He's doing it on behalf of the government. “So they said, ‘let's put in Bonaparte, he's in the office.

The man who had supposedly been asked to quell the revolt was deaf and didn’t receive the order,' Hicks says. “When the revolt starts, he was not actually ordered in advance. “The fall of Robespierre in 1794 leads to political instability and all the forces that were waiting in the wings – notably royalist forces – thought that the revolution could be coming to an end,” Hicks explains.Ī number of Parisians revolted in favour of the royalists, and this is where fate intervened for Napoleon. Peter Hicks.WAV Making a name for himselfĪrriving in Paris to attend the élite Ecole Militaire in the 1790s, following the French Revolution, Napoleon quickly impressed his superiors. After showing his mettle for ruthlessness in quelling a popular uprising in Paris in 1795, he rose to the rank of general.

Paris Perspective #7 - Not Tonight Josephine.

“Napoleon's in school in France, all his brothers and sisters are in France. So they take on a French identity,” Hicks says.ĭivisions in Corsica, he adds, prompted the Bonaparte family to move to the French mainland. “Carlo registers himself as a fully fledged French noble, and that means Napoleon can go to a school for French nobles’ children. Problems began when Napoleon's father, an Italian-trained lawyer named Carlo, abandoned the family's Italian ties to the anti-French royalists seeking dominion over the island.

while the island's interior is largely Corsican in its culture,' Hicks explains. 'Napoleon comes from a part of Corsica that is Francophile. His nationality has always been a big question, says Peter Hicks, an historian with the Fondation Napoléon in Paris. A talented soldier, he became a French general at just 24 years old. But, as an outsider from an island that had only recently been ceded to France by the Genoese, was Bonaparte really French? The life of Napoleon has been scrutinised and debated in more than 3,000 biographies since he succumbed to stomach cancer on 5 May, 1821, at the age of 51.Įxiled to the island of St Helena following his defeat at Waterloo in 1815, Napoleon spent his final years writing his memoirs – a requisite mix of fact and fiction – all the while forging a relationship with his captors and others on the remote British outpost in the South Atlantic.Ī testament to his loyalties and the root of his ambition, Napoleon wrote in his will: 'I wish my ashes to rest on the banks of the Seine, among the people of France whom I have loved so much.”Īs a young man, Napoleon was a Corsican nationalist of sorts, and was looked upon as racially Italian.

How did napoleon come to power