Berezina in late November alone cost between 25,000 and 40,000 men. On 5 December Napoleon left the army at Smorgon to return to Paris.

Counts of what came back differ. Rey’s preface gives about sixty thousand troops recrossing the Niemen. World History Encyclopedia says fewer than 100,000 of the 615,000 men committed to the whole campaign returned.

Later, on Saint Helena, he put the defeat down to “complete accidents” such as the sudden winter. In our reading, his letter of 3 September shows the army losing men long before the cold. Our page on the 1812 Russian campaign goes through it month by month.

09The fall, 1813 to 1815

In 1813 a new coalition formed against him. He won at Lützen on 2 May and at Bautzen on 20 May, then lost the great battle of Leipzig in October 1813. It was called the Battle of the Nations.

In early 1814 he fought in France itself with an army of 60,000 young soldiers, but the coalition entered Paris on 31 March 1814.

He abdicated at Fontainebleau, unconditionally by 6 April 1814, and was sent into exile on the island of Elba. Under the Treaty of Fontainebleau he kept his title of Emperor.

On 1 March 1815 he landed at Golfe-Juan, and by 20 March he was back in the Tuileries palace. Napoleon invaded Belgium with 130,000 soldiers and beat the Prussians at Ligny on 16 June.

On 18 June 1815 he was defeated at Waterloo, in Belgium, by the British and Prussian allied armies. Sources give different numbers for the battle.

	National Army Museum (UK)	Thierry Lentz, Fondation Napoléon
French army	72,000 men and 246 guns	around 65,000 men
Wellington’s army	68,000 men and 156 guns	roughly the same strength
Losses	Napoleon lost nearly 40,000 men killed, wounded or captured; the Allies suffered 22,000 casualties	10,800 dead (6,800 of them French) and around 35,000 injured, two-thirds of them French

In our reading, the two do not count the same things: the museum includes men captured, and Lentz splits the dead from the injured.

He abdicated on 22 June and gave himself up to the British navy. He had landed on the small island of Aix, off Rochefort. The Fondation gives his words as “I have come to put myself under the protection of your prince and your laws”.

10Saint Helena

Napoleon reached St Helena on 15 October 1815. Another Fondation timeline dates his going ashore to 17 October.

Twenty people followed Napoleon into exile, by the Fondation’s count. On 10 December 1815 he moved into Longwood, a former barn with damp and dark rooms.

The Fondation Napoléon describes the island as “well guarded by three thousand men, and four vessels constantly surveyed its coastline to prevent any landing”.

His days were built around meals, riding and dictating his memoirs to his companions. He had brought more than 600 books with him.

He dictated his will of 15 April 1821. In it he asked that his ashes “may repose on the banks of the Seine, in the midst of the French people, whom I have loved so well”. The same will says: “I die prematurely, assassinated by the English oligarchy and its assassin.”

He died on 5 May 1821 at 5.49 pm, aged fifty-one. His last words survive only as fragments, and the witnesses differ.

• General Charles de Montholon, who shared his exile, thought he heard “France — armée, tête d’armée — Joséphine” in the early hours of 5 May.
• General Henri Bertrand’s journal records “at the head of the army” in the same night.

Both accounts mention the army. The Fondation calls Montholon’s memoirs untrustworthy, and Bertrand’s were not published until 1949.

The famous line “There is nothing we can do” is not among them. It comes from a TikTok slideshow posted on 15 August 2023, as our page on the “There is nothing we can do” meme explains. Our page on his exile and death covers these years in more detail.

11How he died

The autopsy took place on 6 May 1821 at Longwood, with a French and a British delegation present. The British report describes the inside of his stomach as “a mass of cancerous disease”.

In 2021 an international group of gastrointestinal pathologists re-examined the reports. They concluded that he died of an advanced stomach cancer with bleeding in the upper gut.

The arsenic theory dates from the early 1960s, when high arsenic was found in hair taken after his death.

But hair cut on Elba in 1814 also had high arsenic. So, by a 2008 study the pathologists cite, did his childhood hair and that of his son and Joséphine. The pathologists’ review says that study finally dismissed the arsenic-poisoning hypothesis.

One 2007 study found that more than 97% of the arsenic in two of his hair samples was inorganic, which its authors call “consistent with a chronic intoxication to arsenic”. In our reading, that shows he was exposed to arsenic over time. It does not show who or what exposed him, or that anyone meant him harm.

One question is still argued: how large a part did toxic substances play?

