MAY 30, 2021

by Maria Anna Avveduto

 

NAPOLEONE
Centenary of the death of the great Napoleon Bonaparte

On May 5th, the two hundred years since the death of the great emperor Napoleon Bonaparte were commemorated.
Napoleon was born in Ajaccio in Corsica on 15 August 1769 and disappeared precisely on 5 May 1821 on the island of Elba, where he was sent into exile.
General of the French Army and protagonist of the first phase of contemporary history called the "Napoleonic Age".
Napoleon was born into a small family of the Italian nobility, he studied in France where he became an Artillery Officer and General during the French Revolution.
Famous for his victories during the Italian campaign, after the coup of 9 November 1799, he assumed power in France becoming First Consul from November 1799 to May 1804 and Emperor of the French with the name of Napoleon I from 2 December 1804 to 14 April 1814 and from 20 March to 22 June 1815.
He was also president of the Italian Republic from 1802 to 1805, was King of Italy from 1805 to 1814, mediator of the Swiss Conference from 1803 to 1813 and protector of the Confederation of the Rhine from 1806 to 1813.
Napoleon Bonaparte was also a great man of war.
He was the protagonist of over twenty years of campaigns in Europe.
Considered by the military historian Basil Liddell Hart, the greatest strategist in history while the historian Evgenij Tàrle does not hesitate to define him "the incomparable master of the art of war" and "the greatest of the great".
He ruled much of continental Europe thanks to his alliance system and a series of brilliant victories against European powers.
Napoleon controls numerous kingdoms through people loyal to him: Girolamo Bonaparte in Westphalia, Giuseppe Bonaparte in Spain, Joachim Murat in the Kingdom of Naples, Jean-Baptiste Jules Bernadotte in the Kingdom of Sweden and Louis Bonaparte in the Kingdom of Holland.
His reform of the legal system merged into the Napoleonic Code laid the foundations for modern civil law.
The disastrous Russian campaign in 1812 marked the end of his dominion over Europe.
Napoleon was defeated in 1813 at the Battle of Leipzig by the European allies.
On 4 April 1814 he abdicated and was exiled to the island of Elba.
In March of the following year, 1815, Napoleon stealthily abandons the island and lands in Golfe Juan near Antibes.
He subsequently returned to Paris without encountering particular opposition and regained power for the so-called "hundred days" period until he was defeated at Waterloo on June 18, 1815.
He spent the last days of his life in exile on the island of Santa Elena which was under British control.
After his fall, the Congress of Vienna re-established the formation of the old kingdoms throughout Europe before the Napoleonic era.
Napoleon was the first ruler of the Bonaarte dynasty.
In 1796 he married Giuseppina di Beauharnais and on 11 March 1810 he married Archduchess Maria Luisa of Austria, with whom he had the only legitimate son, Napoleon Francesco, known as the king of Rome, who was born in 1811 and died. in 1832.
Napoleon, whose real surname was Buonaparte, changed his surname to "Bonaparte" after the death of his father Carlo Maria, a few days before marrying Giuseppina and leaving for the Italian countryside, to make him more suitable for the French language.
He graduated from the University of Pisa as a lawyer and did heraldic research to obtain the license of nobility from the distant relatives of San Minato which gave him prestige in France and allowed him a better education for his children.
His nobility, however, was already certified in the act of baptism.
Carlo Maria Bonaparte, Napoleon's father, died prematurely in Montpellier on February 24, 1785 due to a stomach tumor.
Napoleon's mother was Maria Letizia Ramolino, a descendant of Tuscan and Lombard nobles and married to her father Carlo Maria at 14 while her husband was 18. The couple formed by Carlo Maria and Maria Letizia had 13 children, of which only eight survived: besides Napoleon also the brothers Giuseppe, Luciano, Luigi and Girolamo; the sisters Elisa, Paolina and Carolina. Napoleon himself disdained such illustrious ancestry on several occasions, stating that he wanted to be the founder and not a descendant of this nobility.
The two parents fought in the war between the Corsicans and the French and Maria also fought when she was pregnant with Napoleon, her second child.
At the age of five, he was enrolled in a kindergarten in France.
It was thanks to the noble title obtained in Tuscany that his father Carlo was able to enroll in the Book of the Corsican nobility.
And only thanks to this enrollment at the age of nine, the young Napoleon was admitted to the Royal School of Brienne-le-Château in France.
