WEBVTT - How Did Napoleon I, the Emperor of the French, Rise and Fall? 0:00:01.840 --> 0:00:08.680 Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey Brainstuff, Lauren Bogelbaum. Here, 0:00:10.480 --> 0:00:13.560 have you ever heard the expression they met their waterloo, 0:00:14.520 --> 0:00:18.000 as in the person in question met a crushing defeat 0:00:18.079 --> 0:00:22.239 that ended their ambitions. It comes from what happened to 0:00:22.360 --> 0:00:26.360 Napoleon Bonaparte near a village called Waterloo in Belgium on 0:00:26.480 --> 0:00:30.800 June eighteenth of eighteen fifteen. The forty six year old 0:00:30.800 --> 0:00:35.000 French general turned emperor lost this climactic battle of his 0:00:35.040 --> 0:00:39.839 storied career at the hands of British Impressian opponents. The 0:00:39.840 --> 0:00:43.080 battle ended Napoleon's attempt to make a comeback from exile 0:00:43.440 --> 0:00:48.440 and quashed the short lived glories of France's first Empire. Today, 0:00:48.640 --> 0:00:52.440 let's take a relatively short look at how Napoleon rose 0:00:52.640 --> 0:00:57.400 and fell. Napoleon Bonaparte was born on August fifteenth of 0:00:57.440 --> 0:01:01.360 seventeen sixty nine on the island of Corsica, the son 0:01:01.400 --> 0:01:04.240 of a prominent Corsican family. He was sent to mainland 0:01:04.280 --> 0:01:07.480 France for school, where his Parisian classmates made fun of 0:01:07.520 --> 0:01:11.479 his provincial accent. For the article this episode is based 0:01:11.520 --> 0:01:14.720 on How Stuff Works. Spoke with Peter Hicks, a historian 0:01:14.800 --> 0:01:17.920 and the manager of international affairs for the Napoleon Foundation 0:01:18.040 --> 0:01:23.000 in Paris. He said, instead of calling him Napoleon, they 0:01:23.040 --> 0:01:26.480 called him straw on the nose, mispronouncing his name in 0:01:26.520 --> 0:01:32.080 French with a Corsican accent. When he met thirty two 0:01:32.200 --> 0:01:36.360 year old Paris socialite Josephine du Buernet, Napoleon was six 0:01:36.440 --> 0:01:40.440 years her junior. She already had two children. Their father 0:01:40.520 --> 0:01:43.880 had been executed in seventeen ninety four during France's Reign 0:01:43.920 --> 0:01:47.520 of Terror, part of the ongoing French Revolution that was 0:01:47.560 --> 0:01:52.560 working to unseat the royal dynasty. Napoleon and Josephine married 0:01:52.600 --> 0:01:56.360 in seventeen ninety six. Napoleon became stepfather to her children. 0:01:57.640 --> 0:01:59.920 In the course of time, it was discovered that Josephine 0:02:00.080 --> 0:02:03.560 couldn't have more children. Though Napoleon was said to have 0:02:03.600 --> 0:02:05.680 loved her for the rest of his life, he would 0:02:05.680 --> 0:02:08.360 divorce her in eighteen oh nine to marry the Austrian 0:02:08.440 --> 0:02:12.120 Archduchess Maria louise A, banking on her to produce him 0:02:12.120 --> 0:02:14.400 an air, which she did with the birth of a 0:02:14.480 --> 0:02:18.520 son in eighteen eleven, who would eventually become Napoleon the second. 0:02:18.760 --> 0:02:22.240 For about two weeks in eighteen fifteen, after his father's 0:02:22.320 --> 0:02:26.520 second fall from power. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. 0:02:27.440 --> 0:02:30.040 Napoleon rose through the ranks of the French army and 0:02:30.120 --> 0:02:33.080 was promoted to major general after helping to quash a 0:02:33.160 --> 0:02:37.400 royalist coup in Paris in seventeen ninety six, At just 0:02:37.440 --> 0:02:40.040 twenty six years old, he was sent to Italy to 0:02:40.200 --> 0:02:45.080 mount a last ditch campaign against France's bitter rival Austria. 