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On This Day in 1804…

In Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral, Napoleon Bonaparte was crowned as Napoleon I, becoming the first French emperor in a thousand years.

The crown was given to him by Pope Pius VII, which the 35-year-old European conqueror placed upon his own head.

Born in Corsica, Napoleon emerged as one of history’s greatest military strategists, quickly climbing the ranks of the French Revolutionary Army during the late 1790s. By the year 1799, France had entered conflicts with much of Europe, leading Napoleon to return from his campaign in Egypt to seize control of the French government and rescue his country from impending collapse.

After becoming the first consul in February 1800, he restructured his armies and achieved victory over Austria. In 1802, he instituted the Napoleonic Code, representing a new French legal system, and by 1804 he founded the French empire. By 1807, the empire of Napoleon extended from the River Elbe in the north all the way down to Italy in the south, reaching from the Pyrenees to the Dalmatian coast.

With the onset of 1812, Napoleon faced the initial major setbacks of his military career, including a catastrophic invasion of Russia, the loss of Spain to the Duke of Wellington during the Peninsula War, and ultimately total defeat against an allied coalition by 1814.

After being exiled to the island of Elba, he made a return to France in early 1815, where he organized a new Grand Army that achieved brief success before facing a devastating defeat at the Battle of Waterloo against Wellington’s allied forces on June 18, 1815.

Subsequently, he was exiled to the remote island of Saint Helena, situated off the coast of Africa, where he lived under house arrest with a small group of loyal followers. In May 1821, Napoleon passed away, likely due to stomach cancer, at the age of just 51. His remains were returned to Paris in 1840, leading to a grand funeral. The body of Napoleon was transported through the Arc de Triomphe and laid to rest beneath the dome of the Invalides.

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