Napoleon initially did not consider himself French and felt uneasy in an environment where his classmates were mostly from the ranks of the high transalpine aristocracy.
On 22 September 1784 he was admitted by the grace of the military inspector Reynaud des Monts, to the Royal Military School of Paris founded by Louis XV on the advice of Madame de Pompadour.
In 1785 he tried to go to the Navy but following the cancellation of the entrance exams that year, he went to the artillery.
He then obtained the nomination as second lieutenant at the age of 16 and was seconded on 1 September 1785, to an artillery regiment stationed in La Fère as a sub-lieutenant, under the orders of Baron du Teil to take up the lieutenancy a few months later in a regiment of stationed in Valence in southeastern France.
In those times he fell in love first with Caroline, daughter of Anna du Colombier and later with Louise-Marie-Adelaide de Saint-Germain, in both cases he was rejected.
His first relationship was with a prostitute.
In 1787 he returned to Paris then traveled to Corsica and finally joined the regiment at Auxonne.
Meanwhile the young Napoleon continued to secretly detest France and the French and to cultivate the cause of the independence of Corsica.
At the outbreak of the revolution in 1789, Napoleon, twenty years old and now an officer of King Louis XVI, managed to obtain a long license thanks to which he was able to return safely to Corsica.
Once settled here he joined the island's revolutionary movement by assuming the rank of lieutenant colonel in the National Guard.
In 1791 he fell in love with Manesca Pillet but was refused and after being in Auxonne for a few months he was sent to the 4th artillery regiment in Valence with the rank of first lieutenant.
In January 1792 he ran for lieutenant colonel and was elected only to be temporarily demoted to the rank of captain.
He also risked being considered a deserter due to his constant travels to Corsica.
Meanwhile, the civil war that broke out in 1793 was raging in Corsica.
Napoleon was accused of treason and pursued by an arrest warrant issued by the National Convention on April 2, 1793.
In February 1793 Napoleon commanded the 350 men of the 11th battalion to the island of La Maddalena in Sardinia.
Napoleon quickly fled to Ajaccio and from there took refuge with the whole family accused of treason.
On 12 September 1793 he arrived at the headquarters in Cartaux and in just six weeks he reorganized his forces for the siege of the city, prepared 100 large-caliber guns and gathered various competent officers.
On 1 December he was appointed assistant general by General Dugommier. He managed to conquer the Eguillette fort called little Gibraltar, and after the other forts in December 1793, he freed the port of Toulon from the monarchists and the English troops who supported them. According to Chateaubriand, on this occasion the young Napoleon was guilty of merciless massacres against the population.
Toulon was his first sensational and adventurous military success, which earned him his appointment as brigadier general on December 22 and the attention of the future member of the Directorate Paul Barras, who will then help him in the subsequent rise to power.
His friendship with Augustin de Robespierre, Maximilien's brother, before him freed him from the house arrest he had been forced to in 1794 and then made him fall out of favor.
He was arrested on suspicion of spying and then released.
His gallant adventures led him to seduce Louise Gauthier, wife of a deputy, and to become engaged, on April 21, 1795, to Désirée Clary.
Fortune, however, turned from his side when on 5 October 1795, Barras suddenly appointed him commander of the Paris square with the task of saving the National Convention from the threat of the monarchists.
With the help of Gioacchino Murat in command of the cavalry, Napoleon ruthlessly struck the rioters, averting a new coup d'état.
Following his brilliant success, Barras appointed him general of the Army Corps of the Interior.
In March 1796, Napoleon married Giuseppina Tascher de La Pagerie widow Beauharnais, already the wife of a guillotined officer after the revolution.
Two days later he was forced to leave for Nice to take command of the 38,000 men of the Italian Army.
The general started a military operation.
Very thin, with a hollow face, the cold gaze of the big blue-gray eyes, the long hair on his shoulders and the "sulphurous" face, the general, gloomy and angular, described as "a mathematician or a visionary" [50], imposed his authority, demonstrated his resolve, impressed his subordinate generals, and arranged for the swift implementation of his ambitious war plans.
On April 12, 1796, the first Italian campaign began which would bring to light the military and political genius of General Napoleon Bonaparte who, despite his numerical and logistical inferiority, managed to repeatedly defeat the Austrian, Venetian and Piedmontese forces. These successes also fascinated the great composer Ludwig van Beethoven, who dedicated symphony no. 3, "the Eroica". Then he tore up the dedication outraged by the fact that Napoleon had proclaimed himself emperor.
