Napoleon (2000) s01e01 Episode Script
To Destiny
The congregation shivered in the court.
Notre Dame echoed with the sounds of 400 musicians and singers.
The young man, born on the island of Corsica moved impatiently bored.
Napoleon Bonaparte, 35 years old was about to be crowned Emperor of France.
"I found the crown of France in the gutter," he said "and I picked it up.
" It was December 2, 1804.
Within three years Napoleon's conquests would extend his empire across almost all of Europe and he would rule over 70 million people.
Not since the ancient Caesars had one man held so much power.
Napoleon changed the world.
Here is a man who rises not on the basis of his blood not on the basis of his background but on the basis of his ability.
No one else has appeared like him and dominated the world like he has.
What is Napoleon? It's a hand in a shirt, it's a strange hat.
If you show the hat, if you show the hand in the shirt in Japan, the United States or France everybody will say "Napoleon.
" He was above all ambitious.
He loved power.
He said, "I love power like a musician loves his music.
" He would do almost anything to achieve his ends.
That any one person could rise from humble beginnings to such prominence and, in a matter of a couple days, lose it all-- it's shocking to rise so fast and fall so far.
Napoleon mounted the steps to the altar alone.
Seizing the crown in his own hands he held it aloft then brought it to rest on his own head.
Created, Adapted and syncronyzed by @Goanzaloo.
That morning, he had quietly told his brother "If only our father could see us now.
" PART ONE: TO DESTINY In the spring of 1769 Letizia and Carlo Buonaparte were crossing the mountains that straddled the interior of the island of Corsica.
They were Corsican patriots determined to repel a French army that had invaded their tiny island nation.
The Corsicans were nearly about 100,000 to 120,000 people of peasant or shepherd origin.
They had very few firearms, very little gunpowder and that was all.
They had to defend themselves against the 22 million population of France then the most advanced country in Europe.
The Corsicans never stood a chance.
After a year of fighting leaving thousands dead and wounded they were defeated, and Letizia and Carlo were going home.
Letizia was six months pregnant.
That summer, Letizia was celebrating the Feast of the Assumption when she felt her first labor pains.
Latter that day, August 15 1769, She gave birth to her son.
Napoleone, Napoleone Buonaparte.
Born just after the bitter French conquest Napoleon would spend his childhood hating France the nation he would one day rule.
"I was born when Corsica was perishing" Napoleon later wrote.
"30,000 Frenchmen spewed on to our shores drowning the throne of liberty in waves of blood.
" "The cries of the dying, the groans of the oppressed and tears of despair surrounded my cradle from the hour of my birth.
" Corsica was now a French colony.
Suspended in the Mediterranean between France and Italy for centuries Corsicans had fiercely resisted invaders: Romans, Moors, Genoese.
After the French victory Corsican rebels fled to the mountains where they continued to fight on.
But Napoleon's father Carlo, a 23 year old university student, readily submitted.
Soon he was wearing powdered wigs, embroidered waistcoats and silver-buckled shoes.
Napoleon never forgave him for betraying his Corsican heritage.
He would later say harshly that his father was rather "too fond of pleasure.
" I think Napoleon always held a grudge against his father for having submitted.
But poor Carlo, he knew he had lost the battle he realized that the French were there so he had live with them and make the best of it.
Carlo began practicing law won election to the Corsican assembly and rose in the esteem of the French rulers.
But Napoleon rarely had a good thing to say about him.
He saved his praise for his mother the beautiful, strong-willed Letizia.
"As a mother," he would say, "she was without equal.
" He was obsessed by her, fascinated by her praised her enormously.
She was a very tough and determined little woman.
13 times pregnant, she had eight surviving children.
He says that all his success in life was due to the training she gave him.
Letizia was a hard, austere woman, toughened by war who punished her children to teach them sacrifice and discipline.
"She sometimes made me go to bed without supper" Napoleon remembered "as if there were nothing to eat in the house.
"One had to learn to suffer and not let others see it.
Even her tenderness was severe.
" The mother.
"What a man!" Napoleon said.
"She has the head of a man on the body of a woman.
" Carlo and Letizia owned a house in the country as well as one in the city, a mark of their status.
They were Corsican aristocrats, but they were not rich.
With 8 children they struggled just to get by on an island that had been impoverished for centuries.
There was nothing, the ambitious couple believed that Corsica could offer them or their children.
Only one country could, the country that had vanquished their own, France.
As a representative of the Corsican parliament Carlo traveled to Versailles.
There, he saw the splendor of the French court in all its majesty.
France was the envy of Europe.
Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, Spain none had more people or greater wealth.
While America was just beginning its experiment with democracy Versailles gave testimony to the power of kings.
Carlo was an awestruck provincial.
Rumblings of discontent with King Louis XVI and aristocratic privilege were no concern of his.
That Queen Marie Antoinette and a frivolous court were draining France of precious resources did nothing to diminish Carlo's delight in everything he saw.
He dreamed that one day his children would become noblemen in that glittering citadel of power in which he had no place.
For years, Carlo had nourished a plan.
In Versailles, he saw it come true: he secured Napoleon a scholarship to a school in France.
Napoleon's father was a social climber.
.
enormous ambition.
He got his children a chance in life and Napoleon used it.
Napoleon set foot in France for the first time in the winter of 1778, a thin, sallow nine-year-old accustomed to the warmth of the Mediterranean suddenly alone on the windswept plains of northern France.
A scholarship boy at the Royal Military College at Brienne-le-Chateau.
He could hardly speak French.
For the next five years there would be no holidays, no visits home.
He had no love of France.
He still thought of himself as a grudging subject of an alien king.
He thinks of himself as a Corsican.
He is surrounded by students who are the children of French aristocrats and they have nothing in common with this little foreigner.
And since he is quite proud, he becomes a loner.
Somber, aloof, unpopular Napoleon responded to classmates who made fun of his accent and his yellow complexion with defiance.
"I will do these French all the mischief I can" he told a classmate.
Napoleon became a Francophobe.
He hated France and the French.
And he had a hard time getting over this.
Napoleon would one day turn his sympathies toward France but not without years of resentment and struggle.
He was 15 when he was promoted to the royal military Academy in Paris.
Along with the sons of some of France's greatest families he would learn the splendors of French civilization.
The Royal Academy was as much a finishing school turning officers into gentleman as a war college.
"We were magnificently fed and served," Bonaparte said "treated in every way like officers possessed of great wealth.
" The poor Corsican teenager still felt like an outsider.
He had entered a world of opulence and luxury but it only served to fuel his scorn for the privilege and snobbery of the French nobility.
