The Emperor Napoleon in His Study at the Tuileries, 1812, by Jacques-Louis David (National Gallery of Art)
Since his death in British captivity on the remote island of St Helena, Napoleon Bonaparte remains the subject of spirited debates. For some, he is a ruthless warlord, a soldier of fortune bent on personal aggrandizement and establishing an empire in the heart of Europe. To others, he is a protean multitasker, a man of extraordinary vision and talent, a reformer who stood for modern principles of equality, wider opportunity, and rational and efficient government.
Tracing Napoleon’s life from its Corsican roots, through military triumphs and defeats to the final exile, historian and Napoleon scholar Alexander Mikaberidze tells the story of the French leader’s remarkable life and of the sheer determination and careful calculation that brought him to the pinnacle of power in Europe.
9:30–10:45 a.m. Child of the Enlightenment
Born on the island of Corsica, Nabuleone di Buonaparte was anything but French. From an early age, he struck observers as someone of great character and intellect. Graduating from the French military academy in 1785, he settled into a career of an artilleryman that would have been undistinguished if not for the revolution that shook France in 1789.
11 a.m.–12:15 p.m. The Savior of the Revolution?
Napoleon owed his success to the French Revolution, and in particular, to the campaigns he waged on its behalf in Italy in and Egypt in the late 1790s. But the revolt also created a profound turmoil that Napoleon despised and sought to end. In 1799, he seized a chance to do that. But was he the destroyer or savior of the cause?
12:15–1:30 p.m. Lunch (participants provide their own)
1:30–2:45 p.m. The New Caesar
After four years at the helm of France, Napoleon reformed the country and proclaimed an empire. He then sought to restructure the rest of Europe. Between 1805 and 1810, his conquests led to the creation of the largest empire Europe had seen since Charlemagne. The French armies brought with them important reforms built upon the revolutionary ideals.
3–4:15 p.m. Imperial Sunset
By 1812, discontent with Napoleon's iron-fisted rule spread across Europe. Defeated in Russia and Germany, he was banished into exile on Elba, only to make a spectacular return just one year later, reclaiming the throne of France. Defeated once more at Waterloo, he was sent into a new exile to a remote island in South Atlantic, where, beaten but not broken, he fought his most crucial battle—for posterity.
Mikaberidze holds the Ruth Herring Noel endowed chair for the curatorship of the James Smith Noel Collection at Louisiana State University-Shreveport. He has published more than a dozen books on Napoleonic history, and is currently editing The Cambridge History of the Napoleonic Wars.
