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When-March 14, 1794
Where-United States
Invited by - Eli Whitney
This is important because it allowed for much greater productively than manual cotton separation.

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where -Pawtucket falls of the Merrimack river
when-1820
The Factories in Lowell Massachusetts became the united states largest textile center.

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Born- May 5, 1818
Died- March 14, 1883
From- Trier, Germany

Marx published "The Communist Manifesto" which introduces their conflict of socialism as natural result

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When-1773
Where-Boston
The Boston Tea party was important because it resulted in the passage of the punitive coercive Acts in 1774 and pushed the two sides closer to war.

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When- June 20, 1789
who- The Third Estate (The National Assembly)
This important because they took an oath never to separate until a written constitution had been established for France.

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When- 1879
Invented by- Thomas Edison
The discovery marked the beginning of commercially manufactured light bulbs ans in 1880 Thomas Edison company begin marketing

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When-1830's and 1840's
invented by -Samuel Morse
The telegraph is important because it gave long-distance communication and it laid the groundwork for the communication revolution that led to those later innovations.

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Born -August 23, 1754
Died -January 21, 1793
From -Yvelines, France

Louis XVI, born Louis-Auguste, was also known as Louis Capet during the French Revolution. In 1765, at the death of his father, Louis, Dauphin of France, son and heir apparent of Louis XV of France, Louis-Auguste became the new Dauphin.

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Among the singularities of the French monarchy was the tradition of having Scottish bodyguards. Scottish history has not been riddled with pacifism, and the Scots along with the fiery Castilians, were used as mercenaries as early as Charlemagne. An "Auld Alliance" between Scotland and France was sealed in 1295, and in the dark war days of 1942, Charles de Gaulle invoked it as "the oldest alliance in the world." In 1418, as Charles VI began to go mad, the Dauphin called on Scottish troops to support his cause against Henry V. They were victorious at the battle of Baugé in 1421, prompting Pope Martin V to comment: "The Scots are well known as an antidote to the English." St. Joan of Arc entered besieged Orleans in 1429 with a retinue of 130 Scots guards protecting her and playing on bagpipes the same tune, "Hey Tuttie Taiti," that had been played for Robert the Bruce at the Battle of Bannockburn a century before. The guards and pipers were also present with Joan at the coronation of the Dauphin as Charles VII at Rheims. The new king chose one hundred of the Scots as his personal bodyguards to honor their heroism when 6,000 of their number died at the Battle of Verneuil in 1424. The "Garde Ecossaise" later became "Garde de la Manche" since they escorted the king close enough to be touched by his sleeve. By the eighteenth century, some of them were more French than Scottish but they wore the thistle and carried claymore with basket guards of steel, guarding the French kings until Charles X abdicated in the July Revolution of 1830. They served as a poignant reminder of the Auld Alliance that lasted until 1906, and as late as then, anyone born in Scotland could have dual citizenship with France.

This recalls another Celtic curiosity: the priest who accompanied King Louis XVI to his execution was Irish. Rarely does anyone ask why the French king had an Irish confessor. Like the Garde Ecossaise, there is of course an explanation, and an edifying one at that.

Henry Essex Edgeworth was born in County Longford at Firmount, the ancestral home of the Edgeworths who had come from Middlesex, England during the reign of Elizabeth in 1582. In their house, Oliver Goldsmith had learned to read and write. Some accounts claim Henry as a great great grandson of the third cousin of Archbishop James Ussher, the seventeenth century Anglican Primate of Ireland who was a first rate classicist but a less distinguished historian, as he used the date of King Nebuchadnezzar's death to calculate that the world was created on October 23, 4004 BC. His contemporary, John Lightfoot, Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, outdid him by dating the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden at 10 AM on Monday, November 10 in the same year. Just as Edgeworth eventually would do, Ussher consoled his sovereign Charles I in prison during his last night on earth in 1649 and accompanied him to his execution but fainted before the axe was brought down.

Henry's mother, Martha, was the daughter of Christopher Ussher of Wicklow, an unyielding Protestant who wrote in his Last Will: "My daughters Catherine Ussher and Martha Edgeworth are turned Roman Catholiques and have quitted me and my family and all natural ties to them and their country. I leave them one shilling each, with my blessing." Henry's father Robert was an Anglican clergyman whose own family was not unfriendly to Catholics. One of them recalled: "The Roman Catholic Bishop M'Gaurin, held a Confirmation the day before yesterday, and dined here on a God-send haunch of venison." The Reverend Robert Edgeworth made an intense profession of the Catholic Faith and left the Penal Laws behind for France with his wife, his sister-in-law Catherine, and his youngest son Henry who began studies in Toulouse and eventually was ordained in Paris. He had hoped to become a foreign missionary and lived at the residence of Les Missions Etrangers, working with all ranks of the agitated populace, gaining a great following among the poorest, and counseling expatriate English and Irish, converting some Protestants among them. He chose not to accept the offer of a bishopric back in Ireland, so that he might minister to the poor Savoyards of Paris. At the outbreak of the Revolution, the Archbishop of Paris, Monsignor Antoine Le Clerc, de Juigné nominated him as confessor to Madame Elizabeth, the sister of Louis XVI and he visited her frequently in prison. His mother and sister joined him in Paris, his mother eventually dying in captivity while his sister died later. The Archbishop gave the Abbé Henri Essex Edgeworth de Firmont the title Grand Vicaire, with responsibility for all the Catholics of Paris, and fled for is own life to Germany. An aunt in Galway asked him to flee and be her chaplain, as she had also become Catholic, but he used as an excuse that his English had become poor after many years abroad. A letter to a priest in London told the truth:

Almighty God has baffled my measures, and ties me to this land of horrors by chains I have not the liberty to shake off. The case is this: the wretched master [the King] charges me not to quit this country, as I am the priest whom he intends to prepare him for death. And should the iniquity of the nation commit this last act of cruelty, I must also prepare myself for death, as I am convinced the popular rage will not allow me to survive an hour after the tragic scene; but I am resigned. Could my life save him I would willingly lay it down, and I should not die in vain.

The evening before January 21, 1793, the Abbé fell in tears at the King's feet. Louis helped him up, made his last confession and then bade farewell to the Queen and their children. The Commune having reluctantly allowed the Abbé to put on vestments, as clerical dress had been forbidden, he said Mass and gave the King his last Communion. The two stayed together until dawn:

The King, finding himself seated in the carriage, where he could neither speak to me nor be spoken to without witness, kept a profound silence. I presented him with my breviary, the only book I had with me, and he seemed to accept it with pleasure: he appeared anxious that I should point out to him the psalms that were most suited to his situation, and he recited them attentively with me. The gendarmes, without speaking, seemed astonished and confounded at the tranquil piety of their monarch, to whom they doubtless never had before approached so near....

In one of his last gestures, the King placed his hand on Edgeworth's knee and then told the guard to take care of his priest. Louis appeared shocked when the guards began to bind his hands. Edgeworth told him: "Suffer this outrage, as a last resemblance to that God who is about to be your reward." The youngest of the executioners, eighteen years old, held the King's head high and let some of the blood splatter on the Abbé. He slipped through the crowd: "All eyes were fixed on me, as you may suppose; but as soon as I reached the first line, to my surprise, no resistance was made.... I was not permitted, on this occasion, to wear any exterior marks of a priest. I was absolutely lost in the crowd, and no more noticed than if I had been a simple spectator of a scene which forever will dishonour France."

The Abbé first took refuge in the Rue du Bac where the Blessed Mother would appear to Catherine Labouré in 1830. After a stay in Bayeux, he crossed to England in 1796 and went to Scotland to see the King's brother, the comte d'Artois. Prime Minister Pitt offered him a large pension which he accepted, though he declined the presidency of Maynooth seminary and honors from King Louis XVIII. He joined the exiled household of Louis in Blankenberg and moved with them to Mittau in Russia. Louis delegated him to go to St. Petersburg and present the Order of the Holy Spirit to Czar Paul who, moved by the transparent piety of Edgeworth, knelt and begged his blessing. Back in Mittau he contracted typhus from nursing sick French soldiers stranded during the Napoleonic campaign. Risking contagion, the Princess Marie-Therese, daughter of Louis XVI, attended the deathbed of the "beloved and revered invalid, her more than friend, who had left kindred and country for her family."

The Abbé Edgeworth never claimed to have said the words ascribed to him as the King climbed the steps to the guillotine, and many suppose they were as apocryphal as Newton's apple or the three hundred Spartans who stopped the army of Xerxes, but they were dear to Macaulay: "Montez au ciel, fils de Saint Louis. Climb up to heaven, son of Saint Louis."

Louis XVIII did him the rare honor of personally composing his epitaph, and in splendid Latin, too:

Here lies the Very Reverend Henry Essex Edgeworth de Firmont, a priest, of the Holy Church of God: Vicar General of the Diocese of Paris, etc., Who following in the steps of our Redeemer, was an Eye to the Blind, a Staff to the Lame, a Father to the Poor, and a Consoler of the Afflicted. When Louis XVI was delivered over to Death by his impious and rebellious subjects, he gave the resolute Martyr strength for his last struggle and pointed out to him the opening Heavens. Snatched from the hands of regicides by the wonderful protection of God, he voluntarily attached himself to Louis XVIII, when he signified his wish for his services To whom and to whose Royal Family and Faithful Comrades, he proved himself for a space of ten years, an example of Virtue and an Assuager of misfortune. Driven from kingdom to kingdom by the calamity of the times, he went about doing good, ever like to Him who possessed his sole devotion. At length full of good works, he died the 22nd May, the year of our Lord, 1807, aged 62. May he rest in peace.

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Abbé Edgeworth: King Louis' Irish Confessor - Crisis Magazine

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Among the singularities of the French monarchy was the tradition of having Scottish bodyguards. Scottish history has not been riddled with pacifism, and the Scots along with the fiery Castilians, were used as mercenaries as early as Charlemagne. An "Auld Alliance" between Scotland and France was sealed in 1295, and in the dark war days ...

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America  buying the Louisiana Territory 

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America  buying the Louisiana Territory 

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When-1803
Where-Louisiana
The purchase of Louisiana added 827,000 square miles and doubled the size of the U.S.

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Born -May 6, 1758
Died -July 28, 1794
From -Arras,France

Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre was a French lawyer and politician. He was one of the best-known and most influential figures associated with the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror.

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Maximilien Robespierre has always provoked strong feelings. For the English he is the 'sea-green incorruptible' portrayed by Carlyle, the repellent figure at the head of the Revolution, who sent thousands of people to their death under the guillotine. The French, for the most part, dislike his memory still more. There is no national monument to him, though many of the revolutionaries have had statues raised to them. Robespierre is still considered beyond the pale; only one rather shabby metro station in a poorer suburb of Paris bears his name.

Although Robespierre, like most of the revolutionaries, was a bourgeois, he identified with the cause of the urban workers, the sans-culottes as they came to be known, and became a spokesman for them. It is for this reason that he came to dominate the Revolution in its most radical phase. This was the period of the Jacobin government, which lasted from June 1793 to Robespierre's overthrow in July 1794; the months when the common people became briefly the masters of the first French republic, which had been proclaimed in September 1792. It is also known, more ominously, as the Terror.

The enigmatic figure of Robespierre takes us to the heart of the Revolution, and throws light both on its ideals, and on the violence that indelibly scarred it.

Born in Arras in 1758, Robespierre suffered loss early in his life. His mother died when he was six, and soon after, his father abandoned the family. The children were brought up by elderly relatives who continually reminded them of their dependent situation and their father's irresponsibility. Maximilien was the eldest, a conscientious, hardworking scholarship boy. As soon as he was able he shouldered the burden of caring for his younger siblings. He became a lawyer, leading a quiet and blameless life in his native town. He was best known for defending the poor, and for some rather lengthy and tedious speeches at the local academy.

In 1789, when he was in his early thirties, the Revolution transformed his destiny. He launched himself into the political maelstrom that would immerse him for the rest of his life. He was elected as a deputy for the Third Estate in the Estates General in May, and he witnessed the onset of the Revolution that broke the power of the absolute monarchy two months later. Painstakingly, he worked to forge a reputation for himself as a public speaker in the Assembly. He had his power base in the Jacobin Club, the most important of the revolutionary clubs where people debated events.

From the first, Robespierre was a radical and a democrat, defending the principle that the 'rights of man' should extend to all men - including the poor, and the slaves in the colonies. This stance won him a reputation among the sans-culottes and the radical left, but the earlier years of the Revolution were dominated by men who had no wish to see power in the hands of the propertyless. Robespierre was undaunted. As a spokesman for the opposition and critic of government, he was tireless and consistent. He was also for a long time a vehement opponent of the death penalty. Why did he later change his mind and become an advocate of Terror? Part of the answer to this question lies in the deterioration of the political situation between 1789 and 1792, and the failure of the attempt to set up a workable constitutional monarchy, under Louis XVI.

From the spring of 1792 onwards France was involved in a spiral of war, revolt and civil war. Counter-revolutionaries were plotting the restoration of the absolute monarchy with the support of the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II (succeeded in March by Francis II). The Girondins, then the dominant revolutionary faction in the Legislative Assembly, spearheaded the drive for an aggressive war with the Empire, declaring war in April 1792. The avowed intention of their leader, Jacques-Pierre Brissot, was to polarize French politics, oblige the counter-revolutionaries to emerge into open opposition, and force the monarchy either to capitulate to the revolutionaries or to face its own destruction. In these circumstances, political views hardened, suspicion and fear increased, and the early optimism of the Revolution vanished.

Robespierre himself had long warned of the dangers of provoking counter-revolution. He had tried to oppose the war, because he thought it would divide France and rally support for the counter-revolutionaries. Nor did he believe, as Brissot did, that the ordinary people of Europe would welcome an invading French army, even one that claimed to deliver liberty and equality. 'No one,' said Robespierre, 'welcomes armed liberators.' He stuck doggedly to this position, though it was deeply unpopular and he became politically isolated.

***

By the summer of 1792, his worst fears were realized. The French army, far from being victorious, was on the verge of defeat and suffered from disorganization and raw and inexperienced troops. Many people thought (not without reason) that Louis was secretly on the side of the Austrian and Prussian armies, which were now threatening Paris itself. Many now felt that Robespierre spoke for them when he declared that the aristocrats were plotting a conspiracy to destroy the Revolution. In August the monarchy was overthrown in a pitched battle at the Tuileries palace. A new government, the National Convention, was formed in September 1792, which promptly declared France to be a republic. By now Robespierre's ascendancy in the Jacobin club was unrivalled. The Jacobins identified themselves with the popular movement and the sans-culottes, who in turn saw popular violence as a political right.

The most notorious instance of the crowd's rough justice was the prison massacres of September 1792, when around 2,000 people, including priests and nuns, were dragged from their prison cells, and subjected to summary 'justice'. The Convention was determined to avoid a repeat of these brutal scenes, but that meant taking violence into their own hands as an instrument of government.

When the Convention debated the fate of Louis XVI, now a prisoner of the revolutionaries, Robespierre and his youthful colleague, Saint-Just (1767-94) - also once an opponent of the death penalty - led the way in claiming that 'Louis must die in order for the Revolution to live'. Robespierre had not abandoned his libertarian convictions, but he was coming to the conclusion that the ends justified the means, and that in order to defend the Revolution against those who would destroy it, the shedding of blood was justified.

In June 1793, the sans-culottes, exasperated by the inadequacies of the government, invaded the Convention and overthrew the Girondins. In their place they endorsed the political ascendancy of the Jacobins. Thus Robespierre came to power on the back of popular street violence. Though the Girondins and the Jacobins were both on the extreme left, and shared many of the same radical republican convictions, the Jacobins were much more brutally efficient in setting up a war government. A Committee of Public Safety was established to act as a war cabinet. It became the chief executive power, with Robespierre - now moving from opposition to government for the first time - one of its twelve members. Like so many politicians making such a move, Robespierre's attitude to political power was to change dramatically from this moment. In June the Jacobins drafted a new constitution, the most libertarian and egalitarian the world had yet seen. Yet for some months they hesitated to implement it, as the pressures of war with Austria and Prussia, and of full-blown civil war in the Vendée in the west were compounded by revolts across the country by départements rejecting the authority of the radical government in Paris.

In September 1793, the impatient sans-culottes once again invaded the Convention to exert pressure on the deputies. They wanted economic measures to ensure their food supplies, and the government to deal with counter-revolutionaries. A delegation of the forty-eight sections of sans-culottes urged the Convention to 'make Terror the order of the day!' The Jacobins responded: the Law of Suspects was passed on September 17th, 1793, giving wide powers of arrest to the ruling Committees, and defining 'suspects' in broad terms. In October the Convention passed the Decree on Emergency Government. This authorized the revolutionary government to suspend peacetime rights and legal safeguards and to employ coercion and violence. Saint-Just decreed that the government 'would be revolutionary until the peace'. The constitution was shelved: the libertarian ideals of the Revolution were suspended, indefinitely. Sans-culottes formed armed militias to go out into the provinces to requisition supplies for the armies and the urban populace and to root out counter-revolutionaries. In October Brissot and other Girondin leaders, as well as Marie-Antoinette went to the guillotine.

For the first time in history terror became an official government policy, with the stated aim to use violence in order to achieve a higher political goal. Unlike the later meaning of 'terrorists' as people who use violence against a government, the terrorists of the French Revolution were the government. The Terror was legal, having been voted for by the Convention.

***

Robespierre, like a number of the Jacobin government, had been a lawyer. He clung to the form of law partly in order to prevent the sans-culottes taking the law into their own hands through mob violence. As fellow revolutionary Danton said, 'let us be terrible in order to stop the people from being so'. The resort to Terror also emerged out of relative weakness and fear. The Jacobins had only a shaky legitimacy and innumerable opponents throughout France, ranging from intransigent royalists to more moderate revolutionaries who had seen power centralized and their ideas superseded. Many people in France were already indifferent, if not openly hostile, to the Revolution. For many the Revolution now meant requisitioning of supplies, military conscription and the constant threat to their traditional ways of life, churches, even time - for the revolutionaries had even invented a new calendar. Throughout the year of Jacobin rule, it was the sans-culottes who kept them in power. But the price of that support was the blood-letting.

The number of death sentences in Paris was 2,639, while the total number during the Terror in the whole of France (including Paris) was 16,594. With the exception of Paris (where many of the more important prisoners were transferred to appear before the Revolutionary Tribunal) most of the executions were carried out in regions of revolt such as the Vendée, Lyon and Marseilles. There were wide regional variations. Because on the whole the Jacobins were meticulous in maintaining a legal structure for the Terror clear records exist for official death sentences. But many more people were murdered without formal sentences imposed in a court of law. Some died in overcrowded and unsanitary prisons awaiting trial, while others died in the civil wars and federalist revolts, their deaths unrecorded. The historian Jean-Clément Martin, suggests that up to 250,000 insurgents and 200,000 republicans met their deaths in the Vendée, a war which lasted from 1793-96 in which both sides suffered appalling atrocities.

Today the civil war in the Vendée is largely forgotten except by specialists. It is of the guillotine that most people think when they hear about the Terror. After so many bloodlettings of the twentieth century, why does that image still have the power to shock us? The historian Lord Acton once famously said that in terms of the time, the deaths under the Terror were relatively few in number (he was thinking of the official death sentences). As Acton pointed out, many millions were to die in Napoleon's wars for no better reason than his own glory. Yet the aura of the hero still clings to Napoleon, while Robespierre's name is synonymous with violence and horror.

Perhaps it is because of the stark contrast between Robespierre's ideals and what he became that the question of the Terror remains shocking. In the mind of Robespierre and many of his colleagues, the Terror had a deeper moral purpose beyond winning the civil war: to bring about a 'republic of virtue'. By this he meant a society in which people sought the happiness of their fellow humans rather than their own material benefit. France must be regenerated on moral lines. 'What is our aim?' he asked in a speech of February 1794:

The peaceful enjoyment of liberty and equality; the reign of that eternal justice whose laws are written, not on marble or stone, but in the hearts of all men, even in that of the slave who forgets them and of the tyrant who denies them.

He came to the conclusion that in order to establish this ideal republic one had to be prepared to eliminate opponents of the Revolution. The irony of this idea rings through in the same speech, when he justified the Terror. He said:

If the basis of popular government in peacetime is virtue, the basis of popular government during a revolution is both virtue and terror; virtue, without which terror is baneful; terror, without which virtue is powerless. Terror is nothing more than speedy, severe and inflexible justice; it is thus an emanation of virtue; it is less a principle in itself, than a consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing needs of the patrie.

Throughout his time in government Robespierre conducted his private life as a man of virtue. Far from living in palaces, amassing treasure, or allying himself with royalty, as Napoleon was to do, Robespierre lived a celibate life as a lodger, occupying simple rooms in the house of a master carpenter. He was known as 'the Incorruptible' for, unlike many politicians, he refused to use a public position for private gain and self-advancement. He lived simply on his deputy's salary. He walked everywhere, never taking a carriage. He enjoyed walks in the country and musical soirées with his landlord's family.

Yet the other side of this benign, if dull, domestic life, was the public role he undertook as a spokesman for the Committee of Public Safety and the guiding hand on the policy of Terror. He had become an astute political tactician, and he used these means finally to achieve political power. He could be accused, justly, of political ambition, but he himself did not see this as inconsistent with his dedication to the Revolution. He had an unshakable belief that his own aims coincided with what was best for the Revolution. He was a man of painful sincerity. He was not a hypocrite. He really did believe that the Terror could sustain the republic of virtue. But he was naturally self-righteous, suspicious and unforgiving. All these qualities came to the fore as it became evident that while the Terror played a key part in winning the war and quelling the counter-revolution, it was having the reverse effect as far as installing the republic of virtue was concerned, undermining any genuine enthusiasm for the Revolution. Even Saint-Just, Robespierre's most loyal friend on the Committee of Public Safety, could not be blind to the way the Terror, with its neighbourhood surveillance committees and denunciations, encouraged an atmosphere of duplicity, cynicism and fear, even among the Revolution's most fervent supporters, the Jacobins. 'The Revolution is frozen', he wrote dispairingly in a private note in 1794.

Some of the victims of the last months of the Terror were Robespierre's former friends and colleagues, stalwarts of the Jacobin Club. They included Camille Desmoulins, Robespierre's comrade from his schooldays. Desmoulins had taken the fateful step of supporting Georges Danton, another former friend of Robespierre, in his call that the Terror be wound down, and the power of the Committee of Public Safety broken. In December 1793  he launched a journal, Le Vieux Cordelier, arguing that the Revolution should return to its original ideals. Up to a point Robespierre had supported Desmoulins and his campaign against the more violent extremism of the sans-culottes, led by the journalist, Hébert. Robespierre read, and approved, the first two issues of Le Vieux Cordelier in proof. But in the third issue of the journal, Desmoulins parodied the notorious Law of Suspects and its wide range of people who could be considered 'counter-revolutionary'. Under the Roman Empire, he said, paraphrasing Tacitus, people could be condemned as counter-revolutionary for being 'too rich ... or too poor ... too melancholy ... or too self-indulgent'. Robespierre saw this satire - rightly - as a veiled attack on the Committee of Public Safety itself. Robespierre tried to persuade Desmoulins to burn the journal publicly in the Jacobin Club. Desmoulins refused, recklessly citing the words of Robespierre's hero, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, against him: 'burning is not an answer'. Robespierre was stung, and stopped trying to help his friend. When the Committees decided to arrest Danton and Desmoulins in March 1794, Robespierre used his personal knowledge of the two men to supplement his notes for the official indictment against them. Desmoulins' wife, Lucille, tried to agitate for his release but she too was accused of conspiracy against the Revolution and followed her husband to the guillotine in April. The letter from her heart-broken mother to Robespierre, begging for his intervention to save her daughter, went unanswered. Robespierre had said that a man of virtue must put the good of la patrie before private loyalty, even to his friends. Never had his own virtue seemed so appalling and inhuman as at that moment.

***

Perhaps he thought so too, and the strain of what he had become was beginning to tell. In the last few weeks of his life he shut himself in his rooms, and did not attend the meetings of the Committee or the Convention. He was losing his grip, both on himself and on power. In his absence it is notable that it was 'business as usual' for the Terror: in Paris the executions intensified, based on the notorious Law of 22nd Prairial (June 10th, 1794) which, by depriving the accused of counsel and removing the need for witnesses to substantiate accusations, removed the vestige of justice from the Tribunal.

Robespierre was never the head of the government, nor the only terrorist: he was one man on the Committee - albeit its most high-profile member. Other members of the Committee, together with members of the Committee of General Security (responsible for the police, prisons and most of the arrests), were as much responsible for the running of the Terror as Robespierre. Some of his colleagues were hard, ambitious men, not averse to political corruption unlike Robespierre, and scornful of his dream of a virtuous republic. There were aspects of the Terror with which Robespierre disagreed. He was an opponent of dechristianization - a policy carried out by some militant sans-culottes of forcibly closing churches and preventing any kind of religious activity. In June 1794 he organized the festival of the Supreme Being, based on Enlightenment deist beliefs, intended to unify the people around broadly moral and vaguely religious principles. It made him a laughing stock with the atheists among the deputies and failed to conciliate devout Catholics, long since alienated from the Revolution by its anti-clericalism.

Robespierre also deplored the violent excesses of some of the Jacobin deputies sent out 'on mission' from the Convention to oversee the implementation of policy in the provinces and with the armies. While many of the deputies on mission were conscientious and restrained, others misused their powers to arrest, intimidate and execute local populations. Robespierre had some of these deputies, including Tallien, Fouché, Fréron, Barras and Collot d'Herbois, in his sights when he went to the Convention for the first time in more than four weeks on the July 26th (8 Thermidor by the revolutionary calendar). It was the turning point. He had already quarrelled with men on both the ruling Committees, and, having rejected the reconciliation which Saint-Just tried to broker, he was left with little alternative but to try to destroy his enemies before they could do the same to him. He made a long speech in which he sought to justify the stand he had taken as a defender of virtue. But he also took the opportunity to demand another purge of suspect deputies. In a fatal miscalculation, he failed to name these men. Not unnaturally, many of the fearful deputies thought he might mean them. 'The names!' they shouted. But he refused. His enemies among the Jacobins spent that night in organizing their conspiracy. The next day Saint-Just was shouted down when he tried to speak in his friend's defence. Robespierre and his closest associates were arrested and, after a futile attempt to rally the sans-culottes to defend them at the town hall, they were executed the following day.

