Born at Ajaccio, in Corsica, August 15, 1769. He was the eldest but one of a family of thirteen children; and his father, who was poor, though well descended, gladly embraced an opportunity of sending him to the Military College at Brienne, in France. Here he was noted for aversion to the society of his fellows, and to the amusements of boyhood. He was fond of imitating the operations of war, and displayed an unusual taste for the study of history and civil government; but he made no extraordinary progress in any branch of his education, except mathematics, in which he succeeded so well, that in his fifteenth year he was selected for removal to the Royal Military School at Paris. There he so zealously devoted himself to military studies, that on completing his sixteenth year he received his commission as Lieutenant of Artillery.

He remained unknown, and with little chance of promotion, until after the overthrow of the French monarchy in 1793. In the excesses of the Revolution he did not share; but his Jacobinical principles, which he advocated in a pamphlet entitled the ‘Supper of Beaucaire,’ recommended him to Robespierre and his colleagues, and, in conjunction with his reputation as an engineer, procured him the command of the artillery at the siege of Toulon, the capture of which was wholly owing to his skill. He mainly contributed to the success of the French arms on the Italian frontier; but the honour and the rewards were gathered by his superiors: and, in 1794, on the downfall of Robespierre’s government, he was deprived of his command as chief of battalion. For a time he remained in a state of neglect and poverty; and, without prospect of immediate advancement, indulged alternately in visionary schemes of greatness, and sober plans for obtaining a moderate competency. In 1795, his fortunes were suddenly advanced by the danger of the French Government, which, at the suggestion of Barras, entrusted to him the defence of the Tuileries against the National Guard and mob of Paris, on the 13th VendÉmiaire (October 4th). The authority of the Government was restored by the successful exertions of Buonaparte; and, in requital for this service, he was made General of the Army of the Interior. This office soon ceased to afford scope for his abilities; and the Directory, aware of the necessity of employing his ardent talents, appointed him General of the Army of Italy, then opposed to the Austrians. A few days before his departure from Paris he married Josephine, the widow of Viscount Beauharnois, an amiable woman, who by her talents and graces assisted in advancing his fortunes, and during some years exercised great influence over him.

Buonaparte entered Italy early in 1796, passing between the Alps and the Apennines. In the course of eighteen months he made six successful campaigns, destroyed five Austrian armies, and conquered nearly the whole of Italy. He obliged the Pope and other Italian sovereigns to send their choicest treasures of art to Paris, a measure imitated from ancient Rome, and savouring more of the spirit of ancient conquest, than of the mitigated warfare of modern times. Among the more memorable battles fought during this war, were those of Lodi, Roveredo, Arcole, Rivoli, and Tagliamento. Buonaparte’s activity and skill counterbalanced the numerical inferiority of his troops; and his personal courage, and readiness of resources under difficulties, procured him a great ascendency over the soldiery, by whom he was familiarly called the “Little Corporal.” At the conclusion of this war, in 1797, the territories of Venice were divided between France and Austria, the Pope was deprived of part of his temporal dominions, and a number of the conquered states were united to form the Cisalpine Republic. His military talents being now no longer needed, Buonaparte was obliged to resign his command. Hitherto he had professed a warm attachment to the democracy, and even sided with that party in the revolution of the 18th Fructidor (September 4, 1797), when the democratic members of the Directory deposed their colleagues. His conduct in remodelling some of the Italian governments threw a doubt on the sincerity of his democratic principles, which was latterly increased by the assertion of the dignity of his rank amongst his officers, and by his tenacious resistance to every attempt made by the Directory to divide or control his power in the command of the army.

