Napoleon in 100 Objects

By Gareth Glover

“Takes a look at the life of Napoleon Bonaparte through using 100 objects . . . an entertaining method of presenting a biography.” —Battles and Book Reviews

For almost two decades, Napoleon Bonaparte was the most feared, and revered, man in Europe. At the height of his power, the land under his control stretched from the Baltic to the Mediterranean, and encompassed most of Western Europe.

The story of how a young Corsican, who spoke French with a strange accent, became Emperor of the French at the age of just thirty-three is a remarkable one. The many fascinating objects brought together in this book detail not only Napoleon’s meteoric rise to power, but also his art of war and that magnificent fighting force, the Imperial Guard, which grew from a small personal bodyguard to the size of a small army. Some of his great battles, such as Marengo, Austerlitz, Jena and Wagram, are also explored, as is his exile and ultimate defeat at Waterloo.

In this engaging and hugely informative book, the author takes us on a journey across Napoleonic Europe to discover the places, people and objects that tell the story of one man’s life. It is a story of one of the most turbulent eras in history, one that, to this day, still bears Bonaparte’s name. But his legacy lives on in the French legal and social systems and he remains as enigmatic a figure today as he did 200 years ago.

“An amazing collection of objects that aid our understanding of the man who wanted to rule the world.” —Books Monthly

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Mar 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781526731388

Gareth Glover

Gareth Glover is a former Royal Navy officer and military historian who has made a special study of the Napoleonic Wars for the last 30 years.

Book preview

1: Casa Buonaparte

Napoleone di Buonaparte (Nabulione di Buonaparte in Corsican) was born in this house in Ajaccio on 15 August 1769, the second surviving son of Carlo and Letizia Bonaparte, who had undergone an arranged but happy marriage in June 1764. The baby, which was on the small size but with a large head, was born at home on a plain green couch. The story that he was laid on a carpet with the head of Julius Caesar on it was roundly debunked by his mother many years later, who stated ‘It’s a fairy tale, we don’t have carpets in our Corsican houses, even in winter, much less in summer.’

Napoleone was apparently named after his mother’s uncle, who had been involved in the fighting against the French, who had been given sovereignty of the island the year before by Genoa in settlement of a huge debt. Her uncle died around April 1769, a few weeks before the Battle of Ponte Novu, which virtually ended the Corsican Republic and opened the way for French annexation. This meant that Napoleone was born a Frenchman. What is less well known is that the Buonapartes’ first-born son, born on 17 August 1765 was also called Napoleone but he unfortunately did not survive the day. Had he survived, one can only ponder that Napoleone may have been called Lucciano (or Lucien), which the next brother was called; not perhaps a name which conjures visions of a great military leader!

Both of his parents were minor aristocracy; the Buonapartes on Corsica being a branch of a reasonably well-to-do family based in Tuscany, whilst his mother’s family, the Ramolinos, were descended from a noble family in Lombardy. His father, Carlo, was a member of the Council of Ancients but the family were forced to live frugally on the two floors of the building they occupied; their wealth consisting only of the rents from a few houses, a mill, and two small vineyards which had formed part of Letizia’s dowry and brought in about fifty thousand livres annually (the livre was roughly equal to its eventual replacement, the franc in 1795, which was then worth about one-tenth of an English pound, meaning their income was about £5,000 per annum).

The family lodging above them on the second floor were Letizia’s cousins, the Pozzo di Borgos. They seriously fell out over the accidental/ deliberate splashing of one of the Buonapartes with the contents of a commode and it eventually turned into a vicious family feud. Their son, Carlo Pozzo di Borgo, who was born five years before Napoleone, was eventually to join the Russian diplomatic service and he did much to turn Tsar Alexander against Napoleon.

Napoleone’s father was an atheist and extravagantly litigious, whilst his mother was a staunch Catholic and habitually parsimonious. Despite these very divergent characteristics, they appear to have had quite a loving and harmonious marriage until Carlo’s death from stomach cancer in February 1785. Napoleone was not christened until 1771, when he and his newborn sister, Maria-Anna, were both baptised together. Unfortunately, his sister died aged only four months.

Plaque commemorating Napoleon’s birth over the door of the house.

