Right Man, Right Place, Right Time: The Rise of Napoleon

In 1799 France changed forever. After a decade of rumbling discontent regarding the concentration of wealth towards the powerful and the exploitation of the masses who were facing widespread starvation, the French rose up and killed everyone in charge, from the King on down.

The failure of the ancien regime, the creaking feudal order of things in France, to address this economic crisis led to a new way of thinking, not just for France but for the world. Many of the fundamental principals of modern liberal democracy came out of this seismic upheaval and metamorphosis of one of the most powerful countries in Europe.

This was also a time of bloody violence and widespread paranoia: not for nothing is the period where the French people sought to rule themselves for the first time in history known as “The Terror.” Noble families were butchered, royalists hunted down and executed. 

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Amidst the chaos there was very little that even the new government could agree on. The enormous power vacuum left by the death of a king and his court attracted quite as many chancers and opportunists as it did good men looking to build a better world, and nobody who tried to govern in this almost-lawless time escaped without bloody hands.

But there was unity, of a sort, in the French Consulate. The new order would be one for the people, ruled by merit not by birthright, and in this new democracy one thing was clear: there would never again be a king.

So how is it then that, only 15 years later, France crowned a new ruler: not just a king but an emperor? Who could have charted a course so true in these turbulent times that he could win the backing of the people who had just destroyed such a regime?

This was Napoleon, and the story of how he rose to the top of this chaotic French furball is one of bravado, and of sheer talent. It is also one of duplicity, of disobedience and of sheer luck.

How did France’s “little corporal,” an Italian Corsican, become Emperor of the French?

A Bloody Meritocracy

It certainly helped that Napoleon picked the right side, and the timing could not have been better for him. He had been commissioned as an artillery lieutenant in the Royal French Army in 1785, only four years before the Revolution: long enough to establish himself, but brief enough to escape associations with the traditional royalist elements of the army.

He was also an active and prominent supporter of the Revolution, an understandable thing. For a man of talent but low birth to be suddenly offered a world where he could shine presented a golden opportunity, and Napoleon was never a man to miss an opportunity.

Napoleon threw himself into the cause of the Revolution in his native Corsica, a brave thing to do given the complex politics of the island. There were many who wanted Corsican independence in the wake of the fall of the French regime, and Napoleon’s father was declared a traitor for failing to support them.

Was Napoleon a good soldier? He was a brilliant strategist and his battlefield tactics were unsurpassed, in a large part because this artillery lieutenant understand that artillery were the future, and could shape and direct the course of a battle to devastating effect. But he was also disobedient, opportunist, and very much on the make.

It was a peculiarity of his service in the army that he was never punished for his transgressions. He disobeyed orders in staying too long in Corsica commanding a troop of auxiliary volunteers, but instead of censure and a court martial this earned him a promotion to captain in 1792.

Finally returning to France and his duties after an embarrassing failure to take Corsica’s neighbor, the island of Sardinia, a year after advancing to captain Napoleon was promoted to overall artillery commander of the Republican forces by the French government, known as the Directory. This meteoric jump came about aided by his Corsican support and the disarray in France at the time.

Napoleon was again lucky with his new job, which saw him in  convoy passing the French port of Toulon at a crucial moment. He was charged with capturing the city from the occupying British and French royalists, so he captured a hill fort overlooking the city and its harbor and positioned his artillery so they could attack with impunity.

Toulon fell to Napoleon after several months, and he was made a general for his troubles. He had also caught the attention of the top men in the government. Given command of the artillery of the Army of Italy, he now had a purpose, and the momentum to carry him to power.

The French authorities seemed not to concern themselves with Napoleon’s rise or the increasing cult of personality which surrounded him, so long as he kept winning. He swept through Italy with a series of stunning victories, returning to Paris in 1797 as a populist hero.

His next expedition was to Egypt, where he soon controlled much of the Nile Delta. However Napoleon was unable to hold this territory, and once the British had destroyed his fleet at the Battle of the Nile he found himself trapped and facing ruin.

However this somehow turned out to be to his advantage. In his absence France had suffered a series of costly setbacks and was facing invasion with empty coffers, something for which Napoleon could clearly not take any blame. This allowed him to return, as he did in 1799 without orders to do so, as the savior of France.

This made Napoleon the figure around which public support coalesced. He was winning when everyone else was losing, he was strong when the new French government was weak. His success put him beyond punishment: his desertion in Corsica, his failure in Egypt and his repeated disobeying of orders were discussed by the Directory but no action was taken.

In fact this moment was the end of the nascent democracy in its original form. Napoleon formed an alliance of discontents in government who, on 9 November 1799, overthrew the Directory. Three “consuls” were appointed but only the most senior, Napoleon, had real power.

The change at the top was put to the public vote, of course, and it was said that 3,000,000 French people voted yes and only 1,562 voted no. Regardless of the truth of this vote, this was the moment when France chose her despot: his coronation in 1804 was just icing on the cake, a Roman-style triumph for his victories and an endorsement of what he had achieved.

This first, brutal attempt at French democracy therefore lasted only a decade before a strong and successful man was able to seize power. And, once he seized power, Napoleon spent the next ten years reaching for ever more. And he set Europe ablaze in the process.

Header Image: Very demure, very mindful: Napoleon’s coronation as French Emperor came only 15 years after the French overthrew their last autocratic ruler. Source: Workshop of François Gérard / Public Domain.