Napoleon Bonaparte

Cultural  

1. A French general, political leader, and emperor of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Bonaparte rose swiftly through the ranks of army and government during and after the French Revolution and crowned himself emperor in 1804. He conquered much of Europe but lost two-thirds of his army in a disastrous invasion of Russia. After his final loss to Britain and Prussia at the Battle of Waterloo, he was exiled to the island of St. Helena in the south Atlantic Ocean.

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Because Napoleon was short, overly aggressive men of short stature are sometimes said to have a “Napoleon complex.”

Napoleon's name is often connected with overreaching military ambition and delusions of grandeur.

Example Sentences

In 1815, following the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon Bonaparte wrote a letter of surrender to the Prince Regent in England.

From The Wall Street Journal

Napoleon Bonaparte’s dictatorship was a triumph of techne that put his nation at arms, but it failed to restore stable frameworks of themis.

From The Wall Street Journal

Monarchical trappings dignified Napoleon Bonaparte’s power grab and still dignify the Inauguration Days of American presidents.

From The Wall Street Journal

In 1800, he was commissioned to create a portrait of the young Corsican general Napoleon Bonaparte.

From The Wall Street Journal

He offers other comparisons: Franco, he says, was “the most dominant figure in Spain since the time of Philip II”—king from 1556 to 1598—and regards Napoleon Bonaparte as his “earliest modern prototype.”

From The Wall Street Journal