Napoleon Bonaparte Biography

It is said that there are only two types of people made in this word, the sheep and the wolves. The wolves conquer and control, letting no one stand in their way. If those people want something, they will obtain it, one way or another. No one embodied this persona more than Napoleon Bonaparte. The tenacity and persistence of this man changed the course of European history forever. His personality commanded over others during conversations and he knew how to take control. Born in Corsica on August 15, 1769 into an aristocratic family, Bonaparte was bred to be a leader from the beginning. Firmly disciplined by his mother, Bonaparte learned self-control and governance very early in life. In 1779 he was sent to the Royal Military Academy at Brienne-le-Chateau. Teased for his foreign Corsican accent by his French peers, Bonaparte dedicated himself to his readings and quickly excelled and after graduating, enrolled in the Ecole Militaire in Paris. He studied to become an artillery officer and graduated from the school after only a single year due to his father’s death. He was then commission to be the second Lieutenant in an artillery regiment stationed in Valence.
Despite his deployment, Bonaparte managed to manipulate a leave of absence from the garrison into nearly a two year leave in 1789. This was partly due to the fact the French revolution had broken out, starting with the storming of the Bastille and France had bigger worries to deal with including the dethroning of King Lois XVI. During his leave, Bonaparte partook in a faction war in Corsica between the Corsican separatists and the ruling French in which he took the side of the French. Unfortunately for him, the separatists were victorious, driving Bonaparte and his family to...

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...y of military tactics used after his reign of power.
A variety of opinions have been directed at Napoleon Bonaparte and his tactics throughout the years. At the peak of his reign, he was hailed as a hero and a great man in France while being portrayed as a petite vicious tyrant by the British press. Early in his military career, he earned himself the nickname of “Little Corporal” but eventually came to be called as emperor. Though relatively normal size for the time period, propaganda tagged him as a little man with an equally sized temper. Those who actually met the man also had varying attitudes. Germaine de Staël stated that Bonaparte was “neither good nor violent, neither gentle nor cruel…having no equivalent, could neither feel nor arouse the slightest sympathy” while French writer Stendhal wrote “a man endowed with amazing abilities and a dangerous ambition.”