Four years later, the French Revolution broke out, and the newly established French government was involved in the torrent of war with several foreign powers within a few years. God gave Napoleon a chance to get ahead for the first time. He commanded the artillery units to recapture Toulon from the French and British troops in the siege of Toulon in 1793. By this time, he had given up Corsican nationalism and regarded himself as a Frenchman. He made a great contribution in the siege of Toulon. Promoted to brigade commander, 1796 promoted to commander of French army in Italy. From 1796 to 1797, Napoleon won a series of brilliant victories in Italy, and then returned to Paris as a hero.
1798, Napoleon led the French army to invade Egypt, and the expedition was a fiasco. Although Napoleon's army won a great victory on land, the British navy under Nelson destroyed the French fleet. 1799 Napoleon gave up his army in Egypt and returned to France.
When Napoleon returned to France, he found that people remembered his success in directing the Italian war, not his failure in Egypt. Napoleon took advantage of this advantage. A month later, he launched a coup with Abe Nishino Yu and others and announced the establishment of a new government, the Executive Government. He was the first ruling government. Although Napoleon presided over the formulation of a complete constitution and voted for the people, it was only a mask of his military dictatorship, and he quickly defeated other accomplices in the coup.
Therefore, the speed of Napoleon's career is amazing. 1793 Before the siege of Toulon in August, he was just a nobody, a 24-year-old young officer with incomplete French descent. Less than six years later, at the age of 30, he became the undisputed monarch of France, and his reign lasted more than 14 years.
During his reign, Napoleon carried out major reforms in France's administrative and legal system. He reformed France's financial structure and judicial system; Establishing the Bank of France and the University of France; French-administered centralization of authority was implemented. Although each of these reforms has had an important and lasting impact on France itself, it has little impact on other countries in the world.
However, one of the reforms carried out by Napoleon, of course, went far beyond the borders of France, and that was the creation of the French Civil Code, the famous Napoleonic Code. This code embodies the ideals of the French Revolution in many ways. For example, everyone has no blood privilege before the code, and everyone is equal before the code. At the same time, the code is close to the French laws and customs in the past and is accepted by the French public and legal circles. In short, the code is robust and moderate, clear and concise, and it is commendable. Therefore, this code was not only implemented in France (today's French civil law is obviously similar to the original Napoleonic Code), but also adopted by many other countries after some modifications. Napoleon's consistent policy was to be a defender of the revolution. However, in 1804, Napoleon officially declared himself emperor of France and made his three brothers climb to the top in other European countries. What he did undoubtedly aroused the disgust of some French * * and Republicans-they thought such behavior was a complete betrayal of the ideal of the French Revolution-but the only serious difficulty Napoleon faced was the war from abroad.
Napoleon signed a peace treaty with Britain in Amiens in 1802, in order to give France a breathing space after more than ten years of war. But the peace treaty was torn up in the second year, and a series of long-term wars took place between France and Britain and their allies. Although Napoleon's army kept winning on land, it was impossible to conquer Britain without defeating the British navy. Napoleon 1805 is unlucky. In the decisive battle at Cape Tefarra, the British navy was unstoppable and won a great victory. Since then, Britain has basically gained the right to control the sea. Although Napoleon defeated the Austrian-Russian Coalition forces only six weeks after the Battle of Cape Trafalgar and achieved a brilliant victory, it failed to really make up for the great defeat of his navy.
1808 Napoleon foolishly involved France in a protracted and aimless Iberian war, which left the French army in a dilemma for many years. But Napoleon's fatal mistake was his war against Russia. 1807, Napoleon met with the Russian czar and signed the Tilsit Agreement, vowing to establish permanent friendship. However, this alliance has gradually become vicious. 18 12, Napoleon invaded Russia.
The end of the war is well known. Russian troops usually avoid confrontation with Napoleon. Therefore, he was able to attack quickly and occupied Moscow in September. But the Russians lit a fire all over the sky and almost turned the whole city into ashes. Napoleon waited in Moscow for five weeks, but his hopes for peace were dashed, and he finally decided to withdraw, but it was too late. The ruthlessness of the Russian army, the Russian winter and the shortage of the French army suddenly made the French soldiers panic, make a mess and trample on each other. As a result, less than 10% people can escape alive.