The commander of the French forces in Corsica, the Comte de Marbeuf, was ordered to carry out a charm offensive and the Buonapartes enjoyed his friendship, with Carlo being given a well-paid post. A decree was issued that for Corsican nobles to be accepted – to have equal status to the French nobility – they were required to supply evidence that their titles and residency were in excess of 200 years old. Carlo based his claim on the Italian Buonapartes and was supported by the Archbishop of Pisa, and duly accepted. The greatest advantage this brought for the family was the secure future of their children, as the King of France was obliged to grant impoverished French nobles an education in keeping with their aristocratic birth, and Marbeuf helped them get into the best educational establishments.

Unfortunately, the family’s close links to Marbeuf led to rumours that he was actually Napoleone’s father. Napoleone knew of the rumours later and he did attempt to satisfy himself as to who his real father was (even though he did not dare raise such a question with his mother), as he wished to know how he had inherited his military genius! He looked at the dates of the governor’s departure and came to the conclusion, as if it was a simple mathematical problem, that he was indeed Carlo’s son, but this did leave him wondering where his aptitude for leading armies came from.

Napoleone enjoyed a tough and simple, rough-and-tumble childhood in Corsica and was full of energy and curiosity, gaining the nickname of Ribulione or ‘Hurricane’ from his father. Napoleone later admitted that his mother tamed him, describing her as tenderness combined with severity. ‘Nothing was missed’ – he remembered. She taught him about maintaining honour and courage, beyond everything else. At five years old, he went to a day school run by nuns, where he often held hands with a young girl named Giacominetta, and when made fun of by the other boys, he would charge at them and start a fight. He then progressed to a boy’s school run by a Father Recco, where he learnt to read and write in Italian and excelled in mathematics.

Napoleone moved to France to be educated when he was nine years old and had to learn French from scratch, having spoken only Corsican and Italian on formal occasions until then.

2: Bust of Madame Mère

Without doubt, the woman who wielded the most influence on Napoleon throughout his life was his mother.

Maria Letizia Ramolino was born on 24 August 1750 in Ajaccio on the island of Corsica, then governed by Genoa. She was the daughter of Captain Giovanni Ramolino and Angela Ramolino (née Pietrasanta), both of whose families came from low nobility. Her father died when she was only five years old and her mother remarried Captain Franz Fesch of the Genoan Navy. Her mother had two further children from this second marriage, one of whom was her stepbrother Joseph Fesch, who was later to become a cardinal.

At the very young age of 13, Letizia was married to the 17-year-old Carlo Buonaparte, a trainee lawyer. The couple befriended the new governor, Charles Louis de Marbeuf when the French took possession of the island in repayment of a huge debt owed by Genoa. Spiteful rumours even claimed that Napoleon was the result of an overly close friendship with Marbeuf, something even Napoleon looked into later in life, but discounted.

Carlo and Letizia went on to have thirteen children, of which only eight would survive infancy. These were in order: Joseph, Napoleon, Lucien, Elisa, Louis, Pauline, Caroline and Jérôme.

Letizia was a strong-willed woman, frugal with simple tastes, and she was brutally honest. She insisted on complete obedience from her children and was not averse to corporal punishment when warranted. She instilled many of her traits in her children, especially Napoleon, who continued to bathe daily and to maintain a frugal regime even when surrounded by wealth and riches.

Letizia spoke Italian and Corsican, but apparently never learnt to speak French. In her own words, she described her early life as such:

‘I consecrated myself wholly to my duties as a mother, and rarely went out except to Mass. My presence at home was always necessary to control my little children. My mother-in-law and husband were so indulgent that at the least cry or reprimand they ran to them and gave them a thousand caresses. As for me, I was severe or indulgent as needed. Thus, I was loved and obeyed by my children who have always shown me love and respect.’

She moved to France in 1793 and lived with her family, watching the meteoric rise of her son with great pride, but she always looked on this period as transitory and habitually squirrelled her money away for the inevitable rainy days.

She did not approve of Napoleon’s marriage to Josephine, who she thought was too loose and very extravagant. Although painted into the official painting of the Coronation of Napoleon as Emperor in 1804, she actually did not attend in protest at Napoleon’s decision to omit his brother Lucien from the imperial succession. Napoleon decreed that she be made an Imperial Highness with the official title of ‘Madame Mère de l’Empereur and was granted an allowance of 25,000 francs per month, much of which she saved. She rarely visited Paris and did not attend the Imperial court, living most of the time at the Château de Pont-sur-Seine.