0:02:45.520 --> 0:02:49.040 He found the French troops there exhausted and unpaid, but 0:02:49.080 --> 0:02:52.440 whipped them into excitement with promises of glory and riches 0:02:52.440 --> 0:02:56.480 to be won. Despite being outnumbered almost two to one, 0:02:56.840 --> 0:03:00.440 Napoleon used speed and cunning to separate the enemy forces 0:03:00.720 --> 0:03:05.640 and ruthlessly attacked their weak points. An Italian officer complained, 0:03:06.120 --> 0:03:09.160 they sent a young madman who attacks right, left and 0:03:09.200 --> 0:03:12.800 from the rear. It's an intolerable way of making war. 0:03:15.000 --> 0:03:18.720 Upon their surrender, Napoleon demanded payment in gold, which he 0:03:18.840 --> 0:03:23.040 gave to his fighting men, sealing their loyalty. A word 0:03:23.080 --> 0:03:27.480 of his exploits spread far and wide, Hicks said, everybody 0:03:27.480 --> 0:03:32.200 wanted to know who is this guy. It didn't take 0:03:32.240 --> 0:03:35.160 long for Napoleon to begin seeing himself as the French 0:03:35.200 --> 0:03:39.960 incarnation of Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great. He could 0:03:39.960 --> 0:03:42.440 have made a play for emperor in seventeen ninety seven, 0:03:42.720 --> 0:03:46.080 but felt the moment wasn't quite right in Paris, so 0:03:46.640 --> 0:03:49.600 he rallied his armies and set off for Egypt, where 0:03:49.640 --> 0:03:53.800 he hoped to cut off British trade with India. There 0:03:53.960 --> 0:03:56.960 he marched thirty five thousand troops across the desert from 0:03:57.000 --> 0:04:00.000 the port of Alexandria towards Cairo and took the city. 0:04:01.280 --> 0:04:05.360 But while Napoleon was daydreaming of conquest, he later wrote, 0:04:05.680 --> 0:04:09.120 I saw myself founding a new religion, marching into Asia, 0:04:09.200 --> 0:04:11.440 riding an elephant, a turban on my head and in 0:04:11.440 --> 0:04:16.120 my hand the new Kuran. The British struck back, destroying 0:04:16.120 --> 0:04:20.799 the French fleet docked in the Mediterranean. Thus stranded in Egypt, 0:04:20.960 --> 0:04:24.279 Napoleon picked a few more fights, but by seventeen ninety 0:04:24.279 --> 0:04:27.360 eight morel was low and a civil war was raging. 0:04:27.440 --> 0:04:32.279 Back home, Napoleon saw an opening for his triumphant return, 0:04:32.800 --> 0:04:36.160 so he abandoned his troops in Egypt and secretly made 0:04:36.160 --> 0:04:39.760 for France. When he made it back in October of 0:04:39.760 --> 0:04:44.000 seventeen ninety eight, he found his country in chaos. The 0:04:44.040 --> 0:04:47.400 state coffers were empty, a coalition of enemies was on 0:04:47.440 --> 0:04:50.800 the attack, and the French central government, led by a 0:04:50.960 --> 0:04:55.800 five man Directory, was divided and crumbling. France needed a 0:04:55.800 --> 0:04:59.400 strong leader, and Napoleon knew just the right authoritarian for 0:04:59.440 --> 0:05:03.359 the job. In a matter of weeks, he plotted with 0:05:03.400 --> 0:05:06.400 two of the directors and some wealthy backers to hatch 0:05:06.520 --> 0:05:11.680 a coup de'tat. They convinced the legislature that another royalist 0:05:11.720 --> 0:05:15.200 coup was eminent pretense for relocating the government to a 0:05:15.240 --> 0:05:19.960 country palace and sending in troops to protect them. Then, 0:05:20.160 --> 0:05:23.480 in a complicated series of political maneuvers, he convinced his 0:05:23.480 --> 0:05:26.760 fellows to dissolve the Directory and create a new three 0:05:26.839 --> 0:05:31.839 person council with himself at the head. Just five years 0:05:31.880 --> 0:05:35.159 after the French Revolution ended, Napoleon took the title of 0:05:35.360 --> 0:05:38.800 first Consul for life and decided it was time to 0:05:38.800 --> 0:05:42.880 bring monarchy back. On December second of eighteen oh four, 0:05:43.200 --> 0:05:45.960 after literally snatching the crown from the hands of the 0:05:46.000 --> 0:05:49.080 Pope and placing it on his own head, Napoleon named 0:05:49.160 --> 0:05:54.200 himself Emperor of France. While in power, he did spearhead 0:05:54.200 --> 0:05:57.880 