Links for napoleon videos

1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Os9hQxg3qGM&feature=player_embededd
2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRX1XmNxmY0&feature=related
3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIWnDM50erw&feature=related

Last days of Napoleon

Now a prosperous, post-Soviet city, the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius has had a turbulent and often violent history. Since its founding in the mid-thirteenth century, Lithuania, and especially its capital, was often at the center of conflicts between Russia and Poland, and more recently, the Soviet Union and Germany. When a mass grave was discovered by construction workers in the Siaures Miestelis ("Northern Town") section of Vilnius last fall, archaeologists called to the site suspected the bones belonged to Lithuanian victims of the Nazi occupation. Between 1941 and 1944, the Gestapo and SS annihilated the Jewish community, murdering some 200,000 people, the circumstances of whose disappearance have never been fully documented. Another possible culprit was the Soviet KGB, or its predecessor, the NKVD. The intelligence agencies' brutality over the 47 years of the Red Army's occupation of Lithuania is well known--more than 250,000 Lithuanians were sent to Siberian work camps. The location of the gravesite next to the former barracks of a Soviet tank division fueled this theory.

Archaeologist Justina Poskiene and physical anthropologist Rimantas Jankauskas of the University of Vilnius eventually solved the mystery. In addition to 1,000 to 2,000 human skeletons, they recovered buttons, medals, coins, and scraps of fabric, all pointing to the Napoleonic era. What they had found was the first mass grave of soldiers from Napoleon's Grand Army.

100 days empire

The Hundred Days, sometimes known as the Hundred Days of Napoleon or Napoleon's Hundred Days for specificity, marked the period between Emperor Napoleon I of France's return from exile on Elba to Paris on 20 March 1815 and the second restoration of King Louis XVIII on 8 July 1815 (a period of 111 days)^. This period saw the War of the Seventh Coalition, and includes the Waterloo Campaign and the Neapolitan War. The phrase les Cent Jours was first used by the prefect of Paris, Gaspard, comte de Chabrol, in his speech welcoming the King.

Napoleon returned while the Congress of Vienna was sitting. On 13 March, seven days before Napoleon reached Paris, the powers at the Congress of Vienna declared him an outlaw; four days later the United Kingdom, Russia, Austria and Prussia, members of the Seventh Coalition, bound themselves to put 150,000 men each into the field to end his rule. This set the stage for the last conflict in the Napoleonic Wars, the defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo, the restoration of the French monarchy for the second time and the permanent exile of Napoleon to the distant island of Saint Helena, where he died in May 1821.

Conflict with Britain

Unlike its many coalition partners, Britain remained at war throughout the period of the Napoleonic Wars. Protected by naval supremacy (in the words of Admiral Jervis to the House of Lords "I do not say, my Lords, that the French will not come. I say only they will not come by sea"), the United Kingdom maintained low-intensity land warfare on a global scale for over a decade. Despite such assurance by Admiral Jervis, evidence can still be seen of the beacon warning towers built in the event of such an invasion, for example, at Eston Nab, near Middlesbrough. The British Army gave long-term support to the Spanish rebellion in the Peninsular War of 1808–1814. Protected by topography, assisted by massive Spanish guerrilla activity, and sometimes falling back to massive earthworks (The Lines of Torres Vedras), Anglo-Portuguese forces succeeded in harassing French troops for several years. By 1815, the British Army would play the central role in the final defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo.

The Treaty of Amiens (25 March 1802) resulted in peace between the UK and France, but satisfied neither side. Both parties dishonored parts of it: the French intervened in the Swiss civil strife (Stecklikrieg) and occupied several coastal cities in Italy, while the UK occupied Malta. Bonaparte tried to exploit the brief peace at sea to restore the colonial rule in the rebellious Antilles. The expedition, though initially successful, would soon turn to a disaster, with the French commander and Bonaparte’s brother-in-law, Charles Leclerc, dying of yellow fever and almost his entire force destroyed by the disease combined with the fierce attacks by the rebels.