One teacher described him as "quiet and solitary, frightfully egotistical proud, ambitious, aspiring to everything.
" "He will go far," his school report read "in favorable circumstances.
" He began his apprenticeship as a soldier when he was 16 a lowly second lieutenant training with the best artillery unit in the French army.
He grew expert at sighting a gun handling rammer and shot, deploying men.
One of the greatest careers in military history had begun.
Napoleon's real foundation as a soldier was the training he got as a regimental officer.
He could cast cannon.
He could build gun carriages.
He had to learn the duties of every type of cannoneer and pretty soon you find that he's a very efficient company officer.
During this time, Napoleon showed a real desire to learn.
He read history, a lot of military memoirs law, a little science.
He was very affected by reading Rousseau and the philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment liberty, equality, the abolition of privileges.
He is in the process of discovering himself.
But for a soldier born in Corsica the promise of liberty and equality was only a dream.
Bonaparte knew he can't could go nowhere.
He feels that the regime will not let him have the position he position dreamed.
The top positions are reserved for the noblemen while Napoleon comes from minor nobility, poor people.
Frustrated in his military ambitions Bonaparte dreamed of becoming famous as an author wrote a brief history of Corsica even tried his hand at a novel.
He was angry at this regime for condemning him just to dream of his destiny.
He could only write novels but he wanted his life to be like these novels and that was not possible under the old regime.
He knows that he's capable of great things.
He felt that perhaps is destined for greatness but at that point, how can he possibly believe it.
He's bored to death.
"Always alone among men," Bonaparte wrote "I come home to dream by myself "and to give myself over to all the forces of my melancholy.
"My thoughts dwell on death.
"What fury drives me to wish for my own destruction? No doubt because I see no place for myself in this world.
" It was the Revolution that would set Bonaparte free.
On July 14, 1789, Paris erupted.
Angry crowds stormed through the streets crying liberty, equality, brotherhood.
France was thrown into turmoil.
The monarchy itself tottered on the edge of destruction.
A defiant National Assembly challenged the absolute right of the king stripped nobles and clergy of their ancient feudal privileges fracturing a social order that had endured for centuries.
After years of injustice and inequality the Revolution had begun.
It would take years before it would end.
As the Revolution gained momentum Bonaparte was serving in the army far from Paris.
He distrusted the violent mobs but welcomed the changes transforming the country.
He is certainly not a revolutionary before the beginning of the Revolution.
But Bonaparte welcomes the Revolution as good news.
It almost has a religious impact for him.
Because all of a sudden he feels that the Revolution is going to open up French society.
DECLARATION OF THE RIGHTS OF MAN It would abolish privileges, put an end to hierarchies and the kind of condescension from which Napoleon had suffered while he was growing up.
Bonaparte was a man of his times and to be 20 years old in 1789 is very important.
Napoleon's destiny and the destiny of the whole country become the same.
In the summer of 1792, Bonaparte was on leave in Paris and witnessed the last gasp of the French monarchy.
In June, a mob stormed the Tuileries palace and forced the king to wear the red revolutionary bonnet.
In August, the mob massacred the king's Swiss Guards.
King Louis XVI was dethroned.
The French Republic was proclaimed that fall.
Napoleon wants to be part of this new world.
He wants to play a role.
And he starts in a place he knows very well.
He starts with Corsica.
Bonaparte was 23, an idealistic revolutionary when he took leave of absence from the French army and returned to Corsica.
The French Republic had made Corsica a part of France and given Corsicans all the rights and liberties of French citizens.
Bonaparte, a lieutenant in the island's National Guard threw himself into Corsican politics.
Pasquale Paoli was the island's governor.
Paoli had been Bonaparte's childhood hero, the leader of the Corsican war against France.
Now Bonaparte dreamed of rising to power standing by pauli said.
But he would be bitterly disappointed.
Paoli did not trust him.
A"ragazzone inesperto," Paoli called him "a big, inexperienced boy.
" The Corsican patriot thought Bonaparte too ambitious too self-centered, too sympathetic to France.
Bonaparte and Paoli are on totally different wavelengths.
Paoli retains the idea that Corsica should be independent.
By this time, Napoleon Bonaparte is perfectly comfortable with a Corsica that is part of revolutionary France.
He's kind of a dual personality, both a Corsican and a Frenchman.
But for the longest time Napoleon ignored that he was French.
he had been French for a long time, but did not know.
Napoleon felt, by the army and by natural feeling linked with France.
This long education at school in France had changed him a good deal.
Bonaparte soon became the leader of a faction opposed to Paoli.
Clan rivalry ran deep on the island intensifying the political struggle between the two men.
Paoli's partisans and Bonaparte's were soon at war.
In the end, Paoli proved too strong.
Bonaparte's home was sacked and he was forced to flee to the mountains.
The Corsican assembly declared Bonaparte and his entire family "traitors and enemies of the Fatherland condemned to perpetual execration and infamy.
" Bonaparte no longer had the right to live in Corsica.
He had been given a death sentence by his own people.
His idealism shaken, Bonaparte wrote his brother: "Among so many conflicting ideas "the honest man is confused and distressed.
"Since one must take sides "one might as well choose the side which is victorious.
Considering the alternative, it is better to eat than be eaten.
" The defeat in Corsica, the break with his hero Paoli had toughened him, made him shrewd and turned him toward France.
From the time when there is this breakup with Paoli's Corsica he is French, he wants to be French, heisFrench.
On June 10, 1793, he set sail for France with his widowed mother, three brothers and three sisters a refugee family carryingey owned in the world.
24 years old he was banished from the land of his birth forever.
Failure mostly, frustration.
He couldn't do what he wanted to do.
But when he got away from Corsica his ambition was so great that it swallowed up small aims, like doing something in Corsica.
It became the ambition to control France and then to control Europe and possibly the world.
His ambition swallowed up his childhood hopes and failures.
Bonaparte returned to France to find the French fighting among themselves.
The king had been executed.
The queen and thousands more followed him to the guillotine.
There were cities in revolt; uprisings in the provinces.
Maximilien Robespierre was in charge now.
The austere, moralizing leader suspended the constitution vowing to save the Republic from its enemies at any cost.
The Revolution turned into the Terror.
Torn by civil war France was also at war with almost all of Europe.
Austria, Spain, Prussia and Great Britain were bent on destroying the new French Republic while French radicals promised to help "all peoples rise against their rulers.
" Reinstated in the army as an artillery captain Bonaparte was ordered to Toulon, a city of 28,000 on the southern coast that had rebelled against the Republic throwing its port open to the English.