Other European countries, such as Austria and Prussia, realize that now is the perfect time for them to get rid of French rule. They banded together to attack Napoleon. Napoleon suffered another devastating defeat in the battle of Leipzig. The following year, he announced his resignation and was exiled to the island of Elba on the Italian coast.
18 15 years, he fled from the island of elba to France, where he was very popular and successfully restored. Other European powers immediately declared war, and one hundred days after his restoration, he was finally defeated at Waterloo. After the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon was imprisoned by the British in St. Helena, a small island in the South Atlantic, and died of cancer there in 182 1.
Napoleon's military career was full of contradictions and unpredictability. His tactical command genius is amazing. If we only judge from this aspect, we may regard him as the greatest general who transcends time and space. But from a major strategic point of view, he is prone to make conspicuous blind mistakes, such as invading Egypt and Russia. Napoleon's strategic mistakes were so serious that he was not a first-class general. Is such an evaluation unfair? I don't think so. There is no doubt that the criterion for evaluating whether a general is great depends on his ability to avoid causing heavy casualties. Therefore, it is not controversial to evaluate the greatest generals like Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan and Timur, because their troops have never lost a battle. Napoleon was finally defeated, so the territory he conquered abroad was like a cloud in the sky, drifting away with the wind. 18 15 After his final defeat, France occupied less territory than when the Great Revolution broke out in 1789.
There is no doubt that Napoleon was an extreme egoist. People often compare him with Hitler, but there is an extremely important difference between them. Hitler was to a great extent the collapse of Xie Sidi, while Napoleon was an ambitious opportunist who had no special interest in the horror of the Holocaust. Napoleon's rule is no match for Nazi concentration camps.
Napoleon is so famous that people often overestimate his influence. His influence in the short term is indeed great, perhaps even greater than that of Alexander the Great, although far less than that of Hitler (it is estimated that nearly 500,000 French soldiers died in the Napoleonic Wars and 8 million German soldiers died in the Second World War). In any case, Napoleon's activities are far less than Hitler's in quantity and influence on the life of his contemporaries.
In the long run, Napoleon seems more important than Hitler, but not as important as Alexander. Napoleon carried out extensive political reforms in France, but the population of France is less than one-seventieth of the world, so we must treat such political reforms realistically. Judging from his influence on French personal life, his reform is far less than the unprecedented political reform in the past two centuries.
It is said that the Napoleonic era provided an opportunity to consolidate the achievements of the French Revolution and ensure the vested interests of the French bourgeoisie. Therefore, when the French monarchy was finally restored in 18 15, these changes were so deeply rooted in the hearts of the people that it was impossible to restore the social order of the old system. But the most important change happened before Napoleon. 1799 When Napoleon came to power, it seemed that it was too late to restore the original state. Although Napoleon had his own ambition to establish a monarchy, he played a role in spreading the ideal of the French Revolution to the whole of Europe.
Napoleon also had a great indirect influence on the history of Latin America. His invasion of Spain weakened the Spanish government and made it unable to control its colonies in Latin America for several years. It was during this period of de facto autonomy that the independence movement in Latin America began.
Napoleon made a deal, which seemed to have nothing to do with his main intention, but it became the most lasting and meaningful event in his life. That is, Napoleon sold a large piece of land to the United States in 1803. He realized that it must be very difficult to defend the land occupied by France in North America from British plunder, and he lacked funds. The Louisiana Contract is perhaps the largest land transfer in the whole history, making the United States a country with an area close to a continent. Without the Louisiana contract, it is difficult to predict what the United States would be like, and it will definitely be very different from today's America. In fact, if there is no Louisiana contract, it is hard to say whether the United States can become a powerful country.
Of course, Napoleon was not the only factor that contributed to the signing of the Louisiana contract. Obviously, the US government has also played a role. However, the asking price in France is very low. It seems that any American government may be willing to do this business, but the French government's decision to sell Louisiana territory was made by Napoleon alone.
Source: 100 The most influential person in history