Noyon 2

Napoléon Bonaparte
He was torn the 15th of August 1769 in a house of Malerba street, which is now Saint Charles street, in Ajaccio , like his twelve brothers and sisters - seven of whom survived - that his parents Letizia and Charles Marie Bonaparte gave him .
This one, who in 1768 fought on the sides of Pascal Paoli, maybe becoming aware of the irreversible nature of a Corsica united with France, he joined himself very fast to France and got various favors like a school maintenance allowance which allowed the young Napoleon, to be admitted to the military academy of Brienne.

Aged of nine years he left Ajaccio, Napoleon was already an independent child and a strong mind. He recognized later :

" I did not fear anybody, I beat one, I had a dig at the other. I nude myself redoubtable for everybody.".

In Brienne, while going on with his studies, he felt appear for his isle not only a simple "love of the country" but a real patriotism and was enthusiastic about the general Paoli - about the man, his ideal and his action.

In 1784, he entered in the military academy of Paris from where he left being lieutenant of artillery. At 16 years old, his ambition was then to come back on his isle to make a career in policy and to be a regular soldier dreaming of one day being on the top.

When in 1789, the Revolution broke out, Napoleon was in complete support of his ideas. He took part in the political struggles which divide Corsica, and very fast whereas he was 20 years old, his ambition worried Pascal Paoli of whom he became soon the adversary.

In 1792, he was forced to go away from Ajaccio when after a bloody riot degenerating into a civil war, he failed in his attempt of seizure of the Citadel.

The following year, his family loyal to the Convention, target of a population which held a grudge against Lucien (brother of Napoleon) for his virulence against Paoli, had to take refuge in his house in the country at the Milelli before joining Napoleon. This one actually attempted, one time again, from the tower of the Capitello, to seize the town with the help of the fleet of the Republic but he failed again.

This failure marked the departure of Napoleon Bonaparte first towards Toulon then to an other fate, reminding then of the assessment of him made by a teacher at the academy of Brienne :

" Corsican of nation and of character, he'll go far if the circumstances favor him. " .

This young and ambitious man who already pressed in himself a kind of genius, left his isle but, this one without a doubt remained forever the birthplace of his family and of his affections.

Named, at this same year 1793 Chief of the Artillery in the army in charge of recapturing Toulon to the royalists, he covered himself with glory.

After having known setbacks due to the political crisis of France notably at the fall of Robespierre, Napoleon saw himself confide, in 1796, a short time before his marriage with Josephine de Beauharnais, the command of the troops in the campaign of Italia during which his "stuff" of military strategist was coupled with the "stuff" of a real chief of State.
It was actually, after having defeated Piemontese and Austrian, that he imposed on them peace (Campo Formio 1797), that he formed what became later the kingdom of Italia, then it was the campaign of Egypt, from where he came back in October 1799, invested by the moderates with the task of riding them of the Directory.

But it was not as a simple instrument of the bourgeoisie that Napoleon Bonaparte strove in the end of 1799 : following the coup of the 9th and 10th of November, he made himself proclaimed First Consul of the Republic and became ruler of the country in imposing on it the Constitution of the An VIII which granted to him executive power and initiative of the laws.

Chief of State and Army, Napoleon endowed with exceptional ability to work, an intelligence, and with a creative imagination, reformed in record time the administration and the law.

Once again victorous against the austrian coalition, imposing on English peace, signing in 1801 the Concordat with Pie VII who put the Church of France at the service of the government, Napoleon saw his power grow from day to day and had more and more difficulty to bear the opposition.

It was thus that a royalist plot was discovered, he made himself proclaimed in 1804 emperor of the French under the name of Napoleon 1st, then king of Italia in 1805.

Then a real "monarchy" was created around him with court and nobility of empire, whereas the established system went on with, under its impulse, the reforms and modernization: education, town planning, economy, fine art, creation of the Napoleon code, giving the society which was born of the Revolution a juridical base...

But the Emperor is very fast absorbed in the war. Failing in face of England (Trafalgar 1805) but succeeding in a series of campaigns against the Austrian-Russian (Austerlitz 1805), the Prussians (Iena 1806) he built up the great Empire after the treaty of Tilsit in 1807.

In answer to the sea blockade raised by London, Napoleon set up between 1806 and 1808 the Continental System in order to isolate England. This blockade indeed energized the french industry and farming but hintered the european economy and forced the Emperor to develop an expansionist policy which, from the Papal States to Portugal and to Spain in passing by the mastery of a new coalition of Austria (Wagram 1809) left his armies exhausted.

In 1810, concerned with ensuring his issue, Napoleon married Marie Louise d'Autriche who gave him a son Napoleon II, king of Rome.

In 1812, sensing hostility from the Tsar Alexandre 1st, the Great Army of Napoleon invaded Russia.

This bloody and disastrous campaign made sound the waking up of eastern Europe who, from coalition to occupation of France by the South and the East, saw Paris invaded by the enemy troops the 4th of March 1814 and a few days later Napoleon forced to abdicate in favor of his son then, the 6th of April 1814, to renounce to whole his powers.

It was from May 1814 to May 1815, during his forced stay in the Isle of Elba, the only derisory sovereignty left by his victorous enemies, that Napoleon saw the Austrian, Prussian, English and Russian share out, during the Congress of Vienna, what was his Great Empire.

Escaping from the english watch, Napoleon succeeded in coming back to France in March 1815 where supported by the liberals - enemies of the Bourbons - he knew a second but brief reign known under the name of the "Hundred Days" which brought France a new coalition of Europe bringing the following day of the disaster of Waterloo the new abdication of the Emperor the 22th of June 1815.

It was thus in putting himself in the England's hands, that this islander with a little ordinary fate had as a jail the distant the isle of Sainte-Helene, where before dying he often evoked with nostalgia his native island for which he confided to have been too preoccupied with the wars and jealousies to have the time and the means to implement the great plans he had conceived for it.

Real intentions or belated regrets, maybe history will tell it one day but anyway between Napoleon and Corsica the bonds are today indestructible and those who contest the actions of the renowned man like nevertheless the small boy of Ajaccio who isolating himself on the wooded heights of the town, maybe already sensed a fate out of the common.