Napoleon Bonaparte was not an obvious contender for greatness. From an ordinary family and short on successes at school, it was not until he joined the army and discovered a gift for impressing those who mattered, that we begin to see the potential of the future Emperor.
Marriage to Josephine did little to quell Napoleon's vaulting ambition; quite the opposite. After his triumphant return to Paris in 1797, he was already planning his invasion of Europe. We cover all these events, plus the invasion of Egypt and the battle of the Pyramids, ending with Napoleon's ri...
By the year 1800, Napoleon’s political career was in full swing. However, as First Consul, he was hardly a man of the people. By a stroke of outrageous good fortune, he even survived an assassination attempt on Christmas Eve of 1800, which gave him the perfect excuse to eliminate several politica...
Up until 1807, Napoleon’s life and career had been an almost uninterrupted tale of success - but things were about to begin to unravel. The Emperor’s determination to impose the Continental System on the whole of Europe - thereby providing an insuperable trade barrier to Britain - was the driving...
