Napoleon Bonaparte

Napoleon Bonaparte was a French statesman, military leader, and Emperor of the French whose 15-year reign as the Emperor of the French across 1804–1815 — producing the Napoleonic Wars across continental Europe and the foundational French Civil Code (Napoleonic Code) — made him one of the defining political-and-military leaders of 19th-century European history. He was born Napoleone di Buonaparte on August 15, 1769, in Ajaccio, Corsica, France, into a Corsican-Italian minor-aristocratic family. His father Carlo Maria di Buonaparte was a Corsican attorney and political-administrator, and his mother Maria Letizia Ramolino was the daughter of a Corsican-Italian merchant family.

His education at the Royal Military Academy of Brienne-le-Château (1779–1784) and the École Militaire in Paris (1784–1785) launched his early-career French Royal Army artillery-officer career. His 1785 commissioning as a French Royal Army second lieutenant of artillery — at age 16 — and his subsequent 1789–1799 service across the French-Revolutionary-Wars-period French armies launched his late-1790s European-political and European-military public profile.

His November 9, 1799 18 Brumaire coup d'état — which overthrew the French Directory and produced the French Consulate (with himself as the First Consul) — and his subsequent December 2, 1804 self-coronation as the Emperor of the French at the Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral, launched his 1804–1815 French Imperial reign. His 1803–1815 Napoleonic Wars across continental Europe — launched against the multiple successive Coalitions of European powers (Britain, Austria, Prussia, Russia, Spain, and Portugal) — produced approximately 3.5 million European-military deaths and shaped 19th-century European political and territorial geography.

His 1812 Russian Campaign — across June 24 to December 1812, in which approximately 685,000 French Grande Armée soldiers crossed the Niemen River into Russia and approximately 27,000 returned by December — produced his 1813–1815 French Imperial decline. His April 6, 1814 first abdication and his subsequent April 1814 exile to Elba preceded his March 1815 Hundred Days return-and-second-reign and his June 18, 1815 Battle of Waterloo defeat at the hands of the Anglo-Allied Army under the Duke of Wellington and the Prussian Army under Field Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher. He died on May 5, 1821, at age 51, in Saint Helena, of stomach cancer.

His name Napoleon derives from the Italian-Greek root meaning "of Naples" or "lion of the new city." Napoleon has been a rare but enduring boys' name across French and Italian-tradition American naming.