The men who overthrew Robespierre were more ruthless and cynical terrorists than he. They included Vadier, Elie Lacoste, Billaud-Varenne and Collot d'Herbois on the Committees, as well as the deputies who had carried out atrocities whilst 'on mission'. Initially they wanted the Terror to continue. But it rapidly became clear that the public had sickened of it. Since the overwhelming victory over the Austrians in the Low Countries at Fleurus on June 26th, the military justification for it had also diminished. In the reaction after Thermidor, as the coup is known, terrorist politicians rapidly restyled themselves. Members of the Committees now claimed that they had concerned themselves exclusively with the war: it was only the Robespierrists who had been terrorists.

In the popular imagination Robespierre the enigma rapidly became the embodiment of the Terror. Yet he would never have been so influential had he not spoken for a wide swathe of society and government. When he spoke of conspiracies against the Revolution, of the threats to 'the patrie in danger', and the need for extreme measures, he voiced the fears of many at that time that France was about to be overwhelmed by foreign and internal enemies. The policies of the Jacobin Committees had, after all, been endorsed by the deputies of the Convention. Perhaps this is why he has been so vilified: in holding one individual culpable for the ills of the Terror, French society was able to avoid looking into its own dark heart at that traumatic moment. Robespierre, you might say, took the rap.

Marisa Linton is Senior Lecturer in History at Kingston University and the author of The Politics of Virtue in Enlightenment France (Palgrave, 2001).

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Maximilien Robespierre has always provoked strong feelings. For the English he is the 'sea-green incorruptible' portrayed by Carlyle, the repellent figure at the head of the Revolution, who sent thousands of people to their death under the guillotine. The French, for the most part, dislike his memory still more.

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Born -September 6, 1757
Died -May 20, 1834
From -Lafayette,France

Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, in the U.S. often known simply as Lafayette, was a French aristocrat and military officer who fought in the American Revolutionary War.

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Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de La Fayette (6 September 1757 - 20 May 1834), known in the United States as Lafayette (, French: ), was a French aristocrat and military officer who fought in the American Revolutionary War, commanding American troops in several battles, including the Siege of Yorktown. After returning to France, he was a key figure in the French Revolution of 1789 and the July Revolution of 1830. He has been considered a national hero in both countries.

Lafayette was born into a wealthy land-owning family in Chavaniac in the province of Auvergne in south central France. He followed the family's martial tradition and was commissioned an officer at age 13. He became convinced that the American revolutionary cause was noble, and he traveled to the New World seeking glory in it. He was made a major general at age 19, but he was initially not given American troops to command. He was wounded during the Battle of Brandywine but still managed to organize an orderly retreat, and he served with distinction in the Battle of Rhode Island. In the middle of the war, he sailed for home to lobby for an increase in French support. He returned to America in 1780 and was given senior positions in the Continental Army. In 1781, troops under his command in Virginia blocked forces led by Cornwallis until other American and French forces could position themselves for the decisive Siege of Yorktown.

Lafayette returned to France and was appointed to the Assembly of Notables in 1787, convened in response to the fiscal crisis. He was elected a member of the Estates General of 1789, where representatives met from the three traditional orders of French society: the clergy, the nobility, and the commoners. After forming the National Constituent Assembly, he helped to write the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen with Thomas Jefferson's assistance. This document was inspired by the United States Declaration of Independence and invoked natural law to establish basic principles of the democratic nation-state. He also advocated the end of slavery, in keeping with the philosophy of natural rights. After the storming of the Bastille, he was appointed commander-in-chief of France's National Guard and tried to steer a middle course through the years of revolution. In August 1792, radical factions ordered his arrest, and he fled into the Austrian Netherlands. He was captured by Austrian troops and spent more than five years in prison.

Lafayette returned to France after Napoleon Bonaparte secured his release in 1797, though he refused to participate in Napoleon's government. After the Bourbon Restoration of 1814, he became a liberal member of the Chamber of Deputies, a position which he held for most of the remainder of his life. In 1824, President James Monroe invited him to the United States as the nation's guest, and he visited all 24 states in the union and met a rapturous reception. During France's July Revolution of 1830, he declined an offer to become the French dictator. Instead, he supported Louis-Philippe as king, but turned against him when the monarch became autocratic. He died on 20 May 1834 and is buried in Picpus Cemetery in Paris, under soil from Bunker Hill. He is sometimes known as " The Hero of the Two Worlds" for his accomplishments in the service of both France and the United States.

Lafayette was born on 6 September 1757 to Michel Louis Christophe Roch Gilbert Paulette du Motier, Marquis de La Fayette, colonel of grenadiers, and Marie Louise Jolie de La Rivière, at the château de Chavaniac, in Chavaniac-Lafayette, near Le Puy-en-Velay, in the province of Auvergne (now Haute-Loire).

Lafayette's lineage was likely one of the oldest and most distinguished in Auvergne and, perhaps, in all of France. Males of the Lafayette family enjoyed a reputation for courage and chivalry and were noted for their contempt for danger. One of Lafayette's early ancestors, Gilbert de Lafayette III, a Marshal of France, had been a companion-at-arms of Joan of Arc's army during the Siege of Orléans in 1429. According to legend, another ancestor acquired the crown of thorns during the Sixth Crusade.

His non-Lafayette ancestors are also notable; his great-grandfather (his mother's maternal grandfather) was the Comte de La Rivière, until his death in 1770 commander of the Mousquetaires du Roi, or "Black Musketeers", King Louis XV's personal horse guard. Lafayette's paternal uncle Jacques-Roch died on 18 January 1734 while fighting the Austrians at Milan in the War of the Polish Succession; upon his death, the title of marquis passed to his brother Michel.

Lafayette's father likewise died on the battlefield. On 1 August 1759, Michel de Lafayette was struck by a cannonball while fighting a British-led coalition at the Battle of Minden in Westphalia. Lafayette became marquis and Lord of Chavaniac, but the estate went to his mother. Perhaps devastated by the loss of her husband, she went to live in Paris with her father and grandfather, leaving Lafayette to be raised in Chavaniac-Lafayette by his paternal grandmother, Mme de Chavaniac, who had brought the château into the family with her dowry.

In 1768, when Lafayette was 11, he was summoned to Paris to live with his mother and great-grandfather at the comte's apartments in Luxembourg Palace. The boy was sent to school at the Collège du Plessis, part of the University of Paris, and it was decided that he would carry on the family martial tradition. The comte, the boy's great-grandfather, enrolled the boy in a program to train future Musketeers. Lafayette's mother and grandfather died, on 3 and 24 April 1770 respectively, leaving Lafayette an income of 25,000 livres. Upon the death of an uncle, the 12-year-old Lafayette inherited a handsome yearly income of 120,000 livres.

In May 1771, aged less than 14, Lafayette was commissioned an officer in the Musketeers, with the rank of sous-lieutenant. His duties, which included marching in military parades and presenting himself to King Louis, were mostly ceremonial and he continued his studies as usual.

At this time, Jean-Paul-François de Noailles, Duc d'Ayen was looking to marry off some of his five daughters. The young Lafayette, aged 14, seemed a good match for his 12-year-old daughter, Marie Adrienne Françoise, and the duc spoke to the boy's guardian (Lafayette's uncle, the new comte) to negotiate a deal. However, the arranged marriage was opposed by the duc's wife, who felt the couple, and especially her daughter, were too young. The matter was settled by agreeing not to mention the marriage plans for two years, during which time the two spouses-to-be would meet from time to time in casual settings and get to know each other better. The scheme worked; the two fell in love, and were happy together from the time of their marriage in 1774 until her death in 1807.

Departure from France

Finding a cause

After the marriage contract was signed in 1773, Lafayette lived with his young wife in his father-in-law's house in Versailles. He continued his education, both at the riding school Versailles (his fellow students included the future Charles X) and at the prestigious Académie de Versailles. He was given a commission as a lieutenant in the Noailles Dragoons in April 1773, the transfer from the royal regiment being done at the request of Lafayette's father-in-law.

In 1775, Lafayette took part in his unit's annual training in Metz, where he met Charles-François de Broglie, Marquis de Ruffec, the Army of the East's commander. At dinner, both men discussed the ongoing revolt against British rule by Britain's North American colonies. One historiographical perspective suggests that the marquis was disposed to hate the British for killing his father, and felt that a British defeat would diminish that nation's stature internationally. Another notes that the marquis had recently become a Freemason, and talk of the rebellion "fired his chivalric-and now Masonic-imagination with descriptions of Americans as 'people fighting for liberty'".

In September 1775, when Lafayette turned 18, he returned to Paris and received the captaincy in the Dragoons he had been promised as a wedding present. In December, his first child, Henriette, was born. During these months, Lafayette became convinced that the American Revolution reflected his own beliefs, saying "My heart was dedicated."

The year 1776 saw delicate negotiations between American agents, including Silas Deane, and Louis XVI and his foreign minister, Comte Charles de Vergennes. The king and his minister hoped that by supplying the Americans with arms and officers, they might restore French influence in North America, and exact revenge against Britain for the loss in the Seven Years' War. When Lafayette heard that French officers were being sent to America, he demanded to be among them. He met Deane, and gained inclusion despite his youth. On 7 December 1776, Deane enlisted Lafayette as a major general.

Departure for America

Lafayette learned that the Continental Congress lacked funds for his voyage, so he bought the sailing ship Victoire with his own money for 112,000 pounds. He journeyed to Bordeaux, where Victoire was being prepared for her trip, and he sent word asking for information on his family's reaction. The response threw him into emotional turmoil, including letters from his wife and other relatives. Soon after departure, he ordered the ship turned around and returned to Bordeaux, to the frustration of the officers traveling with him. The army commander there ordered Lafayette to report to his father-in-law's regiment in Marseilles. De Broglie hoped to become a military and political leader in America, and he met with Lafayette in Bordeaux and convinced him that the government actually wanted him to go. This was not true, though there was considerable public support for Lafayette in Paris, where the American cause was popular. Lafayette wanted to believe it, and pretended to comply with the order to report to Marseilles, going only a few miles east before turning around and returning to his ship. Victoire set sail out of Pauillac on the shores of the Gironde on 25 March 1777. The two-month journey to the New World was marked by seasickness and boredom. The ship's captain Lebourcier intended to stop in the West Indies to sell cargo, but Lafayette was fearful of arrest, so he bought the cargo to avoid docking at the islands. He landed on North Island near Georgetown, South Carolina on 13 June 1777.

American Revolution

On arrival, Lafayette met Major Benjamin Huger, a wealthy landowner, with whom he stayed for two weeks before going to Philadelphia. The Continental Congress had been overwhelmed by French officers recruited by Deane, many of whom could not speak English or lacked military experience. Lafayette had learned some English en route (he became fluent within a year of his arrival), and his Masonic membership opened many doors in Philadelphia. After Lafayette offered to serve without pay, Congress commissioned him a major general on 31 July 1777. Lafayette's advocates included the recently arrived American envoy to France, Benjamin Franklin, who by letter urged Congress to accommodate the young Frenchman.

General George Washington, commander in chief of the Continental Army, came to Philadelphia to brief Congress on military affairs. Lafayette met him at a dinner on 5 August 1777; according to Leepson, "the two men bonded almost immediately." Washington was impressed by the young man's enthusiasm and was inclined to think well of a fellow Mason; Lafayette was simply in awe of the commanding general. General Washington took the Frenchman to view his military camp; when Washington expressed embarrassment at its state and that of the troops, Lafayette responded, "I am here to learn, not to teach." He became a member of Washington's staff, although confusion existed regarding his status. Congress regarded his commission as honorary, while he considered himself a full-fledged commander who would be given control of a division when Washington deemed him prepared. Washington told Lafayette that a division would not be possible as he was of foreign birth, but that he would be happy to hold him in confidence as "friend and father".

Brandywine, Valley Forge, and Albany

Lafayette's first battle was at Brandywine on 11 September 1777. The British commanding general, General Sir William Howe, planned to take Philadelphia by moving troops south by ship to Chesapeake Bay (rather than the heavily defended Delaware Bay) and bringing them overland to the rebel capital. After the British outflanked the Americans, Washington sent Lafayette to join General John Sullivan. Upon his arrival, Lafayette went with the Third Pennsylvania Brigade, under Brigadier Thomas Conway, and attempted to rally the unit to face the attack. The British and Hessian forces continued to advance with their superior forces, and Lafayette was shot in the leg. During the American retreat, Lafayette rallied the troops, allowing a more orderly pullback, before being treated for his wound. After the battle, Washington cited him for "bravery and military ardour" and recommended him for the command of a division in a letter to Congress, which was hastily evacuating, as the British took Philadelphia later that month.

Lafayette returned to the field in November after two months of recuperation in the Moravian settlement of Bethlehem, and received command of the division previously led by Major General Adam Stephen. He assisted General Nathanael Greene in reconnaissance of British positions in New Jersey; with 300 soldiers, he defeated a numerically superior Hessian force in Gloucester, on 24 November 1777.

Lafayette stayed at Washington's encampment at Valley Forge in the winter of 1777-78, and shared the hardship of his troops. There, the Board of War, led by Horatio Gates, asked Lafayette to prepare an invasion of Quebec from Albany, New York. When Lafayette arrived in Albany, he found too few men to mount an invasion. He wrote to Washington of the situation, and made plans to return to Valley Forge. Before departing, he recruited the Oneida tribe to the American side. The Oneida referred to Lafayette as Kayewla (fearsome horseman). In Valley Forge, he criticized the board's decision to attempt an invasion of Quebec in winter. The Continental Congress agreed, and Gates left the board. Meanwhile, treaties signed by America and France were made public in March 1778, and France formally recognized American independence.

Barren Hill, Monmouth, and Rhode Island

Faced with the prospect of French intervention, the British sought to concentrate their land and naval forces in New York City, and they began to evacuate Philadelphia in May 1778. Washington dispatched Lafayette with a 2,200-man force on 18 May to reconnoiter near Barren Hill, Pennsylvania. The next day, the British heard that he had made camp nearby and sent 5,000 men to capture him. General Howe led a further 6,000 soldiers on 20 May and ordered an attack on his left flank. The flank scattered, and Lafayette organized a retreat while the British remained indecisive. To feign numerical superiority, Lafayette ordered men to appear from the woods on an outcropping (now Lafayette Hill, Pennsylvania) and to fire upon the British periodically. His troops simultaneously escaped via a sunken road, and he was then able to cross Matson's Ford with the remainder of his force.

The British then marched from Philadelphia toward New York. The Continental Army followed and finally attacked at Monmouth Courthouse in central New Jersey. Washington appointed General Charles Lee to lead the attacking force at the Battle of Monmouth, and Lee moved against the British flank on 28 June. However, he gave conflicting orders soon after fighting began, causing chaos in the American ranks. Lafayette sent a message to Washington to urge him to the front; upon his arrival, he found Lee's men in retreat. Washington relieved Lee, took command, and rallied the American force. After suffering significant casualties at Monmouth, the British withdrew in the night and successfully reached New York.

The French fleet arrived at Delaware Bay on 8 July 1778 under Admiral d'Estaing, with whom General Washington planned to attack Newport, Rhode Island, the other major British base in the north. Lafayette and General Greene were sent with a 3,000-man force to participate in the attack. Lafayette wanted to control a joint Franco-American force but was rebuffed by the admiral. On 9 August, the American land force attacked the British without consulting d'Estaing. The Americans asked d'Estaing to place his ships in Narragansett Bay, but he refused and sought to defeat the British fleet at sea. The fighting was inconclusive as a storm scattered and damaged both fleets.

D'Estaing moved his ships north to Boston for repairs, where it faced an angry demonstration from Bostonians who considered the French departure from Newport to be a desertion. John Hancock and Lafayette were dispatched to calm the situation, and Lafayette then returned to Rhode Island to prepare the retreat made necessary by d'Estaing's departure. For these actions, he was cited by the Continental Congress for "gallantry, skill, and prudence". He wanted to expand the war to fight the British elsewhere in America and even in Europe under the French flag, but he found little interest in his proposals. In October 1778, he requested permission from Washington and Congress to go home on leave. They agreed, with Congress voting to give him a ceremonial sword to be presented to him in France. His departure was delayed by illness, and he sailed for France in January 1779.

Return to France

Lafayette reached Paris in February 1779 where he was placed under house arrest for eight days for disobeying the king by going to America. This was merely face-saving by Louis XVI; Lafayette was given a hero's welcome and was soon invited to hunt with the king. The American envoy was ill, so Benjamin Franklin's grandson William Temple Franklin presented Lafayette with the gold-encrusted sword commissioned by the Continental Congress.

Lafayette pushed for an invasion of Britain, with himself to have a major command in the French forces. Spain was now France's ally against Britain and sent ships to the English Channel in support. The Spanish ships did not arrive until August 1779 and were met by a faster squadron of British ships that the combined French and Spanish fleet could not catch. In September, the invasion was abandoned, and Lafayette turned his hopes toward returning to America. In December 1779, Adrienne gave birth to Georges Washington Lafayette.

Lafayette worked with Benjamin Franklin to secure the promise of 6,000 soldiers to be sent to America, commanded by General Jean-Baptiste de Rochambeau. Lafayette would resume his position as a major general of American forces, serving as liaison between Rochambeau and Washington, who would be in command of both nations' forces. In March 1780, he departed from Rochefort for America aboard the frigate Hermione, arriving in Boston on 27 April 1780.

Second voyage to America

On his return, Lafayette found the American cause at a low ebb, rocked by several military defeats, especially in the south. Lafayette was greeted in Boston with enthusiasm, seen as "a knight in shining armor from the chivalric past, come to save the nation". He journeyed southwest and on 10 May 1780 had a joyous reunion with Washington at Morristown, New Jersey. The general and his officers were delighted to hear that the large French force promised to Lafayette would be coming to their aid. Washington, aware of Lafayette's popularity, had him write (with Alexander Hamilton to correct his spelling) to state officials to urge them to provide more troops and provisions to the Continental Army. This bore fruit in the coming months, as Lafayette awaited the arrival of the French fleet. However, when the fleet arrived, there were fewer men and supplies than expected, and Rochambeau decided to wait for reinforcements before seeking battle with the British. This was unsatisfactory to Lafayette, who proposed grandiose schemes for the taking of New York City and other areas, and Rochambeau briefly refused to receive Lafayette until the young man apologized. Washington counseled the marquis to be patient.

Lafayette spent the first part of the winter of 1780-81 in Philadelphia, where the American Philosophical Society elected him its first foreign member. Congress asked him to return to France to lobby for more men and supplies, but Lafayette refused, sending letters instead.

After the Continental victory at the Battle of Cowpens in South Carolina in January 1781, Washington ordered Lafayette to re-form his force in Philadelphia and go south to Virginia to link up with troops commanded by Baron von Steuben. The combined force was to try to trap British forces commanded by Benedict Arnold, with French ships preventing his escape by sea. If Lafayette was successful, Arnold was to be summarily hanged. British command of the seas prevented the plan, though Lafayette and a small part of his force (the rest left behind in Annapolis) was able to reach von Steuben in Yorktown, Virginia. Von Steuben sent a plan to Washington, proposing to use land forces and French ships to trap the main British force under Lord Cornwallis. When he received no new orders from Washington, Lafayette began to move his troops north toward Philadelphia, only to be ordered to Virginia to assume military command there. An outraged Lafayette assumed he was being abandoned in a backwater while decisive battles took place elsewhere, and objected to his orders in vain. He also sent letters to the Chevalier de la Luzerne, French ambassador in Philadelphia, describing how ill-supplied his troops were. As Lafayette hoped, la Luzerne sent his letter on to France with a recommendation of massive French aid, which, after being approved by the king, would play a crucial part in the battles to come. Washington, fearing a letter might be captured by the British, could not tell Lafayette that he planned to trap Cornwallis in a decisive campaign.

Virginia and Yorktown

Lafayette evaded Cornwallis' attempts to capture him in Richmond. In June 1781, Cornwallis received orders from London to proceed to the Chesapeake Bay and to oversee construction of a port, in preparation for an overland attack on Philadelphia. As the British column traveled, Lafayette sent small squads that would appear unexpectedly, attacking the rear guard or foraging parties, and giving the impression that his forces were larger than they were.

On 4 July, the British left Williamsburg and prepared to cross the James River. Cornwallis sent only an advance guard to the south side of the river, hiding many of his other troops in the forest on the north side, hoping to ambush Lafayette. On 6 July, Lafayette ordered General "Mad" Anthony Wayne to strike British troops on the north side with roughly 800 soldiers. Wayne found himself vastly outnumbered, and, instead of retreating, led a bayonet charge. The charge bought time for the Americans, and the British did not pursue. The Battle of Green Spring was a victory for Cornwallis, but the American army was bolstered by the display of courage by the men.

By August, Cornwallis had established the British at Yorktown, and Lafayette took up position on Malvern Hill, stationing artillery surrounding the British, who were close to the York River, and who had orders to construct fortifications to protect the British ships in Hampton Roads. Lafayette's containment trapped the British when the French fleet arrived and won the Battle of the Virginia Capes, depriving Cornwallis of naval protection. On 14 September 1781, Washington's forces joined Lafayette's. On 28 September, with the French fleet blockading the British, the combined forces laid siege to Yorktown. On 14 October, Lafayette's 400 men on the American right took Redoubt 9 after Alexander Hamilton 's forces had charged Redoubt 10 in hand-to-hand combat. These two redoubts were key to breaking the British defenses. After a failed British counter-attack, Cornwallis surrendered on 19 October 1781.

Hero of two worlds

Lafayette left Boston for France on 18 December 1781 where he was welcomed as a hero, and he was received at the Palace of Versailles on 22 January 1782. He witnessed the birth of his daughter, whom he named Marie-Antoinette Virginie upon Thomas Jefferson's recommendation. He was promoted to maréchal de camp, skipping numerous ranks, and he was made a Knight of the Order of Saint Louis. He worked on a combined French and Spanish expedition against the British West Indies in 1782, as no formal peace treaty had yet been signed. The Treaty of Paris was signed between Great Britain and the United States in 1783, which made the expedition unnecessary; Lafayette took part in those negotiations.

Lafayette worked with Jefferson to establish trade agreements between the United States and France which aimed to reduce America's debt to France. He joined the French abolitionist group Society of the Friends of the Blacks which advocated the end of the slave trade and equal rights for free blacks. He urged the emancipation of slaves and their establishment as tenant farmers in a 1783 letter to Washington, who was a slave owner. Washington declined to free his slaves, though he expressed interest in the young man's ideas, and Lafayette purchased a plantation in French Guiana to house the project.

Lafayette visited America in 1784-1785 where he enjoyed an enthusiastic welcome, visiting all the states. The trip included a visit to Washington's farm at Mount Vernon on 17 August. He addressed the Virginia House of Delegates where he called for "liberty of all mankind" and urged emancipation of slaves, and he urged the Pennsylvania Legislature to help form a federal union (the states were then bound by the Articles of Confederation). He visited the Mohawk Valley in New York to participate in peace negotiations with the Iroquois, some of whom he had met in 1778. He received an honorary degree from Harvard, a portrait of Washington from the city of Boston, and a bust from the state of Virginia. Maryland's legislature honored him by making him and his male heirs "natural born Citizens" of the state, which made him a natural-born citizen of the United States after the 1789 ratification of the Constitution. Lafayette later boasted that he had become an American citizen before the concept of French citizenship existed. Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Virginia also granted him citizenship.

Lafayette made the Hôtel de La Fayette in Paris's rue de Bourbon the headquarters of Americans there. Benjamin Franklin, John and Sarah Jay, and John and Abigail Adams met there every Monday and dined in company with Lafayette's family and the liberal nobility, including Clermont-Tonnerre and Madame de Staël. Lafayette continued to work on lowering trade barriers in France to American goods, and on assisting Franklin and Jefferson in seeking treaties of amity and commerce with European nations. He also sought to correct the injustices that Huguenots in France had endured since the revocation of the Edict of Nantes a century before.

French Revolution

Assembly of Notables and Estates-General

On 29 December 1786, King Louis XVI called an Assembly of Notables, in response to France's fiscal crisis. The king appointed Lafayette to the body, which convened on 22 February 1787. In speeches, Lafayette decried those with connections at court who had profited from advance knowledge of government land purchases; he advocated reform. He called for a "truly national assembly", which represented the whole of France. Instead, the king chose to summon an Estates General, to convene in 1789. Lafayette was elected as a representative of the nobility (the Second Estate) from Riom. The Estates General, traditionally, cast one vote for each of the three Estates: clergy, nobility, and commons, meaning the much larger commons was generally outvoted.

The Estates General convened on 5 May 1789; debate began on whether the delegates should vote by head or by Estate. If by Estate, then the nobility and clergy would be able to outvote the commons; if by head, then the larger Third Estate could dominate. Before the meeting, as a member of the "Committee of Thirty", Lafayette agitated for voting by head, rather than estate. He could not get a majority of his own Estate to agree, but the clergy was willing to join with the commons, and on the 17th, the group declared itself the National Assembly. The loyalist response was to lock out the group, including Lafayette, while those who had not supported the Assembly met inside. This action led to the Tennis Court Oath, where the excluded members swore to not separate until a constitution was established. The Assembly continued to meet, and on 11 July 1789, Lafayette presented a draft of the " Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen" to the Assembly, written by himself in consultation with Jefferson. The next day, after the dismissal of Finance Minister Jacques Necker (who was seen as a reformer), lawyer Camille Desmoulins assemble between 700 and 1000 armed insurgents. The king had the royal army under the duc de Broglie surround Paris. On 14 July, the fortress known as the Bastille was stormed by the insurgents.

National Guard, Versailles, and Day of Daggers

On 15 July, Lafayette was acclaimed commander-in-chief of the National Guard of France, an armed force established to maintain order under the control of the Assembly. Lafayette proposed the name and the symbol of the group: a blue, white, and red cockade. This combined the red and blue colors of the city of Paris with the royal white, and originated the French tricolor. He faced a difficult task as head of the Guard; the king and many loyalists considered him and his supporters to be little better than revolutionaries, whereas many commoners felt that he was helping the king to keep power.

The National Assembly approved the Declaration on 26 August, but the king rejected it on 2 October. Three days later, a Parisian crowd led by women fishmongers marched to Versailles in response to the scarcity of bread. Members of the National Guard followed the march, with Lafayette reluctantly leading them. At Versailles, the king accepted the Assembly's votes on the Declaration, but refused requests to go to Paris, and the crowd broke into the palace at dawn. Lafayette took the royal family onto the palace balcony and attempted to restore order, but the crowd insisted that the king and his family move to Paris and the Tuileries Palace. The king came onto the balcony and the crowd started chanting "Vive le Roi!" Marie Antoinette then appeared with her children, but she was told to send the children back in. She returned alone and people shouted to shoot her, but she stood her ground and no one opened fire. Lafayette kissed her hand, leading to cheers from the crowd.

