From Bonaparte to Napoleon I.

Battle(s) of the month

June 4, 1800: Siege of Genoa

Blocked in Genoa, Masséna held out until his strength finally gave way to famine, forcing him to accept a more than honorable surrender. He had held up valuable Austrian forces before the city for over a month. These forces would be sorely missed by the enemy when Napoleon attacked his rear. Read

June 9, 1800: Battle of Montebello

General Jean Lannes, commanding the French vanguard, encountered forces far superior to his own near Casteggio. The arrival of Austrian troops, freed by the fall of Genoa, had more than tripled the number of defenders. Despite this unexpected numerical disadvantage, Lannes attacked. As he himself would later admit, it was a close call. Read

June 14, 1800: Battle of Marengo

General Michael von Melas's attack on the plain near Alessandria surprised the outnumbered First Consul. The battle began and turned badly for the French. Then Desaix, commanding one of the detachments sent on reconnaissance, turned back at the sound of cannon fire and arrived on the battlefield... Read

June 14, 1807: Battle of Friedland

On June 13, the vanguard of Levin August von Bennigsen crossed the Alle River. On the 14th, the rest of the troops followed but clashed with Lannes' corps, which appeared at the same time on the plain of Friedland. Bennigsen saw this as an opportunity to destroy an isolated section of the Grande Armée. He had failed to take into account the speed of movement, a characteristic of the Napoleonic army. Read

June 21, 1813: Battle of Vitoria

The terrain is unfavorable. Troop movement is hampered by a mountain of baggage. To make matters worse, Marshal Jourdan is ill. Everything is in place for disaster... Read

June 16, 1815: Battle of Quatre Bras

While Napoleon faces the Prussians at Ligny, Marshal Ney attacks Wellington at the Quatre Bras crossroads. The defensive genius of the English general opposes the “Brave of the brave” with an insurmountable wall. The two adversaries separated in a tactical draw which, combined with the result of the Battle of Ligny, gave the Allies a strategic advantage. Read

June 18, 1815: Battle of Waterloo

The Duke of Wellington is installed on the Mont-Saint-Jean plateau where he awaits Blücher. Throughout his campaigns in Portugal and Spain, Arthur Wellesley showed himself to be a master in the art of defense. He's not going to make his reputation lie. Read

June 18-19, 1815: Battle of Wavre

Even as the Battle of Waterloo was taking place, Marshal Grouchy joined and attacked a Prussian rearguard at Wavre. But it's too late. The bulk of the Prussian forces had time to reach Waterloo and will give victory to the Allies. Grouchy's success therefore turns out to be unnecessary. Read

Events of the day

14 june

1797

Proclamation of the Ligurian Republic.

1800

Victory of Marengo and death of Desaix. Assassination of Kleber in Egypt.

1807

Battle of Friedland.

1808

The Admiral François-Étienne de Rosily Mesros and his fleet capitulate to the Spanish insurgents in front of Cadiz.

1813

England and Prussia sign the Treaty of Reichenbach: England finances, Prussia fights.

Pictures of the month

June 15, 1788: Napoleon Bonaparte arrived in Auxonne

June 4 to 11, 1793: Napoleon Bonaparte hid in Calvi in ​​his godfather's house

June 16, 1807: Napoleon set up his HQ in Paterswalde

June 18, 1808: the deposed king of Spain Charles IV arrived at the castle of Compiègne

Death of the day

June 14, 1841

Jean Girard LACUEE DE CESSAC

The "raison d'être" of the Napoléon & Empire website

A Google search for "Napoleon Bonaparte" brings up over ten million results. The idea of adding a drop to this ocean can therefore only come from enthusiasts, determined as they are to bear witness to their fascination for a character endowed, according to Chateaubriand, with "the most powerful breath of life that ever animated human clay".

The "Napoleon & Empire" website claims no other legitimacy.

In our opinion, Napoleon's will, intelligence, daring and achievements make him the prototype of the "great man". Even if this concept is viewed with suspicion today, the fact remains that from a relatively modest lineage and a peripheral province recently united with France − Chateaubriand described his family as "half-African" − he rose to power in one of the oldest and most important countries in Europe, before carving out an empire for himself on a continent then made up of the most prosperous, developed and powerful nations on the globe. Not even Caesar, a patrician born in the capital of the Roman Empire, or Alexander, heir to the kingdom of Macedonia, could compare with him in this respect. He owes his dizzying ascent to his talent, of course, but also to his energy and, above all, his activity − he will always speak of his genius in a somewhat mocking tone, but will take great pride in his capacity for hard work. In this way, his career is positively revolutionary.

