Napoleon Bonaparte

Napoleon Bonaparte was a ruthless killer who hungered for power alone. He sacrificed much in order to contribute a great deal to the world by winning battles and discovering things such as the Rosetta Stone in Egypt. His thirst for control and power cost him everything he worked so hard for consequently leading to exile.

The notorious Napoleon Bonaparte was born August 15, 1769, the second of eight children, on the little island of Corsica. The industrial revolution in Britain had already begun. In the mean time Napoleon matured quickly and reached the height of five feet five and was pale and thin. He did not care very much for anything in his younger days, everything from eating meals to socializing he did alone. The only time he talked to anyone else it was to officers and it was only to enforce some sort of law they were being ignorant of.

At 14 Napoleon decided to pursue a military career and won a scholarship to a French military academy. Napoleons father died of stomach cancer when he was fifteen, and at age sixteen, Napoleon had rights to all his family fortunes but his father left practically nothing. At this, he took upon the responsibility to make sure his mother and his brothers and sisters would not starve. He worked diligently to educate himself by intensive reading. He read mostly about romantics before he discovered how valuable Europe and its secrets are.

The French Revolution could not have made a better time for Napoleon to rise to the top. It was a time of chaos and weakness in Europe and Napoleon being an opportunist took the opening to gain as much power as he could. He saw France as a source of power and not his country for he had none. Seeming heartless, Napoleon did not believe in religion, democracy ...

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...escribe Napoleon as a person is to say that he was ”One of the greatest military commanders and a risk taking gambler; a workaholic genius and an impatient short term planner; a vicious cynic who forgave his closest betrayers; a misogynist who could enthrall men; Napoleon Bonaparte was all of these and more, the twice-emperor of France whose military endeavors and sheer personality dominated Europe in person for a decade, and in thought for a century.” (Wilde)

Works Cited

BBC. Historical Figures. 2 April 2010 .

Johnson, Paul. Napoleon. New York: The Penguin Group, 2002.

Napoleonic Code. 2010. 5 April 2010 .

Wilde, Robert. European History. 2010. 29 March 2010 .