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Filled with revolutionary zeal, the French rapidly achieved a number of stunning victories. The exploits of one young Corsican officer, Napoleon Bonaparte, were recognised by the French to such an extent that in 1799, at the age of 30, he was able to seize power and claim a military dictatorship without too much opposition; all this despite his inglorious defeat at the hands of the Englishman Horatio Nelson during Napoleon’s attempt to conquer Egypt and block Britain’s route to India. Five years later, Napoleon became emperor of the French, inviting the Pope to crown him in the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, but famously putting the crown on his own head at the last minute in a sign that he was in control not only of France, but also of his own destiny.
The British continued to frustrate Napoleon’s ambitions, notably smashing a combined French and Spanish fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar off the coast of south-west Spain in 1805 – a battle during which the British destroyed or captured some 20 French and Spanish ships without losing one themselves. Napoleon’s anger at this defeat was perhaps somewhat assuaged by the death of his old adversary, Admiral Nelson, who was mortally wounded. Despite this defeat on sea, the French continued to have great success on land, defeating Austrian, Russian and Prussian armies in quick succession.
Increasingly concerned by the possibility of Europe becoming unified under a hostile power, the British organised a new anti-French coalition, an act which naturally infuriated Napoleon. Unable to invade Britain while the British navy commanded the English Channel, Napoleon sought to implement a blockade of British goods, forbidding their import into any part of Europe under his control – or even allied to him for that matter – and declaring all British ships open game. He hoped that this action would force Britain to sue for peace.
Most countries fell in line, but the Portuguese, old allies of Britain, proved recalcitrant. This provided Napoleon with a reason to invade the Iberian peninsula in 1808 and place his brother, Joseph, on the Spanish throne. The king of Portugal fled to his colony in Brazil, which was established as the temporary capital of the Portuguese Empire. To Napoleon’s dismay, the Spanish did not accept a French king and, with British help, the entire Iberian peninsula caused Napoleon problems for many years and succeeded in distracting his attention when it needed to be focused elsewhere.
Despite these setbacks on the peninsula, by 1812 Napoleon controlled a quarter of Europe’s population and members of his family sat on thrones in Spain, Naples and Holland, creating a new dynastic family in Europe. He even took for his wife Marie Louise, the Habsburg daughter of the Austrian emperor, Francis I, who happened to be a niece of Marie Antoinette, the queen the revolution had executed.
Yet it was not only the Portuguese who refused to play ball; the Russians also continued to trade with Britain. Distrusting Russia’s imperial intentions, Napoleon invaded the country in the summer of 1812 with approximately half a million men, but the Russians adopted a scorched-earth policy that deprived Napoleon of food to feed his army. Disease, desertion and an inconclusive battle just outside Moscow at Borodino, in which some 50,000 of his soldiers were killed, meant that Napoleon reached Moscow with only 100,000 of his men.
Worse still, when it finally became clear to Napoleon that the Russians had no intention of surrendering, his army was forced into a retreat during the Russian winter. Where desertion and hunger failed to work, ‘General Winter’ and ‘General Typhus’ succeeded. Of the half a million men that had set out, only some 20,000–40,000 returned. The huge number of horses that died en route, estimated by some at up to 200,000, also contributed directly to Napoleon’s defeats over the coming years in a world in which the cavalry could make or break a battle.
Like the Habsburg Empire before it, Napoleon’s growing empire was a threat to other European powers. Encouraged by his defeat in Russia, these powers formed yet another alliance against him, advancing together on Paris where, in 1814, Napoleon was forced to surrender. He was sent to exile on the Mediterranean island of Elba, which he was effectively given as a sovereign principality, along with an income and title. Not one to give up easily though, Napoleon escaped from the island, managed to pull together a huge army of loyal soldiers while marching north through France, and waged war in Europe one last time.
But his time had passed. He was finally and decisively beaten in 1815 by an allied army led by the Duke of Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo,87 near Brussels, in present-day Belgium, and banished to the island of St. Helena in the south Atlantic, under British guard and far enough away for him never to cause trouble again. He lived peacefully for another six years before dying of cancer in 1821 at the age of 51.
Napoleon’s thirst for power had led to death and destruction and, ‘far from establishing a united Europe under French command, he accelerated the growth of nationalism which would eventually lead to the First ‘World War’.88 Nevertheless, his numerous reforms changed the way in which Europe was run: he introduced a legal code that serves as the basis for the legal system in many European countries today, and his regime challenged the institutions and beliefs of the old order. For better or for worse, he brought the secularism of the revolution into mainstream thought. It is to Napoleon’s campaigns in Egypt that we owe the discovery of the Rosetta Stone that allowed us to translate ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, a discovery that subsequently opened up the world of Egyptian history to mankind.