He returned to Paris in January, 1798; and although keenly attentive to the state of the various political parties, he maintained a prudent reserve, adopting the appearance and pursuits of a private citizen. Finding no immediate chance of obtaining a share in the Government, and that he was daily incurring suspicion, he again sought military employment. Being satisfied at this period of the impracticability of invading England, he projected the conquest of Egypt. For this purpose, in May, 1798, a splendid armament was equipped at Toulon, with every requisite for colonizing the country and prosecuting scientific and antiquarian researches. He reached Egypt in July, expelled, after several hard-fought battles, the dominant military caste of Mamelukes, and made subjects of the native Egyptians. His administration, except in an absurd attempt to conciliate the natives by professing Mahometanism, was that of a wise and politic statesman; and there was every prospect that the French, although insulated from Europe by the destruction of their fleet at Aboukir, would permanently establish themselves in Egypt. Many improvements, by which the country has since derived signal benefit, were introduced by him; and to the scientific department of the expedition we are indebted for the foundation of our present knowledge of the natural history and antiquities of Egypt. Early in 1799, Buonaparte apprized Tippoo Saib of his design of marching against the British in India. The hostilities of the Ottoman Porte induced him, however, to invade Syria. After crossing the desert, and taking El-Arish, Jaffa, and Gaza, he was repulsed at Acre by Sir Sidney Smith, and compelled to make a disastrous retreat on Egypt. Jaffa is remarkable for two occurrences which have deeply affected the fame of Buonaparte. One of these is the massacre of a large body of Turkish prisoners, who were shot under the pretext that they had previously been liberated at El-Arish upon parole not to serve against the French. The other is his ordering some of his own soldiers, who were incurably sick of the plague, to be poisoned with opium, rather than abandon them to the enemy, or endanger the rest of the army by transporting them with it. The suggestion was certainly made; but it appears equally certain that it was not acted on, in consequence of the remonstrances of the medical officers. The retreat was closed by a battle at Alexandria, in which the Turkish army was totally defeated.

The French rule being established in Egypt, Buonaparte became very anxious to return to France, where circumstances seemed to favour his ambition. He left his army secretly in August, and arrived in Paris in October, having by singular good fortune escaped the British cruisers, and evaded the impediments imposed by the quarantine laws. He was received with joy by the people, now weary of the feeble administration of the Directory, which, having lost all the late conquests, could preserve their country neither against invasion from abroad, nor from anarchy at home.

Three weeks after his return, Buonaparte overthrew the existing Government by a conspiracy, in which he was assisted by all men of military or political eminence, with very few exceptions: and, with a general concurrence, he was invested with the supreme executive authority, under the title of First Consul of France. His nominal colleagues soon became the mere instruments of his ambition. Although he left France only the semblance of a free government, it cannot be denied that Buonaparte was, in some respects, a real benefactor to the state. Social order was maintained. The public exercise of religion was restored, and a treaty, termed the Concordat, was concluded with the Pope, by which the French Church was released from the supremacy hitherto claimed and exercised by the Holy See. A uniform code of laws, which recognised no adventitious distinctions, henceforth afforded equal protection to the whole community; office and power were fairly opened to the competition of merit, and the Legion of Honour was instituted for the reward of talent and worth in every class of life. Buonaparte restrained the contentions of parties, and rendered their leaders, such as Talleyrand, Carnot, FouchÉ, Moreau, and Bernadotte, subservient to his interests; whilst the people, enjoying the benefit of an able and safe administration, were indifferent to their ruler’s schemes for personal aggrandizement.

Having restored peace and security at home, Buonaparte sought to gratify the national thirst for glory by foreign victories. In 1800, he marched an army across the Alps by the route of the Great St. Bernard, descended unexpectedly on the rear of the Austrians, and, June 14, gave them a complete overthrow at Marengo. Having recovered nearly all the former conquests of the French by this battle, he returned to Paris to avail himself of this triumph to advance his power. But the rejection of the overtures of the Bourbons, and the obvious design of Buonaparte to appropriate the crown to himself, led to a union between the Royalists and Jacobins; and plots were formed against his life, from one of which he narrowly escaped. In November he resumed hostilities against Austria; and the battle of Hohenlinden, gained by Moreau, December 2, concluded the war. Austria then acknowledged the Cisalpine Republic, and permitted France to possess the boundary of the Rhine, and to annex Holland to her dominions. The war, continued by England, was distinguished for the battle of Copenhagen, fought April 2, 1801, by which the Northern Maritime Confederacy was broken up; and for the recovery of Egypt from the French by the army of Abercrombie: it was ended in 1802, by the Treaty of Amiens. A short interval of peace ensued, during which Buonaparte strengthened his personal power by becoming First Consul for life, with the right of naming his successor. He also constituted himself President of the Italian and Helvetian Republics, by which these states became in fact provinces of France.

