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Napoleon Was Sent To French Military Schools Term Paper

Napoleon was sent to French military schools at Brienne and Paris. He received his commission in the artillery in 1785. After the outbreak of the French Revolution, he attempted to join the Corsican patriots led by Pasquale Paoli, but his family was thought to be pro-French. A political event was to reopen his career overnight. In Oct. 1795, a royalist Parisian rebellion attacked the Convention, and Paul Barras convinced the Convention to place Bonaparte in command of the troops. Napoleon dispersed the mob with what he called "a whiff of grapeshot" -- which killed about 100 insurgents. He was given command of the army of the interior. After drawing up a plan for an Italian campaign, he was, made commander in chief of the army of Italy with Barras's...

Assuming command of an ill-supplied army, he succeeded within a short time in changing it into a first-class fighting force. The brilliant success of his Italian campaign was based on three factors: his supply system, which he made virtually independent of the financially exhausted Directory by allowing the troops to live off the land; his reliance on speed and massed surprise attacks by small but compact units against the Austrian forces; and his influence over the morale of his soldiers.
Now the idol of half of Europe, Bonaparte returned to France His plan for an incursion of Britain across the channel was canceled, and he made substitute strategy to crush the…

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Great Britain had never succumbed, and the Continental System proved difficult to enforce. Napoleon's first signs of weakness appeared early in the Peninsular War (1808 -- 14). The victory of 1809 over Austria had been costly, and the victory of Archduke Charles at Aspern (May, 1809) showed that the emperor was not indomitable. Forces were gathering everywhere to cast off the Napoleonic yoke.

Napoleon's decision to invade Russia marked the turning point of his career. His alliance with Czar Alexander I, dating from the treaties of Tilsit and extended at the Congress of Erfurt (1808), was tenuous. When the czar rejected the Continental System, which was ruinous to Russia's economy, Napoleon gathered the largest army Europe had ever seen.

In December, Napoleon left his army, returning to Paris to bolster French forces. Of his allies, Prussia was the first to desert; a Prussian truce with the czar (Dec. 30) was followed by an alliance in Feb. 1813. Great Britain and Sweden joined the coalition, followed (Aug., 1813) by Austria, and the "War of Liberation" began. At the Battle of the Nations (Oct. 16 -- 19), Napoleon was forced to retreat.
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