Bonaparte, Napoléon Bonaparte

   (1769-1821)

   Ruler of France from 1799 to 1815. Napoleon came to power as a successful military commander in the wake of the French Revolution of 1798, initially as First Consul, then as Emperor. A brilliant military and civil commander, Napoleon established good part of the basis of the modern French state, with its centralised power structure, law, and administration. Through military victories and alliances, he rapidly spread the power of post-revolutionary France across Europe. However, like Hitler in the twentieth century, he overstretched the capacities of his great army, when he tried to conquer Russia. The retreat from Moscow in 1812 was his first great defeat. It was followed however by his final undoing, defeat by the British army at the batle of Waterloo in 1815. Captured by the British, Napoleon was exiled first to Elba, from where he escaped, then to the mid atlantic island of Saint Helena, where he died in exile in 1821.