As leader of the National Guard, Lafayette attempted to maintain order and steer a middle ground, even as the radicals gained increasing influence. He and Paris' mayor Jean Sylvain Bailly instituted a political club on 12 May 1790 called the Society of 1789 whose intention was to provide balance to the influence of the radical Jacobins. Lafayette took the civic oath on the Champs de Mars on 14 July 1790 before a huge assembly at the Fête de la Fédération, vowing to "be ever faithful to the nation, to the law, and to the king; to support with our utmost power the constitution decreed by the National Assembly, and accepted by the king." That oath was also taken by his troops and by the king.

Lafayette continued to work for order in the coming months. He and part of the National Guard left the Tuileries on 28 February 1791 to handle a conflict in Vincennes, and hundreds of armed nobles arrived at the Tuileries to defend the king while he was gone. However, there were rumors that these nobles had come to take the king away and place him at the head of a counter-revolution. Lafayette quickly returned to the Tuileries and disarmed the nobles after a brief standoff. The event came to be known as the Day of Daggers, and it boosted Lafayette's popularity with the French people for his quick actions to protect the king. Nonetheless, the royal family were increasingly prisoners in their palace. The National Guard disobeyed Lafayette on 18 April and prevented the king from leaving for Saint-Cloud where he planned to attend Mass.

Decline: Flight to Varennes and Champs de Mars massacre

A plot known as the Flight to Varennes almost enabled the king to escape from France on 20 June 1791. Lafayette had been responsible for the royal family's custody as leader of the National Guard, and he was thus blamed by extremists such as Georges Danton and called a traitor to the people by Maximilien Robespierre. These accusations made Lafayette appear a royalist, damaged his reputation in the eyes of the public, and strengthened the hands of the Jacobins and other radicals. He continued to urge the constitutional rule of law, but he was drowned out by the mob and its leaders.

Lafayette's public standing continued to decline through the latter half of 1791. The radical Cordeliers organized an event at the Champ de Mars on 17 July to gather signatures on a petition to the National Assembly that it either abolish the monarchy or allow its fate to be decided in a referendum. The assembled crowd was estimated approximately 10,000, and they hanged two men believed to be spies. Lafayette rode into the Champ de Mars at the head of his troops to restore order, but they were met with gunshots and stones. When a dragoon went down, the soldiers fired on the crowd, wounding and killing dozens. Martial law was declared, and the leaders of the mob fled and went into hiding, such as Danton and Jean-Paul Marat. His reputation among the common people suffered dramatically after the massacre, as they believed that he sympathized with royal interests. Immediately after the massacre, a crowd of rioters attacked Lafayette's home and attempted to harm his wife. The Assembly finalized a constitution in September, and Lafayette resigned from the National Guard in early October, with a semblance of constitutional law restored.

Conflict and exile

Lafayette returned to his home province of Auvergne in October 1791. France declared war on Austria on 20 April 1792, and preparations to invade the Austrian Netherlands (today's Belgium) began. Lafayette, who had been promoted to Lieutenant General on 30 June 1791, received command of one of the three armies, the Army of the Centre, based at Metz, on 14 December 1791. Lafayette did his best to mold inductees and National Guardsmen into a cohesive fighting force, but found that many of his troops were Jacobin sympathizers and hated their superior officers. This emotion was common in the army, as demonstrated after the Battle of Marquain, when the routed French troops dragged their leader to Lille, where he was torn to pieces by the mob. One of the army commanders, Rochambeau, resigned. Lafayette, along with the third commander, Nicolas Luckner, asked the Assembly to begin peace talks, concerned at what might happen if the troops saw another battle.

In June 1792, Lafayette criticized the growing influence of the radicals through a letter to the Assembly from his field post, and ended his letter by calling for their parties to be "closed down by force". He misjudged his timing, for the radicals were in full control in Paris. Lafayette went there, and on 28 June delivered a fiery speech before the Assembly denouncing the Jacobins and other radical groups. He was instead accused of deserting his troops. Lafayette called for volunteers to counteract the Jacobins; when only a few people showed up, he understood the public mood and hastily left Paris. Robespierre called him a traitor and the mob burned him in effigy. He was transferred to command of the Army of the North on 12 July 1792.

The 25 July Brunswick Manifesto, which warned that Paris would be destroyed by the Austrians and Prussians if the king was harmed, led to the downfall of Lafayette, and of the royal family. A mob attacked the Tuileries on 10 August, and the king and queen were imprisoned at the Assembly, then taken to the Temple. The Assembly abolished the monarchy-the king and queen would be beheaded in the coming months. On 14 August, the minister of justice, Danton, put out a warrant for Lafayette's arrest. Hoping to travel to the United States, Lafayette entered the Austrian Netherlands, the area of present Belgium.

Lafayette was taken prisoner by the Austrians near Rochefort when another former French officer, Jean-Xavier Bureau de Pusy, asked for rights of transit through Austrian territory on behalf of a group of French officers. This was initially granted, as it had been for others fleeing France, but was revoked when the famous Lafayette was recognized. Frederick William II of Prussia, Austria's ally against France, had once received Lafayette, but that was before the French Revolution-the king now saw him as a dangerous fomenter of rebellion, to be interned to prevent him from overthrowing other monarchies.

Lafayette was held at Nivelles, then transferred to Luxembourg where a coalition military tribunal declared him, de Pusy, and two others to be prisoners of state for their roles in the Revolution. The tribunal ordered them held until a restored French king could render final judgment on them. On 12 September 1792, pursuant to the tribunal's order, the prisoners were transferred to Prussian custody. The party traveled to the Prussian fortress-city of Wesel, where the Frenchmen remained in verminous individual cells in the central citadel from 19 September to 22 December 1792. When victorious French revolutionary troops began to threaten the Rhineland, King Frederick William II transferred the prisoners east to the citadel at Magdeburg, where they remained an entire year, from 4 January 1793 to 4 January 1794.

Frederick William decided that he could gain little by continuing to battle the unexpectedly successful French forces, and that there were easier pickings for his army in the Kingdom of Poland. Accordingly, he stopped armed hostilities with the Republic and turned the state prisoners back over to his erstwhile coalition partner, the Habsburg Austrian monarch Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor. Lafayette and his companions were initially sent to Neisse (today Nysa, Poland) in Silesia. On 17 May 1794, they were taken across the Austrian border, where a military unit was waiting to receive them. The next day, the Austrians delivered their captives to a barracks-prison, formerly a college of the Jesuits, in the fortress-city of Olmütz, Moravia (today Olomouc in the Czech Republic).

Lafayette, when captured, had tried to use the American citizenship he had been granted to secure his release, and contacted William Short, United States minister in The Hague. Although Short and other U.S. envoys very much wanted to succor Lafayette for his services to their country, they knew that his status as a French officer took precedence over any claim to American citizenship. Washington, who was by then president, had instructed the envoys to avoid actions that entangled the country in European affairs, and the U.S. did not have diplomatic relations with either Prussia or Austria. They did send money for the use of Lafayette, and for his wife, whom the French had imprisoned. Secretary of State Jefferson found a loophole allowing Lafayette to be paid, with interest, for his services as a major general from 1777 to 1783. An act was rushed through Congress and signed by President Washington. These funds allowed both Lafayettes privileges in their captivity.

A more direct means of aiding the former general was an escape attempt sponsored by Alexander Hamilton's sister-in-law Angelica Schuyler Church and her husband John Barker Church, a British Member of Parliament who had served in the Continental Army. They hired as agent a young Hanoverian physician, Justus Erich Bollmann, who acquired an assistant, a South Carolinian medical student named Francis Kinloch Huger. This was the son of Benjamin Huger, whom Lafayette had stayed with upon his first arrival in America. With their help, Lafayette managed to escape from an escorted carriage drive in the countryside outside Olmütz, but he lost his way and was recaptured.

Once Adrienne was released from prison in France, she, with the help of U.S. Minister to France James Monroe, obtained passports for her and her daughters from Connecticut, which had granted the entire Lafayette family citizenship. Her son Georges Washington had been smuggled out of France and taken to the United States. Adrienne and her two daughters journeyed to Vienna for an audience with Emperor Francis, who granted permission for the three women to live with Lafayette in captivity. Lafayette, who had endured harsh solitary confinement since his escape attempt a year before, was astounded when soldiers opened his prison door to usher in his wife and daughters on 15 October 1795. The family spent the next two years in confinement together.

Through diplomacy, the press, and personal appeals, Lafayette's sympathizers on both sides of the Atlantic made their influence felt, most importantly on the post- Reign of Terror French government. A young, victorious general, Napoleon Bonaparte, negotiated the release of the state prisoners at Olmütz, as a result of the Treaty of Campo Formio. Lafayette's captivity of over five years thus came to an end. The Lafayette family and their comrades in captivity left Olmütz under Austrian escort early on the morning of 19 September 1797, crossed the Bohemian- Saxonian border north of Prague, and were officially turned over to the American consul in Hamburg on 4 October.

Adrienne was able to go to Paris, and attempted to secure her husband's repatriation, flattering Bonaparte, who had returned to France after more victories. After Bonaparte's coup d'état of 18 Brumaire (9 November 1799), Lafayette used the confusion caused by the change of regime to slip into France with a passport in the name of "Motier". Bonaparte expressed rage, but Adrienne was convinced he was simply posing, and proposed to him that Lafayette would pledge his support, then would retire from public life to a property she had reclaimed, La Grange. France's new ruler allowed Lafayette to remain, though originally without citizenship and subject to summary arrest if he engaged in politics, with the promise of eventual restoration of civil rights. Lafayette remained quietly at La Grange, and when Bonaparte held a memorial service in Paris for Washington, who had died in December 1799, Lafayette, though he had expected to be asked to deliver the eulogy, was not invited, nor was his name mentioned.

Retreat from politics

Bonaparte restored Lafayette's citizenship on 1 March 1800 and he was able to recover some of his properties. After Marengo, the First Consul offered him the post of French minister to the United States, but Lafayette declined, saying he was too attached to America to act in relation to it as a foreign envoy. In 1802, he was part of the tiny minority that voted no in the referendum that made Bonaparte consul for life. A seat in the Senate and the Legion of Honor were repeatedly offered by Bonaparte, but Lafayette again declined- though stating that he would gladly have accepted the honours from a democratic government.

In 1804, Bonaparte was crowned the Emperor Napoleon after a plebiscite in which Lafayette did not participate. The retired general remained relatively quiet, although he made Bastille Day addresses. After the Louisiana Purchase, President Jefferson asked him if he would be interested in the governorship, but Lafayette declined, citing personal problems and his desire to work for liberty in France.

During a trip to Auvergne in 1807, Adrienne became ill, suffering from complications stemming from her time in prison. She became delirious but recovered enough on Christmas Eve to gather the family around her bed and to say to Lafayette: " Je suis toute à vous" ("I am all yours"). She died the next day. In the years after her death, Lafayette mostly remained quietly at La Grange, as Napoleon's power in Europe waxed and then waned. Many influential people and members of the public visited him, especially Americans. He wrote many letters, especially to Jefferson, and exchanged gifts as he had once done with Washington.

Bourbon restoration

In 1814, the coalition that opposed Napoleon invaded France and restored the monarchy; the comte de Provence (brother of the executed Louis XVI) took the throne as Louis XVIII. Lafayette was received by the new king, but the staunch republican opposed the new, highly restrictive franchise for the Chamber of Deputies that granted the vote to only 90,000 men in a nation of 25 million. Lafayette did not stand for election in 1814, remaining at La Grange.

There was discontent in France among demobilized soldiers and others. Napoleon had been exiled only as far as Elba, an island in the Tuscan archipelago; seeing an opportunity, he landed at Cannes on 1 March 1815 with a few hundred followers. Frenchmen flocked to his banner, and he took Paris later that month, causing Louis to flee to Ghent. Lafayette refused Napoleon's call to serve in the new government, but accepted election to the new Chamber of Representatives under the Charter of 1815. There, after Napoleon's defeat at the Battle of Waterloo, Lafayette called for his abdication. Responding to the emperor's brother Lucien, Lafayette argued:

By what right do you dare accuse the nation of ... want of perseverance in the emperor's interest? The nation has followed him on the fields of Italy, across the sands of Egypt and the plains of Germany, across the frozen deserts of Russia. ... The nation has followed him in fifty battles, in his defeats and in his victories, and in doing so we have to mourn the blood of three million Frenchmen.

On 22 June 1815, four days after Waterloo, Napoleon abdicated. Lafayette arranged for the former emperor's passage to America, but the British prevented this, and Napoleon ended his days on the island of Saint Helena. The Chamber of Representatives, before it dissolved, appointed Lafayette to a peace commission that was ignored by the victorious allies who occupied much of France, with the Prussians taking over La Grange as a headquarters. Once the Prussians left in late 1815, Lafayette returned to his house, a private citizen again.

Lafayette's homes, both in Paris and at La Grange, were open to any Americans who wished to meet the hero of their Revolution, and to many other people besides. Among those whom Irish novelist Sydney, Lady Morgan met at table during her month-long stay at La Grange in 1818 were the Dutch painter Ary Scheffer and the historian Augustin Thierry, who sat alongside American tourists. Others who visited included philosopher Jeremy Bentham, American scholar George Ticknor, and writer Fanny Wright.

During the first decade of the Bourbon Restoration, Lafayette lent his support to a number of conspiracies in France and other European countries, all of which came to nothing. He was involved in the various Charbonnier plots, and agreed to go to the city of Belfort, where there was a garrison of French troops, and assume a major role in the revolutionary government. Warned that the royal government had found out about the conspiracy, he turned back on the road to Belfort, avoiding overt involvement. More successfully, he supported the Greek Revolution beginning in 1821, and by letter attempted to persuade American officials to ally with the Greeks. Louis' government considered arresting both Lafayette and Georges Washington, who was also involved in the Greek efforts, but were wary of the political ramifications if they did. Lafayette remained a member of the restored Chamber of Deputies until 1823, when new plural voting rules helped defeat his bid for re-election.

Grand tour of the United States

President James Monroe and Congress invited Lafayette to visit the United States in 1824, in part to celebrate the nation's upcoming 50th anniversary. Monroe intended to have Lafayette travel on an American warship, but Lafayette felt that having such a vessel as transport was undemocratic and booked passage on a merchantman. Louis XVIII did not approve of the trip and had troops disperse the crowd that gathered at Le Havre to see him off.

The towns and cities that he visited gave him enthusiastic welcomes, including Fayetteville, North Carolina, the first city named in his honor. He visited the capital in Washington City, and was surprised by the simple clothing worn by President Monroe and the lack of any guards around the White House. He went to Mount Vernon in Virginia as he had 40 years before, this time viewing Washington's grave. He was at Yorktown on 19 October 1824 for the anniversary of Cornwallis's surrender, then journeyed to Monticello to meet with his old friend Jefferson-and Jefferson's successor James Madison, who arrived unexpectedly. He had also dined with 89-year-old John Adams, the other living former president, at Peacefield, his home near Boston.

With the roads becoming impassable, Lafayette stayed in Washington City for the winter of 1824-25, and thus was there for the climax of the hotly contested 1824 election in which no presidential candidate was able to secure a majority of the Electoral College, throwing the decision to the House of Representatives. On 9 February 1825, the House selected Secretary of State John Quincy Adams as president; that evening, runner-up General Andrew Jackson shook hands with Adams at the White House as Lafayette looked on.

In March 1825, Lafayette began to tour the southern and western states. The general pattern of the trip was that he would be escorted between cities by the state militia, and he would enter each town through specially constructed arches to be welcomed by local politicians or dignitaries, all eager to be seen with him. There would be special events, visits to battlefields and historic sites, celebratory dinners, and time set aside for the public to meet the legendary hero of the Revolution.

Lafayette visited General Jackson at his home The Hermitage in Tennessee. He was traveling up the Ohio River by steamboat when the vessel sank beneath him, and he was put in a lifeboat by his son and secretary, then taken to the Kentucky shore and rescued by another steamboat that was going in the other direction. Its captain insisted on turning around, however, and taking Lafayette to Louisville, Kentucky. From there, he went generally northeast, viewing Niagara Falls and taking the Erie Canal to Albany, considered a modern marvel. He laid the cornerstone of the Bunker Hill Monument in Massachusetts in June 1825 after hearing an oration by Daniel Webster. He also took some soil from Bunker Hill to be sprinkled on his grave.

After Bunker Hill, Lafayette went to Maine and Vermont, thus visiting all of the states. He met again with John Adams, then went back to New York and then to Brooklyn, where he laid the cornerstone for its public library. He celebrated his 68th birthday on 6 September at a reception with President John Quincy Adams at the White House, and departed the next day. He took gifts with him, besides the soil to be placed on his grave. Congress had voted him $200,000 in gratitude for his services to the country at President Monroe's request, along with a large tract of public lands in Florida. He returned to France aboard a ship that was originally called the Susquehanna but was renamed the USS Brandywine in honor of the battle where he shed his blood for the United States.

Revolution of 1830

When Lafayette arrived in France, Louis XVIII had been dead about a year and Charles X was on the throne. As king, Charles intended to restore the absolute rule of the monarch, and his decrees had already prompted protest by the time Lafayette arrived. Lafayette was the most prominent of those who opposed the king. In the elections of 1827, the 70-year-old Lafayette was elected to the Chamber of Deputies again. Unhappy at the outcome, Charles dissolved the Chamber, and ordered a new election: Lafayette again won his seat.

Lafayette remained outspoken against Charles' restrictions on civil liberties and the newly introduced censorship of the press. He made fiery speeches in the Chamber, denouncing the new decrees and advocating American-style representative government. He hosted dinners at La Grange, for Americans, Frenchmen, and others; all came to hear his speeches on politics, freedom, rights, and liberty. He was popular enough that Charles felt he could not be safely arrested, but Charles' spies were thorough: one government agent noted "his [Lafayette's] seditious toasts ... in honor of American liberty".

On 25 July 1830, the king signed the Ordinances of Saint-Cloud, removing the franchise from the middle class and dissolving the Chamber of Deputies. The decrees were published the following day. On 27 July, Parisians erected barricades throughout the city, and riots erupted. In defiance, the Chamber continued to meet. When Lafayette, who was at La Grange, heard what was going on, he raced into the city, and was acclaimed as a leader of the revolution. When his fellow deputies were indecisive, Lafayette went to the barricades, and soon the royalist troops were routed. Fearful that the excesses of the 1789 revolution were about to be repeated, deputies made Lafayette head of a restored National Guard, and charged him with keeping order. The Chamber was willing to proclaim him as ruler, but he refused a grant of power he deemed unconstitutional. He also refused to deal with Charles, who abdicated on 2 August. Many young revolutionaries sought a republic, but Lafayette felt this would lead to civil war, and chose to offer the throne to the duc d'Orleans, Louis-Philippe, who had lived in America and had far more of a common touch than did Charles. Lafayette secured the agreement of Louis-Philippe, who accepted the throne, to various reforms. The general remained as commander of the National Guard. This did not last long-the brief concord at the king's accession soon faded, and the conservative majority in the Chamber voted to abolish Lafayette's National Guard post on 24 December 1830. Lafayette went back into retirement, expressing his willingness to do so.

Final years and death

Lafayette grew increasingly disillusioned with Louis-Phillippe, who backtracked on reforms and denied his promises to make them. The retired general angrily broke with his king, a breach which widened when the government used force to suppress a strike in Lyon. Lafayette used his seat in the Chamber to promote liberal proposals, and his neighbors elected him mayor of the village of La Grange and to the council of the département of Seine-et-Marne in 1831. The following year, he served as a pallbearer and spoke at the funeral of General Jean Maximilien Lamarque, another opponent of Louis-Phillippe. He pleaded for calm, but there were riots in the streets and a barricade was erected at the Place de la Bastille. The king forcefully crushed this June Rebellion, to Lafayette's outrage. He returned to La Grange until the Chamber met in November 1832, when he condemned Louis-Phillippe for introducing censorship, as Charles X had.

Lafayette spoke publicly for the last time in the Chamber of Deputies on 3 January 1834. The next month, he collapsed at a funeral from pneumonia. He recovered, but the following May was wet, and he became bedridden after being caught in a thunderstorm. He died at age 76 on 20 May 1834 on 6 rue d'Anjou-Saint-Honoré in Paris (now 8 rue d'Anjou in the 8th arrondissement of Paris). He was buried next to his wife at the Picpus Cemetery under soil from Bunker Hill, which his son Georges Washington sprinkled upon him. King Louis-Philippe ordered a military funeral in order to keep the public from attending, and crowds formed to protest their exclusion.

In the United States, President Jackson ordered that Lafayette receive the same memorial honors that had been bestowed on Washington at his death in December 1799. Both Houses of Congress were draped in black bunting for 30 days, and members wore mourning badges. Congress urged Americans to follow similar mourning practices. Later that year, former president John Quincy Adams gave a eulogy of Lafayette that lasted three hours, calling him "high on the list of the pure and disinterested benefactors of mankind".

Lafayette was a firm believer in a constitutional monarchy. He believed that traditional and revolutionary ideals could be melded together by having a democratic National Assembly work with a monarch, as France always had. His close relationships to American Founding Fathers such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson gave him the ability to witness the implementation of a democratic system. His views on potential government structures for France were directly influenced by the American form of government, which was in turn influenced by the British form of government. For example, Lafayette believed in a bicameral legislature, as the United States had. The Jacobins, however, detested the idea of a monarchy in France, which led the National Assembly to vote against it. This idea contributed to his fall from favor, especially when Maximilien Robespierre took power.

Lafayette was the author of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in 1789 and a staunch opponent of slavery. His work never specifically mentioned slavery, but he made his position clear on the controversial topic through letters addressed to friends and colleagues such as Washington and Jefferson. He proposed that slaves not be owned but rather work as free tenants on the land of plantation owners, and he bought a plantation in the French colony of Cayenne in 1785 to put his ideas into practice, ordering that no slaves be bought or sold. He spent his lifetime as an abolitionist, proposing that slaves be emancipated slowly and recognizing the crucial role that slavery played in many economies. Lafayette hoped that his ideas would be adopted by Washington in order to free the slaves in the United States and spread from there, and his efforts were not in vain, as Washington eventually began implementing those practices on his own plantation in Mount Vernon-though he freed no slaves in his lifetime. Lafayette's grandson Gustave de Beaumont later wrote a novel discussing the issues of racism. Lafayette played a significant role in the abolition of slavery in France in 1794, as riots had erupted in Haiti because of the circulation two years earlier of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.

Assessment

Throughout his life, Lafayette was an exponent of the ideals of the Age of Enlightenment, especially on human rights and civic nationalism, and his views were taken very seriously by intellectuals and others on both sides of the Atlantic. His image in the United States was derived from his "disinterestedness" in fighting without pay for the freedom of a country that was not his own. Samuel Adams praised him for "foregoing the pleasures of Enjoyment of domestick Life and exposing himself to the Hardship and Dangers" of war when he fought "in the glorious cause of freedom". This view was shared by many contemporaries, establishing an image of Lafayette seeking to advance the freedom of all mankind rather than the interests of just one nation. During the French Revolution, Americans viewed him as an advocate for American ideals, seeking to transport them from New World to Old. This was reinforced by his position as surrogate son and disciple of George Washington, who was deemed the Father of His Country and the embodiment of American ideals. Novelist James Fenimore Cooper befriended Lafayette during his time in Paris in the 1820s. He admired his patrician liberalism and eulogized him as a man who "dedicated youth, person, and fortune to the principles of liberty."

Lafayette became an American icon in part because he was not associated with any particular region of the country; he was of foreign birth, did not live in America, and had fought in New England, the mid-Atlantic states, and the South, making him a unifying figure. His role in the French Revolution enhanced this popularity, as Americans saw him steering a middle course. Americans were naturally sympathetic to a republican cause, but also remembered Louis XVI as an early friend of the United States. When Lafayette fell from power in 1792, Americans tended to blame factionalism for the ouster of a man who was above such things in their eyes.

In 1824, Lafayette returned to the United States at a time when Americans were questioning the success of the republic in view of the disastrous economic Panic of 1819 and the sectional conflict resulting in the Missouri Compromise. Lafayette's hosts considered him a judge of how successful independence had become. According to cultural historian Lloyd Kramer, Lafayette "provided foreign confirmations of the self-image that shaped America's national identity in the early nineteenth century and that has remained a dominant theme in the national ideology ever since: the belief that America's Founding Fathers, institutions, and freedom created the most democratic, egalitarian, and prosperous society in the world".

Historian Gilbert Chinard wrote in 1936: "Lafayette became a legendary figure and a symbol so early in his life, and successive generations have so willingly accepted the myth, that any attempt to deprive the young hero of his republican halo will probably be considered as little short of iconoclastic and sacrilegious." That legend has been used politically; the name and image of Lafayette were repeatedly invoked in 1917 to gain popular support for America's entry into World War I, culminating with Charles E. Stanton's famous statement "Lafayette, we are here". This occurred at some cost to Lafayette's image in America; veterans returned from the front singing "We've paid our debt to Lafayette, who the hell do we owe now?" According to Anne C. Loveland, "Lafayette no longer served as a national hero-symbol" by the end of the war. In 2002, however, Congress voted to grant him honorary citizenship.

Lafayette's reputation in France is more problematic. Thomas Gaines notes that the response to Lafayette's death was far more muted in France than in America, and suggested that this may have been because Lafayette was the last surviving hero of America's only revolution, whereas the changes in the French government had been far more chaotic. Lafayette's roles created a more nuanced picture of him in French historiography, especially in the French Revolution. 19th-century historian Jules Michelet describes him as a "mediocre idol", lifted by the mob far beyond what his talents deserved. Jean Tulard, Jean-François Fayard, and Alfred Fierro note Napoleon's deathbed comment about Lafayette in their Histoire et dictionnaire de la Révolution française; he stated that "the king would still be sitting on his throne" if Napoleon had Lafayette's place during the French Revolution. They deemed Lafayette "an empty-headed political dwarf" and "one of the people most responsible for the destruction of the French monarchy". Gaines disagreed and noted that liberal and Marxist historians have also dissented from that view. Lloyd Kramer related 57 percent of the French deemed Lafayette the figure from the Revolution whom they most admired, in a survey taken just before the Revolution's bicentennial in 1989. Lafayette "clearly had more French supporters in the early 1990s than he could muster in the early 1790s".

Marc Leepson concluded his study of Lafayette's life:

The Marquis de Lafayette was far from perfect. He was sometimes vain, naive, immature, and egocentric. But he consistently stuck to his ideals, even when doing so endangered his life and fortune. Those ideals proved to be the founding principles of two of the world's most enduring nations, the United States and France. That is a legacy that few military leaders, politicians, or statesmen can match.

