How old is napoleon

Across the three-mile battlefront men threw down their muskets and fled, terrified of the Prussian lancers who were being ordered to pursue them with their eight-foot spears. In mid-June, darkness would not descend on that part of Europe for hours.

Soon general panic set in. Jean-Martin Petit. Taking a few trusted aides with him, as well as a squadron of light cavalry for personal protection, Napoleon left the square on horseback for the farmhouse at Le Caillou where he had breakfasted that morning, full of hopes for victory. There he transferred into his carriage. In the crush of fugitives on the road outside the town of Genappe he had to abandon it for a horse once again, although there were so many people that he could hardly go at much more than a walking pace.

Letizia di Bunoaparte barely makes it home from church in time to give birth to Napoleon, her fourth child, on August 15 right, his birth certificate. The French government guillotines Louis; Napoleon laments, "Had the French been more moderate and not put Louis to death, all Europe would have been revolutionized.

Even with his horse shot out from under him, Napoleon liberates the French port of Toulon from monarchist forces; is promoted to brigadier general at age As some of his patrons are executed during France's Reign of Terror, Napoleon is imprisoned on suspicion of treason but released 11 days later for lack of evidence.

He remains faithful to the ideals of the Revolution. He uses artillery to quell an insurrection in Paris, saying, "The rabble must be moved by terror.

After a coup, Napoleon becomes first consul; in he is declared emperor, to be succeeded by an heir. Enemy forces take Paris and restore the monarchy as Napoleon retreats from Moscow; he is exiled to Elba, which he calls an "operetta kingdom.

He dies of cancer at age 51 on St. Helena; while in exile there, he had said, "If I had gone to America, we might have founded a State there. There was no denying that the Battle of Waterloo had been catastrophic. Except for the Battle of Borodino, which Napoleon had fought in Russia in his disastrous campaign, this was the costliest single day of the 23 years of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Between 25, and 31, Frenchmen were killed or wounded, and vast numbers more were captured.

Within a month, the disaster cost Napoleon his throne. A vast amount of literature has explored why Napoleon fought such an unimaginative, error-prone battle at Waterloo. Hundreds of thousands of historians have pored over the questions of why he attacked when, where and how he attacked. Yet years after the fact, a different question must be asked: Why was the Battle of Waterloo even fought? Was it really necessary to secure the peace and security of Europe? It was not his second language, but his third.

Napoleone di Buonaparte was born on August 15, , on the island of Corsica; for centuries a backwater province of Genoa, it had been sold to the French the previous year. He grew up speaking the corsicano dialect and Italian, and his name was Gaulified to Napoleon Bonaparte as he and his family painfully accommodated themselves to French rule. In fact, he was extremely anti-French until the age of 20, going through a period of adolescent angst in which he identified them as the enemy of his beloved freedom-loving Corsica.

His antipathy for the French notwithstanding, the youthful Napoleon primarily identified with the Enlightenment and the dreams of Rousseau and Voltaire. That both were forced into exile by the French State only increased their appeal for him, as did their praise for the Corsican experiment that had been snuffed out the year before Napoleon was born.

APRIL Confrontations in Ajaccio between the 2nd Battalion of Ajaccio Volunteers and the inhabitants of the town, in the course of which Napoleon tried to bring French military personnel over to his side. The King is demoted and soon imprisoned in the Temple. They reached Marseilles on the 15th.

Victory at Valmy. The royalty was abolished and a new Constitution was to be drawn up. Arriving in Ajaccio on around the 15, he joined his battalion in Corte. He accepted the project to take the island of La Maddelena, near Sardinia. Napoleon broke definitvely with Paoli.

He began peace negotiations with the Austrians on the 23rd. On the 8th, he collected more than 3, men in armed resistacne to the Convention. On the same day, it became known that Lucien Bonaparte was the source of the accusation against Paoli.

On the same day, Napoleon participated in a failed expedition against Paolists in Ajaccio. They landed in Toulon on the 13th, and set up house in Marseilles shortly afterwards.

Napoleon returned in October of the same year, and schemed with a member of the new government to perform a second coup, this one placing him and two others in power. This position had the authority to appoint generals, governors, civil servants, judges, and members of legislative bodies. Napoleon fulfilled the first incarnation of this position, and led economic, social, military, education, legal, and religious reforms, such as reinstituting Roman Catholicism as the state religion.

He also oversaw the creation of what would come to be known as Napoleonic code, a set of laws forbidding privileges to be given based on birth, decreed government jobs must be granted to the qualified rather than used as favors, and mandated freedom of religion. Outside of French borders, he sued and achieved a brief period of European peace.

The peace Napoleon achieved was short-lived. France and Britain again began warring again in , and soon after that Austria and Russia returned to the fray. Napoleon originally had a plan to invade England, but due to a naval defeat he instead turned his wrath eastward. His victories in the east, defeating combined Austrian and Russian forces in Austerlitz, allowed him to install individuals loyal to him in positions of power in Naples, Sweden, Holland, Italy, Westphalia, and Spain.

He married the daughter of the emperor of Austria, Marie-Louise, that same year. She was 18 years old when they married. In they had a son, Napoleon II. The military invincibility of Napoleon would come to an end at this time.

Several defeats destroyed the national budget of France, and a winter invasion of Russia in , which began with over , men, left fewer than 10, in condition to fight. The defeat of Napoleon filled his enemies, foreign and domestic, with confidence.

A coup was attempted, but failed, while Napoleon was fighting in Russia. At the same time, British forces were sweeping through French territories.

With limited resources to resist, and with extreme tension from within and without his empire, Napoleon surrendered on March 30, He was then exiled from France to an island named Elba.