Napoleon crowned emperor
In Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris Napoleon Bonaparte is crowned Napoleon I the first Frenchman to hold the title of emperor in a thousand years.Pope Pius VII handed Napoleon the crown that the 35-year-old conqueror of Europe placed on his own head.The Corsican-born Napoleon one of the greatest military strategists in history rapidly rose in the ranks of the French Revolutionary Army during the late 1790s.
By 1799 France was at war with most of Europe and Napoleon returned home from his Egyptian campaign to take over the reigns of the French government and save his nation from collapse.After becoming first consul in February 1800 he reorganized his armies and defeated Austria.In 1802 he established the Napoleonic Code a new system of French law and in 1804 he established the French empire.
By 1807 Napoleons empire stretched from the River Elbe in the north down through Italy in the south and from the Pyrenees to the Dalmatian coast.Beginning in 1812 Napoleon began to encounter the first significant defeats of his military career suffering through a disastrous invasion of Russia losing Spain to the Duke of Wellington in the Peninsula War and enduring total defeat against an allied force by 1814.Exiled to the island of Elba he escaped to France in early 1815 and raised a new Grand Army that enjoyed temporary success before its crushing defeat at Waterloo against an allied force under Wellington on June 18 1815.Napoleon was subsequently exiled to the island of Saint Helena off the coast of Africa where he lived under house arrest with a few followers.In May 1821 he died most likely of stomach cancer.
He was only 51 years old.In 1840 his body was returned to Paris and a magnificent funeral was held.Napoleons body was conveyed through the Arc de Triomphe and entombed under the dome of the Invalides.
