Napoleon And Wellington Essays - Nobility, European People

Napoleon and Wellington The careers of Napoleon Bonaparte and Arthur Wellesley, 1st duke of Wellington, contrasted in many different ways. The manner in which both rose to glory was quite dissimilar. Napoleon Bonaparte was born in Corsica on August 15, 1769 and was thought to be the most formidable military commander since Alexander the great. He was a bright, charismatic child of noble background. As a boy, he was described as good ?willed and generous. At nine, through his father's influence, Napoleon went off to military school in Paris at the expense of King Louis XVI. It was here that it was discovered that he had and amazing brain capacity and was considered a genius, yet nobody could imagine his success and all of the dead bodies he left in his wake for the sake of peace. Wellesley, on the other hand, was born on May 1, 1769, in Dublin and was also of noble background. As an adult, Wellesley would rise to rule the British empire, but as a schoolboy his future looked grim and lacked the genius that Napoleon possessed. His situation became so desperate that he was sent to military school, where his metamorphosis was astonishing. He found that he enjoyed the army and needed it to establish a career in life. He was given the title "1st Duke of Wellington" due to his military successes. In school, Napoleon was always the leader and could always win at games due to his strategies and his impeccability at outwitting the other team. He was attracted to the military for a number of reasons and he had secret weapons such as his extraordinary intelligence. The military schools of Napoleon and Wellesley never engaged in competition so they never met. Napoleon graduated military school in 1785, at the age of 16, and joined the artillery as a second lieutenant. He studied firepower and trained in the artillery, which would help Napoleon become a genius in this field. Meanwhile, in 1787, Wellesley was commissioned to the British army and, although he was extremely ambitious, his youth sometimes showed. In 1790, Wellesley was elected to the Irish parliament and participated in the unsuccessful campaign of 1794-95 against French forces in the Netherlands. Upon returning to England in 1805, he was rewarded with knighthood. After the Revolution began, Napoleon became a lieutenant colonel in the Corsican National Guard but, in 1793, Corsica declared independence, and Bonaparte, a French patriot and a Republican, fled to France with his family. He was assigned, as a captain, to an army besieging Toulon, a naval base that, aided by a British fleet, was in revolt against the republic. Replacing a wounded artillery general, he drove the British fleet from the harbor, and Toulon fell. Napoleon was then promoted to brigadier general at the age of 24 and in 1796 he married Josephine de Beauharnais, the widow of an aristocrat guillotined in the Revolution and the mother of two children. Also in 1796, Bonaparte was made commander of the French army in Italy and due to his victories, he became quite well known and respected by the French. In the same year, Wellesley, now holding the rank of colonel in the army, went to India, where he received his first independent command. Wellesley's brother was appointed governor-general of India in 1797, and Arthur took part in several military campaigns and returned to England in 1805. In 1798, Bonaparte led an expedition to Turkish-ruled Egypt, which he conquered yet his fleet was destroyed. Undismayed, he reformed the Egyptian government and law, abolishing serfdom and feudalism and guaranteeing basic rights. In 1799, he won a smashing victory over the Turks but failed to capture Syria. Napoleon then decided to leave his army and return to save France, where he joined a conspiracy against the government. He and his colleagues seized power in the coup d'etat of November 1799, and established a new regime called the Consulate. Under its constitution, Bonaparte, as first consul, had almost dictatorial powers. In 1802 the constitution was revised to make Bonaparte consul for life and then in 1804 it made him emperor. He reorganized the administration, simplified the court system, and all schools in France were put under centralized control. He standardized French law in the Napoleon Code and they guaranteed the rights and liberties won in the Revolution, including equality before the law and freedom of religion. In 1806, Napoleon conquered the kingdom of Naples and the Dutch republic and destroyed the Prussian army. Napoleon made an ally of Czar Alexander I and greatly