In order to defeat the two enemy armies, General Napoleon used the so-called "central position strategy" for the first time and Montenotte's campaign brought continuous victories to the Army of Italy.
The Austrian and Piedmontese forces were beaten in Cairo Montenotte and other places while the Piedmontese were defeated in the Battle of Mondovì also called "Battle of the Bicocca di San Giacomo" or "Presa di San Michele".
On 10 May 1796 he defeated the last Austrian defense in the battle of Lodi, returning to Milan four days later.
On 16 May the General Administration of Lombardy was established in Milan.
Forced Piedmont to armistice and occupied Milan, Napoleon received full powers over the Army of Italy from the Directory and prepared himself for the most difficult task: defeating the Austrian army.
After a series of partial clashes the French and Austrian armies faced each other.
That of Castiglione delle Stiviere was the first great battle led by Napoleon, who demonstrated his tactical genius by overturning in his favor a situation that seemed compromised and conquering one of the most important victories of his military career.
In 1796 the Lombard Legion was formed, the first armed force composed of Italians to adopt the Tricolor of green, white and red as the war flag.
The Austrian forces, commanded by Archduke Charles of Austria, frightened by Napoleon's rapid march towards Vienna, had to accept a truce.
France acquired the Netherlands and the left bank of the Rhine. The Austrians incorporated the territories of the Republic of Venice. Thus ended the campaign of Italy with a sharp defeat of Austria.
During the Italian campaign, Napoleon showed his brilliant strategic ability, able to assimilate the new innovative theories of the French military thinkers and apply them masterfully in the field. An artillery officer by training, he used artillery means in an innovative way as a mobile support for infantry attacks.
Some paintings show that Napoleon was the first in the world in a war theater to use a telecommunications system based on signaling lines made by Chappe's optical telegraph.
During the first Italian campaign, numerous works of art were sold to France as military looting.
In 1798 the Directory, worried about Bonaparte's excessive popularity and considerable prestige, entrusted him with the task of occupying Egypt to oppose English access to India and therefore to damage it economically.
Napoleon had for years cherished the idea of ​​a campaign in the East, dreaming of following in the footsteps of Alexander the Great and being of the idea that «Europe is a den of moles. All great personalities come from the East ».
The expedition began on May 19, when Napoleon sailed from Toulon with an army of over 60 warships, 280 transport ships, 16,000 sailors and 38,000 soldiers.
Taking Malta, where the Knights Hospitallers capitulated without a fight, Napoleon arrived in Egypt. After an important victory in the battle of the pyramids, Napoleon crushed the Mamluks of Murad Bey and on entering Cairo he became master of Egypt.
A few days later, on 1 August 1798, Napoleon's fleet in Egypt was completely destroyed by Admiral Horatio Nelson, so that Napoleon was stranded on the ground.
Returning to Cairo, Napoleon defeated on 25 July 1799 an army of over ten thousand Ottomans led by Mustafa Pasha at Aboukir.
Worried about the terrible news coming from France, Napoleon, having left the command to General Kléber, embarked in great secret on 22 August for France.
On 9 October 1799 Bonaparte landed in Fréjus and his race to Paris was accompanied by the enthusiasm of the whole of France.
Having leaked the false news of a realist plot to overthrow the republic, Napoleon managed to get the Council of Elders and the Council of the Five Hundreds to vote on a resolution transferring the two Chambers outside Paris to Saint-Cloud.
Napoleon was appointed commander in chief of all the armed forces, and this was put in place to avoid that during the coup d'état some deputies could raise the Parisian citizens to defend the Republic from Napoleon's attempt.
Napoleon's intention was to bring the two chambers to vote independently for their dissolution and the transfer of powers into his hands.
It was not so: the Council of Elders remained cold to the speech and while when Napoleon entered the hall of the Council of the Five Hundred, the deputies rushed against him asking to vote to outlaw Bonaparte, which meant arrest and guillotine.
At the moment when it seemed that the coup d'état was close to catastrophe, his brother Luciano arrived to help Napoleon, who in the guise of president of the sixteenth century came out of the hall and harangued the troops deployed outside, ordering that they disperse the deputies opposed to his brother.
Memorable is the moment when he pointed his sword at Napoleon's neck and declared: "I would not hesitate a moment to kill my brother if I knew that he was attacking the freedom of France."