In 1803, Great Britain, provoked by the restlessness of Buonaparte’s ambition, again declared war against France. The First Consul answered this declaration by imprisoning about ten thousand English subjects, who were travelling in his dominions. He also seized the Electorate of Hanover, and made vast preparations for invading England. Early in 1804, the Royalist and Jacobin parties again endangered his life. Amongst the conspirators were Pichegru and Moreau; the latter, however, was not privy to any design of assassination. These plots also proved abortive, and, in crushing them, Buonaparte increased the stability of his power. He established a special commission for the trial of all persons suspected of political crimes, without resorting to the ordinary courts of judicature. He believed, or affected to believe, that the recent plots were promoted by the Bourbons and the British ministers, and resolved to retaliate. By his orders the Duc d’Enghien was carried off, in March, 1804, from the neutral state of Baden, and, after an informal trial, put to death. He seized the British minister at Hamburgh, and confined him for a short period in the Temple. Captain Wright, a British naval officer, was also confined in the Temple, upon pretext that his ship had been captured while in the service of the Bourbon conspirators: he was said to have been murdered in prison; but there is no proof of this improbable crime. It was asserted that Pichegru perished in the same way.

In December, 1804, the First Consul assumed the titles of Napoleon, Emperor of the French and King of Italy. The Pope assisted in the ceremony of his coronation at Notre Dame: but Napoleon placed the crown on his own and his consort’s head with his own hand. In like manner, in May, 1805, he crowned himself King of Italy at Milan. In this year, Austria, Russia, and Sweden formed an alliance with England against France. In the same year, October 21, the naval power of France was destroyed by the battle of Trafalgar. But on the other hand, in a single campaign, which was concluded, December 2, by the battle of Austerlitz, Napoleon overthrew the fabric of the German empire, and obliged the other members of the coalition to separate from England and sue for peace. He then associated Bavaria, Wirtemberg, the Grand Duchy of Berg, and several smaller German states, under the title of the Confederation of the Rhine, of which he constituted himself Protector, receiving in return the services of about sixty thousand soldiers. Venice was added to the kingdom of Italy; while Joseph and Louis Buonaparte were appointed respectively kings of Naples and Holland. At the conclusion of this war Napoleon created a new order of nobility; many of whom bore foreign titles, and received extended grants in the territories recently conquered by France. He was now surrounded by men of the most opposite character and principles, yet all so well chosen for aptitude to their several offices that he was devotedly and efficiently served. He had a keen perception of talent in others, and judgment in giving it a suitable direction: not a few of his ablest followers, among them, Lannes, Junot, Murat, Victor, Augereau, and Soult, were of humble origin. Napoleon usurped the entire control of the civil and ecclesiastical polity, and by means of compulsory laws for military service, and the suppression of public opinion by an inquisitorial police and an enslaved press, established a complete despotism in France. In arrogating the style and pretensions of the Emperor Charlemagne, he desired to bury all remembrance of the late dynasty, and of his own origin. He had a strong tendency to fatalism, and believed that his career depended on destiny. This weakness was often manifested in those inflated bulletins, which announced his deeds in a manner calculated to impress the belief of his infallibility, and never acknowledged the occurrence of reverses.

Prussia had been induced to remain neutral during the war of which we have just spoken, by a promise of the cession of Hanover. Instead of fulfilling this engagement, Napoleon, by a series of injuries, provoked a declaration of war in 1806. Prussia was subjugated by the battle of Jena, fought October 14th: and Napoleon then marched into Poland against the Emperor of Russia; whom, after several battles, at Pultusk, Preuss-Eylau, and Friedland, he compelled to sue for peace. By the treaty of Tilsit, Prussia was dismembered, her sovereign retaining but a scanty portion of his dominions. Jerome Buonaparte received the kingdom of Westphalia, which was formed from the Prussian and Hanoverian territories, whilst the Prusso-Polish provinces were formed into the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, and bestowed on Napoleon’s ally the Elector of Saxony, who was also gratified with the title of King.