References

Works cited

Further reading

External links

Works by Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette at Project Gutenberg

Works by or about Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette at Internet Archive

Société des Cincinnati de France, site of the French Society of the Cincinnati

French Founding Father at the New-York Historical Society

The Cornell University Library Lafayette Collection

The Marquis de Lafayette collection, Cleveland State University

Lafayette College, The Marquis de Lafayette Collections

Marquis de Lafayette Collection, Library of Congress

Martha Joanna Lamb, Lafayette letters from prison, The Magazine of American History with Notes and Queries, pp. 353-76

"Lafayette Triumphant: His 1824-1825 Tour and Reception in the United States"

Thomas Jefferson Letter, 30 November 1813 From the Collections at the Library of Congress

Lafayette Family papers at the University of Maryland Libraries

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Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette - Wikipedia

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Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de La Fayette (6 September 1757 - 20 May 1834), known in the United States as Lafayette (, French: ), was a French aristocrat and military officer who fought in the American Revolutionary War, commanding American troops in several battles, including the Siege of Yorktown.

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Born -August 15, 1769
Died -May 5, 1821
From -Ajaccio ,France

Napoléon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader who rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led several successful campaigns during the French Revolutionary Wars

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Napoleon Bonaparte (born Napoleone Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 - 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French emperor and military commander who rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led successful campaigns during the Revolutionary Wars. He was the leader of the French Republic as First Consul from 1799 to 1804, then of the French Empire as Emperor of the French from 1804 until 1814, and briefly again in 1815. His political and cultural legacy endures as a celebrated and controversial leader. He initiated many enduring reforms, but has been criticized for his authoritarian rule. He is considered one of the greatest military commanders in history and his wars and campaigns are still studied at military schools worldwide. However, historians still debate whether he was responsible for the Napoleonic Wars in which between three and six million people died.

Napoleon was born on the island of Corsica into a family descended from Italian nobility. He was resentful of the French monarchy, and supported the French Revolution in 1789 while serving in the French army, trying to spread its ideals to his native Corsica. He rose rapidly in the ranks after saving the governing French Directory by firing on royalist insurgents. In 1796, he began a military campaign against the Austrians and their Italian allies, scoring decisive victories, and became a national hero. Two years later he led a military expedition to Egypt that served as a springboard to political power. He engineered a coup in November 1799 and became First Consul of the Republic. In 1804, to consolidate and expand his power, he crowned himself Emperor of the French.

Differences with the United Kingdom meant France faced the War of the Third Coalition by 1805. Napoleon shattered this coalition with victories in the Ulm campaign and at the Battle of Austerlitz, which led to the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1806, the Fourth Coalition took up arms against him. Napoleon defeated Prussia at the battles of Jena and Auerstedt, marched the Grande Armée into Eastern Europe, and defeated the Russians in June 1807 at Friedland, forcing the defeated nations of the Fourth Coalition to accept the Treaties of Tilsit. Two years later, the Austrians challenged the French again during the War of the Fifth Coalition, but Napoleon solidified his grip over Europe after triumphing at the Battle of Wagram.

Hoping to extend the Continental System, his embargo against Britain, Napoleon invaded the Iberian Peninsula and declared his brother Joseph the King of Spain in 1808. The Spanish and the Portuguese revolted in the Peninsular War aided by a British army, culminating in defeat for Napoleon's marshals. Napoleon launched an invasion of Russia in the summer of 1812. The resulting campaign witnessed the catastrophic retreat of Napoleon's Grande Armée. In 1813, Prussia and Austria joined Russian forces in a Sixth Coalition against France, resulting in a large coalition army defeating Napoleon at the Battle of Leipzig. The coalition invaded France and captured Paris, forcing Napoleon to abdicate in April 1814. He was exiled to the island of Elba, between Corsica and Italy. In France, the Bourbons were restored to power.

Napoleon escaped in February 1815 and took control of France. The Allies responded by forming a Seventh Coalition, which defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815. The British exiled him to the remote island of Saint Helena in the Atlantic, where he died in 1821 at the age of 51.

Napoleon had a lasting impact on the world, bringing modernizing reforms to France and Western Europe and stimulating the development of nation states. He also sold the Louisiana Territory to the United States in 1803, doubling the size of the United States. However, his mixed record on civil rights and exploitation of conquered territories adversely affect his reputation.

Napoleon's father, Carlo Buonaparte, fought for Corsican independence under Pasquale Paoli, but after their defeat he eventually became the island's representative to the court of Louis XVI.

Napoleon's family was of Italian origin. His paternal ancestors, the Buonapartes, descended from a minor Tuscan noble family that emigrated to Corsica in the 16th century and his maternal ancestors, the Ramolinos, descended from a minor Genoese noble family. His parents Carlo Maria Bonaparte and Maria Letizia Ramolino maintained an ancestral home called " Casa Bonaparte", known nowadays as Maison Bonaparte, in Ajaccio. Napoleon was born there on 15 August 1769. He was the family's fourth child and third son. He had an elder brother, Joseph, and younger siblings Lucien, Elisa, Louis, Pauline, Caroline, and Jérôme. Napoleon was baptized as a Catholic, under the name . In his youth, his name was also spelled as Nabulione, Nabulio, Napolionne, and Napulione.

Napoleon was born one year after the Republic of Genoa ceded Corsica to France. The state sold sovereign rights a year before his birth and the island was conquered by France during the year of his birth. It was formally incorporated as a province in 1770, after 500 years under Genoese rule and 14 years of independence. Napoleon's parents joined the Corsican resistance and fought against the French to maintain independence, even when Maria was pregnant with him. His father Carlo was an attorney who had supported and actively collaborated with patriot Pasquale Paoli during the Corsican war of independence against France; after the Corsican defeat at Ponte Novu in 1769 and Paoli's exile in Britain, Carlo began working for the new French government and in 1777 was named representative of the island to the court of Louis XVI.

The dominant influence of Napoleon's childhood was his mother, whose firm discipline restrained a rambunctious child. Later in life, Napoleon said, "The future destiny of the child is always the work of the mother." His maternal grandmother had married into the Swiss Fesch family in her second marriage, and Napoleon's uncle, the cardinal Joseph Fesch, fulfilled a role as protector of the Bonaparte family for some years. Napoleon's noble, moderately affluent background afforded him greater opportunities to study than were available to a typical Corsican of the time.

Statue of Bonaparte as a schoolboy in Brienne, aged 15, by [Louis Rochet fr] (1853)

When he turned 9 years old, he moved to the French mainland and enrolled at a religious school in Autun in January 1779. In May, he transferred with a scholarship to a military academy at Brienne-le-Château. In his youth he was an outspoken Corsican nationalist and supported the state's independence from France. Like many Corsicans, Napoleon spoke and read Corsican (as his mother tongue) and Italian (as the official language of Corsica). He began learning French in school at the age of around 10. Although he became fluent in French, he spoke with a distinctive Corsican accent and never learned to spell in French. Consequently, Napoleon was routinely bullied by his peers for his accent, birthplace, short stature, mannerisms, and inability to speak French quickly. He became reserved and melancholy, applying himself to reading. An examiner observed that Napoleon "has always been distinguished for his application in mathematics. He is fairly well acquainted with history and geography ... This boy would make an excellent sailor".

On completion of his studies at Brienne in 1784, Napoleon was admitted to the École Militaire in Paris. He trained to become an artillery officer and, when his father's death reduced his income, was forced to complete the two-year course in one year. He was the first Corsican to graduate from the École Militaire. He was examined by the famed scientist Pierre-Simon Laplace.

Early career

Upon graduating in September 1785, Bonaparte was commissioned a second lieutenant in La Fère artillery regiment. He served in Valence and Auxonne until after the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789. Bonaparte was a fervent Corsican nationalist during this period. He asked for leave to join his mentor Pasquale Paoli, when Paoli was allowed to return to Corsica by the National Assembly. But Paoli had no sympathy for Napoleon, as he deemed his father a traitor for having deserted the cause of Corsican independence.

When Corsica declared formal secession from France and requested the protection of the British government, Napoleon and his commitment to the French Revolution came into conflict with Paoli, who had decided to sabotage the Corsican contribution to the Expédition de Sardaigne by preventing a French assault on the Sardinian island La Maddalena. Bonaparte and his family were compelled to flee to Toulon on the French mainland in June 1793 because of the split with Paoli.

Siege of Toulon

In July 1793, Bonaparte published a pro-republican pamphlet, Le souper de Beaucaire (Supper at Beaucaire), which gained him the support of Augustin Robespierre, the younger brother of the Revolutionary leader Maximilien Robespierre. With the help of his fellow Corsican Antoine Christophe Saliceti, Bonaparte was appointed senior gunner and artillery commander of the republican forces that arrived at Toulon on 8 September.

He adopted a plan to capture a hill where republican guns could dominate the city's harbour and force the British to evacuate. The assault on the position led to the capture of the city, and during it Bonaparte was wounded in the thigh on 16 December. Catching the attention of the Committee of Public Safety, he was put in charge of the artillery of France's Army of Italy. On 22 December he was on his way to a new post in Nice, promoted from colonel to brigadier general at the age of 24. He devised plans to attack the Kingdom of Sardinia as part of France's campaign against the First Coalition.

13 Vendémiaire

Some contemporaries alleged that Bonaparte was put under house arrest at Nice for his association with the Robespierres following their fall in the Thermidorian Reaction in July 1794. Bonaparte's secretary Bourrienne disputed the allegation in his memoirs. According to Bourrienne, jealousy was responsible, between the Army of the Alps and the Army of Italy, with whom Bonaparte was seconded at the time. Bonaparte dispatched an impassioned defence in a letter to the commissar Saliceti, and was acquitted of any wrongdoing. He was released within two weeks (on 20 August), and due to his technical skills, was asked to draw up plans to attack Italian positions in the context of France's war with Austria. He also took part in an expedition to take back Corsica from the British, but the French were repulsed by the British Royal Navy.

By 1795, Bonaparte had become engaged to Désirée Clary, daughter of François Clary. Désirée's sister Julie Clary had married Bonaparte's brother Joseph. In April 1795, he was assigned to the Army of the West, which was engaged in the War in the Vendée-a civil war and royalist counter-revolution in Vendée, a region in west-central France on the Atlantic Ocean. As an infantry command, it was a demotion from artillery general-for which the army already had a full quota-and he pleaded poor health to avoid the posting.

Journée du 13 Vendémiaire, artillery fire in front of the Church of Saint-Roch, Paris, Rue Saint-Honoré

He was moved to the Bureau of Topography of the Committee of Public Safety. He sought unsuccessfully to be transferred to Constantinople to offer his services to the Sultan. During this period, he wrote the romantic novella Clisson et Eugénie, about a soldier and his lover, in a clear parallel to Bonaparte's own relationship with Clary. On 15 September, Bonaparte was removed from the list of generals in regular service for refusing to serve in the Vendée campaign. He faced a difficult financial situation and reduced career prospects.

On 3 October, royalists in Paris declared a rebellion against the National Convention. Paul Barras, a leader of the Thermidorian Reaction, knew of Bonaparte's military exploits at Toulon and gave him command of the improvised forces in defence of the convention in the Tuileries Palace. Bonaparte had seen the massacre of the King's Swiss Guard there three years earlier and realized that artillery would be the key to its defence.

He ordered a young cavalry officer, Joachim Murat, to seize large cannons and used them to repel the attackers on 5 October 1795- 13 Vendémiaire An IV in the French Republican Calendar. 1,400 royalists died and the rest fled. He cleared the streets with "a whiff of grapeshot", according to 19th-century historian Thomas Carlyle in The French Revolution: A History.

First Italian campaign

Bonaparte at the Pont d'Arcole, by Baron Antoine-Jean Gros, (c. 1801), Musée du Louvre, Paris

Two days after the marriage, Bonaparte left Paris to take command of the Army of Italy. He immediately went on the offensive, hoping to defeat the forces of Kingdom of Sardinia (1720-1861) before their Austrian allies could intervene. In a series of rapid victories during the Montenotte Campaign, he knocked Piedmont out of the war in two weeks. The French then focused on the Austrians for the remainder of the war, the highlight of which became the protracted struggle for Mantua. The Austrians launched a series of offensives against the French to break the siege, but Bonaparte defeated every relief effort, winning the battles of Castiglione, Bassano, Arcole, and Rivoli. The decisive French triumph at Rivoli in January 1797 led to the collapse of the Austrian position in Italy. At Rivoli, the Austrians lost up to 14,000 men while the French lost about 5,000.

The Treaty of Leoben, followed by the more comprehensive Treaty of Campo Formio, gave France control of most of northern Italy and the Low Countries, and a secret clause promised the Republic of Venice to Austria. Bonaparte marched on Venice and forced its surrender, ending 1,100 years of Venetian independence. He authorized the French to loot treasures such as the Horses of Saint Mark. On the journey, Bonaparte conversed much about the warriors of antiquity, especially Alexander, Caesar, Scipio and Hannibal. He studied their strategy and combined it with his own. To a question from Bourrienne, asking whether he preferred Alexander or Caesar, Bonaparte said that he placed Alexander in the first rank, the main reason being his campaign in Asia.

His application of conventional military ideas to real-world situations enabled his military triumphs, such as creative use of artillery as a mobile force to support his infantry. He said later in life: "I have fought sixty battles and I have learned nothing which I did not know at the beginning. Look at Caesar; he fought the first like the last".

Bonaparte could win battles by concealing troop deployments and concentrating his forces on the "hinge" of an enemy's weakened front. If he could not use his favourite envelopment strategy, he would take up the central position and attack two cooperating forces at their hinge, swing round to fight one until it fled, then turn to face the other. In this Italian campaign, Bonaparte's army captured 150,000 prisoners, 540 cannons, and 170 standards. The French army fought 67 actions and won 18 pitched battles through superior artillery technology and Bonaparte's tactics.

Bonaparte sent General Pierre Augereau to Paris to lead a and purge the royalists on 4 September-the Coup of 18 Fructidor. This left Barras and his Republican allies in control again but dependent upon Bonaparte, who proceeded to peace negotiations with Austria. These negotiations resulted in the Treaty of Campo Formio. Bonaparte returned to Paris on 5 December 1797 as a hero. He met Talleyrand, France's new Foreign Minister-who served in the same capacity for Emperor Napoleon-and they began to prepare to invade Britain.

Egyptian expedition

Bonaparte Before the Sphinx (c. 1886) by Jean-Léon Gérôme, Hearst Castle

After two months of planning, Bonaparte decided that France's naval strength was not yet sufficient to confront the British Royal Navy. He decided on a military expedition to seize Egypt and thereby undermine Britain's access to its trade interests in India. Bonaparte wished to establish a French presence in the Middle East and join forces with Tipu Sultan, the Sultan of Mysore, an enemy of the British. Bonaparte assured the Directory that "as soon as he had conquered Egypt, he will establish relations with the Indian princes and, together with them, attack the English in their possessions". The Directory agreed in order to secure a trade route to the Indian subcontinent.

In May 1798, Bonaparte was elected a member of the French Academy of Sciences. His Egyptian expedition included a group of 167 scientists, with mathematicians, naturalists, chemists, and geodesists among them. Their discoveries included the Rosetta Stone, and their work was published in the Description de l'Égypte in 1809. En route to Egypt, Bonaparte reached Malta on 9 June 1798, then controlled by the Knights Hospitaller. Grand Master Ferdinand von Hompesch zu Bolheim surrendered after token resistance, and Bonaparte captured an important naval base with the loss of only three men.

Bonaparte and his expedition eluded pursuit by the Royal Navy and landed at Alexandria on 1 July. He fought the Battle of Shubra Khit against the Mamluks, Egypt's ruling military caste. This helped the French practise their defensive tactic for the Battle of the Pyramids on 21 July, about 24 km (15 mi) from the pyramids. Bonaparte's forces of 25,000 roughly equalled those of the Mamluks' Egyptian cavalry. Twenty-nine French and approximately 2,000 Egyptians were killed. The victory boosted the French army's morale.

On 1 August 1798, the British fleet under Sir Horatio Nelson captured or destroyed all but two vessels of the French fleet in the Battle of the Nile, preventing Bonaparte from strengthening the French position in the Mediterranean. His army had succeeded in a temporary increase of French power in Egypt, though it faced repeated uprisings. In early 1799, he moved an army into the Ottoman province of Damascus (Syria and Galilee). Bonaparte led these 13,000 French soldiers in the conquest of the coastal towns of Arish, Gaza, Jaffa, and Haifa. The attack on Jaffa was particularly brutal. Bonaparte discovered that many of the defenders were former prisoners of war, ostensibly on parole, so he ordered the garrison and some 1,500-5,000 prisoners to be executed by bayonet or drowning. Men, women, and children were robbed and murdered for three days.

Bonaparte began with an army of 13,000 men. 1,500 were reported missing, 1,200 died in combat, and thousands perished from disease-mostly bubonic plague. He failed to reduce the fortress of Acre, so he marched his army back to Egypt in May. To speed the retreat, Bonaparte was alleged to have ordered plague-stricken men to be poisoned with opium. Back in Egypt on 25 July, Bonaparte defeated an Ottoman amphibious invasion at Abukir.

Ruler of France

While in Egypt, Bonaparte stayed informed of European affairs. He learned that France had suffered a series of defeats in the War of the Second Coalition. On 24 August 1799, fearing that the Republic's future was in doubt, he took advantage of the temporary departure of British ships from French coastal ports and set sail for France, despite the fact that he had received no explicit orders from Paris. The army was left in the charge of Jean-Baptiste Kléber.

Despite the failures in Egypt, Bonaparte returned to a hero's welcome. He drew together an alliance with Talleyrand and members of the Council of Five Hundred: Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, his brother Lucien, Roger Ducos and Joseph Fouché. They overthrew the Directory by a coup d'état on 9 November 1799 ("the 18th Brumaire" according to the revolutionary calendar), closing down the Council of Five Hundred. Napoleon became "first consul" for ten years, with two consuls appointed by him who had consultative voices only. His power was confirmed by the new " Constitution of the Year VIII", originally devised by Sieyès to give Napoleon a minor role, but rewritten by Napoleon, and accepted by direct popular vote (3,000,000 in favour, 1,567 opposed). The constitution preserved the appearance of a republic but, in reality, established a dictatorship.

French Consulate

Bonaparte, First Consul, by Ingres. Posing the hand inside the waistcoat was often used in portraits of rulers to indicate calm and stable leadership.

Silver coin: 5 francs_AN XI, 1802, Bonaparte, First Consul

Bonaparte established a political system that historian Martyn Lyons called "dictatorship by plebiscite". Worried by the democratic forces unleashed by the Revolution, but unwilling to ignore them entirely, Bonaparte resorted to regular electoral consultations with the French people on his road to imperial power. He drafted the Constitution of the Year VIII and secured his own election as First Consul, taking up residence at the Tuileries. The constitution was approved in a rigged plebiscite held the following January, with 99.94 percent officially listed as voting "yes".

In the spring of 1800, Bonaparte and his troops crossed the Swiss Alps into Italy, aiming to surprise the Austrian armies that had reoccupied the peninsula when Bonaparte was still in Egypt. After a difficult crossing over the Alps, the French army entered the plains of Northern Italy virtually unopposed. While one French army approached from the north, the Austrians were busy with another stationed in Genoa, which was besieged by a substantial force. The fierce resistance of this French army, under André Masséna, gave the northern force some time to carry out their operations with little interference.

After spending several days looking for each other, the two armies collided at the Battle of Marengo on 14 June. General Melas had a numerical advantage, fielding about 30,000 Austrian soldiers while Bonaparte commanded 24,000 French troops. The battle began favourably for the Austrians as their initial attack surprised the French and gradually drove them back. Melas stated that he had won the battle and retired to his headquarters around 3 pm, leaving his subordinates in charge of pursuing the French. The French lines never broke during their tactical retreat. Bonaparte constantly rode out among the troops urging them to stand and fight.

Late in the afternoon, a full division under Desaix arrived on the field and reversed the tide of the battle. A series of artillery barrages and cavalry charges decimated the Austrian army, which fled over the Bormida River back to Alessandria, leaving behind 14,000 casualties. The following day, the Austrian army agreed to abandon Northern Italy once more with the Convention of Alessandria, which granted them safe passage to friendly soil in exchange for their fortresses throughout the region.

Although critics have blamed Bonaparte for several tactical mistakes preceding the battle, they have also praised his audacity for selecting a risky campaign strategy, choosing to invade the Italian peninsula from the north when the vast majority of French invasions came from the west, near or along the coastline. As David G. Chandler points out, Bonaparte spent almost a year getting the Austrians out of Italy in his first campaign. In 1800, it took him only a month to achieve the same goal. German strategist and field marshal Alfred von Schlieffen concluded that "Bonaparte did not annihilate his enemy but eliminated him and rendered him harmless" while attaining "the object of the campaign: the conquest of North Italy".

Bonaparte's triumph at Marengo secured his political authority and boosted his popularity back home, but it did not lead to an immediate peace. Bonaparte's brother, Joseph, led the complex negotiations in Lunéville and reported that Austria, emboldened by British support, would not acknowledge the new territory that France had acquired. As negotiations became increasingly fractious, Bonaparte gave orders to his general Moreau to strike Austria once more. Moreau and the French swept through Bavaria and scored an overwhelming victory at Hohenlinden in December 1800. As a result, the Austrians capitulated and signed the Treaty of Lunéville in February 1801. The treaty reaffirmed and expanded earlier French gains at Campo Formio.

Temporary peace in Europe

After a decade of constant warfare, France and Britain signed the Treaty of Amiens in March 1802, bringing the Revolutionary Wars to an end. Amiens called for the withdrawal of British troops from recently conquered colonial territories as well as for assurances to curtail the expansionary goals of the French Republic. With Europe at peace and the economy recovering, Bonaparte's popularity soared to its highest levels under the consulate, both domestically and abroad. In a new plebiscite during the spring of 1802, the French public came out in huge numbers to approve a constitution that made the Consulate permanent, essentially elevating Bonaparte to dictator for life.

Whereas the plebiscite two years earlier had brought out 1.5 million people to the polls, the new referendum enticed 3.6 million to go and vote (72 percent of all eligible voters). There was no secret ballot in 1802 and few people wanted to openly defy the regime. The constitution gained approval with over 99% of the vote. His broad powers were spelled out in the new constitution: Article 1. The French people name, and the Senate proclaims Napoleon-Bonaparte First Consul for Life. After 1802, he was generally referred to as Napoleon rather than Bonaparte.

The brief peace in Europe allowed Napoleon to focus on French colonies abroad. Saint-Domingue had managed to acquire a high level of political autonomy during the Revolutionary Wars, with Toussaint L'Ouverture installing himself as de facto dictator by 1801. Napoleon saw a chance to reestablish control over the colony when he signed the Treaty of Amiens. In the 18th century, Saint-Domingue had been France's most profitable colony, producing more sugar than all the British West Indies colonies combined. However, during the Revolution, the National Convention voted to abolish slavery in February 1794. Aware of the expenses required to fund his wars in Europe, Napoleon made the decision to reinstate slavery in all French Caribbean colonies. The 1794 decree had only affected the colonies of Saint-Domingue, Guadeloupe and Guiana and did not take effect in Mauritius, Reunion and Martinique, the last of which had been captured by the British and as such remained unaffected by French law.

In Guadeloupe slavery had been abolished (and its ban violently enforced) by Victor Hugues against opposition from slaveholders thanks to the 1794 law. However, when slavery was reinstated in 1802, a slave revolt broke out under the leadership of Louis Delgrès. The resulting Law of 20 May had the express purpose of reinstating slavery in Saint-Domingue, Guadeloupe and French Guiana, and restored slavery throughout most of the French colonial empire (excluding Saint-Domingue) for another half a century, while the French transatlantic slave trade continued for another twenty years.

Napoleon sent an expedition under his brother-in-law General Leclerc to reassert control over Saint-Domingue. Although the French managed to capture Toussaint Louverture, the expedition failed when high rates of disease crippled the French army, and Jean-Jacques Dessalines won a string of victories, first against Leclerc, and when he died from yellow fever, then against Donatien-Marie-Joseph de Vimeur, vicomte de Rochambeau, whom Napoleon sent to relieve Leclerc with another 20,000 men. In May 1803, Napoleon acknowledged defeat, and the last 8,000 French troops left the island, and the slaves proclaimed an independent republic that they called Haiti in 1804. In the process, Dessalines became arguably the most successful military commander in the struggle against Napoleonic France. Seeing the failure of his efforts in Haiti, Napoleon decided in 1803 to sell the Louisiana Territory to the United States, instantly doubling the size of the U.S. The selling price in the Louisiana Purchase was less than three cents per acre, a total of $15 million.

The peace with Britain proved to be uneasy and controversial. Britain did not evacuate Malta as promised and protested against Bonaparte's annexation of Piedmont and his Act of Mediation, which established a new Swiss Confederation. Neither of these territories were covered by Amiens, but they inflamed tensions significantly. The dispute culminated in a declaration of war by Britain in May 1803; Napoleon responded by reassembling the invasion camp at Boulogne and declaring that every British male between eighteen and sixty years old in France and its dependencies to be arrested as a prisoner of war.

French Empire

During the consulate, Napoleon faced several royalist and Jacobin assassination plots, including the Conspiration des poignards (Dagger plot) in October 1800 and the Plot of the Rue Saint-Nicaise (also known as the Infernal Machine) two months later. In January 1804, his police uncovered an assassination plot against him that involved Moreau and which was ostensibly sponsored by the Bourbon family, the former rulers of France. On the advice of Talleyrand, Napoleon ordered the kidnapping of the Duke of Enghien, violating the sovereignty of Baden. The Duke was quickly executed after a secret military trial, even though he had not been involved in the plot. Enghien's execution infuriated royal courts throughout Europe, becoming one of the contributing political factors for the outbreak of the Napoleonic Wars.

To expand his power, Napoleon used these assassination plots to justify the creation of an imperial system based on the Roman model. He believed that a Bourbon restoration would be more difficult if his family's succession was entrenched in the constitution. Launching yet another referendum, Napoleon was elected as Emperor of the French by a tally exceeding 99%. As with the Life Consulate two years earlier, this referendum produced heavy participation, bringing out almost 3.6 million voters to the polls.

A keen observer of Bonaparte's rise to absolute power, Madame de Rémusat, explains that "men worn out by the turmoil of the Revolution [...] looked for the domination of an able ruler" and that "people believed quite sincerely that Bonaparte, whether as consul or emperor, would exert his authority and save [them] from the perils of anarchy."

