110 Fun Facts About Napoleon Bonaparte

Napoleon was born in 1769 on which Mediterranean island?

Genoa had ceded the island to France only a year earlier; his first languages were Corsican and Italian.

What was Napoleon's family name at birth, before it was Frenchified?

His paternal ancestors were minor Tuscan nobles who moved to Corsica in the 16th century.

In which Corsican town was Napoleon born, at the Maison Bonaparte?

He was baptised Napoleone di Buonaparte; the house is now a museum.

Napoleon was famously mocked by the British as short. What was his height, according to modern estimates?

British cartoonists called him 'Little Boney', and a nursery rhyme warned children he ate naughty people.

The term 'Napoleon complex' for aggressive short men was inspired by which psychologist's writing?

Adler used Napoleon to illustrate the inferiority complex; the joke is that the man himself was of average height.

The 1793 siege of which French port made Napoleon's name and won him promotion to brigadier general at 24?

It brought him to the attention of Augustin Robespierre, brother of Maximilien.

Whom did Napoleon marry in a civil ceremony on 9 March 1796?

She was the former mistress of Paul Barras and had been born in the French Caribbean; the marriage produced no children.

Napoleon's 1798 expedition to Egypt took along 167 scholars whose discoveries included what?

Their work was published in the Description de l'Égypte; the stone itself ended up in the British Museum after the French surrendered.

Which British admiral destroyed Napoleon's fleet at the Battle of the Nile in 1798?

All but two French vessels were captured or destroyed.

The Battle of the Pyramids in July 1798 was actually fought roughly how far from the pyramids?

The name was good propaganda; the French square formations held off the Mamluk cavalry.

The coup of November 1799 that made Napoleon First Consul is known by which French Republican calendar date?

It overthrew the Directory; 13 Vendémiaire was his earlier crushing of royalist rebels in Paris.

David's portrait shows Napoleon crossing the Alps on a rearing horse. How did he really cross in 1800?

The weather was fine; Napoleon asked to be shown 'calm, mounted on a fiery steed', and Paul Delaroche later painted the mule version.

Chicken Marengo is named after Napoleon's 1800 victory in which country?

The story that his chef improvised it after the battle is probably myth; tomatoes would not have been available.

In 1803 Napoleon sold which territory to the United States for $15 million?

The purchase doubled the size of the United States; Napoleon needed cash for the coming war with Britain.

The civil code Napoleon promulgated in 1804 is still what?

Napoleon did not draft it himself, but chaired many sessions of the four-jurist commission that did.

At his coronation in Notre-Dame on 2 December 1804, what did Napoleon do that surprised observers?

Pope Pius VII had anointed him; Napoleon then placed a replica of Charlemagne's crown on his own head and crowned Joséphine.

Which pope travelled to Paris for Napoleon's coronation?

The same pope later excommunicated Napoleon in 1809.

Beethoven dedicated his Third Symphony to Napoleon but withdrew it in 1804. What is the symphony called?

Beethoven had admired him as First Consul; the withdrawal was partly to protect a noble patron's fee, but he still titled the work 'Bonaparte'.

Napoleon's greatest victory, on 2 December 1805, was fought against Russia and Austria at which battle?

The 'Battle of the Three Emperors' was fought exactly one year after his coronation.

Which centuries-old European institution was dissolved in 1806 after Napoleon's 1805 victory over Austria and Russia?

Napoleon replaced it with the Confederation of the Rhine, a group of German client states.

At which 1805 battle did Nelson smash the French and Spanish fleets, ending Napoleon's invasion hopes?

Nelson died in the action on 21 October 1805.

Napoleon's Continental System, launched with the Berlin Decree of 1806, was an attempt to do what?

Enforcing it drew him into Spain and Russia, the two campaigns that broke his empire.

Which brother did Napoleon make King of Spain in 1808, provoking the Peninsular War?

Louis got Holland and Jérôme Westphalia; Joseph had first been given Naples.

Napoleon divorced Joséphine in 1810 because she had not given him an heir. Whom did he marry that April?

The Habsburg princess bore him a son the following year, styled the King of Rome.

What title did Napoleon give his son, born in 1811?

The boy briefly became Napoleon II when his father abdicated in 1815, though he never ruled.