reforms that pulled the country out of chaos after a 0:05:57.920 --> 0:06:01.279 pact with the Pope. A Napoleonic France recognized Catholics and 0:06:01.480 --> 0:06:06.080 also welcomed Protestants and Jews on equal footing. France created 0:06:06.120 --> 0:06:09.520 its first central bank, the franc was introduced, and taxes 0:06:09.560 --> 0:06:13.520 were collected in a fair and timely manner. The messy 0:06:13.560 --> 0:06:16.800 post revolution legal system was codified under what's known as 0:06:16.800 --> 0:06:21.120 the Civil Code or the Napoleonic Code. On the flip side, 0:06:21.160 --> 0:06:24.800 women lost almost all legal rights and slavery was reintroduced 0:06:24.839 --> 0:06:30.040 in the French colonies. Hicks said government was settled along 0:06:30.080 --> 0:06:33.120 a top down structure and it was very much one 0:06:33.160 --> 0:06:37.520 man at the top. But Napoleon's reforms brought financial security 0:06:37.839 --> 0:06:43.279 and also political and social stability. But Napoleon's rule of 0:06:43.320 --> 0:06:46.919 France was dominated by non stop fighting over territory with 0:06:47.040 --> 0:06:51.440 European rivals, chiefly Britain, the major economic and military power 0:06:51.480 --> 0:06:55.920 of the day, along with Austria, Prussia and Russia. The 0:06:56.000 --> 0:06:59.839 Napoleonic Wars spanned from seventeen ninety six to eighteen fifteen. 0:07:01.360 --> 0:07:04.880 Hicks said Britain was happy to have Europe fighting itself 0:07:04.960 --> 0:07:07.600 so it could run the rest of the world. Britain 0:07:07.640 --> 0:07:10.680 paid other countries to do the fighting against France, but 0:07:10.720 --> 0:07:14.040 the other guys didn't need much encouraging. They found Napoleon 0:07:14.160 --> 0:07:21.440 France quite challenging. Napoleon was a master tactician. He won 0:07:21.480 --> 0:07:24.520 more than fifty battles in his career. He was so 0:07:24.560 --> 0:07:28.000 successful that by eighteen twelve he controlled most of the 0:07:28.000 --> 0:07:32.239 European continent, but his military dominance didn't last, in part 0:07:32.280 --> 0:07:36.000 because of his own hubris. He made what turned out 0:07:36.040 --> 0:07:39.560 to be a disastrous decision to invade Russia in eighteen twelve. 0:07:40.800 --> 0:07:43.840 The Russian Czar Alexander the First backed out of Napoleon's 0:07:43.880 --> 0:07:47.600 blockade of British goods in eighteen eleven, and Napoleon was livid, 0:07:48.880 --> 0:07:51.440 But he failed to prepare his troops for the harsh 0:07:51.480 --> 0:07:54.640 Russian winter and ended up losing and estimated three hundred 0:07:54.680 --> 0:07:57.560 thousand of the five hundred thousand soldiers in his force. 0:07:58.960 --> 0:08:02.040 This was followed by another defeat, this time at the 0:08:02.080 --> 0:08:05.120 hands of the British, Portuguese and Spanish forces. In the 0:08:05.120 --> 0:08:10.600 Peninsula War of eighteen fourteen. They invaded France and seized Paris. 0:08:11.240 --> 0:08:14.280 Napoleon's generals refused to follow him into a final battle, 0:08:14.520 --> 0:08:17.560 and Napoleon abdicated his throne. In April of that year, 0:08:18.360 --> 0:08:22.880 he was exiled to the Mediterranean island of Elba. Hicks 0:08:22.920 --> 0:08:26.240 explained that this exile was kind of a joke, less 0:08:26.240 --> 0:08:29.520 of a punishment for Napoleon than a strategy engineered by 0:08:29.560 --> 0:08:35.120 the Russians to destabilize Austrian controlled Italy, and after less 0:08:35.120 --> 0:08:38.199 than a year in exile, in February of eighteen fifteen, 0:08:38.640 --> 0:08:41.960 Napoleon sailed from Elba with a thousand supporters and landed 0:08:41.960 --> 0:08:45.600 on the French mainland. He issued a proclamation calling for 0:08:45.640 --> 0:08:48.080 the French army to join him and restoring him to 0:08:48.120 --> 0:08:51.600 power in the name of liberating France from foreign domination. 