Coronation

Napoleon's throne room at Fontainebleau

Napoleon's coronation, at which Pope Pius VII officiated, took place at Notre Dame de Paris, on 2 December 1804. Napoleon wore a golden laurel wreath throughout the proceedings, representing victory, peace and civic virtue. For the coronation, he raised a replica of Charlemagne's crown over his own head in a symbolic gesture, but did not wear it atop the wreath. All present rose spontaneously, the men waving their hats. Joséphine, Napoleon's wife, knelt in front of him to receive her crown on her head, the event commemorated in the official painting by Jacques-Louis David. Joséphine became only the second queen to be crowned and anointed in French history, other than Marie de' Medici.

War of the Third Coalition

Napoleon in his coronation robes by François Gérard, c. 1805

Great Britain had broken the Peace of Amiens by declaring war on France in May 1803. In December 1804, an Anglo-Swedish agreement became the first step towards the creation of the Third Coalition. By April 1805, Britain had also signed an alliance with Russia. Austria had been defeated by France twice in recent memory and wanted revenge, so it joined the coalition a few months later.

Before the formation of the Third Coalition, Napoleon had assembled an invasion force, the Armée d'Angleterre, around six camps at Boulogne in Northern France. He intended to use this invasion force to strike at England. They never invaded, but Napoleon's troops received careful and invaluable training for future military operations. The men at Boulogne formed the core for what Napoleon later called La Grande Armée. At the start, this French army had about 200,000 men organized into seven corps, which were large field units that contained 36-40 cannons each and were capable of independent action until other corps could come to the rescue.

A single corps properly situated in a strong defensive position could survive at least a day without support, giving the Grande Armée countless strategic and tactical options on every campaign. On top of these forces, Napoleon created a cavalry reserve of 22,000 organized into two cuirassier divisions, four mounted dragoon divisions, one division of dismounted dragoons, and one of light cavalry, all supported by 24 artillery pieces. By 1805, the Grande Armée had grown to a force of 350,000 men, who were well equipped, well trained, and led by competent officers.

Napoleon knew that the French fleet could not defeat the Royal Navy in a head-to-head battle, so he planned to lure it away from the English Channel through diversionary tactics. The main strategic idea involved the French Navy escaping from the British blockades of Toulon and Brest and threatening to attack the British West Indies. In the face of this attack, it was hoped, the British would weaken their defence of the Western Approaches by sending ships to the Caribbean, allowing a combined Franco-Spanish fleet to take control of the English channel long enough for French armies to cross and invade. However, the plan unravelled after the British victory at the Battle of Cape Finisterre in July 1805. French Admiral Villeneuve then retreated to Cádiz instead of linking up with French naval forces at Brest for an attack on the English Channel.

Napoleon and the Grande Armée receive the surrender of Austrian General Mack after the Battle of Ulm in October 1805. The decisive finale of the Ulm Campaign raised the tally of captured Austrian soldiers to 60,000. With the Austrian army destroyed, Vienna would fall to the French in November.

Austrian commander Karl Mack had gathered the greater part of the Austrian army at the fortress of Ulm in Swabia. Napoleon swung his forces to the southeast and the Grande Armée performed an elaborate wheeling movement that outflanked the Austrian positions. The Ulm Maneuver completely surprised General Mack, who belatedly understood that his army had been cut off. After some minor engagements that culminated in the Battle of Ulm, Mack finally surrendered after realizing that there was no way to break out of the French encirclement. For just 2,000 French casualties, Napoleon had managed to capture a total of 60,000 Austrian soldiers through his army's rapid marching. Napoleon wrote after the conflict: "I have accomplished my object, I have destroyed the Austrian army by simply marching."

The Ulm Campaign is generally regarded as a strategic masterpiece and was influential in the development of the Schlieffen Plan in the late 19th century. For the French, this spectacular victory on land was soured by the decisive victory that the Royal Navy attained at the Battle of Trafalgar on 21 October. After Trafalgar, the Royal Navy was never again seriously challenged by a French fleet in a large-scale engagement for the duration of the Napoleonic Wars.

Following the Ulm Campaign, French forces managed to capture Vienna in November. The fall of Vienna provided the French a huge bounty as they captured 100,000 muskets, 500 cannons, and the intact bridges across the Danube. At this critical juncture, both Tsar Alexander I and Holy Roman Emperor Francis II decided to engage Napoleon in battle, despite reservations from some of their subordinates. Napoleon sent his army north in pursuit of the Allies but then ordered his forces to retreat so that he could feign a grave weakness.

Napoleon at the Battle of Austerlitz, by François Gérard, 1805. The Battle of Austerlitz, also known as the Battle of the Three Emperors, was one of Napoleon's many victories, where the French Empire defeated the Third Coalition.

It imposed an indemnity of 40 million francs on the defeated Habsburgs and allowed the fleeing Russian troops free passage through hostile territories and back to their home soil. Napoleon went on to say, "The battle of Austerlitz is the finest of all I have fought". Frank McLynn suggests that Napoleon was so successful at Austerlitz that he lost touch with reality, and what used to be French foreign policy became a "personal Napoleonic one". Vincent Cronin disagrees, stating that Napoleon was not overly ambitious for himself, "he embodied the ambitions of thirty million Frenchmen".

Middle-Eastern alliances

Napoleon continued to entertain a grand scheme to establish a French presence in the Middle East in order to put pressure on Britain and Russia, and perhaps form an alliance with the Ottoman Empire. In February 1806, Ottoman Emperor Selim III recognized Napoleon as Emperor. He also opted for an alliance with France, calling France "our sincere and natural ally". That decision brought the Ottoman Empire into a losing war against Russia and Britain. A Franco-Persian alliance was formed between Napoleon and the Persian Empire of Fat′h-Ali Shah Qajar. It collapsed in 1807 when France and Russia formed an unexpected alliance. In the end, Napoleon had made no effective alliances in the Middle East.

War of the Fourth Coalition and Tilsit

The initial military manoeuvres began in September 1806. In a letter to Marshal Soult detailing the plan for the campaign, Napoleon described the essential features of Napoleonic warfare and introduced the phrase le bataillon-carré ("square battalion"). In the bataillon-carré system, the various corps of the Grande Armée would march uniformly together in close supporting distance. If any single corps was attacked, the others could quickly spring into action and arrive to help.

Following his triumph, Napoleon imposed the first elements of the Continental System through the Berlin Decree issued in November 1806. The Continental System, which prohibited European nations from trading with Britain, was widely violated throughout his reign. In the next few months, Napoleon marched against the advancing Russian armies through Poland and was involved in the bloody stalemate at the Battle of Eylau in February 1807. After a period of rest and consolidation on both sides, the war restarted in June with an initial struggle at Heilsberg that proved indecisive.

On 14 June Napoleon obtained an overwhelming victory over the Russians at the Battle of Friedland, wiping out the majority of the Russian army in a very bloody struggle. The scale of their defeat convinced the Russians to make peace with the French. On 19 June, Tsar Alexander sent an envoy to seek an armistice with Napoleon. The latter assured the envoy that the Vistula River represented the natural borders between French and Russian influence in Europe. On that basis, the two emperors began peace negotiations at the town of Tilsit after meeting on an iconic raft on the River Niemen. The very first thing Alexander said to Napoleon was probably well-calibrated: "I hate the English as much as you do". Their meeting lasted two hours. Despite waging wars against each other the two Emperors were very much impressed and fascinated by one another. "Never," said Alexander afterward, "did I love any man as I loved that man."

Alexander faced pressure from his brother, Duke Constantine, to make peace with Napoleon. Given the victory he had just achieved, the French emperor offered the Russians relatively lenient terms-demanding that Russia join the Continental System, withdraw its forces from Wallachia and Moldavia, and hand over the Ionian Islands to France. By contrast, Napoleon dictated very harsh peace terms for Prussia, despite the ceaseless exhortations of Queen Louise. Wiping out half of Prussian territories from the map, Napoleon created a new kingdom of 2,800 square kilometres (1,100 sq mi) called Westphalia and appointed his young brother Jérôme as its monarch.

Prussia's humiliating treatment at Tilsit caused a deep and bitter antagonism that festered as the Napoleonic era progressed. Moreover, Alexander's pretensions at friendship with Napoleon led the latter to seriously misjudge the true intentions of his Russian counterpart, who would violate numerous provisions of the treaty in the next few years. Despite these problems, the Treaties of Tilsit at last gave Napoleon a respite from war and allowed him to return to France, which he had not seen in over 300 days.

Peninsular War and Erfurt

The settlements at Tilsit gave Napoleon time to organize his empire. One of his major objectives became enforcing the Continental System against the British forces. He decided to focus his attention on the Kingdom of Portugal, which consistently violated his trade prohibitions. After defeat in the War of the Oranges in 1801, Portugal adopted a double-sided policy.

Unhappy with this change of policy by the Portuguese government, Napoleon negotiated a secret treaty with Charles IV of Spain and sent an army to invade Portugal. On 17 October 1807, 24,000 French troops under General Junot crossed the Pyrenees with Spanish cooperation and headed towards Portugal to enforce Napoleon's orders. This attack was the first step in what would eventually become the Peninsular War, a six-year struggle that significantly sapped French strength. Throughout the winter of 1808, French agents became increasingly involved in Spanish internal affairs, attempting to incite discord between members of the Spanish royal family. On 16 February 1808, secret French machinations finally materialized when Napoleon announced that he would intervene to mediate between the rival political factions in the country.

Marshal Murat led 120,000 troops into Spain. The French arrived in Madrid on 24 March, where wild riots against the occupation erupted just a few weeks later. Napoleon appointed his brother, Joseph Bonaparte, as the new King of Spain in the summer of 1808. The appointment enraged a heavily religious and conservative Spanish population. Resistance to French aggression soon spread throughout Spain. The shocking French defeats at the Battle of Bailén and the Battle of Vimiero gave hope to Napoleon's enemies and partly persuaded the French emperor to intervene in person.

Before going to Iberia, Napoleon decided to address several lingering issues with the Russians. At the Congress of Erfurt in October 1808, Napoleon hoped to keep Russia on his side during the upcoming struggle in Spain and during any potential conflict against Austria. The two sides reached an agreement, the Erfurt Convention, that called upon Britain to cease its war against France, that recognized the Russian conquest of Finland from Sweden and made it an autonomous Grand Duchy, and that affirmed Russian support for France in a possible war against Austria "to the best of its ability".

Napoleon then returned to France and prepared for war. The Grande Armée, under the Emperor's personal command, rapidly crossed the Ebro River in November 1808 and inflicted a series of crushing defeats against the Spanish forces. After clearing the last Spanish force guarding the capital at Somosierra, Napoleon entered Madrid on 4 December with 80,000 troops. He then unleashed his soldiers against Moore and the British forces. The British were swiftly driven to the coast, and they withdrew from Spain entirely after a last stand at the Battle of Corunna in January 1809 and the death of Moore.

Napoleon would end up leaving Iberia in order to deal with the Austrians in Central Europe, but the Peninsular War continued on long after his absence. He never returned to Spain after the 1808 campaign. Several months after Corunna, the British sent another army to the peninsula under Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington. The war then settled into a complex and asymmetric strategic deadlock where all sides struggled to gain the upper hand. The highlight of the conflict became the brutal guerrilla warfare that engulfed much of the Spanish countryside. Both sides committed the worst atrocities of the Napoleonic Wars during this phase of the conflict.

The vicious guerrilla fighting in Spain, largely absent from the French campaigns in Central Europe, severely disrupted the French lines of supply and communication. Although France maintained roughly 300,000 troops in Iberia during the Peninsular War, the vast majority were tied down to garrison duty and to intelligence operations. The French were never able to concentrate all of their forces effectively, prolonging the war until events elsewhere in Europe finally turned the tide in favour of the Allies. After the invasion of Russia in 1812, the number of French troops in Spain vastly declined as Napoleon needed reinforcements to conserve his strategic position in Europe. By 1814 the Allies had pushed the French out of the peninsula.

War of the Fifth Coalition and Marie Louise

After four years on the sidelines, Austria sought another war with France to avenge its recent defeats. Austria could not count on Russian support because the latter was at war with Britain, Sweden, and the Ottoman Empire in 1809. Frederick William of Prussia initially promised to help the Austrians but reneged before conflict began. A report from the Austrian finance minister suggested that the treasury would run out of money by the middle of 1809 if the large army that the Austrians had formed since the Third Coalition remained mobilized. Although Archduke Charles warned that the Austrians were not ready for another showdown with Napoleon, a stance that landed him in the so-called "peace party", he did not want to see the army demobilized either. On 8 February 1809, the advocates for war finally succeeded when the Imperial Government secretly decided on another confrontation against the French.

In the early morning of 10 April, leading elements of the Austrian army crossed the Inn River and invaded Bavaria. The early Austrian attack surprised the French; Napoleon himself was still in Paris when he heard about the invasion. He arrived at Donauwörth on the 17th to find the Grande Armée in a dangerous position, with its two wings separated by 120 km (75 mi) and joined by a thin cordon of Bavarian troops. Charles pressed the left wing of the French army and hurled his men towards the III Corps of Marshal Davout.

In response, Napoleon came up with a plan to cut off the Austrians in the celebrated Landshut Maneuver. He realigned the axis of his army and marched his soldiers towards the town of Eckmühl. The French scored a convincing win in the resulting Battle of Eckmühl, forcing Charles to withdraw his forces over the Danube and into Bohemia. On 13 May, Vienna fell for the second time in four years, although the war continued since most of the Austrian army had survived the initial engagements in Southern Germany.

After the setback at Aspern-Essling, Napoleon took more than six weeks in planning and preparing for contingencies before he made another attempt at crossing the Danube. From 30 June to the early days of July, the French recrossed the Danube in strength, with more than 180,000 troops marching across the Marchfeld towards the Austrians. Charles received the French with 150,000 of his own men. In the ensuing Battle of Wagram, which also lasted two days, Napoleon commanded his forces in what was the largest battle of his career up until then. Napoleon finished off the battle with a concentrated central thrust that punctured a hole in the Austrian army and forced Charles to retreat. Austrian losses were very heavy, reaching well over 40,000 casualties. The French were too exhausted to pursue the Austrians immediately, but Napoleon eventually caught up with Charles at Znaim and the latter signed an armistice on 12 July.

The French Empire at its greatest extent in 1812:

The resulting Treaty of Schönbrunn in October 1809 was the harshest that France had imposed on Austria in recent memory. Metternich and Archduke Charles had the preservation of the Habsburg Empire as their fundamental goal, and to this end, they succeeded by making Napoleon seek more modest goals in return for promises of friendship between the two powers. While most of the hereditary lands remained a part of the Habsburg realm, France received Carinthia, Carniola, and the Adriatic ports, while Galicia was given to the Poles and the Salzburg area of the Tyrol went to the Bavarians. Austria lost over three million subjects, about one-fifth of her total population, as a result of these territorial changes.

Napoleon turned his focus to domestic affairs after the war. Empress Joséphine had still not given birth to a child from Napoleon, who became worried about the future of his empire following his death. Desperate for a legitimate heir, Napoleon divorced Joséphine on 10 January 1810 and started looking for a new wife. Hoping to cement the recent alliance with Austria through a family connection, Napoleon married the 18-year-old Archduchess Marie Louise, daughter of Emperor Francis II. On 20 March 1811, Marie Louise gave birth to a baby boy, whom Napoleon made heir apparent and bestowed the title of King of Rome. His son never actually ruled the empire but given his brief titular rule and cousin Louis-Napoléon's subsequent naming himself Napoléon III, historians often refer to him as Napoleon II.

Invasion of Russia

In 1808, Napoleon and Tsar Alexander met at the Congress of Erfurt to preserve the Russo-French alliance. The leaders had a friendly personal relationship after their first meeting at Tilsit in 1807. By 1811, however, tensions had increased, a strain on the relationship became the regular violations of the Continental System by the Russians as their economy was failing, which led Napoleon to threaten Alexander with serious consequences if he formed an alliance with Britain.

By 1812, advisers to Alexander suggested the possibility of an invasion of the French Empire and the recapture of Poland. On receipt of intelligence reports on Russia's war preparations, Napoleon expanded his Grande Armée to more than 450,000 men. He ignored repeated advice against an invasion of the Russian heartland and prepared for an offensive campaign; on 24 June 1812 the invasion commenced.

In an attempt to gain increased support from Polish nationalists and patriots, Napoleon termed the war the Second Polish War-the First Polish War had been the Bar Confederation uprising by Polish nobles against Russia in 1768. Polish patriots wanted the Russian part of Poland to be joined with the Duchy of Warsaw and an independent Poland created. This was rejected by Napoleon, who stated he had promised his ally Austria this would not happen. Napoleon refused to manumit the Russian serfs because of concerns this might provoke a reaction in his army's rear. The serfs later committed atrocities against French soldiers during France's retreat.

The Russians eventually offered battle outside Moscow on 7 September: the Battle of Borodino resulted in approximately 44,000 Russian and 35,000 French dead, wounded or captured, and may have been the bloodiest day of battle in history up to that point in time. Although the French had won, the Russian army had accepted, and withstood, the major battle Napoleon had hoped would be decisive. Napoleon's own account was: "The most terrible of all my battles was the one before Moscow. The French showed themselves to be worthy of victory, but the Russians showed themselves worthy of being invincible".

The Russian army withdrew and retreated past Moscow. Napoleon entered the city, assuming its fall would end the war and Alexander would negotiate peace. Moscow was burned, rather than surrendered, on the order of Moscow's governor Feodor Rostopchin. After five weeks, Napoleon and his army left. In early November Napoleon became concerned about the loss of control back in France after the Malet coup of 1812. His army walked through snow up to their knees, and nearly 10,000 men and horses froze to death on the night of 8/9 November alone. After the Battle of Berezina Napoleon managed to escape but had to abandon much of the remaining artillery and baggage train. On 5 December, shortly before arriving in Vilnius, Napoleon left the army in a sledge.

The French suffered in the course of a ruinous retreat, including from the harshness of the Russian Winter. The Armée had begun as over 400,000 frontline troops, with fewer than 40,000 crossing the Berezina River in November 1812. The Russians had lost 150,000 soldiers in battle and hundreds of thousands of civilians.

War of the Sixth Coalition

There was a lull in fighting over the winter of 1812-13 while both the Russians and the French rebuilt their forces; Napoleon was able to field 350,000 troops. Heartened by France's loss in Russia, Prussia joined with Austria, Sweden, Russia, Great Britain, Spain, and Portugal in a new coalition. Napoleon assumed command in Germany and inflicted a series of defeats on the Coalition culminating in the Battle of Dresden in August 1813.

Napoleon after his abdication in Fontainebleau, 4 April 1814, by Paul Delaroche

Napoleon withdrew into France, his army reduced to 70,000 soldiers and little cavalry; he faced more than three times as many Allied troops. Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon's older brother, abdicated as king of Spain on 13 December 1813 and assumed the title of lieutenant general to save the collapsing empire. The French were surrounded: British armies pressed from the south, and other Coalition forces positioned to attack from the German states. By the middle of January 1814, the Coalition had already entered France's borders and launched a two-pronged attack on Paris, with Prussia entering from the north, and Austria from the east, marching out of the capitulated Swiss confederation. The French Empire, however, would not go down so easily. Napoleon launched a series of victories in the Six Days' Campaign. While they repulsed the coalition forces and delayed the capture of Paris by at least a full month, these were not significant enough to turn the tide. The coalitionaries camped on the outskirts of the capital on 29 March. A day later, they advanced onto the demoralized soldiers protecting the city. Joseph Bonaparte led a final battle at the gates of Paris. They were greatly outnumbered, as 30,000 French soldiers were pitted against a combined coalition force that was five times greater. They were defeated, and Joseph retreated out of the city. The leaders of Paris surrendered to the Coalition on the last day of March 1814. On 1 April, Alexander addressed the . Long docile to Napoleon, under Talleyrand's prodding it had turned against him. Alexander told the Sénat that the Allies were fighting against Napoleon, not France, and they were prepared to offer honourable peace terms if Napoleon were removed from power. The next day, the Sénat passed the Acte de déchéance de l'Empereur ("Emperor's Demise Act"), which declared Napoleon deposed.

Napoleon had advanced as far as Fontainebleau when he learned that Paris had fallen. When Napoleon proposed the army march on the capital, his senior officers and marshals mutinied. On 4 April, led by Ney, the senior officers confronted Napoleon. When Napoleon asserted the army would follow him, Ney replied that the army would follow its generals. While the ordinary soldiers and regimental officers wanted to fight on, the senior commanders were unwilling to continue. Without any senior officers or marshals, any prospective invasion of Paris would have been impossible. Bowing to the inevitable, on 4 April Napoleon abdicated in favour of his son, with Marie Louise as regent. However, the Allies refused to accept this under prodding from Alexander, who feared that Napoleon might find an excuse to retake the throne. Napoleon was then forced to announce his unconditional abdication only two days later.

In his farewell address to the soldiers of Old Guard in 20 April, Napoleon said:

"Soldiers of my Old Guard, I have come to bid you farewell. For twenty years you have accompanied me faithfully on the paths of honor and glory. ...With men like you, our cause was [not] lost, but the war would have dragged on interminably, and it would have been a civil war. ... So I am sacrificing our interests to those of our country. ...Do not lament my fate; if I have agreed to live on, it is to serve our glory. I wish to write the history of the great deeds we have done together. Farewell, my children!"

Exile to Elba

The Allied Powers having declared that Emperor Napoleon was the sole obstacle to the restoration of peace in Europe, Emperor Napoleon, faithful to his oath, declares that he renounces, for himself and his heirs, the thrones of France and Italy, and that there is no personal sacrifice, even that of his life, which he is not ready to make in the interests of France.
Done in the palace of Fontainebleau, 11 April 1814.

In the Treaty of Fontainebleau, the Allies exiled Napoleon to Elba, an island of 12,000 inhabitants in the Mediterranean, 10 km (6 mi) off the Tuscan coast. They gave him sovereignty over the island and allowed him to retain the title of Emperor. Napoleon attempted suicide with a pill he had carried after nearly being captured by the Russians during the retreat from Moscow. Its potency had weakened with age, however, and he survived to be exiled, while his wife and son took refuge in Austria. He was conveyed to the island on HMS Undaunted by Captain Thomas Ussher, and he arrived at Portoferraio on 30 May 1814. In the first few months on Elba he created a small navy and army, developed the iron mines, oversaw the construction of new roads, issued decrees on modern agricultural methods, and overhauled the island's legal and educational system. A few months into his exile, Napoleon learned that his ex-wife Joséphine had died in France. He was devastated by the news, locking himself in his room and refusing to leave for two days.

Hundred Days

Separated from his wife and son, who had returned to Austria, cut off from the allowance guaranteed to him by the Treaty of Fontainebleau, and aware of rumours he was about to be banished to a remote island in the Atlantic Ocean, Napoleon escaped from Elba in the brig Inconstant on 26 February 1815 with 700 men. Two days later, he landed on the French mainland at Golfe-Juan and started heading north.

The 5th Regiment was sent to intercept him and made contact just south of Grenoble on 7 March 1815. Napoleon approached the regiment alone, dismounted his horse and, when he was within gunshot range, shouted to the soldiers, "Here I am. Kill your Emperor, if you wish." The soldiers quickly responded with, "Vive L'Empereur!" Ney, who had boasted to the restored Bourbon king, Louis XVIII, that he would bring Napoleon to Paris in an iron cage, affectionately kissed his former emperor and forgot his oath of allegiance to the Bourbon monarch. The two then marched together toward Paris with a growing army. The unpopular Louis XVIII fled to Belgium after realizing that he had little political support. On 13 March, the powers at the Congress of Vienna declared Napoleon an outlaw. Four days later, Great Britain, Russia, Austria, and Prussia each pledged to put 150,000 men into the field to end his rule.

Napoleon returned to Paris and found that both the legislature and the people had turned against him. Realizing that his position was untenable, he abdicated on 22 June in favour of his son. He left Paris three days later and settled at Joséphine's former palace in Malmaison (on the western bank of the Seine about 17 kilometres (11 mi) west of Paris). Even as Napoleon travelled to Paris, the Coalition forces swept through France (arriving in the vicinity of Paris on 29 June), with the stated intent of restoring Louis XVIII to the French throne.

When Napoleon heard that Prussian troops had orders to capture him dead or alive, he fled to Rochefort, considering an escape to the United States. British ships were blocking every port. Napoleon surrendered to Captain Frederick Maitland on HMS Bellerophon on 15 July 1815.

Exile on Saint Helena

Napoleon on Saint Helena, watercolour by Franz Josef Sandmann, c. 1820

Napoleon was held in British custody and transferred to the island of Saint Helena in the Atlantic Ocean, 1,870 km (1,162 mi) from the west coast of Africa. Napoleon and 27 followers arrived at Jamestown, Saint Helena, in October 1815 on board HMS Northumberland. The prisoner was guarded by a garrison of 2,100 soldiers while a squadron of 10 ships continuously patrolled the waters to prevent escape. In the following years, there were rumours of escape plots, but no serious attempts were made.

Napoleon stayed for two months at Briars pavilion before he was moved to Longwood House, a 40-room wooden bungalow. The location and interior of the house were damp, windswept, rat-infested and unhealthy. published articles insinuating the British government was trying to hasten his death. Napoleon often complained of his living conditions in letters to the island's governor, Hudson Lowe, while his attendants complained of "colds, catarrhs, damp floors and poor provisions".

Napoleon insisted on imperial formality. When he held a dinner party, men were expected to wear military dress and "women [appeared] in evening gowns and gems. It was an explicit denial of the circumstances of his captivity". He formally received visitors, read, and dictated his memoirs and commentaries on military campaigns. He studied English under Count Emmanuel de Las Cases for a few months but gave up as he was poor at languages.

Napoleon also circulated reports of poor treatment in the hope that public opinion would force the allies to revoke his exile on Saint Helena. Under instructions from the British government, Lowe cut Napoleon's expenditure, refused to recognize him as a former emperor, and made his supporters sign a guarantee they would stay with the prisoner indefinitely. Accounts of the mistreatment led, in March 1817, to a debate in parliament and Lord Holland's call for an inquiry.

Napoleon's health continued to worsen and in March 1821 he was confined to bed. In April he wrote two wills declaring that he had been murdered by the British, that the Bourbons would fall and that his son would rule France. He left his fortune to 97 legatees and asked to be buried by the Seine.

On 3 May he was given the last rites but could not take communion due to his illness. He died on 5 May 1821 at age 51. His last words, variously recorded by those present, were either France, l'armée, tête d'armée, Joséphine ("France, the army, head of the army, Joséphine"), or qui recule... à la tête d'armée ("who retreats... at the head of the army") or "France, my son, the Army."

