From Corsica to Waterloo — how well do you know the man who conquered Europe and changed history forever? 20 questions on Napoleon's campaigns, reforms, and legacy.
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From a small stone house in Ajaccio to the throne of an empire that reshaped Europe, Napoleon Bonaparte's life reads like a novel no novelist would dare invent. Born a Corsican minor noble in 1769, he rose through the turbulent French Revolution to crown himself Emperor at Notre-Dame in December 1804, bending half the continent to his will in little more than a decade.
His legacy is measured in both marble and blood. The Napoleonic Code, promulgated in 1804, still forms the backbone of civil law from France to Louisiana, from Belgium to Chile. Austerlitz, Jena, Wagram and Borodino are studied in military academies worldwide, while Trafalgar, Leipzig and Waterloo mark the limits of his genius. His Grande Armée of some 600,000 men vanished in the Russian snows of 1812, and a coalition of Europe's monarchies finally brought him down in .
Behind the legend stand the human episodes: a passionate marriage to Joséphine de Beauharnais, the political union with Marie Louise of Austria, the stolen kingdom of Elba, and the final exile on Saint Helena where he died in May 1821. Step into the world of the bicorn hat, the marshals, and the eagle standards — and discover how well you really know the man who still divides historians two centuries later.