Hostilities between Britain and France renewed on 18 May 1803. The Coalition war-aims changed over the course of the conflict: a general desire to restore the French monarchy became closely linked to the struggle to stop Bonaparte.

Bonaparte declared France an Empire on 18 May 1804 and crowned himself Emperor at Notre-Dame on 2 December.

Having lost most of its colonial empire in the preceding decades, French efforts were focused mainly in Europe. Haiti had won its independence, the Louisiana Territory had been sold to the United States of America, and British naval superiority threatened any potential for France to establish colonies outside Europe. Beyond minor naval actions against British imperial interests, the Napoleonic Wars were much less global in scope than preceding conflicts such as Seven Years' War which historians would term a "world war".

In 1806, Napoleon issued the series of Berlin Decrees, which brought into effect the Continental System. This policy aimed to eliminate the threat from Britain by closing French-controlled territory to its trade. Britain maintained a standing army of just 220,000 at the height of the Napoleonic Wars, whereas France's strength peaked at over 2,500,000, as well as several hundred thousand national guardsmen that Napoleon could draft into the military if necessary; however, British subsidies paid for a large proportion of the soldiers deployed by other coalition powers, peaking at about 450,000 in 1813. The Royal Navy effectively disrupted France's extra-continental trade—both by seizing and threatening French shipping and by seizing French colonial possessions—but could do nothing about France's trade with the major continental economies and posed little threat to French territory in Europe. Also, France's population and agricultural capacity far outstripped that of Britain. However, Britain had the greatest industrial capacity in Europe, and its mastery of the seas allowed it to build up considerable economic strength through trade. That sufficed to ensure that France could never consolidate its control over Europe in peace. However, many in the French government believed that cutting Britain off from the Continent would end its economic influence over Europe and isolate it.

Timeline

1796
Napoleon defeats Austrians in Italy, and establishes Lombard Republic.
1798-9
Napoleon lands in Egypt (to hit Britain indirectly) and defeats the Mamelukes. A British naval victory at Aboukir cuts off his army from France. He returns to Paris, over-throws the directory and becomes Consul.
1799-1802
War of the coalition (Britain, Austria, Russia) against France, fought in Austria, Switzerland, Italy, the Mediterranean, and the Baltic.
After Austria and Russia conclude peace, England becomes isolated.
 1804
Napoleon crowned Emperor in the presence of Pope Pius VII in Paris
1805
Resumption of warfare against the coalition joined by Sweden and Naples. Napoleon defeats an Austrian army at Ulm and enters Vienna. 
Oct 20, 1805
British Admiral Nelson wins the naval battle of  Trafalgar, which secures British supremacy at sea.
Napoleon abandons plans for an invasion of England.
1812
Russia discontinues embargo on England. Napoleon invades Russia.
Russian Campaign by the Grand Army ends in a catastrophic retreat from Moscow, and with the loss of 500,000 men. Napoleon's defeat in Russia revives the national resistance of European peoples. Liberation of Madrid. Liberation of Germany, Holland and Upper Italy.
 1813
Prussia and Austria declare war and defeat Napoleon in the battle of Nations at  Leipzig.
 1815
Napoleon returns for 100 days but is again beaten in the battle of Waterloo by the combined armies of England and Prussia. Napoleon surrenders to the English and is exiled to St. Helena.

Conquests

Rupture of the peace of Amiens in May 1803 until the fall of the Empire in 1814 and the interlude of the Hundred Days in 1815, the war was continual. The historians are in disagreement on the causes of this permanent war. Some accuse the insatiable ambition of the emperor: new Alexandre, it believed himself intended to dominate the world; for others, its ambition was restricted to organize new Europe dominated by France.

Others still point out the heritage of the Revolution: Napoleon was to defend the natural borders that its adversaries and especially Great Britain did not want to recognize in France. Noticing that Great Britain was present in all the successive coalitions directed against France, others reflect ahead the role of the British imperialism, which could not accept the Napoleonean attempts to compete with it in the economic domain: even when it wished peace, Napoleon ran up against the British opposition.