The troops formed largely by the veterans of Napoleon's campaigns led by his brother-in-law, General Charles Victoire Emmanuel Leclerc and the future brother-in-law Gioacchino Murat, entered with bayonets fixed and dispersed the deputies. In the evening, the Chambers were dissolved and the decree that assigned full powers to three consuls was passed: Roger Ducos, Sieyès and Napoleon.
The three consuls drafted a new constitution.
Having been appointed First Consul, that is to say concretely superior to any other power of the State, Napoleon rebuilt France with a strongly centralizing administrative structure that has remained so until today: France was divided into departments, districts and municipalities, respectively administered by prefects, sub-prefects and mayors.
The coffers of the state were being healed by the conquests of war and by the founding of the Bank of France, as well as by the introduction of the silver franc which put an end to the era of allocations and inflation.
The long struggle against Catholicism ended with the Concordat of 1801.
Napoleon set up high schools and polytechnics to form a trained and indoctrinated ruling class but left out elementary education because he was of the idea that the people had to remain in a certain ignorance to guarantee a stable government and an obedient army.
Napoleon's consulate became "for life" and paved the way for the establishment of the Napoleonic Empire.
During his exile in Sant'Elena, Napoleon stressed several times that his most important work would be his "civil code".
The Napoleonic Code legitimized some of the Enlightenment and natural law ideas, was exported to all the countries where Napoleon's armies arrived, was taken as a model by all the states of continental Europe and is still the basis of Italian law today.
Established on 11 August 1799, the commission in charge of drafting the civil code was chaired by Napoleon himself who read the drafts during the military campaigns and sent his ideas on the project to Paris from the front.
On March 21, 1804, the Civil Code came into force, immediately renamed the Napoleonic Code.
The Code, however, was designed and drafted above all to enhance the ideals of the bourgeoisie
For Italy the value of the Napoleonic Code was fundamental, since it was brought into the states created by Napoleon and then merged into the Italian Civil Code of 1865. The other codes are also of equal value and importance: that of civil procedure, issued in 1806. , that of commerce of 1807, that of criminal procedure of 1808 and the penal code of 1810.
On the evening of 10 October 1800 Napoleon, while attending an opera at the Théatre de la République, should have fallen under the stabbings of four assassins but the plot was foiled at the last moment thanks to a tip that allowed the police to intervene by arresting the four bombers right in the theater. The event will go down in history with the name of the conspiracy of daggers.
On Christmas night of the same year, shortly after the planned attack on the theater, Napoleon, his wife and his entourage miraculously escaped an explosive attack that broke out in Rue Saint-Nicaise in Paris while on their way to the Opera.
Napoleon took advantage of this to outlaw the Jacobins and disperse the monarchists.
In March 1804, to give a strong signal to the Bourbons, Napoleon had the Duke of Enghien captured, linked to the exiled royal family who was unjustly accused of conspiracy against the First Consul and shot immediately afterwards.
The event aroused the indignation of all the European courts for the arrogant violation of the sovereignty of a foreign state by France and for the fate reserved for the poor duke, and gave a negative shadow to the European image of Bonaparte, to the which the then First Consul cared a lot.
During Napoleon's absence from Egypt, the French had been repeatedly beaten in Italy and Germany by the Austrians and Russians.
On 6 May 1800 Napoleon took command of the so-called "Reserve Army", destined to be transferred to Italy to reverse the fate of the war. The First Consul led the march of his army with great strategic skill; he crossed the Alps at the Gran San Bernardo pass and took by surprise the Austrians engaged in the siege of Genoa. The enemy was quickly defeated in the battle of Montebello, while Napoleon returned to Milan.
On 14 June 1800 the decisive battle of Marengo was fought.
It was the most famous of the Napoleonic battles in Italy, bitterly fought and with decisive consequences.
Peace in Italy was sanctioned with the Treaty of Lunéville.
In 1802 Napoleon was proclaimed President of the Italian Republic, a title that he will keep until March 17, 1805 when he will assume that of King of Italy.
In 1802 Napoleon sold part of North America to the United States as part of the Louisiana Agreement.
After Napoleon had extended his influence to Switzerland and the German states, a dispute over Malta provided England with the pretext to declare war on France and provide support for French monarchists who opposed Napoleon.
Having become consul for life, Napoleon was practically the absolute ruler of France. On May 18, 1804, the Senate proclaimed him Emperor of the French.
On December 2, 1804, the coronation ceremony was held in the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris. Napoleon crowned himself emperor of the French and then crowned his wife Josephine of Beauharnais as empress.
