Curated category
Napoleon
- Malet coup of 1812At four in the morning on the 23rd of October 1812, a man in a general's uniform slipped out of a Parisian sanatorium and walked calmly toward the…
- NapoleonListen to the story of Napoleon, the Corsican outsider who rose through a revolution and rewrote the laws of a continent. Follow the thread to St Helena.
- Treaty of Campo FormioThe Treaty of Campo Formio was signed on the 17th of October 1797 in an old house on the main square of a small village west of Udine.
- Legion of HonourThe Legion of Honour has been pinned to the chests of soldiers, scientists, artists, and heads of state for more than two centuries.
- Peace of Pressburg (1805)The Peace of Pressburg was signed on the 26th of December 1805, less than four weeks after one of the most decisive battles in European history.
- French ConsulateThe French Consulate was the government of France from the 9th of November 1799 to the 18th of May 1804, a span of less than five years that changed the…
- Concordat of 1801On the 15th of July 1801, in Paris, Napoleon Bonaparte and Pope Pius VII put their names to a document that neither of them entirely wanted.
- Coup of 18 BrumaireThe Coup of 18 Brumaire took place on the 9th of November 1799, and by the end of that single night, the French Revolution was over.
- Protector of the Confederation of the RhineThe Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine was a title held by Napoleon, Emperor of the French, and it appears in the founding treaty of that…
- Constitution of the Year VIIIOn the 18th of Brumaire, year VIII, which corresponds to the 9th of November 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte executed a coup d'état in Saint-Cloud.
- Frankfurt proposalsThe Frankfurt proposals landed in front of Napoleon I in November 1813, in the middle of the War of the Sixth Coalition.
- Treaty of Fontainebleau (1814)The Treaty of Fontainebleau, signed on the 11th of April 1814, ended the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte as emperor of the French and sent him into exile on the…
- Abdications of BayonneThe Abdications of Bayonne took place across three days in May 1808, when Napoleon I extracted the Spanish Crown from two kings simultaneously.
- Acte de déchéance de l'EmpereurThe Acte de déchéance de l'Empereur was a law passed on the 2nd of April 1814 that stripped Napoleon I of his throne in a single morning session.
- Congress of ErfurtThe Congress of Erfurt brought together two of the most powerful men on earth for nearly three weeks in the autumn of 1808.
- Continental SystemThe Continental System was Napoleon's grand attempt to strangle Britain without firing a single shot at sea. On the 21st of November 1806, he signed the…
- Italian campaign of 1796–1797On the 27th of March 1796, Napoleon Bonaparte summoned three senior generals to his headquarters in Nice. Louis Alexandre Berthier served as chief of staff…
- Military career of NapoleonNapoleon Bonaparte fought more than 80 battles over a career spanning more than 20 years, and he lost only eleven of them.
- Coronation of NapoleonThe Coronation of Napoleon unfolded on the 2nd of December, 1804, inside Notre-Dame de Paris, and it left witnesses with a ceremony unlike anything France…
- Napoleon and the JewsNapoleon and the Jews stands as one of the most debated chapters in modern Jewish history. On the 22nd of May 1799, a French newspaper reported that Napoleon…
- Clisson et EugénieClisson et Eugénie is a romantic novella written by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1795, when he was still a young officer whose fate was far from settled.
- French expedition to SardiniaThe French expedition to Sardinia turned bloody on the 22nd of January 1793, when defenders at Cagliari opened fire on an approaching French boat crew.
- Napoleon's penisNapoleon's penis has one of the stranger documented afterlives in history. When Napoleon died on the island of Saint Helena on the 5th of May, 1821, no one…
- Napoleon's theoremNapoleon's theorem sits at an odd crossroads between pure geometry and contested history. Draw any triangle you like - scalene, obtuse, lopsided, it does not…
- Napoleon's tombNapoleon's tomb sits beneath the dome of the Invalides in Paris, built to hold remains that had to be brought home first.
- Quum memorandaThe Latin phrase Quum memoranda opens a papal brief issued by Pope Pius VII in 1809. This document arrived as a direct counter to an imperial decree from…
- Route NapoléonNapoleon I stepped onto the soil of France on the 1st of March 1815. He had escaped from his exile on the island of Elba just days before.
- Napoleonic CodeThe Napoleonic Code, officially the Civil Code of the French, arrived in the world on the 21st of March 1804 and has never left.
- French Imperial EagleThe French Imperial Eagle stood just 310 mm tall and weighed under two kilograms. Yet Napoleon told his troops on the 5th of December 1804 that they must…
- HMS Undaunted (1807)HMS Undaunted was a fifth-rate 38-gun sailing frigate of the British Royal Navy, and in the spring of 1814 she carried the most famous passenger in the world…
- Legacy of NapoleonIn 1805, Jacques-Louis David painted Napoleon Crossing the Alps, a work that would become central to centuries of historical argument.
- Napoleon complexAn 1803 political cartoon by James Gillray depicts Napoleon as short of stature. This image helped spread a myth about the French emperor's height that…
- Bank of FranceOn the 14th of April 1803, the new Bank received its first official charter granting it the exclusive right to issue paper money in Paris for fifteen years.
- Napoleonic tacticsNapoleonic tactics shaped the battlefield for roughly half a century, from the late 18th century until the rifled musket made them obsolete.