The British fleet defended the city from the harbor.
24-year-old Bonaparte thought he knew how to drive them out.
He argued that if his soldiers could seize the heights commanding the harbor they could bombard the fleet drive it away, and the city would fall.
It was a simple plan, but none of the generals would listen.
The generals in Toulon were total incompetents or a little worse.
Finally, a fairly competent general showed up listened to Napoleon's plans and said, "Naturally.
" This would be Bonaparte's first great chance.
With aristocratic officers fleeing the country there was suddenly a vacuum-- an opportunity for rapid promotion for soldiers who could prove themselves under fire.
Bonaparte fought bravely, leading his men in the assault on the fort guarding the heights; suffering a wound in the thigh from an enemy bayonet.
Ten ships went up in flames.
The British fled.
Toulon was recaptured and Bonaparte promoted.
In just three months he had risen from captain to brigadier general.
his young officer brought with him a rare fearlessness and the most indefatigable energy," one general wrote.
"If he needed a moment's rest he would take it lying on the ground wrapped in his overcoat.
" Toulon is important in Napoleon's life because that's where everything started.
But it must be said his actions were nothing special.
Any good young officer would have done the same thing but the job fell to Napoleon, and that made him known.
The Republic continued to fight for its life still clashing with enemies beyond its borders still in turmoil at home.
With France in chaos, threatened in on all sides Robespierre showed no mercy in his efforts to bring about unity and order.
"Liberty," he said, "cannot be secured unless criminal lose their head.
Determined to make his voice heard Bonaparte wrote a political tract in support of Robespierre.
The young soldier hated the Terror but he hated chaos even more.
Bonaparte is really a man of order.
For him orders has to serve ideals exactly the idea of Robespierre.
It is necessary to suspend liberties in the name of liberty.
In order to save liberty, to save the Republic it's necessary to suspend individual liberties.
In the summer of 1794 Robespierre goverment fail.
Now it was the turn of those who made the Terror to die including Robespierre.
In the spring of 1795, Bonaparte headed for Paris.
Now a brigadier general, he was determined to rise still higher.
France had a new constitutional government.
The guillotine, the riots in the street the war still raging along the frontier all seemed forgotten.
"No one," wrote a contemporary, "thinks of anything now but eating and drinking and pleasure.
" The rich indulged themselves in flamboyant display entertaining lavishly and dressing a la sauvage.
Bonaparte frequented the salons where the women who dominated Paris society held court.
"The women here," he wrote his brother "are the center of importance.
"Here alone, of all places on Earth they appear to hold the reins of government.
" But they wanted little to do with him.
He was just another ambitious young soldier.
"I can still picture him," one noblewoman remembered.
"He wore badly made dirty boots "and a nasty round hat pulled down over his eyes.
"An overall sickly effect was created by this thinness and his yellow complexion.
" Bonaparte seemed to have come to a dead end.
He was desperate for promotion, but no one paid any attention.
"If this continues," he wrote his brother "I shall end by not stepping aside when a carriage rushes past.
" Then, political turmoil once again gave him his chance.
On October 5, 1795 crowds of Parisians stormed through the streets alongside national guardsmen bent on restoring the monarchy.
The rebellion threatened to topple the Republic.
The government called on Bonaparte to repel the attack.
There wasn't much other choice, actually.
When this rebellion broke there aren't any competent generals in Paris.
But here is the young Bonaparte he's a man of conviction, puthimin.
Napoleon was not one to pussyfoot around.
He would use all his weapons.
Nobody had really used cannon on the Paris mobs before.
He was willing to shoot.
He waited till he could see the whites of their eyes.
Almost in one blast, the whole thing was over.
He probably killed a hundred people.
He was not a very popular man with the rank and file the man on the street in Paris, after that.
"The enemy attacked us," Bonaparte wrote his brother.
"We killed a great many of them.
"Now all is quiet.
I could not be happier.
" Three weeks later, he was made a full general Commander of the Army of the Interior.
He was 26.
Bonaparte was now a man to be reckoned with.
He was driving through Paris in a fine carriage wearing new clothes drenching himself in eau de cologne.
The unsophisticated general was no ladies' man but he had fallen in love.
Her name was Marie-Josephe-Rose de Beauharnais.
Everyone called her "Rose"; Bonaparte called her "Josephine.
" She was a Creole aristocrat from colony of Martinique a 32-year-old widow with two small children deep in debt, trying to make her way in Paris alone.
Languid, with a nonchalance shading into indolence she was known as a woman of refinement, charm and grace.
It was said that "she even went to bed gracefully.
" Josephine is a woman who has a lot of charm, sensuality and if not beauty, at least agile and undulant movements, Beauty is something we all admire but beauty without charm is like a meal without spices.
Bonaparte was dazzled by her.
"I was naturally timid among women," he said.
"Madame de Beauharnais was the first woman who gave me any degree of confidence.
" Josephine was what might be called a slightly fast woman.
She'd been married young.
Her husband had died at the guillotine.
She'd had an affair with somebody that helped her out and it was well known she had affairs with men in high French society.
No one stood higher than Paul Barras the most powerful figure in the new government.
Josephine was his mistress a woman of influence in the most fashionable salons in Paris.
Bonaparte saw her in a world of power.
She was at the center of society.
She had all these connections.
She was very much someone who could be useful to him and then I think he just fell madly in love with her.
Josephine lived in a little cottage set in a pleasant garden.
Some said it was Barras who paid the rent.
But Barras was growing tired of her.
Now Bonaparte visited her there.
"Sweet and incomparable Josephine," he wrote her "I awake full of you.
"The memory of last night's intoxicating pleasures has left no rest to my senses.
" Josephine loved love, and she was a very good lover.
Bonaparte did not have any experience.
She was the one who introduced him to love.
"Sweet and matchless Josephine how strangely you work upon my heart.
"Yes, one night has taught me how far your portrait falls short of yourself.
"A thousand kisses, mio dolce amor but give me none back, for they set my blood on fire.
" Josephine seemed amused by her new lover.
Although she knew how to please him she did not return his passion.
When Bonaparte proposed marriage, she hesitated.
She wasn't atractive to him, at all.
In fact, she told a friend later that she for a long time she had to overcome a feeling of repugnance.
He was so serious and he had no sense of humor.
He was skinny.
His hair was kind of hanging and he was unkempt.
But she knows her beauty is vanishing.
Already her teeth are bad, she's getting wrinkles.
Napoleon doesn't see it but others see it, and she sees it.
Her looks fading and her debts mounting she needed a protector.
