The Rise of Napoleon and the First Coalitions

Napoleon Bonaparte was born on August 15, 1769, in Ajaccio, Corsica, just months after France purchased the island from Genoa. His family were minor Corsican nobility of Italian descent, and the young Napoleon harbored Corsican nationalist sympathies before finding his destiny in the French artillery.

Educated at the royal military school in Brienne and the École Militaire in Paris, he graduated as a second lieutenant of artillery in 1785.

The French Revolution transformed his prospects utterly: the emigration of the aristocratic officer class opened paths to advancement that would have been closed to an obscure provincial under the ancien régime.

By 1793, at age twenty-four, he had distinguished himself at the siege of Toulon, driving out the British fleet with a bold deployment of artillery that experts twice his age had failed to conceive.

The Italian campaigns of 1796–1797 revealed Napoleon's genius to the world. Given command of the Army of Italy — a half-starved, poorly equipped force that older generals had deemed incapable of offensive action — he transformed it in weeks through sheer force of will and operational brilliance.

His strategy of dividing enemy armies and defeating each in detail, moving faster than opponents believed possible, produced a string of victories: Montenotte, Millesimo, Lodi, Castiglione, Arcola, Rivoli. Within a year he had forced Austria to sign the humiliating Peace of Campo Formio and made himself the most famous man in France.

The Egyptian expedition of 1798–1799, though ultimately a failure, added oriental mystique to his legend. He returned to France at the perfect moment, as the Directory government collapsed, and seized power in the coup of 18 Brumaire (November 9, 1799), becoming First Consul.

As First Consul and then Emperor after 1804, Napoleon simultaneously pursued military conquest and administrative transformation.

His legal code — the Code Civil or Code Napoléon — unified French law and established principles of equality before the law, property rights, and religious tolerance that spread across Europe in the wake of French armies.

He reorganized the education system, rationalized taxation, established the Bank of France, and concluded the Concordat with Pope Pius VII that healed the religious schism of the Revolution.

Europe's monarchs watched with alarm as Napoleon transformed France from a revolutionary republic into an imperial monarchy that combined the energy of the Revolution with the authority of the old order. The War of the Third Coalition in 1805 would test these achievements on the largest stage yet.

The campaign of 1805 showcased Napoleon at his absolute peak. When Austria and Russia mobilized against France, he swept the Grande Armée from the Channel coast — where it had been assembled for a planned invasion of Britain — eastward in a lightning march that enveloped an entire Austrian army at Ulm without a pitched battle.

Then, on December 2 — the first anniversary of his coronation — he shattered the combined Austro-Russian force at Austerlitz in what he would later call his finest battle. The Austrian Emperor sued for peace immediately. The Treaty of Pressburg stripped Austria of Venetia, Tyrol, and much of southern Germany.

The Holy Roman Empire, that medieval institution, was dissolved the following year. Europe had been remade in ten months of campaigning.