France: Napoleon Bonaparte

France: Napoleon Bonaparte

In the year 1799, the dictatorship begins.

One of the events that changed mostly the history of the 18 century, is the dictatorship of Napoleon Bonaparte in France. He changed, and conquered a big part of Europe, at the point that the territories that he conquered are called “Napoleonic Europe”.

Napoleon was born on 15 August 1769 to Carlo Maria di Buonaparte and Maria Letizia Ramolino in his family's ancestral home, Casa Buonaparte, in the town of Ajaccio, the capital of the island of Corsica. He was their 4th child and 3rd son. This was a year after the island was transferred to France by the Republic of Genoa. He was named Napoleone di Buonaparte, probably named after an uncle (an older brother, who did not survive infancy, was the first of the sons to be called Napoleone). In his twenties, he adopted the more French-sounding “Napoléon Bonaparte”.He had an older brother Joseph, and younger sisters, Lucien, Elisa, Louis, Pauline, Caroline and Jérôme. A boy and girl were born before Joseph but died in infancy. Napoleon was baptised as a Catholic. In January 1779, Napoleon was enrolled at a religious school in Autun, in mainland France, to learn French. In May he was admitted to a military academy at “Brienne-le-Château”. He always spoke with a marked Corsican accent and never learned to spell French properly.

At Brienne in 1784, Napoleon was admitted to the elite “École Militaire” in Paris. He trained to become an artillery officer and, when his father's death reduced his income, was forced to complete the two-year course in one year. Upon graduating in September 1785, Bonaparte was commissioned a second lieutenant in La Fère artillery regiment. He served on garrison duty in Valence and Auxonne until after the outbreak of the Revolution in 1789.

The French Revolution was the main thing that pushed Napoleon to do something about France. For many years ago, France had a very unstable and bad form of government. They had a royal absolutism, in which the aristocracy and the clergy were the only ones that could make or take decisions of France. The 70% of the citizens were starving to eat and the other ones were very sick and full of taxes. This was the result of the Seven Years War that France had with England. Also, France supported the American colonies for their independence with food and supplies. All this spent of money and goods leaved France with a very little amount of supplies, that were only for the First and Second State. The French Revolution was a period of radical social and political change in France that profoundly affected French and modern history, marking the decline of powerful monarchies and churches and the rise of democracy and nationalism.

Napoleon spent the early years of the Revolution in Corsica, fighting in a complex three-way struggle among royalists, revolutionaries, and Corsican nationalists. He gained the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Corsican militia, and

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