On March 9, 1796, Napoleon Bonaparte and Josephine de Beauharnais were married.
A gold-enameled medallion was the general's wedding gift to his bride.
On it were inscribed the words "To Destiny.
" The honeymoon lasted two days.
Bonaparte was sent to the Italian Alps.
Josephine former lover Paul Barras had help win him an appointment as supreme commander of all French forces in Italy.
His assignment was to challenge the empire of Austria and their Italian allies.
He had never commanded an army before.
Young and untested, no one expected very much from him especially his own generals.
Everyone makes fun of him before he gets there this little general who perhaps owes his command to his wife.
Then he arrives.
And within a few moments the veterans who made fun of him understand exactly: he is in charge.
"I don't know why," one of his generals said "but the little bastard scares me.
" Bonapart's army was in no condition to win battles.
It had been stagnating under incompetent commanders in the foothills of the Alps for almost two years.
This army was destitute.
The country was broke.
They couldn't pay them, they couldn't feed them they couldn't clothe them.
The only thing they could do was to tell them they invaded enemy territory and find what they lacked.
Then comes this young whippersnapper this 26 year old not even a Frenchman, a Corsican-- and in his bad French he says, "If you stick with me I'll have you in the most fertile valleys in the world.
" "Soldiers," he proclaimed, "you are naked and ill-fed.
"No fame shines upon you.
"I will lead you into the most fertile plains in the world.
"Rich provinces, great cities will lie in your power; you will find there honor, glory and riches.
" He really enthralls them.
He's a terrific actor.
He is capable of laughing, smiling.
And then suddenly, he is passionate-- inspiring fear, horror and anger.
On April 2, 1796, Bonaparte led his army forward.
He was badly outnumbered.
38,000 French soldiers faced 38,000 Austrians and their allies, 25,000 Piedmontese.
Bonaparte planned to isolate the Austrians from the Piedmontese, than conquerly each separately.
He was strike first at Piedmontese.
Napoleon's principle was always to try to have superior numbers at a given place.
So he tried to divide his enemies to compensate for having less men.
He goes up into the mountains, he spreads his forces out-- the enemy doesn't know where he is and so they begin to spread their forces out.
Then at the last minute he quickly concentrates his forces he achieves mass superiority at one point and then blasts them.
It was lightning.
Napoleon's armies could go up to 30 miles a day.
The Piedmontese were rolling on along at about six or seven miles a day.
Napoleon says: "There is nothing fears radicals about war.
You do what you have to do, you do it fast and you surprise the enemy and shock him if you can".
Move quickly and be ruthless about it.
In just two weeks he won six battles, took thousand of prisoners and broke the back of Piedmont's army.
One Piedmontese officer would later complain: "They sent a young madman "who attacks right, left and from the rear.
It's an intolerable way of making war.
" On April 26, Piedmont surrendered.
Bonaparte demanded gold and silver, and paid his troops; the first real money they had seen in years.
"Soldiers," he said, "we thank you.
" While Bonaparte led his soldiers into battle he never stopped thinking of Josephine writing her letter after letter, day after day.
"Not a day goes by without my loving you," he wrote her.
"Not a night without holding you in my arms.
"I curse the glory and ambition which keeps me from the soul of my life.
" "Whenever I am troubled as to how things will turn out "I put my hand to my heart where throbs your likeness.
"I have but to look at it and my love is perfect happiness.
" "A kiss on your heart and then another a little lower, much, much lower.
" Josephine would sometimes read his letters aloud to friends.
"Bonaparte," she told them, "is so amusing.
" With Piedmont defeated Bonaparte was now pursuing the Austrians who retreated to the east, bewildered by the 26 year old general and his new way of making war.
In the 18th century, there were nobles commanding on both sides and they had a certain code.
The armies would maneuver and very often if one had the other in check that would be the end of it, there would be no fight.
Napoleon was, in a way, the first modern general.
He did not accommodate those old codgers on the other side at all.
He attacks every day.
He attacks when it snows, he attacks at night he attacks when it's cold is not the way of game is played.
He looks for the enemy, fights it and when they assume that he's going to stop, he continues.
The next day he fights again, it surprises them.
As the Austrians fled their rear guard hoped to slow Bonaparte down by making a stand at the little Italian town of Lodi.
They fortified a narrow wooden bridge with 14 cannon and three battalions and dared Bonaparte to cross it.
The general ordered a simple frontal assault on the bridge.
Everything would depend on the courage of his men.
He had earned their admiration with his rapid string of victories.
Now he would find out if he also had their faith.
How do you incite men to do something like that? It's charisma, I mean, he's got tremendous presence.
Napoleon was a master at motivating his soldiers.
Victory always goes a long way.
The more they win, the harder they get to stop.
His troops were pretty well hepped up.
They'd been chasing Austrians now for weeks and they went forward.
There are no tactics at all.
The troops come in so enthusiastically and quickly it surprises the enemy.
It's just a question of enthusiasm everyone throws themselves into it, everyone risks death.
With his men facing withering enemy fire Bonaparte was in the thick of it.
He was actually up there laying in the cannon which is a corporal's job.
But he was always up there with them.
This is a man with absolute courage.
He is wherever he is needed.
If he's needed up at the very front to encourere people, is there.
He takes physical risks even if cannon balls fall close to him and this happened on several occasions, he is not afraid.
The French made it halfway across the bridge and fell back under a vicious hail of fire.
Then one last charge, and they were across.
The Austrian guns fell silent.
Here, they thought they were safe behind the river holding the bridge and all at once the French come across the bridge beat the living bejesus come out of them.
It's a real spectacular job.
It wasn't a big battle the casualties were not particularly heavy but he had imposed his will on his own men and the enemy, both.
It was not a great victory.
The Austrian army had, in fact, escaped.
But Bonaparte had won the respect and devotion of his men.
He came out all sweaty and grimy and covered with gun smoke.
The troops liked that.
They began calling him the "Little Corporal" right there.
It was: "You identify with us.
You're our corporal.
" This is the moment when he becomes convinced that he has a lucky star and that destiny has chosen him to accomplish great things.
"They haven't seen anything yet" Bonaparte told one of his generals.
"In our time, no one has the slightest conception of what is great.
It is up to me to give them an example.
" Something happened at that moment.
Something happened and perhaps it is truly inexplicable.
There was a spark.
The battle at Lodi convinced Napoleon Bonaparte that he was a man of destiny.
"From that moment," he said, "I foresaw what I might be.
"Already I felt the earth flee from beneath me as if I were being carried into the sky.
