Napoleon Bonaparte Research Paper

Napoleon Bonaparte, despite being labeled as a “poor soldier” was quite smart. As he gained more experience, he became more popular and strategic in his planning, which led to success on the battlefield and later the greatest domestic change. It started In 1796, he was offered to lead a French army against the forces in Austria and the Kingdom of Sardinia. Napoleon also fought and won successful battles in Italy. With Napoleon’s strong arm in leadership he took action in 1799 to seize political power. He quickly took the title of first consul and assumed the powers as a dictator. This became known as a coup d’état, or “blow to state.” As this was happening, France was still at war. Britain, Austria, and Russia came together to try and

This gave all power to Napoleon as the first consul. As first consul he had a lot of work ahead of him. First was to start a system to generate money. This would help support his dictatorship and help him with control, financially and militarily. Creating a banking system and taxing the people were also ways to help his economy. Napoleon achieved most of his goals with the help of dishonest businessmen and government officials. An example of one of his achievements was setting up Lycées. These were government run schools, open to all men. Along with the schooling, part of his strategy was to rebuild the Church of France. Through the signed concordat, or an agreement with Pope Pius VII establishing a new relationship between church and state, he was able to improve relationships between himself, common French people and the clergy. All of this was a way for Napoleon to gain power and create an empire. But, then again Napoleons ultimate goal was to get the French people to support France over all other countries. So from all of this he needed nationalism and a big change in domestic policy. To get this he created what he thought was the