Napoleon once said: ‘She has always been an excellent woman, a mother without an equal; she deserves all reverence.’

In 1814, when Napoleon abdicated, she went to Elba to be with Napoleon and in 1815 she followed him to Paris, but after his final abdication she moved to Rome to live with Cardinal Fesch. She corresponded with Napoleon on St. Helena and arranged for some of his staff to be sent out to him, including two priests and a doctor.

She eventually went blind and broke her thigh in a fall in 1830, leaving her virtually immobile. She died in 1836 and was buried in Rome, but in 1847 she was reinterred at Saint Leu La Forêt in the Île de France, alongside Carlo Bonaparte. In 1951 both were moved again and they now lie in their native Corsica.

A young Letizia.

Madame Mère.

3: Statue of Paoli

Corsica had only become French one month before Napoleon was born, so as a child he grew up with stories of Pasquale di Paoli, who led Corsican resistance to Genoese rule and had gained Corsican independence. Napoleon, in fact, came to heroworship Paoli and he is recorded as saying:

‘On Corsica I was given life, and with that life I was also given a fierce love of this, my ill-starred homeland and a fierce desire for her independence. I too shall one day be a Paoli.’

Pasquale di Paoli had initially been caught up in Corsican attempts to revolt against Genoese rule when he was only 14 years old; when a rebellion in 1729 was defeated (with French and Austrian help) and his father was exiled to Naples. In 1741 Pasquale joined the Neapolitan Army, serving in the Corsican Regiment in Calabria. The Corsican exiles in Italy were constantly plotting to oust the Genoese and in 1754 his father nominated him for election. He was then successfully elected General in Chief in Corsica and leader of the resistance. This election was not official of course, and had only included the inhabitants of the Corsican highlands; the lowlanders voted in their own election and voted Mario Matra into the same post, who promptly attacked Paoli’s supporters with Genoese support. During intense fighting between these factions, Matra was killed and support for this faction soon dissolved.

Now that he had unchallenged leadership of the Corsican forces, Paoli forced the Genoese garrisons to shut themselves within their fortresses, and in November 1755 the Corsican people ratified a constitution prepared by Paoli and proclaimed Corsica a sovereign nation. Paoli set himself the task of improving the plight of Corsica and he began by founding a university at Corte.

Realising that they had effectively lost control of the island, the Genoese handed Corsica to France in 1764 in a secret deal as repayment for a substantial debt, and arranged to quietly hand over the fortresses to French troops. When all was ready, the union of Corsica with France was announced in 1768 and the French troops sought to complete the subjugation of the entire island. In a guerrilla war, Paoli sought to prevent the French takeover, but in 1769 he was defeated at the Battle of Ponte Novu and he was forced to flee to England. Corsica formally became a French province in 1770. There is evidence that Napoleon’s father had worked closely with Paoli during these years, but following his departure, Carlo Buonaparte supported the French rule and he became part of the establishment, eventually becoming the Corsican representative at the king’s court.

At school in France, Napoleon remained an ardent admirer of Paoli and was often ridiculed by the other pupils for his strong desire for Corsican independence. He longed for Paoli’s return and dreamed of serving with him in achieving this goal.

Paoli was well supported in England; he attended a number of private interviews with King George III and he received a pension from the government. In fact, Paoli became a real Anglophile and he readily agreed to forward British interests in Corsica if he ever returned to power there. So, when France offered the exiles an amnesty in 1790, Paoli happily returned to his homeland. Napoleon organised elections, and to the great joy of everyone – including Napoleon, who had yet to suspect Paoli’s sympathies for both royalty and Britain – he was elected to office as President of the French Department of Corsica.

Paoli turned against the French revolution when the king was executed. Secretly moving towards the royalist party, when he was ordered to invade Sardinia by the revolutionary government, he ensured that it failed. Napoleon was involved in these operations and he now came to realise Paoli’s real intentions. Consequently, he and his family denounced Paoli to the French National Convention as a traitor. An arrest warrant was issued and French forces were sent to capture the Corsican fortresses, but Paoli’s force succeeded in driving the republicans out of Corsica – including the Buonaparte family – and penned the French troops within the fortresses. Paoli then formally broke from France and called on British support; in 1794 Admiral Samuel Hood’s fleet landed a force on Corsica to besiege the French-held fortresses, Nelson losing the sight in his right eye during the siege of Calvi.

Napoleon meets Paoli.