Antommarchi and the British wrote separate autopsy reports, each concluding that Napoleon had died of internal bleeding caused by stomach cancer, the disease that had killed his father. A later theory, based on high concentrations of arsenic found in samples of Napoleon's hair, held that Napoleon had died of arsenic poisoning. However, subsequent studies also found high concentrations of arsenic in hair samples from Napoleon's childhood and from his son and Joséphine. Arsenic was widely used in medicines and products such as hair creams in the 19th century. A 2021 study by an international team of gastrointestinal pathologists concluded that Napoleon died of stomach cancer.

In 1840, the British government gave Louis Philippe I permission to return Napoleon's remains to France. Napoleon's body was exhumed and found to be well preserved as it had been sealed in four coffins (two of metal and two of mahogany) and placed in a masonry tomb. On 15 December 1840, a state funeral was held in Paris before a crowd of 700,000 to one million who lined the route of the funeral procession to the chapel of the Esplanade des Invalides. The coffin was later placed in the cupola in St Jérôme's Chapel, where it remained until the tomb designed by Louis Visconti was completed. In 1861, Napoleon's remains were entombed in a sarcophagus in the crypt under the dome at Les Invalides.

Napoleon was baptized in Ajaccio on 21 July 1771. He was raised as a Catholic but never developed much faith, though he recalled the day of his First Communion in the Catholic Church to be the happiest day of his life. As an adult, Napoleon was a deist, believing in an absent and distant God. However, he had a keen appreciation of the power of organized religion in social and political affairs, and he paid a great deal of attention to bending it to his purposes. He noted the influence of Catholicism's rituals and splendors. Napoleon once said "religion is a sort of inoculation or vaccine which, while satisfying our sense of the supernatural, guarantees us from the charlatans and the magicians".

Napoleon had a civil marriage with Joséphine de Beauharnais, without religious ceremony. Napoleon was crowned Emperor on 2 December 1804 at Notre-Dame de Paris in a ceremony presided over by Pope Pius VII. On the eve of the coronation ceremony, and at the insistence of Pope Pius VII, a private religious wedding ceremony of Napoleon and Joséphine was celebrated. Napoleon's half-uncle, Cardinal Joseph Fesch, performed the wedding. This marriage was annulled by tribunals under Napoleon's control in January 1810. On 1 April 1810, Napoleon married the Austrian princess Marie Louise in a Catholic ceremony. Napoleon was excommunicated by the pope through the bull Quum memoranda in 1809, but later reconciled with the Catholic Church before his death in 1821. While in exile in Saint Helena, he is recorded to have said "I know men; and I tell you that Jesus Christ is not a man." He also defended Muhammad ("a great man") against Voltaire's .

Seeking national reconciliation between revolutionaries and Catholics, Napoleon and Pope Pius VII signed the Concordat of 1801 on 15 July 1801. It solidified the Catholic Church as the majority church of France and brought back most of its civil status. The hostility of devout Catholics against the state had now largely been resolved. The Concordat did not restore the vast Church lands and endowments that had been seized during the revolution and sold off. As a part of the Concordat, Napoleon presented another set of laws called the Organic Articles.

Arrest of Pope Pius VII

In 1809, under Napoleon's orders, Pope Pius VII-who had excommunicated Napoleon that year, following his annexation of the Papal States-was placed under arrest in Italy. In 1812 the prisoner pontiff was transferred to France, being held in the Palace of Fontainebleau. Because the arrest was made in a clandestine manner, some sources describe it as a kidnapping. In January 1813, Napoleon personally forced the pope to sign a humiliating "Concordat of Fontainebleau" which was later repudiated by the pontiff. The pope was not released until 1814, when the Coalition invaded France.

Religious emancipation

He stated, "I will never accept any proposals that will obligate the Jewish people to leave France, because to me the Jews are the same as any other citizen in our country. It takes weakness to chase them out of the country, but it takes strength to assimilate them". He was seen as so favourable to the Jews that the Russian Orthodox Church formally condemned him as " Antichrist and the Enemy of God".

One year after the final meeting of the Sanhedrin, on 17 March 1808, Napoleon placed the Jews on probation. Several new laws restricting the citizenship the Jews had been offered 17 years previously were instituted at that time. However, despite pressure from leaders of a number of Christian communities to refrain from granting Jews emancipation, within one year of the issue of the new restrictions, they were once again lifted in response to the appeal of Jews from all over France.

Personality

Pieter Geyl wrote in 1947, "It is impossible that two historians, especially two historians living in different periods, should see any historical personality in the same light." There is no dispute that Napoleon was ambitious, although commentators disagree on whether his ambition was mostly for his own power and glory or for the welfare of France. Historians agree that Napoleon was highly intelligent with an excellent memory, and was a superior organizer who could work efficiently for long hours. In battle, he could rapidly dictate a series of complex commands to his subordinates, keeping in mind where major units were expected to be at each future point.

He was an inspiring leader who could obtain the best from his soldiers and subordinates. The Duke of Wellington said his presence on the battlefield was worth 40,000 soldiers. He could charm people when he needed to but could also publicly humiliate them and was known for his rages when his plans were frustrated. Historian McLynn sees him as a misogynist with a cruel streak which he often inflicted on women, children and animals.

There is debate over whether Napoleon was an outsider who never felt at home in France or with other people. Taine said Napoleon saw others only as instruments and was cut off from feelings of admiration, sympathy or pity. Arthur Lévy replied that Napoleon genuinely loved Joséphine and often showed humanity and compassion to his enemies or those who had let him down. He had the normal middle class virtues and understood the common man.

Similarly, historians are divided over whether Napoleon was consistently ruthless when his power was threatened or surprisingly indulgent in some cases. Those arguing for a ruthless personality point to episodes such as his violent suppression of revolts in France and conquered territories, his execution of the Duc de Enghien and plotters against his rule, and his massacre of Turkish prisoners of war in Syria in 1799. Others point to his mild treatment of disloyal subordinates such as Bernadotte, Talleyrand and Fouché.

Many historians see Napoleon as pragmatic and a realist, at least in the early years of his rule. He wasn't driven by ideology and promoted capable men irrespective of their political and social background, as long as they were loyal. As an expert in military matters, he valued technical expertise and listened to the advice of experts in other fields. However, there is a consensus that once he dominated Europe he became more intolerant of other views and surrounded himself with "yes men". Towards the end of his reign he lost his realism and ability to compromise.

Various psychologists have attempted to explain Napoleon's personality. Alfred Adler cited Napoleon to describe an inferiority complex in which short people adopt over-aggressive behaviour to compensate for lack of height; this inspired the term Napoleon complex. Adler, Fromm and Reich ascribed his nervous energy to sexual dysfunction. Harold T. Parker speculated that rivalry with his older brother and bullying when he moved to France led him to develop an inferiority complex which made him domineering.

Appearance and image

A friend who first met him as a young man said Napoleon was only notable "for the dark color of his complexion, for his piercing and scrutinising glance, and for the style of his conversation". He also said that Napoleon was serious and sombre. Johann Ludwig Wurstemberger, who accompanied Napoleon in 1797 and 1798, noted that "Bonaparte was rather slight and emaciated-looking; his face, too, was very thin, with a dark complexion... his black, unpowdered hair hung down evenly over both shoulders", but that, despite his slight and unkempt appearance, "[h]is looks and expression were earnest and powerful."

Denis Davydov considered him average in appearance:

His face was slightly swarthy, with regular features. His nose was not very large, but straight, with a slight, hardly noticeable bend. The hair on his head was dark reddish-blond; his eyebrows and eyelashes were much darker than the colour of his hair, and his blue eyes, set off by the almost black lashes, gave him a most pleasing expression ... The man I saw was of short stature, just over five feet tall, rather heavy although he was only 37 years old.

During the Napoleonic Wars, he was depicted by the British press as a dangerous tyrant, poised to invade. A nursery rhyme warned children that Bonaparte ate naughty people; the " bogeyman". He was mocked as a short-tempered small man and was nicknamed "Little Boney in a strong fit". In fact, at about 170 cm (5 ft 7 in), he was of average height.

In his later years he gained weight and had a sallow complexion. Novelist Paul de Kock, who saw him in 1811, called Napoleon "yellow, obese, and bloated". A British captain who met him in 1815 stated "I felt very much disappointed, as I believe everyone else did, in his appearance ... He is fat, rather what we call pot-bellied, and although his leg is well shaped, it is rather clumsy ... He is very sallow, with light grey eyes, and rather thin, greasy-looking brown hair, and altogether a very nasty, priestlike-looking fellow."

Napoleon instituted numerous reforms, many of which had a lasting impact on France, Europe and the world. He reformed the French administration, codified French law, implemented a new education system, and established the first French central bank, the Banque de France. He negotiated the Concordat of 1801 with the Catholic Church, which sought to reconcile the majority Catholic population to his regime. It was presented alongside the Organic Articles, which regulated public worship in France. He also implemented civil and religious equality for protestants and Jews. In May 1802, he instituted the Legion of Honour to encourage civilian and military achievements. The order is still the highest decoration in France. He introduced three French constitutions culminating in the reintroduction of a hereditary monarchy and nobility.

Administration

After several attempts by revolutionary governments, Napoleon officially introduced the metric system in France in 1801 and it was spread through western Europe by his armies. The new system was unpopular in some circles, so in 1812 he introduced a compromise system in the retail trade called the mesures usuelles (traditional units of measurement). In December 1805, Napoleon abolished the Revolutionary calendar, with its ten-day week, which had been introduced in 1793.

Napoleonic Code

Napoleon's civil code of laws, known from 1807 as the Napoleonic Code, was implemented in March 1804. It was prepared by committees of legal experts under the supervision of Jean Jacques Régis de Cambacérès, the Second Consul. Napoleon participated actively in the sessions of the Council of State that revised the drafts. The code introduced a clearly written and accessible set of national laws to replace the various regional and customary law systems that had operated in France.

In the field of military organization, Napoleon borrowed from previous theorists such as Jacques Antoine Hippolyte, Comte de Guibert, and from the reforms of preceding French governments, and then developed what was already in place. He continued the Revolutionary policies of conscription and promotion based primarily on merit.

Napoleon was regarded by the influential military theorist Carl von Clausewitz as a genius in the art of war, and many historians rank him as a great military commander. Wellington considered him the greatest military commander of all time. Cobban states that he showed his genius in moving troops quickly and concentrating them on strategic points. Conner states that his principles were to keep his forces united, keep no weak point unguarded, seize important points quickly, and seize his chance. Owen Connelly, however, states, "Napoleon's personal tactics defy analysis." He used his intuition, engaged his troops, and reacted to what developed.

Napoleon's educational reforms laid the foundation of a modern system of secondary and tertiary education in France and throughout much of Europe. He synthesized academic elements from the Ancien Régime, The Enlightenment, and the Revolution. His education laws of 1802 left most primary education in the hands of religious or communal schools which taught basic literacy and numeracy for a minority of the population. He abolished the revolutionary central schools and replaced them with secondary schools and elite lycées where the curriculum was based on reading, writing, mathematics, Latin, natural history, classics, and ancient history.

He retained the revolutionary higher education system, with grandes écoles in professions including law, medicine, pharmacy, engineering and school teaching. He introduced grandes écoles in history and geography, but opposed one in literature because it wasn't vocational. He also founded the military academy of Saint Cyr. He promoted the advanced centres, such as the École Polytechnique, that provided both military expertise and advanced research in science.

Female education, in contrast, was designed to be practical and religious, based on home science, the catechism, basic literacy and numeracy, and enough science to eradicate superstition.

Memory and evaluation

There is debate over whether Napoleon was "an enlightened despot who laid the foundations of modern Europe" or "a megalomaniac who wrought greater misery than any man before the coming of Hitler". He was compared to Adolf Hitler by Pieter Geyl in 1947, and Claude Ribbe in 2005. Most modern critics of Napoleon, however, reject the Hitler comparison, arguing that Napoleon did not commit genocide and did not engage in the mass murder and imprisonment of his political opponents. Nevertheless, Bell and McLynn condemn his killing of 3,000-5,000 Turkish prisoners of war in Syria.

A number of historians have argued that his expansionist foreign policy was a major factor in the Napoleonic wars which cost six million lives and caused economic disruption for a generation. McLynn and Barnett suggest that Napoleon's reputation as a military genius is exaggerated. Cobban and Conner argue that Napoleon had insufficient regard for the lives of his soldiers and that his battle tactics led to excessive casualties.

Critics also cite Napoleon's exploitation of conquered territories. To finance his wars, Napoleon increased taxes and levies of troops from annexed territories and satellite states. He also introduced discriminatory tariff policies which promoted French trade at the expense of allies and satellite states. He institutionalized plunder: French museums contain art stolen by Napoleon's forces from across Europe. Artefacts were brought to the Musée du Louvre for a grand central museum; an example which would later be followed by others.

Many historians have criticized Napoleon's authoritarian rule, especially after 1807, which included censorship, the closure of independent newspapers, the bypassing of direct elections and representative government, the dismissal of judges showing independence, and the exile of critics of the regime. Historians also blame Napoleon for reducing the civil rights of women, children and people of colour, and reintroducing the legal penalties of civil death and confiscation of property. His reintroduction of an hereditary monarchy and nobility remains controversial. His role in the Haitian Revolution and decision to reinstate slavery in France's overseas colonies adversely affect his reputation.

Propaganda and memory

In England, Russia and across Europe-though not in France-Napoleon was a popular topic of caricature.

Hazareesingh (2004) explores how Napoleon's image and memory are best understood. They played a key role in collective political defiance of the Bourbon restoration monarchy in 1815-1830. People from different walks of life and areas of France, particularly Napoleonic veterans, drew on the Napoleonic legacy and its connections with the ideals of the 1789 Revolution.

Las Cases, who was with Napoleon in exile, eventually published The Memorial of Saint Helena which depicted Napoleon a liberal, visionary ruler for European unification, deposed by reactionary elements of the Ancien Régime.

Datta (2005) shows that, following the collapse of militaristic Boulangism in the late 1880s, the Napoleonic legend was divorced from party politics and revived in popular culture. Concentrating on two plays and two novels from the period- Victorien Sardou's Madame Sans-Gêne (1893), Maurice Barrès's Les Déracinés (1897), Edmond Rostand's L'Aiglon (1900), and André de Lorde and Gyp's Napoléonette (1913)-Datta examines how writers and critics of the Belle Époque exploited the Napoleonic legend for diverse political and cultural ends. International Napoleonic Congresses take place regularly, with participation by members of the French and American military, French politicians and scholars from different countries. In January 2012, the mayor of Montereau-Fault-Yonne, near Paris-the site of a late victory of Napoleon-proposed development of Napoleon's Bivouac, a commemorative theme park at a projected cost of 200 million euros.

Long-term influence outside France

Napoleon was responsible for spreading the values of the French Revolution to other countries, especially through the Napoleonic Code. After the fall of Napoleon, not only was it retained by conquered countries including the Netherlands, Belgium, parts of Italy and Germany, but it has been used as the basis of certain parts of law outside Europe including the Dominican Republic, the US state of Louisiana and the Canadian province of Quebec. The code was also used as a model in many parts of Latin America. The reputation of Napoleon in Poland has been favourable, especially for his support of independence, opposition to Russia, his legal code, the abolition of serfdom, and the introduction of modern middle class administration.

Dieter Langewiesche described the Napoleonic code as a "revolutionary project" that spurred the development of bourgeois society in Germany by the extension of the right to own property and an acceleration towards the end of feudalism. Napoleon reorganized what had been the Holy Roman Empire, made up of about three hundred Kleinstaaterei, into a more streamlined forty-state Confederation of the Rhine; this helped promote the German Confederation and the unification of Germany in 1871.

The movement toward Italian unification was similarly precipitated by Napoleonic rule. These changes contributed to the development of nationalism and the nation state.

Napoleon directly overthrew remnants of feudalism in much of western Continental Europe. He liberalized property laws, ended seigneurial dues, abolished the guild of merchants and craftsmen to facilitate entrepreneurship, legalized divorce, closed the Jewish ghettos and made Jews equal to everyone else. The Inquisition ended as did the Holy Roman Empire. The power of church courts and religious authority was sharply reduced and equality under the law was proclaimed for all men.

Napoleon indirectly began the process of Latin American independence when he invaded Spain in 1808. The abdication of King Charles IV and renunciation of his son, Ferdinand VII created a power vacuum that was filled by native born political leaders such as Simón Bolívar and José de San Martín. Such leaders embraced nationalistic sentiments influenced by French nationalism and led successful independence movements in Latin America.

From 1796 to 2020, at least 95 major ships were named for him. In the 21st century, at least 18 Napoleon ships are operated under the flag of France, as well as Indonesia, Germany, Italy, Australia, Argentina, India, Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.

By wanting to make his dynasty the most ancient in Europe, Napoleon ousted numerous houses in favor of his own family. Talleyrand commented that "either these newly created sovereigns respected his overarching plan and became its satellites, which made it impossible for them to take root in the country entrusted to them; or they must reject it. ... Each new creation thus became a source of dissolution in Napoleon's fortune."

Wives, mistresses, and children

Napoleon was first engaged to Désirée Clary, the younger sister of his brother Joseph's wife, in 1795. After meeting Joséphine ( Marie Josèphe Rose Tascher de La Pagerie) later that year, he broke off the engagement to Désirée. He then married Joséphine in 1796, at the age of 26.

Joséphine was a 32-year-old widow whose first husband, Alexandre de Beauharnais, had been executed during the Reign of Terror. Five days after Alexandre de Beauharnais' death, the Reign of Terror initiator Maximilien de Robespierre was overthrown and executed, and, with the help of high-placed friends, Joséphine was freed. Until she met Bonaparte, she had been known as "Rose", a name which he disliked. He called her "Joséphine" instead, and she went by this name henceforth. Bonaparte often sent her love letters while on his campaigns. He formally adopted her son Eugène and second cousin (via marriage) Stéphanie and arranged dynastic marriages for them. Joséphine had her daughter Hortense marry Napoleon's brother Louis.

Joséphine had lovers, such as Lieutenant Hippolyte Charles, during Napoleon's Italian campaign. Napoleon learnt of that affair and a letter he wrote about it was intercepted by the British and published widely, to embarrass Napoleon. Napoleon had his own affairs too: during the Egyptian campaign he took Pauline Bellisle Fourès, the wife of a junior officer, as his mistress. She became known as "Cleopatra".

On 11 March 1810 by proxy, he married the 19-year-old Marie Louise, Archduchess of Austria, and a great-niece of Marie Antoinette. Thus, he had married into a German royal and imperial family. Louise was less than happy with the arrangement, at least at first, stating: "Just to see the man would be the worst form of torture". Her great-aunt had been executed in France, while Napoleon had fought numerous campaigns against Austria all throughout his military career. However, she seemed to warm up to him over time. After her wedding, she wrote to her father: "He loves me very much. I respond to his love sincerely. There is something very fetching and very eager about him that is impossible to resist".

Napoleon acknowledged one illegitimate son: Charles Léon (1806-1881) by Eléonore Denuelle de La Plaigne. Alexandre Colonna-Walewski (1810-1868), the son of his Polish mistress Maria Walewska, although acknowledged by Walewska's husband, was also widely known to be his child, and the DNA of his direct male descendant has been used to help confirm Napoleon's Y-chromosome haplotype E1b1b1c1*. He may have had further unacknowledged illegitimate offspring as well, such as Eugen Megerle von Mühlfeld by Emilie Victoria Kraus von Wolfsberg and Hélène Napoleone Bonaparte (1816-1907) by Albine de Montholon.

1. He established a system of public education, abolished the vestiges of ^ feudalism, emancipated Jews and other religious minorities, abolished the Spanish Inquisition, enacted legal protections for an emerging middle class, and centralized state power at the expense of religious authorities.

2. He abolished the free press, ended directly elected representative government, exiled and jailed critics of his regime, reinstated slavery in France's colonies except for ^ Haiti, banned the entry of blacks and mulattos into France, reduced the civil rights of women and children, reintroduced a hereditary monarchy and nobility, and violently repressed popular uprisings against his rule.

3. Although the ^ 1768 Treaty of Versailles formally ceded Corsica's rights, it remained un-incorporated during 1769 until it became a province of France in 1770. Corsica would be legally integrated as a département in 1789.

4. Aside from his name, there does not appear to be a connection between him and ^ Napoleon's theorem.

5. ^ He was mainly referred to as Bonaparte until he became First Consul for life.

6. This is depicted in ^ Bonaparte Crossing the Alps by Hippolyte Delaroche and in Jacques-Louis David's imperial Napoleon Crossing the Alps. He is less realistically portrayed on a charger in the latter work.

7. One night, during an illicit liaison with actress ^ Marguerite Georges, Napoleon had a major fit. This and other more minor attacks have led historians to debate whether he had epilepsy and, if so, to what extent.

1. Parker, Harold T. (1971). "The Formation of Napoleon's Personality: An Exploratory Essay". French Historical Studies. 7 (1): 6-26. doi:10.2307/286104. JSTOR 286104.

2. ^ Carlyle, Thomas (1896). "The works of Thomas Carlyle - The French Revolution, vol. III, book 3.VII". Archived from the original on 20 March 2015.

3. ^ Holt, Lucius Hudson; Chilton, Alexander Wheeler (1919). A Brief History of Europe from 1789-1815. Macmillan. p. 206. August 1802 referendum napoleon.

4. De Rémusat, Claire Elisabeth, ^ Memoirs of Madame De Rémusat, 1802-1808 Volume 1, HardPress Publishing, 2012, 542 pp., ISBN 978-1-290-51747-8.

5. ^ Chandler 1966, p. 328. Meanwhile, French territorial rearrangements in Germany occurred without Russian consultation and Napoleon's annexations in the Po valley increasingly strained relations between the two.

6. Richard Brooks (editor), ^ Atlas of World Military History. p. 156. "It is a historical cliché to compare the Schlieffen Plan with Hannibal's tactical envelopment at Cannae (216 BC); Schlieffen owed more to Napoleon's strategic maneuver on Ulm (1805)".

7. ^ Hope, John; Baird, D. (28 January 1809). "Battle of Corunna". Vol. 15, no. 4. Cobbett's political register. pp. 91-94.

8. ^ John Lynch, Caudillos in Spanish America 1800-1850. Oxford: Clarendon Press 1992, pp. 402-403.

9. Todd Fisher & Gregory Fremont-Barnes, The Napoleonic Wars: The Rise and Fall of an Empire. p. 144.

10. David Watkin, ^ The Roman Forum. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2012. 183.ISBN 978-0-674-06367-9 books.google.com/books?id=cRrufMNLOhwC&pg=PA183

11. ^ Latson, Jennifer (26 February 2015). "Why Napoleon Probably Should Have Just Stayed in Exile the First Time". Archived from the original on 25 June 2016.

12. ^ "Hundred Days | Napoleon, Waterloo, Reforms | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Louis XVIII fled to Ghent on March 13, and Napoleon entered Paris one week later.

13. Lugli, Alessandro; et al. (4 March 2021). "The gastric disease of Napoleon Bonaparte: brief report for the bicentenary of Napoleon's death on St. Helena in 1821". Virchows Archiv. 2021 (479): 1055-1060 - via Springer.

14. ^ Bennett, Michael (2020). War Against Smallpox: Edward Jenner and the Global Spread of Vaccination. Cambridge University Press. p. 168.

15. ^ Confidential Correspondence of the Emperor Napoleon and the Empress Josephine: Including Letters from the Time of Their Marriage Until the Death of Josephine, and Also Several Private Letters from the Emperor to His Brother Joseph, and Other Important Personages. With Numerous Illustrative Notes ... Mason Brothers. 1856. p. 359. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and I have founded empires. But on what did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ founded his empire upon love; and at this hour millions of men would die for him

16. Nigel Aston, ^ Religion and revolution in France, 1780-1804 (Catholic University of America Press, 2000) pp. 279-315

17. Nigel Aston, ^ Christianity and revolutionary Europe, 1750-1830 (Cambridge University Press, 2002) pp. 261-262.

18. ^ Parker, Harold T. (1971). "The Formation of Napoleon's Personality: An Exploratory Essay". French Historical Studies. 7 (1): 6-26. doi:10.2307/286104. JSTOR 286104.

19. ^ Hallock, William; Wade, Herbert T (1906). "Outlines of the evolution of weights and measures and the metric system". London: The Macmillan Company. pp. 66-69.

20. ^ Hastings, Max (31 October 2014). "Everything is Owed to Glory". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on 13 November 2014.

21. Sudhir Hazareesingh, "Memory and Political Imagination: the Legend of Napoleon Revisited". French History, 2004 18(4): 463-483

22. ^ Laurent, Ottavi (8 February 2012). "A New Napoleonic Campaign for Montereau". Foundation Napoleon. Archived from the original on 29 September 2013.

23. ^ Talleyrand, Chares-Maurice de (1953). Mémoires du Prince de Talleyrand (in French). Vol. 2. Paris: Henri Javal. pp. 41-50.

24. ^ Lucotte, Gérard; Macé, Jacques & Hrechdakian, Peter (September 2013). "Reconstruction of the Lineage Y Chromosome Haplotype of Napoléon the First" (PDF). International Journal of Sciences. 2 (9): 127-139. ISSN 2305-3925. Archived (PDF) from the original on 6 April 2014.

References

Biographical studies

Historiography and memory

Specialty studies

Dwyer, Philip (2015b). "'Citizen Emperor': Political Ritual, Popular Sovereignty and the Coronation of Napoleon I". History. 100 (339): 40-57. doi:10.1111/1468-229X.12089. ISSN 1468-229X.

Fulghum, Neil (2007). "Death Mask of Napoleon". University of North Carolina. Archived from the original on 26 July 2013.

Glover, Richard (1967). "The French Fleet, 1807-1814; Britain's Problem; and Madison's Opportunity". The Journal of Modern History. 39 (3): 233-252. doi:10.1086/240080. S2CID 143376566.

Hindmarsh, J. Thomas; Savory, John (2008). "The Death of Napoleon, Cancer or Arsenic?". Clinical Chemistry. 54 (12): 2092. doi:10.1373/clinchem.2008.117358.

Watson, William (2003). Tricolor and crescent. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-275-97470-1.

External links

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Napoleon Bonaparte (born Napoleone Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 - 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French emperor and military commander who rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led successful campaigns during the Revolutionary Wars.

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Born -September 15, 1736
Died -November 12, 1793
From -Paris,France

Jean Sylvain Bailly was a French astronomer, mathematician, freemason, and political leader of the early part of the French Revolution

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Jean Sylvain Bailly ( French: ; 15 September 1736 - 12 November 1793) was a French astronomer, mathematician, freemason, and political leader of the early part of the French Revolution. He presided over the Tennis Court Oath, served as the mayor of Paris from 1789 to 1791, and was ultimately guillotined during the Reign of Terror.

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Born -May 24, 1743
Died -July 13, 1793
From -Paris,France

Jean-Paul Marat was a French political theorist, physician, and scientist who became best known for his role as a radical journalist and politician during the French Revolution.