A 2021 systematic review classed the death as “unnatural”: massive stomach bleeding in which toxic substances may have set off or worsened an underlying disease. It names medicines containing antimony, mercury or arsenic. The disease underneath “as likely could be a stomach carcinoma”, it says, and the finding “does not imply criminal intent”.

The pathologists’ review of the same year judged an “unnatural” component unlikely. It holds that the cancer caused the bleeding, and that calomel (mercurous chloride), given on 3 May, was “just a trigger”.

A 1999 paper by Weider, of the International Napoleonic Society, and Fournier argued that he was murdered, with slow arsenic poisoning followed by calomel and orgeat on 3 May. In our reading, the evidence points strongly to stomach cancer, and these recent reviews give no support to deliberate poisoning.

12Where he is buried

He was buried in Geranium Valley, near Longwood. Most sources we checked give 9 May 1821; one Fondation page for young readers gives 10 May. The stone carried no inscription, because the British would not allow the name “Napoleon” to be engraved.

In 1840 King Louis-Philippe had his remains brought back to France, the retour des cendres. Britain agreed in a letter of 9 May 1840. The coffin reached the Invalides in Paris on 15 December 1840, after more than 7,200 km, and a state funeral was held there that day.

His tomb under the dome took two decades to finish: on 2 April 1861, in the presence of Napoleon III, his coffin was moved into the sarcophagus. The sarcophagus is made of red quartzite from Shoksha, in Russian Karelia, brought from the shores of Lake Onega.

13What he built, and what lasted

Between 1799 and 1804 he set up these institutions. Several are still part of French life:

Institution	Created	What became of it
Conseil d’État (Council of State)	13 December 1799	Still an important institution today
Banque de France	18 January 1800	Founded by bankers at his instigation; sole issuer of banknotes across France from 1848
Prefects, appointed to run each department	17 February 1800	The law stayed on the statute books, amended, until 1982; large parts survive, including the prefects
Concordat with the Pope	15 July 1801	Called Catholicism the religion of “the majority of the French”; the law putting it into force was repealed in 1905, except in Bas-Rhin, Haut-Rhin and Moselle
Lycées	1 May 1802	Created solely for boys
Légion d’honneur	19 May 1802	Still France’s highest national distinction
Civil Code	21 March 1804	Renamed the Code Napoléon in 1807

Promulgated on 21 March 1804, the Code civil ran to 2,281 articles.

Its property laws swept away feudal traditions. In France and across continental Europe, it fixed ideas such as equality, citizenship, freedom of conscience and the protection of property.

It also restored the authority of the husband. A married woman could not perform any legal act or manage her own property without her husband’s agreement.

The Légion d’honneur was contested at the time. It passed by 56 votes to 38 in the Tribunate and 166 to 110 in the legislative body. The first woman received it only on 15 August 1851. Our page on his reforms looks at each one in turn.

14The hard parts

Slavery and Haiti

The Revolution had abolished slavery on 4 February 1794. On 25 December 1799 the consuls promised Saint-Domingue that “the sacred principles of liberty and the equality of the blacks will never be infringed or modified among you”.

A law of 20 May 1802 provided that slavery would be maintained in the colonies returned to France under the Treaty of Amiens. His instructions then asked his captains general to re-establish slavery everywhere when they judged it right.

Lentz writes that it was brought back in Guadeloupe and Guyana (French Guiana) in the following months, and that in Saint-Domingue independence was proclaimed instead. The Fondation’s slavery page names Saint-Domingue as well.

In August 1802 news reached Saint-Domingue that slavery had been re-established in the colonies, and a new revolt began. Haiti’s independence was proclaimed on 1 January 1804. The US Office of the Historian also describes the Napoleonic attempts to reconquer the colony and reimpose slavery.

The Fondation cites an estimate of 100,000 deaths in the colonial wars in the West Indies from 1802 to 1804, about 70% of them Black. The Fondation Napoléon calls the re-establishment of slavery, and the repression that followed, a stain on the posterity of the consular regime.

A 2005 book argued that he ordered a genocide in the colonies. The Fondation says specialists in colonial history or slavery have never taken that charge seriously. It also writes that his instructions and letters “encouraged great severity” but gave no orders for massacre. It adds that he “did not publicly disavow his subordinates, which is already serious enough”.

During the Hundred Days he abolished the slave trade, by a decree of 28 March 1815. France abolished slavery again in 1848.

Women and the family

The Code’s rules on wives were noted above. The historian Thierry Lentz dates the end of part of this legal inequality to 1946, and full legal and political equality to the 1970s. Adultery was judged unequally too: a husband’s could be held against him only if committed in the marital home.