The want of a navy rendering Napoleon unable to contend with England, he endeavoured to separate her from the European world. In 1806, by certain decrees issued at Berlin and Milan, and acknowledged at the Treaty of Tilsit by every continental power, England was declared in a state of blockade, and all articles of English growth and manufacture were excluded from their ports. But as the rigid enforcement of these decrees was prevented by the access of the English to the Peninsula, Napoleon devised a scheme for rendering this part of Europe also amenable to his authority. In 1807 a treaty was concluded with Spain; and, by a joint invasion of the Spanish and French forces, Portugal was subdued and the House of Braganza expelled. But under pretext of supporting this invasion, Napoleon filled the most important military stations in Spain with his own troops. The royal family were enticed into France, and compelled by threats of violence to renounce all claims to their hereditary throne. Joseph Buonaparte, resigning the kingdom of Naples to Murat, repaired to Madrid, and was crowned king of Spain. But a fierce war breaking out between Joseph and his new subjects, the French, who had already been driven from Portugal by Sir Arthur Wellesley, seemed on the point of losing the whole Peninsula. Napoleon, in a campaign which he conducted in person, re-established his power in the Peninsula; but a declaration of war by Austria recalled him in mid-conquest. He hurried to the German frontier, and, after beating the Austrians at Abensberg, Landshut, and Eckmuhl, and taking Vienna, concluded the war by the battle of Wagram, fought July 6, 1809. A treaty was signed at SchoËnbrun in October, by which Austria made great sacrifices of territory and population. At SchoËnbrun Napoleon narrowly escaped death by the hand of a young German enthusiast, named Stabbs. During this war, Rome was annexed to France, as the second city of the empire; and the Pope, thus entirely stripped of his temporal dominions, was soon after removed to Fontainebleau, where he was confined as a prisoner.

Desirous of an heir to succeed to his vast empire, Napoleon, on his return from SchoËnbrun, divorced his empress, and, in accordance with one of the articles of the late treaty, married Maria Louisa, daughter of the Emperor of Austria, in March, 1810. This marriage was followed, in 1811, by the birth of a son, who was styled King of Rome. Although Napoleon remained in Paris in attendance on his new consort, his plans of ambition suffered no interruption. In 1810 he deposed his brother Louis, who thought too much of the welfare of his own subjects; and annexed Holland, together with the Hanse Towns and the whole sea-coast of Germany, to the French empire. The election of the French Marshal Bernadotte to the crown of Sweden seemed to place all Europe, except England, Russia, and the Peninsula, in the power of France. On the departure of Napoleon from Spain, in 1809, England again attempted to deliver the Peninsula; and, during the two succeeding years, Wellington did much towards effecting this object. The Emperor of Russia, who, at the treaty of Tilsit, was supposed to have agreed with Napoleon on the division of the European world, now found the power of the latter dangerous to his own kingdom, which also suffered greatly from the prohibition of commerce with England. Napoleon, perceiving that his brother Emperor designed to avail himself of the reverses in the Peninsula to insist on a more liberal course of policy, and security against future aggression, determined on war. In 1812 he invaded Russia, with the largest army that had ever been assembled under one European leader. After beating the Russians at Smolensko and Borodino, he took possession of Moscow, September 14. But the approach of winter, the burning of the city, and the consequent want of food and shelter, rendered it impossible to remain there; and the Czar refusing to listen to proposals for peace, Napoleon, after five weeks’ residence at Moscow, was obliged to withdraw. In the celebrated retreat which followed, the French army was utterly destroyed, more by the climate than by the enemy; the Emperor himself escaped with difficulty.