His work is no less so. The period of Napoleon's career, so short in truth, is so full of events that it has no equivalent in French history. It fell to the First Consul, then the Emperor, to preside over the reconstruction of a new society based on new legal, political and social rules, on the ruins of the Ancien Régime destroyed by the Revolution. Less dazzling than his military prowess, this refoundation proved more useful and more profitable to the nation − and more lasting, too, in its effects, for the institutional edifice it built proved to be of rare solidity, and was maintained for the most part well into the 20th century. France built its modern state on this foundation, and many European countries followed suit.

Why, with such a track record, does Napoleon arouse such admiration and fascination in some, and such hostility in others? Why did the French authorities prefer to remain as discreet as an English butler during the years 1996-2015, when so many glorious bicentennials were waiting to be commemorated? The slavery re-establishment lawsuit brought against Napoleon cannot, alone, explain this phenomenon, especially as it only began in 2005, and other opportunities had already been squandered in previous years.

The primary cause certainly lies in the reputation for warmongering that attaches to his name, and the bloodshed for which he is held responsible. But is he really the only one to blame for the incessant conflicts that ravaged Europe during his reign? Is there no doubt that his adversaries were determined to make peace, and especially England, which financed hostilities against France, his main historical rival, for twenty-five years? Admittedly, the man many consider to be the greatest military genius of all time, and who always imposed himself on his enemies on the battlefield, may have abused this superiority. However, it's hard to deny that his warlike ventures had other than political aims. It was Louis XIV who confessed: I loved war too much; Napoleon, on the other hand, used it as a tool, never prolonging hostilities once his objectives had been achieved. It's true that, up to that point, he practices it withour qualms. If time and the evolution of mentalities have spoiled the prestige of great conquerors, let's not forget that Napoleon lived at a time when military glory and heroism were usually ranked among the noblest achievements of the human person, and war was considered a school of virtue. In fact, we don't have to go back very far to recall the days when Hoche, Marceau, Kléber and Desaix were held up as examples to children in french schools.

General Bonaparte, some would argue, was certainly of the same calibre. But he didn't die like them at the turn of the century, and metamorphosed into an entirely different character: Napoleon I. This is the other recurring criticism levelled at him: that he stifled the Revolution. This is forgetting − or refusing to see − that his regime was a worthy heir to the Revolution, when it exhausted itself trying to get European sovereigns to accept its annexations; that the Empire, as a political entity, was part monarchy and part republic; that the much-maligned Napoleonic wars also led to the collapse of large swathes of feudal and absolutist institutions throughout Europe; that the Emperor remained consistently more popular with the lower classes of society than with the upper; that he was always concerned to provide work for the workers and to supply the markets properly!

All this, you may object, at the price of freedom. That's true. It's impossible to deny it. Napoleon's temperament and training combined to make him hate disorder. He saw it as the consequence of excessive freedom during the revolutionary years. He mistrusted it, and compressed it with all his might. In doing so, however, he met with little opposition in French society, which was generally indifferent to the loss, since equality had been proclaimed and secured, while the nation's dazzling grandeur, which came very close to total domination of Europe, flattered the pride of its people. The sacrifice made was, it seemed, amply compensated. And perhaps it was the prerequisite for achieving that synthesis of Ancien Régime and Revolutionary France which, from the 18th Brumaire onwards, was one of the objectives most doggedly pursued by both Consul Bonaparte and Emperor Napoleon. Although he was unable to achieve it for lack of time, and the respective elites of these two groups did not amalgamate, he nevertheless forced them, throughout his reign, to coexist and put their abilities at the service of the state, for the latter's greatest benefit. Indeed, the Consulate and Empire together make up one of those rare periods in French history when our country's successes were achieved exclusively at the expense of foreign powers, and not of a section of its own people.

It's clear, then, that he is such a diverse character that any judgment of him is bound to be reductive. Hence the contradictory accounts of his life, and the divergent assessments givent to him and his work. It's hard to find a place where to put together a young Corsican patriot, a fallen sovereign who was a prisoner and ill, a victorious conqueror, a revolutionary general favored by Robespierre and then Barras, and an authoritarian emperor. Napoleon played all these roles, and many more, in diplomatic, political, administrative and military spheres. He alone is the exception that confirms − or the example that invalidates, each to judge according to his own personal conviction − the view that history can be explained by the general laws of social evolution, and not by the consequences of the choices made by its major players.

In conclusion, Napoleon Bonaparte's life is one of history's most prodigious phenomena, one of its most irreducibly singular yet universal figures. His complexity continues to fascinate people all over the world. Each generation finds in him something to fuel its own problematics. There's no doubt that the day when his story will cease to be written is still a long way off.

Lionel A. Bouchon