Short answers, pulled from the story.
Joachim Murat was a French Marshal and cavalry commander who became one of Napoleon Bonaparte's most trusted officers and eventually his brother-in-law through marriage to Caroline Bonaparte in 1800. Napoleon named him First Horseman of Europe, Grand Duke of Berg, and finally King of Naples, where he ruled from 1808 to 1815.
On the 5th of October 1795, Murat seized artillery from the Camp des Sablons outside Paris and delivered the cannons to General Napoleon Bonaparte, who used them to suppress a royalist insurrection and save the National Convention. This act, known as the whiff of grapeshot, established Murat's bond with Napoleon despite not being mentioned in Napoleon's official report.
Murat was named King of Naples on the 1st of August 1808, after previously serving as Grand Duke of Berg and Duke of Cleves from the 15th of March 1806. He ruled Naples as Joachim-Napoleon until 1815.
Murat was captured after a failed attempt to retake Naples with approximately 200 men, tried for treason, and executed by firing squad in Pizzo Calabro on the 13th of October 1815. His last recorded request was that his eyes not be bandaged and that his soldiers aim at his heart.
At the Battle of Tolentino on the 2nd and the 3rd of May 1815, Murat suffered a decisive defeat against Austrian forces during the Neapolitan War. The loss ended his campaign to secure his throne and forced him to return to Naples, where he found that his wife Caroline had already surrendered to the British.
Murat was born on the 25th of March 1767 in La Bastide-Fortunière in Guyenne, in what is now the French department of Lot. His father, Pierre Murat-Jordy, was a yeoman, innkeeper, postmaster, and churchwarden. The town was later renamed Labastide-Murat in his honor.