" Created, Adapted and syncronyzed by @Goanzaloo.
Notre Dame echoed with the sounds of 400 musicians and singers.
The young man, born on the island of Corsica moved impatiently bored.
Napoleon Bonaparte, 35 years old was about to be crowned Emperor of France.
"I found the crown of France in the gutter," he said "and I picked it up.
" It was December 2, 1804.
Within three years Napoleon's conquests would extend his empire across almost all of Europe and he would rule over 70 million people.
Not since the ancient Caesars had one man held so much power.
Napoleon changed the world.
Here is a man who rises not on the basis of his blood not on the basis of his background but on the basis of his ability.
No one else has appeared like him and dominated the world like he has.
What is Napoleon? It's a hand in a shirt, it's a strange hat.
If you show the hat, if you show the hand in the shirt in Japan, the United States or France everybody will say "Napoleon.
" He was above all ambitious.
He loved power.
He said, "I love power like a musician loves his music.
" He would do almost anything to achieve his ends.
That any one person could rise from humble beginnings to such prominence and, in a matter of a couple days, lose it all-- it's shocking to rise so fast and fall so far.
Napoleon mounted the steps to the altar alone.
Seizing the crown in his own hands he held it aloft then brought it to rest on his own head.
Created, Adapted and syncronyzed by @Goanzaloo.
That morning, he had quietly told his brother "If only our father could see us now.
" PART ONE: TO DESTINY In the spring of 1769 Letizia and Carlo Buonaparte were crossing the mountains that straddled the interior of the island of Corsica.
They were Corsican patriots determined to repel a French army that had invaded their tiny island nation.
The Corsicans were nearly about 100,000 to 120,000 people of peasant or shepherd origin.
They had very few firearms, very little gunpowder and that was all.
They had to defend themselves against the 22 million population of France then the most advanced country in Europe.
The Corsicans never stood a chance.
After a year of fighting leaving thousands dead and wounded they were defeated, and Letizia and Carlo were going home.
Letizia was six months pregnant.
That summer, Letizia was celebrating the Feast of the Assumption when she felt her first labor pains.
Latter that day, August 15 1769, She gave birth to her son.
Napoleone, Napoleone Buonaparte.
Born just after the bitter French conquest Napoleon would spend his childhood hating France the nation he would one day rule.
"I was born when Corsica was perishing" Napoleon later wrote.
"30,000 Frenchmen spewed on to our shores drowning the throne of liberty in waves of blood.
" "The cries of the dying, the groans of the oppressed and tears of despair surrounded my cradle from the hour of my birth.
" Corsica was now a French colony.
Suspended in the Mediterranean between France and Italy for centuries Corsicans had fiercely resisted invaders: Romans, Moors, Genoese.
After the French victory Corsican rebels fled to the mountains where they continued to fight on.
But Napoleon's father Carlo, a 23 year old university student, readily submitted.
Soon he was wearing powdered wigs, embroidered waistcoats and silver-buckled shoes.
Napoleon never forgave him for betraying his Corsican heritage.
He would later say harshly that his father was rather "too fond of pleasure.
" I think Napoleon always held a grudge against his father for having submitted.
But poor Carlo, he knew he had lost the battle he realized that the French were there so he had live with them and make the best of it.
Carlo began practicing law won election to the Corsican assembly and rose in the esteem of the French rulers.
But Napoleon rarely had a good thing to say about him.
He saved his praise for his mother the beautiful, strong-willed Letizia.
"As a mother," he would say, "she was without equal.
" He was obsessed by her, fascinated by her praised her enormously.
She was a very tough and determined little woman.
13 times pregnant, she had eight surviving children.
He says that all his success in life was due to the training she gave him.
Letizia was a hard, austere woman, toughened by war who punished her children to teach them sacrifice and discipline.
"She sometimes made me go to bed without supper" Napoleon remembered "as if there were nothing to eat in the house.
"One had to learn to suffer and not let others see it.
Even her tenderness was severe.
" The mother.
"What a man!" Napoleon said.
"She has the head of a man on the body of a woman.
" Carlo and Letizia owned a house in the country as well as one in the city, a mark of their status.
They were Corsican aristocrats, but they were not rich.
With 8 children they struggled just to get by on an island that had been impoverished for centuries.
There was nothing, the ambitious couple believed that Corsica could offer them or their children.
Only one country could, the country that had vanquished their own, France.
As a representative of the Corsican parliament Carlo traveled to Versailles.
There, he saw the splendor of the French court in all its majesty.
France was the envy of Europe.
Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, Spain none had more people or greater wealth.
While America was just beginning its experiment with democracy Versailles gave testimony to the power of kings.
Carlo was an awestruck provincial.
Rumblings of discontent with King Louis XVI and aristocratic privilege were no concern of his.
That Queen Marie Antoinette and a frivolous court were draining France of precious resources did nothing to diminish Carlo's delight in everything he saw.
He dreamed that one day his children would become noblemen in that glittering citadel of power in which he had no place.
For years, Carlo had nourished a plan.
In Versailles, he saw it come true: he secured Napoleon a scholarship to a school in France.
Napoleon's father was a social climber.
.
enormous ambition.
He got his children a chance in life and Napoleon used it.
Napoleon set foot in France for the first time in the winter of 1778, a thin, sallow nine-year-old accustomed to the warmth of the Mediterranean suddenly alone on the windswept plains of northern France.
A scholarship boy at the Royal Military College at Brienne-le-Chateau.
He could hardly speak French.
For the next five years there would be no holidays, no visits home.
He had no love of France.
He still thought of himself as a grudging subject of an alien king.
He thinks of himself as a Corsican.
He is surrounded by students who are the children of French aristocrats and they have nothing in common with this little foreigner.
And since he is quite proud, he becomes a loner.
Somber, aloof, unpopular Napoleon responded to classmates who made fun of his accent and his yellow complexion with defiance.
"I will do these French all the mischief I can" he told a classmate.
Napoleon became a Francophobe.
He hated France and the French.
And he had a hard time getting over this.
Napoleon would one day turn his sympathies toward France but not without years of resentment and struggle.
He was 15 when he was promoted to the royal military Academy in Paris.
Along with the sons of some of France's greatest families he would learn the splendors of French civilization.
The Royal Academy was as much a finishing school turning officers into gentleman as a war college.
"We were magnificently fed and served," Bonaparte said "treated in every way like officers possessed of great wealth.
" The poor Corsican teenager still felt like an outsider.
He had entered a world of opulence and luxury but it only served to fuel his scorn for the privilege and snobbery of the French nobility.