Paoli slowly fell out with the British attempts to meddle and the Corsicans began to split into factions again. Paoli eventually left the island for Britain in October 1795, where he died in 1807.

Without naval dominance of the Mediterranean, the British struggled to maintain a military presence on the island and British troops were eventually removed completely in late 1796 and the French repossessed the island permanently.

4: Statue of a Young Napoleon

At the age of nine, Napoleon was sent from his home in Corsica to Brienne in the Champagne region of France to attend one of the twelve military schools which acted as preparatory schools for the main Military Academy in Paris. The school was run by Benedictine monks, who received sixty pensionnaires from moneyed aristocracy and sixty from the poorer nobility, of which Napoleon was one.

The lessons taught here were French (a relatively new language to Napoleon), Latin, Mathematics, History, Geography, Technical Drawing, Music, Fencing and Military Fortifications. Throughout his five years at the school, Napoleon was entirely cut off from his family and he had to endure severe discipline and an austere life in the unheated cells the students lived in.

This statue of a young Napoleon is at Brienne Town Hall.

Napoleon at his studies.

The École Militaire at Brienne.

Napoleon was singled out by the other cadets for his poor social skills, ardent Corsican nationalism and dreadful French with a thick Corsican accent. He was bullied repeatedly. Napoleon became withdrawn and applied himself to his studies as a way of coping. There are a number of anecdotes regarding the young Napoleon leading his school friends in a snowball fight, as if he was already a general. However, given his poor standing in the school with few friends, it is more likely that many of these stories emerged later, to colour what was a difficult period for him.

He excelled particularly at Mathematics, and having passed his exams for the Artillery, Napoleon left Brienne on 30 October 1784 for the Military Academy in Paris.

Napoleon only visited Brienne twice later in his life; he passed through on his way to Milan in 1805 when he became King of Italy and returned again in 1814, when he fought two battles in the area while staying at Château Brienne. At the Battle of Brienne, Napoleon was nearly captured by Russian Cossacks.

The Military School closed in 1790 having been partly destroyed in the Revolution. Napoleon granted 12,000 francs for its repair, but it never happened. In his will Napoleon also bequeathed 1 million francs to the town.

He is recorded as having said:

‘As regards my thinking, it is not Corsica but Brienne that is my native land, because it was there that I formulated my first opinions of mankind.’

5: Mètre étalon

An original mètre ètalon bar set in the wall at 36 Rue de Vaugirard in Paris.

Napoleon is often credited with the establishment of metrification in France, but this is incorrect. France, just like the rest of Europe, had no countrywide system of weights and measures before the French Revolution. The same measurement could vary widely, depending on the region, city or even different trade bodies. For example, the lieue (or league) varied in length from 3.27 km to as much as 5.85 km in different regions. Overall, within France, because of these regional variances, it has been estimated that there were over a quarter of a million different measures used in 1791.

During the Revolution, the government incorporated a metric system to unify weights and measurements across France. The mètre was defined in 1793 as one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole but this was found not to be accurate enough, as the earth is not an easily-defined shape and thus the calculation was in error. It was redefined in 1799 in terms of a platinum metre bar deposited in the National Archives. In 1889 the International Prototype Metre Bar was produced. Six metre bars, as per the one above, were set around Paris to allow people to produce their own accurate metres.

The kilogram was introduced in 1795, although redefined in 1799 as the mass of one litre of water at 4 degrees centigrade. In 1889 the International Prototype Kilogram was produced made of a platinum-iridium alloy and kept environmentally controlled inside three bell jars, each locked by a key held by a different person. It is kept in a safe in Sèvres in Paris and every 50 years it is brought out and compared with six copies, which are then used to calibrate 34 replicas all around the world. The introduction of these metric measurements was slow and done region by region, starting with Paris, hence the standardisation was slow to happen and many resisted the change and continued using the old measures.

The International Prototype Kilogram.

Metric time was also introduced with ten hours per day of one hundred minutes of one hundred seconds, but it proved so unpopular that it was all but abandoned the same year and was finally abolished by Napoleon in 1806.

Napoleon was a great advocate of having a universal system of weights and measures, but he was also a traditionalist and a pragmatist and he was not a huge fan of the metric system per se. In 1812 Napoleon decreed the ‘Mesures Usuelles’, which kept the metric measures, but also reintroduced a number of the ancient measures, which people refused to give up, but giving them a standard, country-wide measurement.