Contrary to what is usually claimed, Napoleon did not take the crown from the hands of the Pope who also attended without directly participating in the ceremony, at the behest of the emperor himself.
On 26 May 1805 Napoleon was crowned King of Italy in Milan
On this occasion Napoleon, placing the imperial crown on his head, made for the occasion, pronounced the famous words: "God gave it to me, woe to those who touch it".
The monarchy was reborn in France.
Napoleon was not "king of France and Navarre by the grace of God", as the formulas of the Ancien Régime cited, but "Emperor of the French by the will of the people", even if the official documents maintained a compromise formula.
In 1808, taking advantage of the contrasts in the Spanish royal family between King Charles IV and his son, Napoleon forced both of them to abdicate and put his brother Joseph Bonaparte on the throne of Spain, thus making it enter directly into the orbit of the French Empire.
At the same time the French troops invaded and conquered Portugal.
From 1810 Napoleon's physical appearance changed and his health began to decline; the passage of time and the enormous commitment of government and administration of the Empire began to wear it down; very different from the "sulphurous scaramouche" [132], thin, with long hair on his shoulders, gloomy and shadowy with youth, he gained weight, his hair cut short thinned, his face became full and his complexion livid; his features relaxed. While maintaining overall a great intellectual clarity and tenacious resolve, he occasionally showed a decrease in his ability to concentrate and decide. Dysuria and gastralgia became more frequent.
In 1810, Europe was definitively redesigned according to the Napoleonic will. Territories under direct French control had expanded far beyond traditional pre-1789 borders; the rest of the European states were either his satellite or his ally. The kingdom of Italy was nominally ruled by Napoleon but ruled by the viceroy Eugene of Beauharnais, the first bed son of Napoleon's wife, Giuseppina.
After the peace of Schönbrunn, Napoleon and the Austrian Metternich had agreed on a state marriage. On December 14, 1809, Napoleon divorced Josephine of Beauharnais, his wife who was certainly unfaithful but very much loved.
On 1 April 1810 Napoleon married the daughter of the Emperor of Austria, Maria Luisa, niece of Marie Antoinette, the queen beheaded during the Revolution, which caused quite a few controversies in France.
With this marriage, Austria was linked to Napoleon, which led to the creation of an almost indissoluble alliance. Napoleon had a legitimate heir from Maria Luisa, born after a difficult birth on March 20, 1811.
However, the heir of the Empire, Napoleon Francesco, known as the king of Rome (Napoleon II), never actually ascended the throne: Napoleon was dethroned a few years later and Napoleon II later died at the age of 21.
On April 12 at the Castle of Fontainebleau, Napoleon attempted suicide by ingesting a strong dose of arsenic preserved in a vial that the emperor had obtained after the defeat in Russia, but miraculously he was rescued and saved by his collaborators who called the doctors in time.
After a memorable farewell to the Old Guard, Napoleon suffered the drama of escape when, crossing southern France, he was forced to wear an Austrian uniform to avoid being lynched by the crowd.
He embarked hastily in Marseille on the English frigate HMS Undaunted commanded by Thomas Ussher, on 4 May 1814 he landed on the island of Elba, where the enemy had decided to exile him, while acknowledging his sovereignty on the island with the rank of prince and the preservation of the title of emperor.
Settled in Portoferraio, he wanted to live in the Palazzina dei Mulini, to which he added a floor, and which dominated the suggestive bay where he could observe the ships entering and leaving the port.
As a country residence he chose the Villa di San Martino. His mother wanted to join him in Portoferraio, who took up residence in a small house in the historic center. He also stayed in the dormitory annexed to the Sanctuary of the Madonna del Monte, where his mother - who was temporarily staying in Marciana - joined him occasionally, and later Countess Maria Walewska with their son Alexandre.
In the ten months of exile Napoleon did not remain idle, but built infrastructures, mines, roads, defenses, while the Congress of Vienna which was to design the new Europe of the Restoration hypothesized to exile him in the ocean.
They were feverish months, which transformed a sleepy island into the cultural and political center of the time: poets, artists, spies and men of the world rushed in hoping to visit what had been the man who had held Europe in his hand. Many found hospitality in the stately residences of the city and others at the Auberge Bonroux. But his wife and son, the little King of Rome, never came to see him.