One teacher described him as "quiet and solitary, frightfully egotistical proud, ambitious, aspiring to everything.
" "He will go far," his school report read "in favorable circumstances.
" He began his apprenticeship as a soldier when he was 16 a lowly second lieutenant training with the best artillery unit in the French army.
He grew expert at sighting a gun handling rammer and shot, deploying men.
One of the greatest careers in military history had begun.
Napoleon's real foundation as a soldier was the training he got as a regimental officer.
He could cast cannon.
He could build gun carriages.
He had to learn the duties of every type of cannoneer and pretty soon you find that he's a very efficient company officer.
During this time, Napoleon showed a real desire to learn.
He read history, a lot of military memoirs law, a little science.
He was very affected by reading Rousseau and the philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment liberty, equality, the abolition of privileges.
He is in the process of discovering himself.
But for a soldier born in Corsica the promise of liberty and equality was only a dream.
Bonaparte knew he can't could go nowhere.
He feels that the regime will not let him have the position he position dreamed.
The top positions are reserved for the noblemen while Napoleon comes from minor nobility, poor people.
Frustrated in his military ambitions Bonaparte dreamed of becoming famous as an author wrote a brief history of Corsica even tried his hand at a novel.
He was angry at this regime for condemning him just to dream of his destiny.
He could only write novels but he wanted his life to be like these novels and that was not possible under the old regime.
He knows that he's capable of great things.
He felt that perhaps is destined for greatness but at that point, how can he possibly believe it.
He's bored to death.
"Always alone among men," Bonaparte wrote "I come home to dream by myself "and to give myself over to all the forces of my melancholy.
"My thoughts dwell on death.
"What fury drives me to wish for my own destruction? No doubt because I see no place for myself in this world.
" It was the Revolution that would set Bonaparte free.
On July 14, 1789, Paris erupted.
Angry crowds stormed through the streets crying liberty, equality, brotherhood.
France was thrown into turmoil.
The monarchy itself tottered on the edge of destruction.
A defiant National Assembly challenged the absolute right of the king stripped nobles and clergy of their ancient feudal privileges fracturing a social order that had endured for centuries.
After years of injustice and inequality the Revolution had begun.
It would take years before it would end.
As the Revolution gained momentum Bonaparte was serving in the army far from Paris.
He distrusted the violent mobs but welcomed the changes transforming the country.
He is certainly not a revolutionary before the beginning of the Revolution.
But Bonaparte welcomes the Revolution as good news.
It almost has a religious impact for him.
Because all of a sudden he feels that the Revolution is going to open up French society.
DECLARATION OF THE RIGHTS OF MAN It would abolish privileges, put an end to hierarchies and the kind of condescension from which Napoleon had suffered while he was growing up.
Bonaparte was a man of his times and to be 20 years old in 1789 is very important.
Napoleon's destiny and the destiny of the whole country become the same.
In the summer of 1792, Bonaparte was on leave in Paris and witnessed the last gasp of the French monarchy.
In June, a mob stormed the Tuileries palace and forced the king to wear the red revolutionary bonnet.
In August, the mob massacred the king's Swiss Guards.
King Louis XVI was dethroned.
The French Republic was proclaimed that fall.
Napoleon wants to be part of this new world.
He wants to play a role.
And he starts in a place he knows very well.
He starts with Corsica.
Bonaparte was 23, an idealistic revolutionary when he took leave of absence from the French army and returned to Corsica.
The French Republic had made Corsica a part of France and given Corsicans all the rights and liberties of French citizens.
Bonaparte, a lieutenant in the island's National Guard threw himself into Corsican politics.
Pasquale Paoli was the island's governor.
Paoli had been Bonaparte's childhood hero, the leader of the Corsican war against France.
Now Bonaparte dreamed of rising to power standing by pauli said.
But he would be bitterly disappointed.
Paoli did not trust him.
A"ragazzone inesperto," Paoli called him "a big, inexperienced boy.
" The Corsican patriot thought Bonaparte too ambitious too self-centered, too sympathetic to France.
Bonaparte and Paoli are on totally different wavelengths.
Paoli retains the idea that Corsica should be independent.
By this time, Napoleon Bonaparte is perfectly comfortable with a Corsica that is part of revolutionary France.
He's kind of a dual personality, both a Corsican and a Frenchman.
But for the longest time Napoleon ignored that he was French.
he had been French for a long time, but did not know.
Napoleon felt, by the army and by natural feeling linked with France.
This long education at school in France had changed him a good deal.
Bonaparte soon became the leader of a faction opposed to Paoli.
Clan rivalry ran deep on the island intensifying the political struggle between the two men.
Paoli's partisans and Bonaparte's were soon at war.
In the end, Paoli proved too strong.
Bonaparte's home was sacked and he was forced to flee to the mountains.
The Corsican assembly declared Bonaparte and his entire family "traitors and enemies of the Fatherland condemned to perpetual execration and infamy.
" Bonaparte no longer had the right to live in Corsica.
He had been given a death sentence by his own people.
His idealism shaken, Bonaparte wrote his brother: "Among so many conflicting ideas "the honest man is confused and distressed.
"Since one must take sides "one might as well choose the side which is victorious.
Considering the alternative, it is better to eat than be eaten.
" The defeat in Corsica, the break with his hero Paoli had toughened him, made him shrewd and turned him toward France.
From the time when there is this breakup with Paoli's Corsica he is French, he wants to be French, heisFrench.
On June 10, 1793, he set sail for France with his widowed mother, three brothers and three sisters a refugee family carryingey owned in the world.
24 years old he was banished from the land of his birth forever.
Failure mostly, frustration.
He couldn't do what he wanted to do.
But when he got away from Corsica his ambition was so great that it swallowed up small aims, like doing something in Corsica.
It became the ambition to control France and then to control Europe and possibly the world.
His ambition swallowed up his childhood hopes and failures.
Bonaparte returned to France to find the French fighting among themselves.
The king had been executed.
The queen and thousands more followed him to the guillotine.
There were cities in revolt; uprisings in the provinces.
Maximilien Robespierre was in charge now.
The austere, moralizing leader suspended the constitution vowing to save the Republic from its enemies at any cost.
The Revolution turned into the Terror.
Torn by civil war France was also at war with almost all of Europe.
Austria, Spain, Prussia and Great Britain were bent on destroying the new French Republic while French radicals promised to help "all peoples rise against their rulers.
" Reinstated in the army as an artillery captain Bonaparte was ordered to Toulon, a city of 28,000 on the southern coast that had rebelled against the Republic throwing its port open to the English.