He reintroduced the toise (2 metres), pieds, pouces and lignes for distance (not unlike the Imperial feet and inches); the aune or ell (120 cm) as a measure of cloth; litres were divided into demis, quarts, huitiemes and seiziemes (2 fluid ounces); the boisseau (bushel) was re-established as well as the livre (or pound) as 500 grams, which divided into 16 onces, each of 8 gros of 72 grains each. These standardised Imperial measures remained in force until they were banned in 1839, however, the livre is commonly used in France to this day.

What Napoleon did do though, through the expansion of his Empire across Europe, was to expedite the metric system’s adoption by other states, although they all initially abandoned it after the fall of Napoleon in 1814. In fact, Portugal was the second country in Europe to fully apply the metric system in 1814 and Belgium and Holland (then a joint kingdom) followed in 1820. Spain went metric in 1852, Italy in 1861, the German states in 1868-69, Austria in 1871, Hungary in 1874 and Turkey in 1875. Today, most countries have adopted the metric system wholly or at least partially, like Britain and the United States of America.

6: Snuff Box

With all the upheaval in France in 1793, the forces of revolution and counter-revolution clashed continuously, culminating with major insurrections in Lyon, Marseilles and Toulon, home of the vast French naval base for the Mediterranean. Royalists gained control in Toulon but when news reached them of the horrendous brutality of the reprisals inflicted by revolutionary forces after they had recaptured Marseilles, they sought help from Spain and Britain, enemies of France.

On 28 August 1793 Admiral Sir Samuel Hood’s fleet and a Spanish squadron under Admiral Juan de Lángara sailed into the bay and soon landed some 13,000 British, Spanish, Neapolitan and Piedmontese troops, who manned the outer defences around the city.

This was a major blow to a revolutionary government, which was under attack from all sides and they immediately despatched General Jean Carteaux (who had been an artist prior to the Revolution), and General La Poype, sending with them whatever troops they could scrape together to quickly recapture the city and regain command of the Mediterranean fleet within. Initial attempts to take some of the circle of fortifications failed dismally and when the commander of the artillery, General Elzéar de Dommartin was wounded, influential friends and the local representative of the National Convention put Napoleon, who had fortunately been passing with a convoy of powder waggons, in command of the guns.

Napoleon showed great activity and purpose; he had guns collected from every possible source, he had retired artillerymen forced back to the guns and he had soldiers trained to fire cannon. Still, they weren’t strong enough to formally besiege Toulon.

This box depicts Napoleon at Toulon.

Napoleon commanding the cannon at Toulon.

He therefore conceived a plan to capture some outlying forts named L’Eguillette and Balaguire on the heights overlooking the entrance of the inner harbour. The capture of these forts would allow his guns to dominate the harbour, preventing any resupply of the city from the sea, including further reinforcements and supplies for the army defending the city.

General Carteaux only supplied a weak force to attack the forts and it failed with some loss. However, the allies were not slow to realise that this was a weak point, and they quickly built a strong fortification on the crest of the heights. It was named Fort Mulgrave and with three small supporting fortifications, it made the hill almost impregnable. In fact, the French dubbed it ‘Little Gibraltar’.

In early November, Carteaux was dismissed and he was replaced by General Doppet, a former doctor (he apparently could not stand the sight of blood), who was renowned for his indecision and ineptitude, which he soon displayed in abundance, launching hopeless attacks and constantly changing his plans. He resigned five days later, fully aware of his own incompetence.

Finally, he was succeeded by a career soldier, General Jacques Dugommier, who readily recognised the value of Napoleon’s plan and put every effort into the capture of ‘Little Gibraltar’ with his army, which now numbered nearly 45,000 men, heavily outnumbering the allied troops. They constructed numerous batteries to pummel the forts and successfully defeated allied sorties, even capturing General O’Hara.

The final assault on Fort Mulgrave was launched on the night of 16 December, and during the attack Napoleon was the nearest he ever came to being killed in battle, when a British sergeant bayonetted him in the thigh. The position was taken and the quickly-mounted guns began firing on the shipping, forcing the allied warships to move out of the harbour. The fall of Toulon was now inevitable.

The siege of Toulon by Jean-Antoine Fort.

Napoleon was not able to take part in further operations, but the allied troops quickly began pulling out and an operation was launched to destroy as much of the