Napoleon and Europe
The Spirit of the Age or The Scourge of Nations? Jeremy Black sets the scene for our major series on the impact of Napoleon on Europe.
Napoleon Bonaparte was the greatest general of his day, but he was more than a great warrior. He was also a statesman concerned to make France a great and modern state, a dynast ambitious to make the Bonapartes the leading family in Europe, and a ruler whose influence was to mould the history of Europe at the outset of its most influential century. What is too easily forgotten is that he was a young man when he set out to do this. Born on August 15th, 1769, Napoleon seized power in 1799 and in 1804 proclaimed himself Emperor.
It was only an accident that he was French. Napoleon was born in Ajaccio on Corsica, a Mediterranean island that for centuries had been ruled by the Italian city-state of Genoa. In 1768, however, the French bought Corsica from Genoa and in 1769 conquered the island from its rebellious subjects.
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