The British fleet defended the city from the harbor.
24-year-old Bonaparte thought he knew how to drive them out.
He argued that if his soldiers could seize the heights commanding the harbor they could bombard the fleet drive it away, and the city would fall.
It was a simple plan, but none of the generals would listen.
The generals in Toulon were total incompetents or a little worse.
Finally, a fairly competent general showed up listened to Napoleon's plans and said, "Naturally.
" This would be Bonaparte's first great chance.
With aristocratic officers fleeing the country there was suddenly a vacuum-- an opportunity for rapid promotion for soldiers who could prove themselves under fire.
Bonaparte fought bravely, leading his men in the assault on the fort guarding the heights; suffering a wound in the thigh from an enemy bayonet.
Ten ships went up in flames.
The British fled.
Toulon was recaptured and Bonaparte promoted.
In just three months he had risen from captain to brigadier general.
his young officer brought with him a rare fearlessness and the most indefatigable energy," one general wrote.
"If he needed a moment's rest he would take it lying on the ground wrapped in his overcoat.
" Toulon is important in Napoleon's life because that's where everything started.
But it must be said his actions were nothing special.
Any good young officer would have done the same thing but the job fell to Napoleon, and that made him known.
The Republic continued to fight for its life still clashing with enemies beyond its borders still in turmoil at home.
With France in chaos, threatened in on all sides Robespierre showed no mercy in his efforts to bring about unity and order.
"Liberty," he said, "cannot be secured unless criminal lose their head.
Determined to make his voice heard Bonaparte wrote a political tract in support of Robespierre.
The young soldier hated the Terror but he hated chaos even more.
Bonaparte is really a man of order.
For him orders has to serve ideals exactly the idea of Robespierre.
It is necessary to suspend liberties in the name of liberty.
In order to save liberty, to save the Republic it's necessary to suspend individual liberties.
In the summer of 1794 Robespierre goverment fail.
Now it was the turn of those who made the Terror to die including Robespierre.
In the spring of 1795, Bonaparte headed for Paris.
Now a brigadier general, he was determined to rise still higher.
France had a new constitutional government.
The guillotine, the riots in the street the war still raging along the frontier all seemed forgotten.
"No one," wrote a contemporary, "thinks of anything now but eating and drinking and pleasure.
" The rich indulged themselves in flamboyant display entertaining lavishly and dressing a la sauvage.
Bonaparte frequented the salons where the women who dominated Paris society held court.
"The women here," he wrote his brother "are the center of importance.
"Here alone, of all places on Earth they appear to hold the reins of government.
" But they wanted little to do with him.
He was just another ambitious young soldier.
"I can still picture him," one noblewoman remembered.
"He wore badly made dirty boots "and a nasty round hat pulled down over his eyes.
"An overall sickly effect was created by this thinness and his yellow complexion.
" Bonaparte seemed to have come to a dead end.
He was desperate for promotion, but no one paid any attention.
"If this continues," he wrote his brother "I shall end by not stepping aside when a carriage rushes past.
" Then, political turmoil once again gave him his chance.
On October 5, 1795 crowds of Parisians stormed through the streets alongside national guardsmen bent on restoring the monarchy.
The rebellion threatened to topple the Republic.
The government called on Bonaparte to repel the attack.
There wasn't much other choice, actually.
When this rebellion broke there aren't any competent generals in Paris.
But here is the young Bonaparte he's a man of conviction, puthimin.
Napoleon was not one to pussyfoot around.
He would use all his weapons.
Nobody had really used cannon on the Paris mobs before.
He was willing to shoot.
He waited till he could see the whites of their eyes.
Almost in one blast, the whole thing was over.
He probably killed a hundred people.
He was not a very popular man with the rank and file the man on the street in Paris, after that.
"The enemy attacked us," Bonaparte wrote his brother.
"We killed a great many of them.
"Now all is quiet.
I could not be happier.
" Three weeks later, he was made a full general Commander of the Army of the Interior.
He was 26.
Bonaparte was now a man to be reckoned with.
He was driving through Paris in a fine carriage wearing new clothes drenching himself in eau de cologne.
The unsophisticated general was no ladies' man but he had fallen in love.
Her name was Marie-Josephe-Rose de Beauharnais.
Everyone called her "Rose"; Bonaparte called her "Josephine.
" She was a Creole aristocrat from colony of Martinique a 32-year-old widow with two small children deep in debt, trying to make her way in Paris alone.
Languid, with a nonchalance shading into indolence she was known as a woman of refinement, charm and grace.
It was said that "she even went to bed gracefully.
" Josephine is a woman who has a lot of charm, sensuality and if not beauty, at least agile and undulant movements, Beauty is something we all admire but beauty without charm is like a meal without spices.
Bonaparte was dazzled by her.
"I was naturally timid among women," he said.
"Madame de Beauharnais was the first woman who gave me any degree of confidence.
" Josephine was what might be called a slightly fast woman.
She'd been married young.
Her husband had died at the guillotine.
She'd had an affair with somebody that helped her out and it was well known she had affairs with men in high French society.
No one stood higher than Paul Barras the most powerful figure in the new government.
Josephine was his mistress a woman of influence in the most fashionable salons in Paris.
Bonaparte saw her in a world of power.
She was at the center of society.
She had all these connections.
She was very much someone who could be useful to him and then I think he just fell madly in love with her.
Josephine lived in a little cottage set in a pleasant garden.
Some said it was Barras who paid the rent.
But Barras was growing tired of her.
Now Bonaparte visited her there.
"Sweet and incomparable Josephine," he wrote her "I awake full of you.
"The memory of last night's intoxicating pleasures has left no rest to my senses.
" Josephine loved love, and she was a very good lover.
Bonaparte did not have any experience.
She was the one who introduced him to love.
"Sweet and matchless Josephine how strangely you work upon my heart.
"Yes, one night has taught me how far your portrait falls short of yourself.
"A thousand kisses, mio dolce amor but give me none back, for they set my blood on fire.
" Josephine seemed amused by her new lover.
Although she knew how to please him she did not return his passion.
When Bonaparte proposed marriage, she hesitated.
She wasn't atractive to him, at all.
In fact, she told a friend later that she for a long time she had to overcome a feeling of repugnance.
He was so serious and he had no sense of humor.
He was skinny.
His hair was kind of hanging and he was unkempt.
But she knows her beauty is vanishing.
Already her teeth are bad, she's getting wrinkles.
Napoleon doesn't see it but others see it, and she sees it.
Her looks fading and her debts mounting she needed a protector.
