After the Corsican defeat at the Battle of Ponte Novu in 1769 and Paoli's exile in Britain, Carlo became friends with the French governor Charles Louis de Marbeuf, who became his patron and godfather to Napoleon.

[81][82] The preliminary peace of Leoben, signed on 18 April, gave France control of most of northern Italy and the Low Countries, and promised to partition the Republic of Venice with Austria.

Grand Master Ferdinand von Hompesch zu Bolheim surrendered after token resistance, and Bonaparte captured an important naval base with the loss of only three men.

[109] On 24 August 1799, fearing that the Republic's future was in doubt, he took advantage of the temporary departure of British ships from French coastal ports and set sail for France, despite the fact that he had received no explicit orders from Paris.

On 9 November 1799 (18 Brumaire according to the revolutionary calendar), the conspirators launched a coup, and the following day, backed by grenadiers with fixed bayonets, forced the Council of Five Hundred to dissolve the Directory and appoint Bonaparte, Sieyès and Ducos provisional consuls.

[122][123][124] Bonaparte also improved state finances by securing loans under a promise to defend private property, raising taxes on tobacco, alcohol and salt, and extracting levies from France's satellite republics.

Although Toussaint was captured and sent to France in July, the expedition ultimately failed due to high rates of disease and a string of defeats against rebel commander Jean-Jacques Dessalines.

[152] In February 1804, Bonaparte's police made a series of arrests in relation to a royalist plot to kidnap or assassinate him that involved the British government, Moreau and an unnamed Bourbon prince.

Following the royalist plot, Bonaparte's supporters convinced him that creating a hereditary regime would help secure it in case of his death, make it more acceptable to constitutional monarchists, and put it on the same footing as other European monarchies.

He then swore an oath to defend the territory of the Republic; to respect the Concordat, freedom of worship, political and civil liberty and the sale of nationalized lands; to raise no taxes except by law; to maintain the Legion of Honour; and to govern in the interests, wellbeing and the glory of the French people.

By the subsequent Treaty of Pressburg, signed on 26 December, Austria left the coalition, lost substantial territory to the Kingdom of Italy and Bavaria, and was forced to pay an indemnity of 40 million francs.

[185] Napoleon continued to entertain a grand scheme to establish a French presence in the Middle East in order to put pressure on Britain and Russia, possibly by forming an alliance with the Ottoman Empire.

The two emperors began peace negotiations on 25 June at the town of Tilsit during a meeting on a raft floating in the middle of the River Niemen which separated the French and Russian troops and their respective spheres of influence.

[199] Napoleon offered Alexander relatively lenient terms—demanding that Russia join the Continental System, withdraw its forces from Wallachia and Moldavia, and hand over the Ionian Islands to France.

[237] France received Carinthia, Carniola, and the Adriatic ports of Trieste and Fiume(Rijeka); the part of Poland annexed by Austria in the third partition in 1795, known at the time as West Galicia, was given to the Polish-ruled Duchy of Warsaw; and the territory of the former Archbishopric of Salzburg went to Bavaria.

[244] Tsar Alexander saw the creation of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, Napoleon's marriage alliance with Austria and the election of the French Marshal Bernadotte as Crown Prince of Sweden as attempts to contain Russia.

[252] The Russians retreated 320 kilometres east to the Dvina river and implemented a scorched earth policy, making it increasingly difficult for the French to forage food for themselves and their horses.

In the first few months on Elba, he drew up plans for administrative reforms, road and building works, and improvements to the island's mines and agriculture, but results were limited by lack of funds.

Realizing that his wife and son would not be joining him in exile, cut off from the allowance guaranteed to him by the Treaty of Fontainebleau, and aware of rumours he was about to be banished to a remote island in the Atlantic Ocean, Napoleon escaped from Elba in the brig Inconstant on 26 February 1815 with about 1,000 men and a flotilla of seven vessels.

[318] Under instructions from the British government, Lowe cut Napoleon's expenditure, refused to recognize him as a former emperor, and made his supporters sign a guarantee they would stay with the prisoner indefinitely.

[322][323] A number of his entourage also left Saint Helena including Las Cases in December 1816, General Gaspard Gourgaud in March 1818 and Albine de Montholon, who was possibly Napoleon's lover, in July 1819.

"[330] Antommarchi and the British wrote separate autopsy reports, each concluding that Napoleon had died of internal bleeding caused by stomach cancer, the disease that had killed his father.

An imperial decree of March 1808 organized Jewish worship into consistories, limited usury and encouraged Jews to adopt a family name, intermarriage, and civil marriage and divorce.

Those arguing for a ruthless personality point to episodes such as his violent suppression of revolts in France and conquered territories,[377] his execution of the Duc d'Enghien and plotters against his rule,[10][378] and his massacre of Turkish prisoners of war in Syria in 1799.

"[398] English painter Joseph Farington, who met him in 1802, said Bonaparte's eyes were "lighter, and more of a grey, than I should have expected from his complexion", that "his person is below middle size", and that "his general aspect was milder than I had before thought it.

[411] Real power in the regions was now in the hands of the prefects who were judged by how they met the main priorities of Napoleon's government: efficient administration, law and order, stimulating the local economy, gathering votes for plebiscites, conscripting soldiers and provisioning the army.

"[423] In the field of military organization, Napoleon borrowed from previous theorists such as Jacques Antoine Hippolyte, Comte de Guibert, and from the reforms of preceding French governments, and then developed what was already in place.

[424][425] Corps replaced divisions as the largest army units, mobile artillery was integrated into reserve batteries, the staff system became more fluid, and cavalry returned as an important formation in French military doctrine.

[104][105] A number of historians have argued that his expansionist foreign policy was a major factor in the Napoleonic wars,[450][451] which cost six million lives and caused economic disruption for a generation.

Napoleon indirectly began the process of Latin American independence when the power vacuum was filled by local political leaders such as Simón Bolívar and José de San Martín.