0:08:52.840 --> 0:08:56.439 He promised them victory shell March in double quick time. 0:08:58.400 --> 0:09:00.640 King Louis the Eighteenth, who had been installed by the 0:09:00.679 --> 0:09:04.320 coalition allies in Napoleon's place, skipped town without a fight. 0:09:05.200 --> 0:09:10.360 The emperor was back, but not for long. What followed 0:09:10.400 --> 0:09:14.320 is known as one Hundred Days Campaign, Napoleon's last desperate 0:09:14.400 --> 0:09:19.000 grasp of power. As the allies who opposed Napoleon gathered 0:09:19.000 --> 0:09:23.320 troops at France's borders. Napoleon struck first, leading his forces 0:09:23.320 --> 0:09:26.560 into Belgium, with the plan of beating the opposed armies 0:09:26.559 --> 0:09:29.880 one at a time before they could coalesce against him. 0:09:30.440 --> 0:09:33.560 He had some luck against the Prussians in a preliminary battle, 0:09:33.960 --> 0:09:38.040 but that would be his final triumph. Napoleon sent a 0:09:38.080 --> 0:09:42.160 third of his troops to chase the retreating Prussians. Meanwhile, 0:09:42.280 --> 0:09:45.000 he led his remaining seventy two thousand men towards a 0:09:45.000 --> 0:09:48.520 confrontation with an Allied force of sixty eight thousand soldiers 0:09:48.760 --> 0:09:52.640 led by the British general Arthur Wellesley, first Duke of Wellington, 0:09:53.000 --> 0:09:56.120 who was positioned near Waterloo, about a dozen miles or 0:09:56.160 --> 0:10:01.960 twenty kilometers outside the Belgian city of Brussels. Hastuffworks also 0:10:02.000 --> 0:10:04.640 spoke with Tom Makaitis, a professor of history at De 0:10:04.720 --> 0:10:08.640 Paul University, but he said the first thing to bear 0:10:08.679 --> 0:10:12.040 in mind is that even had he been victorious at Waterloo, 0:10:12.240 --> 0:10:15.640 Napoleon would not have won the war. He faced a 0:10:15.679 --> 0:10:20.800 coalition consisting of Britain, Prussia, Russia, Austria, and several smaller powers. 0:10:21.640 --> 0:10:25.760 Defeating Wellington would only have delayed the inevitable. With most 0:10:25.800 --> 0:10:29.000 of Europe ranged against him, defeat was only a matter 0:10:29.040 --> 0:10:34.720 of time. However, In the moment, Napoleon had a pretty 0:10:34.760 --> 0:10:38.199 good chance of winning. The armies were fairly evenly matched. 0:10:38.920 --> 0:10:42.760 You could say that fate intervened. There was a heavy 0:10:42.840 --> 0:10:45.640 rainstorm the night before his planned attack on the British, 0:10:45.880 --> 0:10:48.360 and the ground was so soaked the next morning that 0:10:48.400 --> 0:10:51.199 the French had to wait until eleven am to move 0:10:51.200 --> 0:10:55.800 their artillery into position. That deprived Napoleon of the element 0:10:55.840 --> 0:11:00.360 of surprise. To make matters worse, Napoleon hadn't slept due 0:11:00.360 --> 0:11:05.280 to some mysterious malady. Some biohistorians believe it was a 0:11:05.280 --> 0:11:08.960 severe case of hemorrhoids, which may have made it excruciating 0:11:09.000 --> 0:11:11.600 for Napoleon to sit on horseback that day as he 0:11:11.679 --> 0:11:15.679 directed his forces. Whatever it was may have also made 0:11:15.720 --> 0:11:19.000 it harder for him to think clearly at crucial moments. 0:11:19.960 --> 0:11:23.240 Napoleon's plan was to break Wellington's line and force his 0:11:23.320 --> 0:11:26.680 retreat before an incoming Prussian army could arrive and join 0:11:26.800 --> 0:11:30.400 forces with the British, but he didn't count on Wellington's 0:11:30.440 --> 0:11:35.680 expertise a defensive warfare. Napoleon's elegant plan degenerated into a 0:11:35.720 --> 0:11:40.319 frontal assault. Still, the battle was a tactical draw until 0:11:40.360 --> 0:11:43.920 the afternoon, when Napoleon saw the Prussian troops approaching in 0:11:43.920 --> 0:11:48.800 the distance. The French cavalry desperately attacked Wellington's line of soldiers, 0:11:49.080 --> 0:11:53.040 but they held. When the Prussians finally arrived, it was 0:11:53.080 --> 0:11:57.600 the French line that collapsed. Over sixty percent of Napoleon's 0:11:57.640 --> 0:12:00.280 army was killed, wounded, or wound up my mass in 0:12:00.360 --> 0:12:06.360 action that day, the Emperor's comeback was over. He abdicated 0:12:06.360 --> 0:12:09.800 for the second time four days later, and this time 0:12:09.840 --> 0:12:14.319 it stuck. But even in defeat, Napoleon was still feared. 