Although engaged in work on Elba, Napoleon continued to secretly receive news of the French situation through some optical telegraphs located on the heights of the island. The new ruler, Louis XVIII Bourbon, was disliked by the population: in the wake of the Restoration, Louis was slowly dismantling all the conquests of the French Revolution maintained by Napoleon. [160] These news, added to the now certain rumor that the enemies were close to moving him away from Europe, led Napoleon to act. Taking advantage of the absence of the English commissioner Sir Neil Campbell, who went to Livorno, Napoleon left Elba on February 26, 1815, greeted by the population of Portoferraio, with a fleet of seven ships and about a thousand men in tow.
The emperor evaded the surveillance of the English fleet and on 1 March 1815 he landed in France in the Gulf of Cannes, at Golfe Juan, near Antibes: the period which will be known as the "Hundred Days" began.
The population welcomed him with surprising enthusiasm and the armies sent against him by Luigi, instead of stopping him, joined him.
It was first the turn of the 5th line of Grenoble: Napoleon moved to meet the soldiers of the Bourbon army and shouted: «Whoever wants to shoot his emperor is free to do so». Later the armies led by Charles de la Bédoyère and Marshal Ney, who had previously emphatically promised Louis XVIII that he would lead Napoleon to Paris "in an iron cage" passed to his side. Both generals will pay for their defection from the post received by shooting. On March 20 Napoleon triumphantly entered Paris, while Louis had fled in great haste to Ghent at the suggestion of Talleyrand, who at the Congress of Vienna pushed the crowned heads to take back the sword against the emperor.
Quickly reorganized the army, Napoleon asked his enemies to join forces again for peace, with the sole condition of keeping the throne of France: his request was not accepted.
To avoid a new invasion of his homeland, Napoleon made the first move, entering by surprise in Belgium, where the British and Prussian armies were deployed. His plan was for a two-wing maneuver that would divide and defeat the Prussians and the British separately before they could join together.
Napoleon made some tactical mistakes and made a mistake in the choice of lieutenants, giving up Marshal Louis Nicolas Davout, left in Paris, and relying on Grouchy, inexperienced in command posts, and Ney, famous for daring, but not for his tactical intelligence, the whose unnecessarily rash behavior was among the determining factors of the defeat.
Napoleon was asked to abdicate under pressure to the Chamber by the powerful Fouchè. Napoleon accepted and asked that his wish to place his son Napoleon II on the throne at the right age be respected, even if this request was in vain.
The enemy forces, on the other hand, entered Paris and restored Louis XVIII to the throne. Napoleon took refuge in the castle of Malmaison, the old house where he had lived with his first wife Giuseppina, who died recently.
His intention was to flee to the United States, but he refused to disguise himself as it would have been necessary to escape capture, because that would have slandered his honor of him.
Instead, on July 15, 1815, Napoleon surrendered to the British by boarding the ship HMS Bellerophon.
Condition of the surrender was deportation to England or the United States, where he intended to live subject to common law and with the status of private citizen; if he had obtained permission to stay in America, his intentions were to become a famous scientist and scholar of natural phenomena, but unfortunately things went completely different for him. Captain Maitland, representing the prince regent, arrested Napoleon, partly breaking his word: with the promise of being able to continue living in a simple country house in English territory, Napoleon was actually satisfied and obtained a domicile in British territory; led by the battleship HMS Northumberland, on October 15, 1815 Napoleon was landed prisoner and exiled to St. Helena, a small island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, still a British possession today, so remote and lost as to make any attempt to escape impossible.
With a small following of loyalists, Napoleon was transferred to the inner village of Longwood where he lived until his death.
On the island, Napoleon had the freedom to move as he pleased although he was constantly watched over by a small English military contingent; even though he did not undergo any trial or conviction, the now former emperor found himself practically serving a life sentence in a distant and unknown place.
Napoleon dictated his memoirs and expressed his contempt for the British, personified in the hateful figure of the "jailer" Sir Hudson Lowe.
On the basis of his memories, expressed in long, almost daily conversations, the Count de Las Cases wrote "The Memorial of Saint Helena" and in the second half of April 1821 he himself wrote his last wishes, and many notes in the margin .
The stomach pains he had been suffering from for some time, worsened in the inhospitable climate of the island and with the harsh regime imposed on him, led to his death on May 5, 1821 at 5:49 pm. Napoleon's last words were France, army - army chief - Giuseppina.
He asked to be buried on the banks of the Seine but was instead buried in St. Helena near Sane Valley, as established the year before by the English government.
Governor Lowe and his men bestowed on him the honors reserved for a general.