One also could show the logical bond, after 1807, between the continental Blockade and the interventions in Italy, in the Baltic, in the Iberian peninsula and, in 1812, in Russia: it was necessary, so that the blockade was effective, to control all the shores by where the British goods had been able to unload, to oblige the tsar, the old ally, to respect its engagements.

There is in all these explanations a share of truth, but none can with it only claim to incarnate it. One could also add the hatred of the aristocracies against that which they presented like the parvenu of the Revolution, the hatred of the people which forged in the suffering of oppression the national feeling which will raise them in 1813.

Starting from a certain level of conquests, Napoleon was taken in gears which continuously threw it in an escape ahead perhaps which it did not wish always: it was inevitably to find its term.

Military Career

Despite being posted on the French mainland, Napoleon was able to spend much of the next eight years in Corsica thanks to his ferocious letter writing and rule bending, as well as the effects of the French Revolution and sheer good luck. There he played an active part in political and military matters, initially supporting the Corsican rebel Pasquale Paoli, a former patron of Carlo Buonaparte. Military promotion also followed, but Napoleon became opposed to Paoli and when civil war erupted in 1793 the Buonapartes fled to France, where they adopted the French version of their name: Bonaparte. Historians have frequently used the Corsican affair as a microcosm of Napoleon's career.

The French Revolution had decimated the republic's officer class and favoured individuals could achieve swift promotion, but Napoleon's fortunes rose and fell as one set of patrons came and went. By December 1793 Bonaparte was the hero of Toulon, a General and favourite of Augustin Robespierre; shortly after the wheel of revolution turned and Napoleon was arrested for treason. Tremendous political 'flexibility' saved him and the patronage of Vicomte Paul de Baras, soon to be one of France's three 'Directors', followed.

Napoleon became a hero again in 1795, defending the government from angry counter-revolutionary forces; Baras rewarded Napoleon by promoting him to high military office, a position with access to the political spine of France. Bonaparte swiftly grew into one of the country's most respected military authorities - largely by never keeping his opinions to himself - and he married Josephine de Beauharnais. Commentators have considered this an unusual match ever since.

In 1796 France attacked Austria. Napoleon was given command of the Army of Italy - the post he wanted - whereupon he welded a young, starving and disgruntled army into a force which won victory after victory against, theoretically stronger, Austrian opponents. Aside from the Battle of Arcole, where Napoleon was lucky rather than clever, the campaign is legitimately legendary. Napoleon returned to France in 1797 as the nation's brightest star, having fully emerged from the need for a patron. Ever a great self-publicist, he maintained the profile of a political independent, thanks partly to the newspapers he now ran.

In May 1798 Napoleon left for a campaign in Egypt and Syria, prompted by his desire for fresh victories, the French need to threaten Britain's empire in India and the Directory's concerns that their famous general might seize power. The Egyptian campaign was a military failure (although it had a great cultural impact) and a change of government in France caused Bonaparte to leave - some might say abandon - his army and return in the August of 1799. Shortly after he took part in the Brumaire coup of November 1799, finishing as a member of the Consulate, France's new ruling triumvirate.

Biography

Napoleon was born in Ajaccio, Corsica, on August 15th 1769 to Carlo Buonaparte, a lawyer and political opportunist, and his wife, Marie-Letizia. The Buonaparte's were a wealthy family from the Corsican nobility, although when compared to the great aristocracies of France Napoleon's kin were poor and pretentious. A combination of Carlo's social climbing, Letizia's adultery with the Comte de Marbeuf - Corsica's French military governor - and Napoleon's own ability enabled him to enter the military academy at Brienne in 1779. He moved to the Parisian École Royale Militaire in 1784 and graduated a year later as a second lieutenant in the artillery. Spurred on by his father's death in February 1785, the future emperor had completed in one year a course that often took three.