Control and censorship

From 1810 books were censored by a central bureau, the Direction Générale de l’Imprimerie et de la Librairie, set up by a decree of 5 February 1810.

The human cost

Nobody knows exactly how many died in his wars. For French soldiers, the Fondation’s series on his dark side gives 900,000 to 1,000,000 killed over 15 years of conflict.

Lentz reports a wider range: 600,000 to 1.3 million French dead from 1792 to 1815, between 400,000 and one million of them in the wars of the Empire.

For the other armies of Europe, his enemies and his allies alike, the Fondation’s page gives estimates from 1 million to over 2.5 million.

The vast majority died in hospital of wounds or illness, not on the battlefield. A man-by-man count reduced the French dead at Austerlitz from the traditional 3,000 to 5,000 to about 1,600.

15How historians judge him

He has been judged very differently, partly because he shaped his own image. The Fondation Napoléon, which publishes his correspondence, says he began to create an image of invincibility in Italy. There he founded two army newspapers, “a publicity campaign before its time”.

The Fondation also says Las Cases’s Memorial of St Helena (1823) can be considered “a work of propaganda that would nourish the cult of Napoleon”.

The opposite picture, the “Corsican Ogre”, took hold across Europe from 1813, as opposition to the Empire grew. The historian Joan Tumblety writes that a rumour he had his own plague-stricken troops poisoned at Jaffa “finally tarnished” his reputation in the early 19th century.

In our reading, the debate turns on what you weigh. On one side are the institutions of the Consulate, which the Fondation’s timeline says survive to this day. On the other are slavery, the war dead and the place of women in his Code. The Fondation itself runs a series called “Napoleon, the dark side” on these subjects.

Which side weighs more is a judgement of values. The facts for both are on this page, and the weighing is yours.

16Myths and famous lines

Was he short?

Not unusually. At the autopsy, his doctor Francesco Antommarchi recorded his height as five pieds, two pouces and four lignes. Those are French units: the French inch, the pouce, was about 2.7 cm, longer than the English inch of 2.54 cm.

Read as French measures, that comes to about 1.67 to 1.69 m, depending on whether the four lignes are counted. History.com gives about 1.67 m, a little above average for a French man in the early 1800s. In 1900 the historian Frédéric Masson converted the full figure to 1.687 m.

History.com traces the short image largely to one British cartoonist, James Gillray. His “Little Boney” cartoon of 1803 ushered it in, and his caricatures of Napoleon were very popular and influential.

Did his army fire at the pyramids?

Probably not. The historian Joan Tumblety treats the pyramid shelling in Ridley Scott’s film Napoleon as an invention.

The battle named after them was fought near Embabeh, where the Mamluks were entrenched. In his own despatch, the army saw the pyramids on 20 July 1798, and that evening he learned the Mamluk beys were dug in at Embabeh.

Lines credited to him

• “History is a set of lies agreed upon.” On Saint Helena, Las Cases recorded him calling historical truth “une fable convenue”, a fable agreed upon. Fontenelle had written in 1724 that there are no ancient histories other than these fables. The word “lies” appears by 1881. Quote Investigator concludes that Napoleon was an important popularizer of the saying, although he disclaimed coining it.
• “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” This one is looked at in Real or Myth? 14 Popular Claims, Checked.

Our check of famous Napoleon quotes and our page on Napoleon myths go further.

17Where to go next

• napoleon.org: the Fondation Napoléon’s history website.
• “Four, for the gospel makers”: on the four eyewitness memoirs of Saint Helena.
• Las Cases’s memoirs: his Saint Helena conversations, volume I of the English translation, free at Project Gutenberg.
• Code civil des Français: a scan of an 1804 edition, at the Internet Archive.

18Quick answers

19Use this

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How we checked this · Last checked October 2026

• Rewritten in October 2026 from primary and official sources: his will and a despatch, the Fondation Napoléon's timelines and articles, the Banque de France, the Légion d'honneur's chancellery, the National Army Museum, the US Office of the Historian, and peer-reviewed papers on his death.
• Where sources give different numbers (the 1812 army, Borodino, Waterloo, the war dead) or reach different views (the Moscow fire, how large a part toxic substances played in his death), the page shows each side and who holds it.
• The Fondation Napoléon, which publishes his correspondence, is the main secondary source. On slavery and Haiti a non-Napoleonic official source is cited too.
• The 2008 study of his childhood hair is cited through the 2021 pathologists' review, because we could not open a copy of it.

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21Sources