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Jean-Paul Marat (, , French: [ʒɑ̃pɔlmaʁa]; born Mara; 24 May 1743 - 13 July 1793) was a French political theorist, physician, and scientist. A journalist and politician during the French Revolution, he was a vigorous defender of the sans-culottes, a radical voice, and published his views in pamphlets, placards and newspapers. His periodical L'Ami du peuple ( The Friend of the People) made him an unofficial link with the radical Jacobin group that came to power after June 1793.

His journalism was known for its fierce tone and uncompromising stance toward the new leaders and institutions of the revolution. Responsibility for the September massacres has been attributed to him, given his position of renown at the time, and a paper trail of decisions leading up to the massacres. Others posit the collective mentality that made them possible resulted from circumstances and not from the will of any particular individual. Marat was assassinated by Charlotte Corday, a Girondin sympathizer, while taking a medicinal bath for his debilitating skin condition. Corday was executed four days later for his assassination, on 17 July 1793.

In death, Marat became an icon to the Montagnards faction of the Jacobins as well as the greater sans-culotte population, and a revolutionary martyr; according to contemporary accounts, some even mourned him with a kind of prayer: "O heart of Jesus! O sacred heart of Marat". The most famous painter in Paris, Jacques-Louis David, immortalized Marat in his iconic painting The Death of Marat. David and Marat were part of the Paris Commune leadership anchored in the Cordeliers section, from where the Revolution is said to have started in 1789 because those who stormed the Bastille lived there. Both David and Marat were on the Commune's Committee of General Security during the beginnings of what would become known as the Reign of Terror.

Early life, education, and early writing

Commemorative plaque on the house where Marat was born, in Boudry in Switzerland

Jean-Paul Marat was born in Boudry, in the Prussian Principality of Neuchâtel (now a canton of Switzerland), on 24 May 1743. He was the first of five children born to Jean Mara (born Juan Salvador Mara; 1704-1783), a Sardinian from Cagliari, and Louise Cabrol (1724-1782), from Geneva. His father studied in Spain and Sardinia before becoming a Mercedarian friar in 1720, at age 16, but at some point left the order and converted to Calvinism, and in 1740 immigrated to the Protestant Republic of Geneva. His mother, who had Huguenot background from both sides of her family, was the daughter of French perruquier Louis Cabrol, originally from Castres, Languedoc, and Genevan citizen after 1723, and his wife Pauline-Catherine Molinier. Jean Mara and Louise Cabrol married on 19 March 1741 at the parish church of Le Petit-Saconnex, a district of Geneva. One of Marat's brothers, David Mara (born in 1756), was a professor at the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum in the Russian Empire, where he had Alexander Pushkin as his student.

Marat's family lived in moderate circumstances, as his father was well educated but unable to secure a stable profession. Marat credits his father for instilling in him a love of learning. He explains he felt "exceptionally fortunate to have had the advantage of receiving a very careful education in my paternal home." From his mother, he claims to have been taught a strong sense of morality and social conscience. Marat left home at the age of 16, desiring to seek an education in France. He was aware of the limited opportunities for those seen as outsiders as his highly educated father had been turned down for several college (secondary) teaching posts. In 1754 his family settled in Neuchâtel, capital of the Principality, where Marat's father began working as a tutor.

Marat received his early education in the city of Neuchâtel and there was a student of Jean-Élie Bertrand, who later founded the Société typographique de Neuchâtel. At 17 years of age he applied for the expedition of Jean-Baptiste Chappe d'Auteroche to Tobolsk to measure the transit of Venus, but was turned down. His first patronage was fulfilled with the wealthy Nairac family in Bordeaux, where he stayed for two years. He then moved to Paris and studied medicine without gaining any formal qualifications. After moving to France, Jean-Paul Mara francized his surname as "Marat". He worked, informally, as a doctor after moving to London in 1765 due to a fear of being "drawn into dissipation". While there he befriended the Royal Academician artist Angelica Kauffman. His social circle included Italian artists and architects who met in coffee houses around Soho. Highly ambitious, but without patronage or qualifications, he set about inserting himself into the intellectual scene.

Political, philosophical, and medical writing

Around 1770, Marat moved to Newcastle upon Tyne. His first political work, Chains of Slavery (1774), inspired by the extra-parliamentary activities of the disenfranchised MP and later Mayor of London John Wilkes, was most probably compiled in the central library there. By Marat's own account, while composing it he lived on black coffee for three months and slept two hours a night, and after finishing it he slept soundly for 13 days in a row. He gave it the subtitle, "A work in which the clandestine and villainous attempts of Princes to ruin Liberty are pointed out, and the dreadful scenes of Despotism disclosed". In the work, Marat criticized aspects of England's constitution that he believed to be corrupt or despotic. He condemned the King's power to influence Parliament through bribery and attacked limitations on voting rights. Chains of Slavery's political ideology takes clear inspiration from Jean-Jacques Rousseau by attributing the nation's sovereignty to the common people rather than a monarch. He also suggests that the people express sovereignty through representatives who cannot enact legislation without the approval of the people they represent. This work earned him honorary membership of the patriotic societies of Berwick-upon-Tweed, Carlisle and Newcastle. The Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society Library possesses a copy, and Tyne and Wear Archives Service holds three presented to the various Newcastle guilds.

Marat published "A Philosophical Essay on Man," in 1773 and "Chains of Slavery," in 1774. Voltaire's sharp critique of "De l'Homme" (an augmented translation, published 1775-76), partly in defence of his protégé Helvétius, reinforced Marat's growing sense of a widening gulf between the philosophes, grouped around Voltaire on one hand, and their opponents, loosely grouped around Rousseau on the other.

After a published essay on curing a friend of gleets ( gonorrhoea) he secured medical referees for an MD from the University of St Andrews in June 1775.

He published Enquiry into the Nature, Cause, and Cure of a Singular Disease of the Eyes on his return to London. In 1776, Marat moved to Paris after stopping in Geneva to visit his family.

In Paris, his growing reputation as a highly effective doctor along with the patronage of the Marquis de l'Aubespine (the husband of one of his patients) secured his appointment as physician to the bodyguard of the Comte d'Artois, Louis XVI's youngest brother who was to become king Charles X in 1824. He began this position in June 1777. The position paid 2,000 livres a year plus allowances.

Marat set up a laboratory in the Marquise de l'Aubespine's house with funds obtained by serving as court doctor among the aristocracy. His method was to describe in detail the meticulous series of experiments he had undertaken on a problem, seeking to explore and then exclude all possible conclusions but the one he reached.

He published works on fire and heat, electricity, and light. He published a summary of his scientific views and discoveries in Découvertes de M. Marat sur le feu, l'électricité et la lumière (English: Mr Marat's Discoveries on Fire, Electricity and Light) in 1779. He published three more detailed and extensive works that expanded on each of his areas of research.

Recherches Physiques sur le Feu

The first of Marat's large-scale publications detailing his experiments and drawing conclusions from them was Recherches Physiques sur le Feu (English: Research into the Physics of Fire), which was published in 1780 with the approval of the official censors.

This publication describes 166 experiments conducted to demonstrate that fire was not, as was widely held, a material element but an " igneous fluid." He asked the Academy of Sciences to appraise his work, and it appointed a commission to do so, which reported in April 1779. The report avoided endorsing Marat's conclusions but praised his "new, precise and well-executed experiments, appropriately and ingeniously designed". Marat then published his work, with the claim that the Academy approved of its contents. Since the Academy had endorsed his methods but said nothing about his conclusions, this claim drew the ire of Antoine Lavoisier, who demanded that the Academy repudiate it. When the Academy did so, this marked the beginning of worsening relations between Marat and many of its leading members. A number of them, including Lavoisier himself, as well as Condorcet and Laplace took a strong dislike to Marat. However, Lamarck and Lacépède wrote positively about Marat's experiments and conclusions.

Découvertes sur la Lumière

In Marat's time, Newton's views on light and colour were regarded almost universally as definitive, yet Marat's explicit purpose in his second major work Découvertes sur la Lumière ( Discoveries on Light) was to demonstrate that in certain key areas, Newton was wrong.

The focus of Marat's work was the study of how light bends around objects, and his main argument was that while Newton held that white light was broken down into colours by refraction, the colours were actually caused by diffraction. When a beam of sunlight shone through an aperture, passed through a prism and projected colour onto a wall, the splitting of the light into colours took place not in the prism, as Newton maintained, but at the edges of the aperture itself. Marat sought to demonstrate that there are only three primary colours, rather than seven as Newton had argued.

Once again, Marat requested the Academy of Sciences review his work, and it set up a commission to do so. Over a period of seven months, from June 1779 to January 1780, Marat performed his experiments in the presence of the commissioners so that they could appraise his methods and conclusions. The drafting of their final report was assigned to Jean-Baptiste Le Roy. The report was finally produced after many delays in May 1780, and consisted of just three short paragraphs. Significantly, the report concluded that "these experiments are so very numerous...[but]...they do not appear to us to prove what the author believes they establish". The Academy declined to endorse Marat's work. When it was published, Découvertes sur la lumière did not carry the royal approbation. According to the title page, it was printed in London, so that either, Marat could not get the official censor to approve it, or, he did not want to spend the time and effort to do so.

Recherches Physiques sur L'Électricité

Marat's third major work, Recherches Physiques sur l'Électricité (English: Research on the Physics of Electricity), outlined 214 experiments. One of his major areas of interest was in electrical attraction and repulsion. Repulsion, he held, was not a basic force of nature. He addressed a number of other areas of enquiry in his work, concluding with a section on lightning rods which argued that those with pointed ends were more effective than those with blunt ends, and denouncing the idea of " earthquake rods" advocated by Pierre Bertholon de Saint-Lazare. This book was published with the censor's stamp of approval, but Marat did not seek the endorsement of the Academy of Sciences.

In April 1783, he resigned his court appointment and devoted his energies full-time to scientific research. Apart from his major works, during this period Marat published shorter essays on the medical use of electricity ( Mémoire sur l'électricité médicale (1783)) and on optics ( Notions élémentaires d'optique (1784)). He published a well-received translation of Newton's (1787), which was still in print until recently, and later a collection of essays on his experimental findings, including a study on the effect of light on soap bubbles in his Mémoires académiques, ou nouvelles découvertes sur la lumière ( Academic memoirs, or new discoveries on light, 1788). Benjamin Franklin visited him on several occasions and Goethe described his rejection by the Academy as a glaring example of scientific despotism.

In 1780, Marat published his "favourite work," a Plan de législation criminelle. It was a polemic for penal reform which had been entered into a competition announced by the Berne Economic Society in February 1777 and backed by Frederick the Great and Voltaire. Marat was inspired by Rousseau and Cesare Beccaria's "Il libro dei delitti e delle pene".

Marat's entry contained many radical ideas, including the argument that society should provide fundamental natural needs, such as food and shelter, if it expected all its citizens to follow its civil laws, that the king was no more than the "first magistrate" of his people, that there should be a common death penalty regardless of class, and that each town should have a dedicated " avocat des pauvres" and set up independent criminal tribunals with twelve-man juries to ensure a fair trial.

Marat by Jean-François Garneray

In 1788, the Assembly of Notables advised Louis XVI to assemble the Estates-General for the first time in 175 years. According to Marat, in the latter half of 1788 he had been deathly ill. Upon hearing of the King's decision to call together the Estates General, however, he explains that the "news had a powerful effect on me; my illness suddenly broke and my spirits revived". He strongly desired to contribute his ideas to the coming events and subsequently abandoned his career as a scientist and doctor, taking up his pen on behalf of the Third Estate.

Marat anonymously published his first contribution to the revolution in February 1789, titled Offrande à la Patrie ( Offering to the Nation), which touched on some of the same points as the Abbé Sieyès' famous " Qu'est-ce que le Tiers État?" (" What is the Third Estate?"). Marat claimed that this work caused a sensation throughout France, though he likely exaggerated its effect as the pamphlet mostly echoed ideas similar to many other pamphlets and cahiers circulating at the time. This was followed by a "Supplément de l'Offrande" in March, where he was less optimistic, expressing displeasure with the King's Lettres Royales of 24 January. In August 1789, he published La Constitution, ou Projet de déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen, intended to influence the drafting of France's new constitution, then being debated in the National Assembly. In this work, he builds his theories upon ideas taken from Montesquieu and Rousseau, claiming that the sovereignty of the nation rests with the people and emphasizing the need for a separation of powers. He argues for a constitutional monarchy, believing that a republic is ineffective in large nations. Marat's work elicited no response from the National Assembly.

On 14 July, three days after Louis XVI dismissed Jacques Necker as his financial advisor, enraged Parisians attacked the Hotel des Invalides and the Bastille, marking the first insurrection of the French Revolution. Marat was not directly involved in the Fall of the Bastille but sought to glorify his role that day by claiming that he had intercepted a group of German soldiers on Pont Neuf. He claims that these soldiers were seeking to crush the revolution in its infancy, and that he had successfully convinced a crowd to force the soldiers to surrender their weapons. Whether or not this event actually occurred is questionable as there are no other known accounts that confirm Marat's story.

On 12 September 1789, Marat began his own newspaper, entitled Publiciste parisien, before changing its name four days later to L'Ami du peuple ("The People's friend"). From this position, he often attacked the most influential and powerful groups in Paris as conspirators against the Revolution, including the Commune, the Constituent Assembly, the ministers, and the Châtelet. In January 1790, he moved to the radical Cordeliers section, then under the leadership of the lawyer Danton, was nearly arrested for his attacks against Jacques Necker, Louis XVI's popular Finance Minister, and was forced to flee to London. In May, he returned to Paris to continue publication of L'Ami du peuple and briefly ran a second newspaper in June 1790 called Le Junius français named after the notorious English polemicist Junius. Marat faced the problem of counterfeiters distributing falsified versions of L'Ami du peuple. This led him to call for police intervention, which resulted in the suppression of the fraudulent issues, leaving Marat the continuing sole author of L'Ami du peuple.

During this period, Marat made regular attacks on the more conservative revolutionary leaders. In a pamphlet from 26 July 1790, entitled " C'en est fait de nous" ("We're done for!"), he warned against counter-revolutionaries, advising, "five or six hundred heads cut off would have assured your repose, freedom and happiness."

Between 1789 and 1792, Marat was often forced into hiding, sometimes in the Paris sewers, where he almost certainly aggravated his debilitating chronic skin disease (possibly dermatitis herpetiformis). In January 1792, he married the 26-year-old Simonne Évrard in a common-law ceremony on his return from exile in London, having previously expressed his love for her. She was the sister-in-law of his typographer, Jean-Antoine Corne, and had lent him money and sheltered him on several occasions.

Marat only emerged publicly on the 10 August insurrection, when the Tuileries Palace was invaded and the royal family forced to shelter within the Legislative Assembly. The spark for this uprising was the Brunswick Manifesto, which called for the crushing of the Revolution and helped to inflame popular outrage in Paris.

Anonymous portrait of Marat, c. 1793 (Musée Carnavalet)

As the Paris Commune of Marat's allies achieved more influence, it formed a Committee on Surveillance which included Marat, Jacque-Nicolas Billaud-Varennes, Jean-Marie Collot d'Herbois, Georges Danton, Jean-Lambert Tallien, Panis and David. Marat was said by Stanley Loomis to have claimed the position of its head. Ernest Belfort Bax disputed this claim, saying that on appearing once again in the upper daylight of Paris, Marat was almost immediately invited to assist the new governing body with his advice, and had a special tribune assigned to him. Marat was thus assiduous in his attendance at the Commune, although never formally a member. The Commune and the Sections of Paris, between them, had established a Comité de Surveillance, with power to add to its numbers. Into this committee Marat was, according to Bax, co-opted. They quickly decided to round up those they believed were "suspect"; the Committee voted to do so and four thousand were sent into the prisons by late August 1792. Actually the Committee, of which Marat was one of the most influential members, took the step of withdrawing from the prisons those of whose guilt, in its opinion, there was any reasonable doubt. Marat and the rest saw what was coming; the last straw to break the patience of Paris was the acquittal on Friday 31 August of Montmarin, the late Governor of Fontainebleau. Montmarin was notoriously and openly a courtier, who wished to see the allies in Paris, and his royal master reinstated, and who was proved, beyond the shadow of a doubt, to have been actively engaged in plotting to this end; yet, on being brought to trial, he was acquitted, and, as if to lend emphasis to the acquittal, the judge himself, descending from the bench, gave him his arm as he walked out of court. An unsuccessful attempt was even made to deprive the Commune of its powers. Forty-eight hours later, the notorious September massacres began.

Those arrangements would include a collection of mercenaries grouped as "Marsellais" though they were "foreign vagabonds, dregs of all nations, Genosee, Corsicans and Greeks led by a Pole named Lazowski" Added to these were convicted murderers and those imprisoned for other violent crimes, released in time to join the "Marsellais" at the center of the bloodlettings. At times those enacting violence were joined by mobs of locals, some of who had armed themselves in preparation for a defense of the city National Guardsmen and some . In some cases makeshift "courts" were set-up, prisoners were pronounced "free" or "guilty" then all were led to a central courtyard where they were bludgeoned, hacked, speared, and decapitated. In other prisons, small bands of mercenaries entered cells which had held murderers days before, who turned their craft on the innocents brought in by the Committee, some as young as 10.

On 3 September, the second day of the massacres, the Committee of Surveillance of the Commune published a circular that called on provincial Patriots to defend Paris and asked that, before leaving their homes, they eliminate counter-revolutionaries. Authored by Marat as head of the Committee, signed by him and circulated to the provinces, it hailed the rounding up and killing of political enemies going on in Paris as a model for the provinces. While Georges Lefebvre maintained collective mentality was sufficient explanation for the mass killing, Stanley Loomis says this "is their excuse or justification".

The Girondins then made a number of copies of this circular, but there is no evidence that it had any effect. Marat himself did not participate in the violence of the massacres, but rather the Sections of Paris had begun to act of themselves. Marat and his Committee of Supervision at most took the control of the movement which had already begun spontaneously. Whether Marat played a part in the cause of the massacres is still continually debated. It can be said that there was a continuous goading on of the tribunals to definite and decided action. In No. 679 of L'Ami du Peuple we have the following advice:

Guard the King from view, put a price on the heads of the fugitive Capets, arm all the citizens, form a camp near Paris, press forward the sale of the goods of the 'emigrants,' and recompense the unfortunates who have taken part in the conquest of the Tuileries, invite the troops of the line to name their officers, guard the provisions, do not miss a word of this last advice, press the judgment of the traitors imprisoned in the Abbaye; ... if the sword of justice do at last but strike conspirators and prevaricators, we shall no longer hear popular executions spoken of, cruel resource which the law of necessity can alone commend to a people reduced to despair, but which the voluntary sleep of the laws always justifies.

Danton at the same moment was urging from the tribune the necessity of the prompt appointment of a court to try traitors, as the only alternative to the popular justice of the streets. Maximilien Robespierre, Danton and Marat all stressed the necessity of a tribunal that would judge these crimes. Robespierre intervened on 15 August, as a delegate of the Commune, and proclaimed: "Since 10 August, the just vengeance of the people has not yet been satisfied." According to Bax, the September massacres were the result of the efforts of the Moderate party to screen men who were openly plotting the overthrow of the Revolution. The Moderatist and Girondist Assembly hesitated at making a few examples of even the most notorious of these plotters. The crisis in the war, long foreseen by Marat and others, was now becoming more acute every day. On 6 September, Mlle de Mareuil, daughter of a member of the Commune's general council, wrote to her brother:

I have to make the following remark: since the journée of 10 August, there have only been three people guillotined, and this has revolted the people. Finally people gathered from all sides... Oh my dear friend, we are all in a state of dreadful consternation.

There is an exculpatory article in No.12 of Marat's Journal de la République, occasioned by the virulent attacks of the Girondins in the Convention on the Commune, the Committee of Supervision, and above all on Marat himself, with reference to the massacres:

The disastrous events of the 2nd and 3rd of September, which perfidious and venal persons attribute to the Municipality, has been solely promoted by the denial of justice on the part of the Criminal tribunal which whitewashed the conspirator Montmarin, by the protection thus proclaimed to all others conspirators, and by the indignation of the people, fearing to find itself the slave of all the traitors who have for so long abused its misfortunes and its disasters. They call those brigands who massacred the traitors and scoundrels confined in the prisons. If that were so, Pétion would be criminal for having peaceably left brigands to perpetrate their crimes during two consecutive days in all the prisons of Paris. His culpable inaction would be the most serious crime, and he would merit the loss of his head for not having mobilised his whole armed force to oppose them. He will doubtless tell you, in order to exculpate himself, that the armed force would not have obeyed him, and that all Paris was involved, which is indeed a fact. Let us agree, then, that it is an imposture to make brigands responsible for an operation unhappily only too necessary. It is then because the conspirators have escaped the sword of justice that they have fallen under the axe of the people. Is it necessary to say more to refute the dishonest insinuation, which would make the Committee of Supervision of the Commune responsible for these popular executions? But its justification does not end there. We shall see what the principal members of this Committee have done to prevent any innocent person, any debtor, any one culpable of a trivial offence, being involved in the dangers which threatened great criminals. I was at the Committee of Supervision, when the announcement was made that the people had just seized from the hands of the Guard, and put to death, several refractory priests, accused of plotting, destined by the Committee for La Force, and that the people threatened to enter the prisons. At this news, Panis and myself exclaimed together, as if by inspiration, "Save the small delinquents, the poor debtors, those accused of trivial assaults!" The Committee immediately ordered the different jailers to separate these from the serious malefactors and the counter-revolutionary traitors, lest the people should be exposed to the risk of sacrificing some innocent persons. The separation was already made when the prisons were forced, but the precaution was unnecessary, owing to the care taken by the judges appointed by the people, who exercised the functions of tribunes during the expedition, to inquire into each case and to release all those whom the Committee of Supervision had separated. This is a discrimination the despot would certainly not have exercised had he triumphed on the 10th of August. Such are the facts which oppose themselves to the calumny that has distorted the narrative of the events of the 2nd and 3rd of September.

The September massacres were not the work of one party, much less of one man, but an ebullition of popular fury, acquiesced in as a necessity by all parties and by all the leading men of the Revolution. This perspective of affairs is summed up in the passages of Mr. Bowen-Graves quoted by Ernest Belfort Bax:

Marat's part in these last terrible events has been constantly and grossly misrepresented. He had long foreseen and foretold what would happen if foreign invasion found Paris in a state of chaos. The predicted crisis had now arrived. On the east the Germans are at the Thermopylae of France. A step more, the Revolution sinks beneath them. On the west the standard of the Vendean insurrection is already raised. Between the two lies Paris, in hardly dormant civil war. Royalty is overthrown, but royalism is rampant. The Swiss guards, the rank and file have fallen, sacrificed to their fidelity to a master who had deserted and forgotten them; but officers, courtiers, chevaliers de poignard, are lively as ever, intriguing, plotting, vapouring in street and café, openly rejoicing in the triumph which German armies will give them measuring, compasses in hand, the distance between Verdun and Paris. The newly-formed tribunal is inefficient, acquitting men, notorious for their part in the intrigues, which were the cause of all the evil. Lafayette, with his army, is believed to be marching on Paris to restore the monarchy. Republicans knew well enough what such restoration would mean. The horrors of Montauban, Arles, and Avignon are written in history, to show how well-founded were their fears. And in the midst of all this came the tidings that the one strong place between Paris and the enemy is besieged; that its resistance is a question hardly even of days. Then, while the tocsin was clanging, and the alarm cannon roaring, and the Girondin minister could find nothing better to suggest, with his unseasonable classicism, than carrying into the South the statue of liberty, Paris answered with one instinct to Danton's thundering defiance, and perpetrated that tremendous act of self-defence at which we shudder to this day. The reaction hid its head and cowered; and within the month the ragged volunteers of the Republic were hurling back from the passes of the Argonne the finest soldiery which Europe could produce.

On 2 September, news arrived in Paris that the army of the Duke of Braunschweig had invaded France and the fortress of Verdun had quickly fallen, and that the Prussians were rapidly advancing towards the capital. This information ignited anger and fear among the population. Parisians knew that an illumination had been staged at the Abbay prison on the day of the capture of Longwy, where behind bars the prisoners insulted passers-by and assured them that the Prussians would occupy Paris and destroy it. That the Parisians' hatred of the Royalists was founded can be deduced from an article published in a Girondist newspaper on 2 September stating that the Royalists decided to burn the city on all sides after the Prussian army entered Paris, starved the city population and punished the revolutionaries. And the Manifesto of the Duke of Braunschweig (25 July 1792), written in large part by Louis XVI's cousin Louis Joseph de Bourbon, Prince of Condé, leader of a large contingent of immigrants in the Allied army, threatened the French people with instant punishment if the people resists the imperial and Prussian armies and the re-establishment of a monarchy. The days of September in Paris were seen by some as the act of self-defense of a people who knew how brutal the counter-revolutionaries were, a people who feared a coup in Paris while fighting on the front lines. After the capture of Verdun, the Prussian army was only a hundred miles from Paris. Many Europeans had no doubt about the victory of the Duke of Braunschweig. A fall of Paris was not expected later than 10 September.

In the Créole patriote for 2 September, the account began by evoking 10 August: 'The people, justly indignant at the crimes committed during the journée of 10 August, made for the prisons. They still feared plots and traitors... The news that Verdun had been taken... provoked their resentment and vengeance.'

It was enough for the Legislative Assembly, at the vigorous request of the Commune, to issue a statement to the French people on 4 September in which it promised "that it would fight with all its powers against the king and the royal government" so that the slaughter would end the same day and Parisians would go to the front. The Battle of Valmy (20 September 1792) was the first victory over their enemy since the beginning of the war. Johann Wolfgang van Goethe, an admirer of the scientific work of Dr. Marat, said, "At that place, on that day, a new era in world history began. It is the first victory of the people over the kings." No one was prosecuted for the killings.

"Marat's Triumph": a popular engraving of Marat borne away by a joyous crowd following his acquittal.

Marat was elected to the National Convention in September 1792 as one of 26 Paris deputies, although he belonged to no party. When France was declared a Republic on 22 September, Marat renamed his L'Ami du peuple as Le Journal de la République française ("Journal of the French Republic"). His stance during the trial of the deposed king Louis XVI was unique. He declared it unfair to accuse Louis of anything before his acceptance of the French Constitution of 1791, and although implacably, he said, believing that the monarch's death would be good for the people, defended Guillaume-Chrétien de Lamoignon de Malesherbes, the King's counsel, as a " sage et respectable vieillard" ("wise and respected old man").