0:12:15.440 --> 0:12:18.800 The Allies exiled him to Saint Helena, a remote island 0:12:18.840 --> 0:12:21.720 in the mid Atlantic, thousands of miles from France off 0:12:21.720 --> 0:12:25.000 the coast of Africa. He lived there in a ramshackle 0:12:25.120 --> 0:12:29.120 estate called Longwood, a single prisoner, guarded by twenty eight 0:12:29.200 --> 0:12:32.520 hundred men and a Royal Navy squadron of eleven ships. 0:12:33.480 --> 0:12:36.360 Napoleon died there on May fifth of eighteen twenty one, 0:12:36.960 --> 0:12:42.160 likely from stomach cancer, at the age of fifty one years. Reportedly, 0:12:42.520 --> 0:12:46.520 Josephine's name was the last word on his lips. He 0:12:46.600 --> 0:12:49.600 was buried on Saint Helena, but his remains were eventually 0:12:49.679 --> 0:12:52.199 returned to France, where he was entombed at Les, A 0:12:52.280 --> 0:12:57.240 valid among the great French leaders of all time. By 0:12:57.280 --> 0:13:03.040 the way, he wasn't that short. The term Napoleon complex 0:13:03.160 --> 0:13:06.360 dates to the nineteen twenties, a century after his death, 0:13:06.920 --> 0:13:10.880 describing someone usually a guy who compensates for a lack 0:13:10.920 --> 0:13:15.200 of physical height with a combative personality. A few things 0:13:15.200 --> 0:13:19.120 seemed to have gone into the making of this insult. Certainly, 0:13:19.320 --> 0:13:23.120 Napoleon did have an outsized ego for any human person, 0:13:23.800 --> 0:13:29.360 but his contemporary critics often portrayed him as ill tempered. Also, 0:13:29.640 --> 0:13:33.440 he was once given the nickname Le Petite Corporal, but 0:13:33.520 --> 0:13:36.800 this was affectionate and based not on his size, but 0:13:36.920 --> 0:13:39.720 rather his young age when he led that campaign in 0:13:39.760 --> 0:13:44.600 Italy in seventeen ninety six. The real confusion here seems 0:13:44.600 --> 0:13:49.120 to stem from a lack of standardization of measurements. At 0:13:49.160 --> 0:13:51.680 the time of his death. The British and French used 0:13:51.720 --> 0:13:55.000 the same terms for units of length, though the actual 0:13:55.120 --> 0:14:00.680 lengths represented were different, So Napoleon stood five two inches 0:14:00.720 --> 0:14:05.280 tall in French units. The French inch at the time 0:14:05.480 --> 0:14:09.520 was about two point seven centimeters. The British inch, which 0:14:09.559 --> 0:14:13.599 is the standard today, was just two point five four centimeters, 0:14:14.640 --> 0:14:18.080 so Napoleon actually stood at what we would recognize today 0:14:18.320 --> 0:14:21.560 as five feet six inches or one hundred and sixty 0:14:21.600 --> 0:14:25.840 nine centimeters, which was just a smidge above average for 0:14:25.960 --> 0:14:33.400 his time. Today's episode is based on the articles Why 0:14:33.440 --> 0:14:36.120 did Napoleon Lose the Battle of Waterloo by Patrick J. 0:14:36.280 --> 0:14:40.440 Kuiger and a Short History of Napoleon The Ambitious, Charismatic 0:14:40.440 --> 0:14:44.520 Emperor of France by Dave Bruce, both on HowStuffWorks dot com. 0:14:45.000 --> 0:14:47.680 Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with house 0:14:47.680 --> 0:14:50.960 stuffworks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. Four 0:14:51.000 --> 0:14:54.000 more podcasts from my heart Radio. 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