The spirit of the French people was roused by this disaster, and Napoleon speedily found himself at the head of another vast army. But Prussia and Sweden now joined the league against him, and experience had made his enemies more fit to cope with him; and though, in 1813, he won the battles of Lutzen and Bautzen in Saxony, he derived no material advantage from them. Having refused to accede to the terms proposed through the mediation of Austria, which would have restricted France to her ancient power and boundaries, this state also took part with the allies against him. After gaining the battle of Dresden, in August, Napoleon was compelled, by the successive defeat of four of his Marshals, to abandon his position on the Elbe, and retire on Leipsic. In October was fought the great battle of Leipsic, where, in three days, the French lost upwards of fifty thousand men. The Emperor then retreated across the Rhine. The Rhenish Confederacy was forthwith dissolved, and the Pope and Ferdinand were permitted to return to their respective dominions.

Napoleon having thus lost all his allies and foreign possessions, still refused the reasonable terms of peace which were offered to him, and prepared to defend France against invasion. Wellington crossed the Pyrenees in 1814, and about the same time the Russian and German armies passed the Rhine. During this campaign Napoleon showed wonderful energy in encountering his numerous enemies, but still adhered, with obstinate arrogance, to what he considered due to his own personal glory, and refused to treat for peace. After losing the battles of Brienne and La RothiÈre, in February, he entered on a negotiation with the Allies; during the discussion of which he attacked and defeated the Prussians on the Marne: and, on the 17th and 18th, with a perfect knowledge that his minister had signed the preliminaries of peace, he assaulted the Austrians and defeated them at Nangis and Montereau. These successes were useless, and only served to exasperate his foes. In March he was beaten at the battles of Craonne and Laon, and finding the Allies getting the superiority, he skilfully marched on their rear with the view of inclosing them between his own army and the capital. But the Allies obtained possession of Paris, and finding the people alienated by the tyranny of the Emperor, declared they would no more treat with Napoleon Buonaparte. The weakened state of his army, and the defection of most of his ministers and generals, left him without resources. On the 11th of April Napoleon renounced, for himself and his heirs, the thrones of France and Italy. He was allowed to retain the title of Emperor, and received the sovereignty of the island of Elba.

He reached his miniature kingdom May 4; and for a time appeared to occupy himself as intently with its affairs as if they had equalled in importance those of his late empire. But perceiving that the Bourbon government caused great discontent, he suddenly returned to France, and landed at Cannes, March 1, 1815, accompanied by about seven hundred soldiers. He reached Lyons on the 10th, and resumed the functions of sovereignty. On the 17th he was joined by Marshal Ney and a large body of men, and on the 19th by the army of Macdonald. The following day he entered Paris. He was immediately declared an outlaw by the Allied Powers, who, with upwards of a million of soldiers, prepared to dethrone him. Although he made many specious promises of freedom and good government, the feelings and interests of the people were opposed to him; and, after the decisive battle of Waterloo, he was again obliged to abdicate. Being foiled in attempting to escape to America, he took refuge in a British ship of war. The British Government rejecting his proposal to reside in England, it was determined that the rest of his life should be passed in the island of St. Helena, with the observances of etiquette due to a general officer. He arrived at St. Helena, October 15, 1815. A few courtiers and domestics attended him in his exile, and by them the form and ceremony of a court were always maintained. His ambition was not corrected by past experience, and he was continually forming plans for returning to Europe. His escape from the island was strictly guarded against. This exposed him to an unpleasant degree of superintendence, which he did not bear with the calmness of a great mind. Of the Governor’s conduct it is unnecessary to speak: but Napoleon’s constant and undignified disputes with that officer concerning the regulations for his personal treatment, lowered his character, while they added to the bitterness of his captivity. In the last year of his life Napoleon lost all his cheerfulness and disposition for active employment. He died, May 5, 1821, of a cancerous affection of the liver, and was borne, by a party of British grenadiers, to his grave in a secluded valley on the island.

Napoleon Buonaparte was short in stature, but handsome and well formed, and capable of enduring great fatigue and great vicissitudes of climate. We abstain from offering a summary of his character, as we have abstained for the most part from passing judgment upon his actions. The time is not yet come for him to be judged dispassionately. A multitude of books have been written concerning him, with the more important of which most readers are familiar.

The picture from which our engraving is taken was formerly in the collection at Malmaison, from whence it was purchased, on the restoration of the Bourbons, by Mr. Hamlet.