On 21 January 1793, Louis XVI was guillotined, which caused political turmoil. From January to May, Marat fought bitterly against the Girondins, whom he believed to be covert enemies of republicanism. Marat's hatred and suspicion of the Girondins became increasingly heated which led him to call for the use of violent tactics against them. He cried that France needed a chief, "a military Tribune". The Girondins fought back and demanded that Marat be tried before the Revolutionary Tribunal. After trying to avoid arrest for several days, Marat was finally imprisoned. On 24 April, he was brought before the Tribunal on the charges that he had printed in his paper statements calling for widespread murder as well as the suspension of the Convention. Marat decisively defended his actions, stating that he had no evil intentions directed against the Convention. Marat was acquitted of all charges to the celebration of his supporters.

Bloodstained copy of L'Ami du peuple held by Marat at his assassination, now in the Bibliothèque nationale de France

The fall of the Girondins on 2 June, helped by the actions of François Hanriot, the new leader of the National Guard, was one of Marat's last achievements. Forced to retire from the Convention due to his worsening skin disease, he continued to work from home, where he soaked in a medicinal bath. Now that the Montagnards no longer needed his support in the struggle against the Girondins, Robespierre and other leading Montagnards began to separate themselves from him, while the Convention largely ignored his letters.

The assassination of Marat by Charlotte Corday on 13 July 1793

Marat was in his bathtub on 13 July, when a young woman from Caen, Charlotte Corday, appeared at his flat, claiming to have vital information on the activities of the escaped Girondins who had fled to Normandy. Despite his wife Simone's protests, Marat asked for her to enter and gave her an audience by his bath, over which a board had been laid to serve as a writing desk. Their interview lasted around fifteen minutes. He asked her what was happening in Caen and she explained, reciting a list of the offending deputies. After he had finished writing out the list, Corday claimed that he told her, "Their heads will fall within a fortnight," a statement she later changed at her trial to, "Soon I shall have them all guillotined in Paris." This was unlikely since Marat did not have the power to have anyone guillotined. At that moment, Corday rose from her chair, drawing out from her corset a five-inch kitchen knife, which she had bought earlier that day, and brought it down into Marat's chest, where it pierced just under his right clavicle, opening the brachiocephalic artery, close to the heart. The massive bleeding was fatal within seconds. Slumping backwards, Marat cried out his last words to Simone, "Aidez-moi, ma chère amie!" ("Help me, my beloved!") and died.

Corday was a Girondin sympathizer who came from an impoverished royalist family; her brothers were émigrés who had left to join the exiled royal princes. From her own account, and those of witnesses, it is clear that she had been inspired by Girondin speeches to a hatred of the Montagnards and their excesses, symbolised most powerfully in the character of Marat. The Book of Days claims the motive was to "avenge the death of her friend Barboroux". Marat's assassination contributed to the mounting suspicion which fed the Terror during which thousands of the Jacobins' adversaries - both royalists and Girondins - were executed on charges of treason. Charlotte Corday was guillotined on 17 July 1793 for the murder. During her four-day trial, she testified that she had carried out the assassination alone, saying "I killed one man to save 100,000."

The Death of Marat by Jacques-Louis David (1793)

Marat's assassination led to his apotheosis. The painter Jacques-Louis David, a member of one of the two "Great Committees" (the Committee of General Security), was asked to organise a grand funeral. David was also asked to paint Marat's death, and took up the task of immortalising him in the painting The Death of Marat. The extreme decomposition of Marat's body made any realistic depiction impossible, and David's work beautified the skin that was discoloured and scabbed from his chronic skin disease in an attempt to create antique virtue. The resulting painting is thus not an accurate representation of Marat's death. As a result of this work, David was later criticised as glorifying the Jacobin's death.

The entire National Convention attended Marat's funeral, and he was buried under a weeping willow in the garden of the former Club des Cordeliers (former Couvent des Cordeliers). After Marat's death, he was viewed by many as a martyr for the revolution, and was immortalized in various ways to preserve the values he stood for. His heart was embalmed separately and placed in an urn in an altar erected to his memory at the Cordeliers to inspire speeches that were similar in style to Marat's journalism. On his tomb, the inscription on a plaque read, "Unité, Indivisibilité de la République, Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité ou la mort." His remains were transferred to the Panthéon on 21 September 1794 and his near messianic role in the Revolution was confirmed with the elegy: Like Jesus, Marat loved ardently the people, and only them. Like Jesus, Marat hated kings, nobles, priests, rogues and, like Jesus, he never stopped fighting against these plagues of the people. The eulogy was given by the Marquis de Sade, delegate of the Section Piques and an ally of Marat's faction in the National Convention.

Statue of Marat in front of the Musée de la Révolution française

On 19 November, the port city of Le Havre-de-Grâce changed its name to Le Havre-de-Marat and then Le Havre-Marat. When the Jacobins started their dechristianisation campaign to set up the Cult of Reason of Hébert and Chaumette and later the Cult of the Supreme Being of the Committee of Public Safety, Marat was made a quasi- saint, and his bust often replaced crucifixes in the former churches of Paris.

After the Thermidorian Reaction, Marat's reputation decreased. On 13 January 1795, Le Havre-Marat became simply Le Havre, the name it bears today. In February, his coffin was removed from the Panthéon and his busts and sculptures were destroyed. The 4 February 1795 (16 Pluviôse) issue of Le Moniteur Universel reported how, two days earlier, "his busts had been knocked off their pedestals in several theatres and that some children had carried one of these busts about the streets, insulting it [before] dumping it in the rue Montmartre sewer to shouts of 'Marat, voilà ton Panthéon !' [Marat, here is your Panthéon] His final resting place is the cemetery of the church of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont.

A bronze sculpture of Marat was removed from Parc des Buttes Chaumont and was melted down during the Nazi occupation of Paris. Another was created in 2013 for the Musée de la Révolution française.

He continued to be held in high regard in the Soviet Union. Marat became a common name, and Marat Fjord in Severnaya Zemlya was named after him. Russian battleship Petropavlovsk (Russian: Петропавловск) was renamed Marat in 1921. A street in the centre of Sevastopol was named after Marat (Russian: Улица Марата) on 3 January 1921, shortly after the Bolsheviks took over the city.

Described during his time as a man "short in stature, deformed in person, and hideous in face," Marat has long been noted for physical irregularities. The nature of Marat's debilitating skin disease, in particular, has been an object of ongoing medical interest. In the 19th century Thomas Carlyle alleged that the cause was syphilis, though this is very unlikely as syphilitic rashes are generally neither itchy nor as long-lasting as Marat's skin condition was. Josef E. Jelinek noted that his skin disease was intensely itchy, blistering, began in the perianal region, and was associated with weight loss leading to emaciation. He was sick with it for the three years prior to his assassination, and spent most of this time in his bathtub. There were various minerals and medicines that were present in his bath while he soaked to help ease the pain caused by the disease. A bandana wrapped around his head was soaked in vinegar to reduce the severity of his discomfort. Jelinek's diagnosis is dermatitis herpetiformis.

After Marat's death, his wife may have sold his bathtub to her journalist neighbour, as it was included in an inventory of his possessions. The royalist de Saint-Hilaire bought the tub, taking it to Sarzeau, Morbihan in Brittany. His daughter, Capriole de Saint-Hilaire, inherited it when he died in 1805 and she passed it on to the Sarzeau curé when she died in 1862. A journalist for tracked down the tub in 1885. The curé then discovered that selling the tub could earn money for the parish, yet the Musée Carnavalet turned it down because of its lack of provenance as well as its high price. The curé approached Madame Tussaud's waxworks, who agreed to purchase Marat's bathtub for 100,000 francs, but the curé's acceptance was lost in the mail. After rejecting other offers, including one from Phineas Barnum, the curé sold the tub for 5,000 francs to the Musée Grévin, where it remains today. The tub was in the shape of an old-fashioned high-buttoned shoe and had a copper lining.

A Philosophical Essay on Man (1773) (in English)

The Chains of Slavery (1774) (in English)

An Essay on Gleets &c.(1775) (in English)

Enquiry into the Nature, Cause, and Cure of a Singular Disease of the Eyes (1776) (in English)

De l'Homme (1776) (translation of his 1773 English work)

Découvertes de M. Marat sur le feu, l'électricité et la lumière (1779)

Plan de Législation Criminelle (1780)

Recherches physiques sur le feu (1780)

Découvertes de M. Marat sur la lumière, constatées par une suite d'expériences nouvelles (1780)

Recherches physiques sur l'électricité, &c (1782)

Mémoire sur l'électricité médicale (1783)

Notions élémentaires d'optique (1784)

Lettres de l'observateur Bon Sens à M. de M sur la fatale catastrophe des infortunés Pilatre de Rozier et Ronzain, les aéronautes et l'aérostation (1785)

Observations de M. l'amateur Avec à M. l'abbé Sans . . . &c., (1785)

Éloge de Montesquieu : présenté à l'Académie de Bordeaux, le 28 mars 1785 / par J.-P. Maratz ; publié avec une introduction, par Arthur de Brézetz,...Éloge de Montesquieu (1785) (provincial Academy competition entry first published 1883 by M. de Bresetz)

Mémoires académiques (1788)

Offrande à la Patrie (1789)(pamphlet)

Constitution, ou projet de déclaration des Droits de l'Homme et du Citoyen (1789) (pamphlet)

Les Charlatans modernes, ou lettres sur le charlatanisme académique (L'Ami du Peuple, 1791) (pamphlet)

Les chaînes de l'Esclavage (1792) (translation of his 1774 English work)

Les Aventures du jeune comte Potowski (unpublished manuscript first published in 1847 by Paul Lacroix)

Lettres polonaises (unpublished manuscript first printed in English in 1905; recently translated into French but authenticity disputed)

La Correspondance de Marat (published in 1908 by Charles Vellay)

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2. ^ Isaac Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology - Second Revised Edition, 1982, p. 334.

3. ^ Mara, Émile (1964). "L'origine et l'âme sardes de Jean-Paul Mara, dit Marat". Annales historiques de la Révolution française. 175 (175): 78-84. doi:10.3406/ahrf.1964.3659.

4. ^ Pillai, Carlo (2005). "Le ascendenze sarde di Jean Paul Marat". NOBILTA'. Rivista di Araldica, Genealogia, Ordini Cavallereschi: 505-512.

5. ^ Jean-Paul Marat in German , French and Italian in the online Historical Dictionary of Switzerland.

6. Goëtz-Nothomb, Charlotte. "Jean-Paul Marat - Notice Generale" (in French). pp. 5-6, 9.

7. ^ Robert, Adolphe; Cougny, Gaston (1891). Dictionnaire des parlementaires français (in French). Paris. p. 252.

8. ^ Les Chaines de l'Esclavage, 1793 (ed. Goetz et de Cock) p. 4167 (6). Numbers in brackets refer to the original version.

9. ^ "Lit & Phil Home - Independent Library Newcastle". Litandphil.org.uk. Archived from the original on 2 May 2010.

10. de Cock, J. & Goetz, C., Œuvres de Jean-Paul Marat, 10 volumes, Éditions Pôle Nord, Brussels, 1995.

11. Baillon, Jean-François (2009). "Two Eighteenth-Century Translators of Newton's Opticks: Pierre Coste and Jean-Paul Marat" (PDF). Enlightenment and Dissent. 25: 1-28. Archived from the original (PDF) on 7 November 2018.

12. ^ "Jean-Paul Marat | Biography, Death, Painting, Writings, & Facts | Britannica". www.britannica.com.

13. ^

14. ^ Albert, Pierre. "Ami du Peuple l'". universalis.fr. Encyclopædia Universalis.

15. Massin, Jean (1988). Marat. Aix en Provence: Éditions Alinéa. ISBN 2-904631-58-5.

16. Jelinek, J.E. (1979). "Jean-Paul Marat: The differential diagnosis of his skin disease". American Journal of Dermatopathology. 1 (3): 251-52. doi:10.1097/00000372-197900130-00010. PMID 396805.

17. ^ Belfort Bax, Ch. 8 This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.

18. ^ Furet, Francois; Ozouf, Mona, eds. (1989). A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution. Harvard University Press. pp. 521-22. ISBN 978-0674177284.

19. Belfort Bax, Ch. 6

20. ^ Robespierre (15 August 1792). Archives parlementaires. pp. vol. 48, p. 180.

21. ^ Caron, Pierre (1935). Les Massacres de Septembre. Paris.

22. ^ Mary Duclaux (1918) A short history of France, p. 244

23. Donnelly, Marea (13 July 2023). "French convent girl Charlotte Corday 'killed one man to save thousands'". The Daily Telegraph. Sydney.

24. "A Patriotic Murder | History Today".

25. ^ "Charlotte Corday | French noble | Britannica".

26. ^ "Charlotte Corday assassinates French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat".

27. Schama, Simon (1989). Citizens: A chronicle of the French Revolution. Knopf Doubleday Publishing. pp. 742-744. ISBN 0-679-72610-1.

28. ^ "The Death of Marat - Jacques-Louis David". bc.edu. Archived from the original on 19 February 2010.

29. Gibson, Kenneth (2012) ^ Killer Doctors The Ultimate Betrayal of Trust. Neil Wilson Publishing

30. Buchez, Philippe-Joseph-Benjamin (1838) ^ Histoire Parlementaire de la Révolution française, ou Journal des Assemblées Nationales, depuis 1789 jusqu'en 1815, Vol. 36, Paulin, Paris, p. 230.

31. ^ "Where the Statues of Paris were sent to Die". messynessychic.com. 7 January 2016.

32. ^ McLaughlin, Stephen (2003). Russian & Soviet Battleships. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, p. 321.

33. ^ "Улица Марата:: Улицы Севастополя [Streets of Sevastopol - Marat Street]". www.sevastopol.info.

34. ^ Adolphus, John. Biographical Anecdotes of the Founders of the French Republic. London: R. Phillips, 1799. p 232.

Conner, Clifford D. Jean Paul Marat: Scientist and Revolutionary (2nd ed. 2012) online review from H-France 2013; excerpt and text search

Fishman, W. J. "Jean-Paul Marat", History Today (1971) 21#5, pp. 329-337; his life before 1789

Palmer, R.R. Twelve Who Ruled: The Year of the Terror in the French Revolution (1941) excerpt and text search

1989-1995: Jean-Paul Marat, Œuvres Politiques (ten volumes 1789-1793 - Text: 6.600 p. - Guide: 2.200 p.)

2001: Marat en famille - La saga des Mara(t) (2 volumes) - New approach of Marat's family.

2006: Plume de Marat - Plumes sur Marat (2 volumes): Bibliography (3.000 references of books and articles of and on Marat)

The Correspondance de Marat has been edited with notes by Charles Vellay (1908)

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Jean-Paul Marat (, , French: [ʒɑ̃pɔlmaʁa]; born Mara; 24 May 1743 - 13 July 1793) was a French political theorist, physician, and scientist. A journalist and politician during the French Revolution, he was a vigorous defender of the sans-culottes , a radical voice, and published his views in pamphlets, placards and newspapers.

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Born- November 14,1765
Died- February 24, 1815
From- Little Britain Township , PA

Fulton was important and best known for his first commercially successful made steam boat he was also known for his portrait painting and canal engineering.

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Born - April 24, 1743
Died- October 30, 1823
From- Nottinghamshire, United Kingdom
Cartwright was known for being an English creator and an Clergyman of the Church of England

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Born - February 11, 1847
Died- October 18, 1931
From- Milan, OH

Edison was well known for the light bulb and he made it eventful for people around the world to be able to see things in the dark.

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Born - April 7, 1775
Died- August 10, 1817
From - Newburyport, MA

Lowell was important because he built up am American textile manufacturing industry

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Born -November 2, 1755
Died -October 16, 1793
From -Vienna, Austria

Marie Antoinette, was the last Queen of France and Navarre before the French Revolution. She was born an Archduchess of Austria, and was the fifteenth and second youngest child of Empress Maria Theresa and Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor.

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Maria Antonia Josepha Joanna was born in Vienna on 2 November 1755. She was the 15th child of Empress Maria-Theresa of Austria and her husband Emperor Francis Stephen. Soon after the birth, the baby was put into the care of a wet-nurse named Constance Weber, the wife of a magistrate. As she grew, she would still keep in touch with the Weber family. During her childhood, her mother Maria-Theresa would bring her to visit them and bring them gifts. She was also encouraged, as were all her siblings, to play with "common" children.

The relationship with her mother was one of "awe-inspired fear" mixed with love. Years later she commented: "I love the Empress but I'm frightened of her, even at a distance; when I'm writing to her, I never feel completely at ease". Antonia, as she was called by her family, was closer to her father, who was cheerful, indulgent and good-natured. He transmitted to his daughter his passions for plants, flowers and gardens. Sadly, he died of a stroke when Antonia was only nine years old.

The family was close-knit, but with so many siblings there were bound to be some jealouses and rivalries. She and her siblings were particularly jealous of Marie Christine, who was their mother favourite and the only daughter allowed to marry for love. Instead, Antonia was very close to Maria Carolina, the sister closer to her age, being only three years her senior. The two lively and mischevious little girls grew up together almost like twins.

The atmosphere at the Autrian court was very informal and etiquette was lax. Antonia and her younger siblings would often perform, singing and dancing for the court, and in the long Austrian winters would go sledging. But the young archduchess had to study too. Her education was centered on the need to perform gracefully at court events. But because Antonia was only the youngest daughter in a big family and her parents so busy, her education was neglected and her governess spoiled her, helping her a bit too much in her studies.

While Antonia excelled at dancing, loved embroidery and learned to play the harp well, at 13 she couldn't read nor write well yet and didn't know much history either. Her French wasn't fluent and was full of German constructions and phrases. This became a huge problem when after her sister Marie Josephine died of smallpox and her sister Marie Elizabeth was left scarred by the disease, she became the only available candidate to marry the heir to the throne of France. To improve her education, in 1768, the Abbé Vermond arrived to the Austrian court and became her tutor. A year later she could speak French fluently.

Her education wasn't the only thing that needed to be improved to become, one day, Queen of France. Antonia was a pretty, lively and graceful girl with a beautiful pink white complexion but her teeth were far from perfect. She had to wear a pelican, a form of braces created by the dentist Pierre Fauchard, for three months to fix them. Next was her uneven hairline. Parisian hairdresser Larsenneur was called to Austria to turn her unruly hair into a stylish, powdered do that disguised her high forehead. Antonia's transformation was now complete and she was ready to marry the Dauphin.

The wedding by proxy was celebrated on 19th April 1770 and two days later, on the 21st, she said goodbye to her family, friends and the people of Austria, got into the carriage that would bring her to France and left her native country, never to return.

Further reading:
Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Antonia Fraser
Marieantoinettequeenoffrance.org

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Maria Antonia Josepha Joanna was born in Vienna on 2 November 1755. She was the 15th child of Empress Maria-Theresa of Austria and her husband Emperor Francis Stephen. Soon after the birth, the baby was put into the care of a wet-nurse named Constance Weber, the wife of a magistrate.

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Born- March 3, 1847
Died- August 2, 1922
From - Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Alexander was important because he helped people navigate how to get spoken words through a phone across the country.

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Born-  December 8 ,1765
Died- January 8, 1825
From- West borough , MA

Eli Whitney was important because he panted the cotton gin and was used for taking the seeds out of the cotton.

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Born -September 27, 1722
Died -October 2, 1803
From - Boston,MA

Samuel Adams was an American statesman, political philosopher.He later became a controversial figure in American history.

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In a letter written to James Warren in 1779, Samuel Adams stated, "A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue, they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader. How necessary then it is for those who are determined to transmit the blessings of liberty as a fair inheritance to posterity, to associate on public principles in support of public virtue."

So here they were in the middle of the War for Independence and Sam Adams touts the importance of virtue in relation to retaining liberty. He had to have really felt strongly about it in order to mention it in a letter during the tumultuous times they were in. So what is virtue? What is this thing that was deemed so important by Mr. Adams - and many other founders - to our liberties? Why do you suppose they regarded it as so important?

The American Dictionary of the English Language - Noah Webster 1828 defines virtue as : Moral goodness; the practice of moral duties and the abstaining from vice; or a conformity of life and conversation to the moral law.

Moral goodness, moral duties, moral law. To paraphrase the definition of moral from the same dictionary: it is "applicable to actions that are good or evil, virtuous or vicious" with a "reference to the law of God as the standard by which their character is to be determined" and "conformed to rules of right, or to the divine law respecting social duties".

In order to have virtue, to be virtuous and moral, one has to be able to determine what is "good or evil, virtuous or vicious". This means that a person has to be able to determine what is right and what is wrong - but according to what? What is the standard that we are supposed to measure against? According to Noah Webster's definition the standard that determines what is right and wrong is the law of God or the divine law. Right and wrong are not to be defined by what the government tells us it is. It is not to be determined by what society says it is. Government was never intended to dictate it for us, and society's definition of the two terms changes with the seasons and is full of gray areas.

God's word and His law are black and white. There are no gray areas. Therefore it gives us a firm foundation on which to stand and live our lives. A firm foundation to be able to determine what is good and evil.

So after learning this and then going back to the quote from Sam Adams what he was saying is that as long as people live by a standard that is determined by divine law they will not be subdued. Why do you suppose that is? Because a people who understand the truth of what is right and what is wrong will not allow themselves to be oppressed. People who live by a higher moral standard according to the law of God will not allow themselves to be manipulated. They will recognize when they are being lied to or when their freedoms are being stolen because they are vigilant. If you remove virtue and moral understanding from a people - then you open the door to their defeat and their oppression because they have no solid foundation on which to stand. How do you remove virtue and moral understanding? By working to remove God from the lives of the people. How do you remove God from the lives of people? First you take Him out of schools, then you take Him from the public square, then you ridicule and attack those who believe. What are you left with? A citizenry who believes that truth is relative and ever changing. You end up with a population who loses the ability or the willingness to self-govern themselves which in turn will then hand more and more power over to a government that is more than willing to step in.

There is a reason that John Adams told us that "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people" and that it " is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." You see, the Constitution doesn't dictate things to us as a people. It puts restrictions on the Federal Government. It was set up the way it was because it was believed that the people could govern themselves better than the government could. But it was also realized that they could only govern themselves as long as they remained virtuous and moral. If they ever lost the firm foundation of what is right and wrong - they would reach a point where they would surrender their liberty.

So here we are. 2013. Are we a virtuous and moral people? Do we stand on principle and values? Not in the view of this writer. We have allowed ourselves to be manipulated into surrendering one thing after another all because we haven't remained vigilant. We have lost our virtue by way of surrendering it for the sake of being politically correct. Can it be restored? I believe so. But it didn't disappear overnight, nor will it be restored overnight. Christians, parents, grandparents - all of us - need to become strong in our faith and teach that virtue to the next generation. We must lead by example and begin the long trek back to where we came from.

It begins today. It begins with you and me.

"Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy - meditate on these things. The things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do, and the God of peace will be with you," (Philippians 4:8-9).

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The Importance of Virtue | Caffeinated Thoughts

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In a letter written to James Warren in 1779, Samuel Adams stated, "A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy.

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Born -July 28, 1635
Died -March 3, 1703
From -Freshwater, Isle of Wright, Hamstead, United Kingdom

Robert Hooke is an English natural philosopher known for his important research.

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Robert Hooke was born on July 18, 1635, at Freshwater on the Isle of Wight. Being a son to a clergyman who committed suicide by hanging in 1648, Hooke was able to combat the effects of becoming orphaned at an early age, including irregular schooling and emotional scaring.

Hooke's Education

Hooke was educated mostly at home during his early years. But at the age of 13, he joined Westminster School and from there he was able to enter Oxford University, which was the only university where some of the best scientists from all over the world were working at that time. Hooke impressed a majority of them with his skills at designing and setting up experiments. In just a short time, Robert Boyle, the famous chemist, appointed him as his assistant.

In 1662, Robert Hooke was named curator of experiments (responsible for demonstrating new experiments) to the newly formed Royal society of London. He later became a Professor of Geometry at Gresham College in London. During this time, Hooke had a set of rooms where he spent most of life until his death in London on March 3, 1703.

Micrographia

Hooke's reputation in the history of biology can be attributed to Micrographia, his first book published in 1665. Micrographia is still considered the world's first comprehensive book with illustrations on microscopy. During his time, Hooke devised a compound microscope with an illumination system that he used in his demonstrations. He was able to observe several microscopic organisms including sponges, foraminifera, insects and bryozoans.

Micrographia was Hooke's accurate and detailed record of his observations. He created illustrations in the most magnificent manner using drawings, which is why the book was a bestseller during his day. However, some of his readers ridiculed him for spending so much of his time and money on such trifling pursuits.

Discovery of Cells

The most famous observation in the field of microscopy made by Robert Hooke was that of discovering plant cells by observing microscopic images of thin slices of cork. As a matter of fact, it was Hooke who came up with the term "cell" based on the boxlike nature of these cells that reminded him of the cells of a monastery.

In 1678, Hooke helped the Society of London successfully confirm a report written by Leeuwenhoek about bacteria and protozoa, referred to as little animals by then. During this time, Hooke noted that his compound microscope was not as effective as Leeuwenhoek's simple microscopes that gave clearer images even though he found them difficult to use.

Studies of Microscopic Fossils

In the early 17th century, many hypotheses had been proposed by a number of scientists regarding the origin of fossils. For instance, Aristotle proposed that fossils were formed and grew within the earth.

However, Hooke became the first scientist to examine fossils using a microscope. He observed that there were some close similarities in the structure of fossils and that of petrified wood and also the structure of living wood and that of living mollusk. As a result, Hooke successfully managed to convince scientists that the fossils were the remains of plants or animals that existed in past geological ages.

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Born: Jul 28 ( O.S. Jul 18), 1635 at Freshwater, Isle of Wight, England Died: Mar 3, 1703 (at age 67) at London, England Nationality: English Famous For: Hooke's law and Microscopy applied the word 'cell' Robert Hooke was born on July 18, 1635, at Freshwater on the Isle of Wight.

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Born - May 2, 1729
Died - November 17, 1796
From-  Szcencin, Poland

Catherine the Great was important because she became the Russian empress in 1762.

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Born - January 24, 1712
Died - August 17, 1786
From - Berlin, Germany

Fredrick the Great was significantly important, he was best known for

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Born - January 17, 1706
Died-April 17 , 1790
From-Boston,MA
Benjamin Franklin is one of the founding Fathers of the United States.

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Born -April 13,1743
Died-July 4,1826
From-Shadwell,VA
Thomas Jefferson was elected the second vice president of the unite states.

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Born - December 25,1642
Died - March 20,1726
From -Woolsthorpeby -colsterworth,united kingdom

Isaac Newton is widely recognized as one of the most influential scientist of all time and a key figure in the scientific revolution.