On July 19, 1821, Napoleon Bonaparte died.
Alternative hypotheses about Napoleon's death, the fruit of conspiracy theories, immediately began to spread. Although accredited, they do not deny the veracity of the cause of death from stomach cancer.
On 2 August 1830, nine years after Napoleon's death, King Charles X of Bourbon was forced to abdicate and the crown was granted to Louis Philippe d'Orléans.
The statue of the emperor was restored on the column of Place Vendôme and there were requests for the return of the mortal remains to their homeland.
The king's younger son, the Prince of Joinville, was commissioned to return the emperor's remains to France and he directed an expedition to Saint Helena to bring the body back to Paris.
On October 15, 1840, the body was exhumed by a commission which turned out to be intact, dressed in the uniform of a colonel of the Cacciatori della Guardia.
Having reassembled his body in an ebony coffin, the emperor began his journey back to France on the Belle-Poule, arriving in Cherbourg on 2 December, greeted by the cannon volleys of the fort and the military ships present.
On December 15, 1840, a solemn funeral took place in Paris, celebrated with all the honors of the imperial rank. Arranged the coffin on a chariot drawn by 16 horses, escorted by the Marshals of France Oudinot and Molitor, by Admiral Roussin and by General Bertrand, on horseback, on all four sides, the funeral procession passed under the Arc de Triomphe, between two rows of insignia with the imperial eagle, greeted by cannon volleys and welcomed by the ruling family in the name of France.
General Bertrand, who had faithfully accompanied Napoleon to Elba and Sant'Elena, was instructed by the king to place the emperor's sword and headdress on the coffin, but he was unable to do so due to emotion and was replaced by General Gourgaud.
Later, in 1843, Joseph Bonaparte sent the large collar, ribbon, and insignia of the Legion of Honor that his brother had worn.
The remains of Napoleon rest in a monument placed in an open-air crypt carved into the floor of the church of Saint-Louis des Invalides in Paris, exactly under the golden dome.
The monument conceived by the architect Louis Visconti was finished in 1861 and consists of a large sarcophagus of red porphyry from Finland which contains the six coffins within which the body of Napoleon was closed: from the innermost to the outermost we have a coffin in sheet metal and then one in mahogany, two coffins in lead, one in ebony and the last in oak. Around the sarcophagus there is a circular loggia decorated with huge statues representing twelve victories.
The transfer from the chapel of Saint-Jérôme, where the body had been laid in 1840, to the crypt in the central hall of the church of Saint-Louis des Invalides was carried out with a non-public ceremony on April 2, 1861 in the presence of Emperor Napoleon III.
The funeral mask is instead kept at the Euteleti Academy in San Miniato in the province of Pisa, the city from which the Bonaparte family traces its origins.
The cast on the original was made by the Corsican doctor Antommarchi and the English doctor Francis Burton.
Inside the crypt there is also the tomb of Napoleon's son, Napoleon Francesco, whose body was transferred here by Adolf Hitler in 1940 from the Capuchin Crypt in Vienna, where he was buried like all the members of the house of Austria. as a gift to the people of France after the occupation at the beginning of the Second World War.
Napoleon had only one legitimate son, the aforementioned Francesco Napoleone Francesco born in 1811 and died in 1832, had by his second wife Maria Luisa of Habsburg-Lorraine (1791 - 1847).
However, at least two illegitimate children are known for certain: Charles, Count Léon born in 1806 and died in 1881, had by Luisa Caterina Eleonora Denuelle de la Plaigne (1787 - 1868), reader of Princess Carolina Bonaparte, already married to Jean-Honoré François Revel and divorced from him a few months before the birth of Charles; Alessandro Floriano Giuseppe, Count Colonna-Walewski, (1810 - 1868), had by Maria Laczynska (1786 - 1817), a young Polish woman, wife of the elderly Count Attanasio Colonna di Walewice-Walewski, better known by the name of Maria Walewska, of the which Napoleon was sincerely in love with.
It has also been written that the French philosopher, journalist and statesman Jules Barthélemy-Saint-Hilaire born in 1805 and died in 1895 was the illegitimate son of Napoleon Bonaparte, but there is no historical certainty about this.