On March 9, 1796, Napoleon Bonaparte and Josephine de Beauharnais were married.
A gold-enameled medallion was the general's wedding gift to his bride.
On it were inscribed the words "To Destiny.
" The honeymoon lasted two days.
Bonaparte was sent to the Italian Alps.
Josephine former lover Paul Barras had help win him an appointment as supreme commander of all French forces in Italy.
His assignment was to challenge the empire of Austria and their Italian allies.
He had never commanded an army before.
Young and untested, no one expected very much from him especially his own generals.
Everyone makes fun of him before he gets there this little general who perhaps owes his command to his wife.
Then he arrives.
And within a few moments the veterans who made fun of him understand exactly: he is in charge.
"I don't know why," one of his generals said "but the little bastard scares me.
" Bonapart's army was in no condition to win battles.
It had been stagnating under incompetent commanders in the foothills of the Alps for almost two years.
This army was destitute.
The country was broke.
They couldn't pay them, they couldn't feed them they couldn't clothe them.
The only thing they could do was to tell them they invaded enemy territory and find what they lacked.
Then comes this young whippersnapper this 26 year old not even a Frenchman, a Corsican-- and in his bad French he says, "If you stick with me I'll have you in the most fertile valleys in the world.
" "Soldiers," he proclaimed, "you are naked and ill-fed.
"No fame shines upon you.
"I will lead you into the most fertile plains in the world.
"Rich provinces, great cities will lie in your power; you will find there honor, glory and riches.
" He really enthralls them.
He's a terrific actor.
He is capable of laughing, smiling.
And then suddenly, he is passionate-- inspiring fear, horror and anger.
On April 2, 1796, Bonaparte led his army forward.
He was badly outnumbered.
38,000 French soldiers faced 38,000 Austrians and their allies, 25,000 Piedmontese.
Bonaparte planned to isolate the Austrians from the Piedmontese, than conquerly each separately.
He was strike first at Piedmontese.
Napoleon's principle was always to try to have superior numbers at a given place.
So he tried to divide his enemies to compensate for having less men.
He goes up into the mountains, he spreads his forces out-- the enemy doesn't know where he is and so they begin to spread their forces out.
Then at the last minute he quickly concentrates his forces he achieves mass superiority at one point and then blasts them.
It was lightning.
Napoleon's armies could go up to 30 miles a day.
The Piedmontese were rolling on along at about six or seven miles a day.
Napoleon says: "There is nothing fears radicals about war.
You do what you have to do, you do it fast and you surprise the enemy and shock him if you can".
Move quickly and be ruthless about it.
In just two weeks he won six battles, took thousand of prisoners and broke the back of Piedmont's army.
One Piedmontese officer would later complain: "They sent a young madman "who attacks right, left and from the rear.
It's an intolerable way of making war.
" On April 26, Piedmont surrendered.
Bonaparte demanded gold and silver, and paid his troops; the first real money they had seen in years.
"Soldiers," he said, "we thank you.
" While Bonaparte led his soldiers into battle he never stopped thinking of Josephine writing her letter after letter, day after day.
"Not a day goes by without my loving you," he wrote her.
"Not a night without holding you in my arms.
"I curse the glory and ambition which keeps me from the soul of my life.
" "Whenever I am troubled as to how things will turn out "I put my hand to my heart where throbs your likeness.
"I have but to look at it and my love is perfect happiness.
" "A kiss on your heart and then another a little lower, much, much lower.
" Josephine would sometimes read his letters aloud to friends.
"Bonaparte," she told them, "is so amusing.
" With Piedmont defeated Bonaparte was now pursuing the Austrians who retreated to the east, bewildered by the 26 year old general and his new way of making war.
In the 18th century, there were nobles commanding on both sides and they had a certain code.
The armies would maneuver and very often if one had the other in check that would be the end of it, there would be no fight.
Napoleon was, in a way, the first modern general.
He did not accommodate those old codgers on the other side at all.
He attacks every day.
He attacks when it snows, he attacks at night he attacks when it's cold is not the way of game is played.
He looks for the enemy, fights it and when they assume that he's going to stop, he continues.
The next day he fights again, it surprises them.
As the Austrians fled their rear guard hoped to slow Bonaparte down by making a stand at the little Italian town of Lodi.
They fortified a narrow wooden bridge with 14 cannon and three battalions and dared Bonaparte to cross it.
The general ordered a simple frontal assault on the bridge.
Everything would depend on the courage of his men.
He had earned their admiration with his rapid string of victories.
Now he would find out if he also had their faith.
How do you incite men to do something like that? It's charisma, I mean, he's got tremendous presence.
Napoleon was a master at motivating his soldiers.
Victory always goes a long way.
The more they win, the harder they get to stop.
His troops were pretty well hepped up.
They'd been chasing Austrians now for weeks and they went forward.
There are no tactics at all.
The troops come in so enthusiastically and quickly it surprises the enemy.
It's just a question of enthusiasm everyone throws themselves into it, everyone risks death.
With his men facing withering enemy fire Bonaparte was in the thick of it.
He was actually up there laying in the cannon which is a corporal's job.
But he was always up there with them.
This is a man with absolute courage.
He is wherever he is needed.
If he's needed up at the very front to encourere people, is there.
He takes physical risks even if cannon balls fall close to him and this happened on several occasions, he is not afraid.
The French made it halfway across the bridge and fell back under a vicious hail of fire.
Then one last charge, and they were across.
The Austrian guns fell silent.
Here, they thought they were safe behind the river holding the bridge and all at once the French come across the bridge beat the living bejesus come out of them.
It's a real spectacular job.
It wasn't a big battle the casualties were not particularly heavy but he had imposed his will on his own men and the enemy, both.
It was not a great victory.
The Austrian army had, in fact, escaped.
But Bonaparte had won the respect and devotion of his men.
He came out all sweaty and grimy and covered with gun smoke.
The troops liked that.
They began calling him the "Little Corporal" right there.
It was: "You identify with us.
You're our corporal.
" This is the moment when he becomes convinced that he has a lucky star and that destiny has chosen him to accomplish great things.
"They haven't seen anything yet" Bonaparte told one of his generals.
"In our time, no one has the slightest conception of what is great.
It is up to me to give them an example.
" Something happened at that moment.
Something happened and perhaps it is truly inexplicable.
There was a spark.
The battle at Lodi convinced Napoleon Bonaparte that he was a man of destiny.
"From that moment," he said, "I foresaw what I might be.
"Already I felt the earth flee from beneath me as if I were being carried into the sky.
" Created, Adapted and syncronyzed by @Goanzaloo.