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.

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Napoleon Bonaparte

France ended slavery in 1794 under the French Revolution, but Napoleon Bonaparte ordered troops to be sent to Guadeloupe in 1802 to restore the practice.

From Barron's ● May 28, 2026

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 ● Mar. 8, 2026

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 ● Nov. 19, 2025

That’s probably how Napoleon Bonaparte felt, three-quarters of the way through the battle of Waterloo.

From Salon ● Sep. 14, 2025

Traditional histories like to equate Beethoven, the colossus of music in the early 1800s, with his contemporary Napoleon Bonaparte, revolutionary-turned-Emperor and serial military adventurer.

From "The Story of Music" by Howard Goodall