The honors received by Napoleon are numerous, we remember: "Grand Master and Grand Aigle of the Order of the Legion of Honor", "Grand Maitre of the Order of the Three Golden Fleeces", "Grand Maitre de l'Ordre de la Reunion "," Grand Master and Grand Dignitary of the Order of the Iron Crown "," Grand Maitre of the Order of Academic Palms "," Knight of the Order of the Black Eagle ",
"Knight of the Order of the Red Eagle", "Knight of the Grand Cross of the Order of Louis of Hesse", "Knight of the Order of Saint Andrew", "Knight of the Imperial Order of Saint Alexander Nevskij", "Knight 1st Class of the Order of St. Anne", "Knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece", "Knight of the Grand Cross of the Order of St. Joseph," Knight of the Grand Cross of the Imperial Order of Leopoldo " , "Knight of the Grand Cross of the Order of the White Eagle", "Knight of the Grand Cross of the Order Virtuti Militari", "Knight of the Grand Cross of the Order of Loyalty", "Knight of the Grand Cross of the Order of the Crown of Württemberg "," Knight of the Grand Cross of the Order of the Flowered Crown "," Knight of the Grand Cross of the Royal Order of the Two Sicilies "," Knight of the Grand Cross of the Order of Santiago "," Knight of the Grand Cross of the Order of Lion and the Sun "," Knight of the Order of St. Hubert "," Knight of the Grand Cross of the Royal Order of St. Stephen of Hungary "," Knight of Gra n Cross of the Order of the Crown of Westphalia "," Knight of the Grand Cross of the Order of the Union "; "Knight of the Grand Cross of the Royal Order of Spain", "Knight of the Grand Cross of the Spanish Order of Charles III", "Knight of the Order of the Elephant",
"Knight of the Order of the Seraphim", "Knight of the Grand Cross of the Royal Order of St. George for the Defense of the Immaculate Conception", "Knight of the Grand Cross of the Royal Order of St. George for the Defense of the Immaculate Conception", "Commendatore of the Order of Merit of the Bavarian Crown "," Commander of the Order of Merit of the Bavarian Crown ".
Many writers dedicated works and poems to him: Ugo Foscolo honored him in 1797 with "A Bonaparte Liberatore", in 1802 "Prayer to Bonaparte in the congress of Lyon" and between 1821 and 1827 "In death of Napoleon";
Vittorio Alfieri in 1799 dedicated "Il Misogallo" to him, Victor Hugo dedicated "I miserabili" to him, Lev Tolstoy in 1869 dedicated to him the novel "War and Peace", Alexandre Dumas in 1846 dedicated to him "The Count of Monte Cristo" and Ryoko Ikeda in 1987 he dedicated "Eroica - The glory of Napoleon" to him.
On 19 July 1821, on hearing the news of Napoleon's death, Alessandro Manzoni composed the famous ode "Il cinque maggio" which had a strong resonance throughout Europe and was translated into German by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

«He was. As motionless,
given the mortal sigh,
the immemorial remains stood
orba of so much breath,
so beaten, astonished
the land is at the nuncio, "
«Changes thinking about the last one
hour of the fatal man;
nor does he know when such a one
footprint of mortal pious
its bloody dust
will come to trample."
(from "Il cinque maggio" by Alessandro Manzoni)


Even the cinema was fascinated by the figure of the great and mythical emperor: "Il grenadier Roland" by Luigi Maggi of 1911; Alexander Butler's "Napoleon and Josephine" from 1924; "Napoleon" by Abel Gance from 1927; "Sant'Elena" by Lupu Pick; "Campo di Maggio" by Giovacchino Forzano from 1935; Clarence Brown's "Maria Walewska" from 1937; Carol Reed's 1942 "Napoleon's Enemy"; "Sant'Elena, small island" by Renato Simoni from 1943; "Napoleone" by Carlo Borghesio from 1952; Henry Koster's "Désirée" from 1954; "Napoleon Bonaparte" by Sacha Guitry from 1954; Abel Gance's "The Battle of Austerlitz" from 1960; "The great chameleons" by Edmo Fenoglio, a 1964 TV drama; "Waterloo" by Sergej Fëdorovič Bondarčuk from 1970; "Napoleon and the women", a TV miniseries in eight episodes from 1974; "Napoleone a Sant'Elena", a TV drama by Vittorio Cottafavi from 1973; "Napoleone e Giuseppina", a TV miniseries by Richard T. Heffron from 1987; Alan Taylor's 2001 "The Emperor's New Clothes"; "Napoléon", a TV miniseries by Yves Simoneau from 2002; "Monsieur N." by Antoine de Caunes from 2003; "N (Napoleon and I)" by Paolo Virzì from 2006.

        

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