Roughly what fraction of Napoleon's 450,000-strong 1812 Grande Armée were native French speakers?

Germans, Poles, Italians and others filled the ranks; most never came home.

Which battle in September 1812 forced the Russians to abandon Moscow to Napoleon?

The occupation lasted weeks before the catastrophic winter retreat began.

The Grande Armée crossed the Berezina in November 1812 in temperatures reaching what?

Minus 40 is the one temperature where Celsius and Fahrenheit agree.

Where was the October 1813 Battle of the Nations, Napoleon's decisive defeat, fought?

It was the largest battle of the Napoleonic Wars, and it opened the road to Paris.

After his first abdication in April 1814, Napoleon was exiled as sovereign of which island?

It had 12,000 inhabitants and lay just 10 km off the Tuscan coast, which made escape easy.

When a regiment sent to stop him blocked his road near Grenoble in March 1815, what did Napoleon do?

The soldiers shouted 'Vive l'empereur!' and joined him; Marshal Ney, who had promised to bring him back in an iron cage, defected a week later.

Napoleon's 1815 return from exile to his final defeat is known as what?

He landed at Golfe-Juan on 1 March and abdicated again on 22 June.

Who led the Prussians who arrived late on Napoleon's flank at Waterloo on 18 June 1815?

Wellington's line held off repeated French attacks until the Prussians arrived in force.

Waterloo, the site of Napoleon's final defeat, lies in which modern country?

In 1815 it was part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.

After Waterloo, Napoleon surrendered on 15 July 1815 aboard which British warship?

He had hoped to sail for America but found the port blockaded.

Napoleon spent his final exile on Saint Helena, an island in which ocean?

His home there, Longwood House, was a damp, rat-infested 40-room bungalow.

Napoleon died on 5 May 1821 at what age?

Both the French and British autopsies blamed stomach cancer, the disease that had killed his father; the arsenic-poisoning theory came later.

A theory that Napoleon was poisoned rested on high levels of which element in his hair?

The official cause remains stomach cancer; arsenic was common in wallpaper dyes and hair tonics of the era.

Napoleon's well-preserved body, exhumed in 1840, had been sealed in how many coffins?

Two were metal and two mahogany, all inside a masonry tomb in the Valley of the Geraniums.

Which French king allowed the return of Napoleon's remains to Paris in 1840?

The remains now lie under the dome of Les Invalides.

The Legion of Honour, the nation's highest order of merit, was created by Napoleon in which year?

Republicans disliked it, and it squeaked through the Council of State by 14 votes to 10.

Napoleon founded which institution as the country's first central bank?

It was part of a wave of reforms that also codified law and built a public education system.

Napoleon's Concordat of 1801 was an agreement with whom?

Pius VII recognised the regime, and France recognised Catholicism as the majority religion.

At which subject did the young Napoleon excel at the military academy at Brienne?

He arrived in France at nine speaking little French and always kept a Corsican accent and poor spelling.

Napoleon's brother Louis was made king of which country in 1806?

Louis's son would later reign as Napoleon III.

Napoleon had how many siblings who survived to adulthood, from an elder brother down to young Jérôme?

Five more were stillborn or died in infancy; several of the survivors were given thrones.

Napoleon said 'The future destiny of the child is always the work of' whom?

His mother Letizia's firm discipline was the dominant influence of his childhood.

The night after his 1814 abdication, what did Napoleon attempt?

The poison he had carried since the Russian campaign had lost its potency and he survived.

How much was the 1795 French food-preservation prize, later won by Nicolas Appert, worth?

Appert finally got the money in 1810 on condition he publish his method, laying the ground for canning.

Napoleon reintroduced which institution in the French colonies, one of the darkest marks on his record?

He also banned the entry of black people into France, even as he emancipated Jews and abolished the Spanish Inquisition.

Which marshal vowed to bring Napoleon back to Paris in an iron cage in 1815, then joined him?

Ney was shot for treason after the Bourbon restoration.

Which republic ceded Corsica to France a year before Napoleon was born?

His father had supported Pasquale Paoli in the Corsican war of independence against France.

Aged nine, Napoleon was sent to a religious school in which French town to improve his French?

His mother tongues were Corsican and Italian; he kept a Corsican accent and poor French spelling all his life.

At the École militaire in Paris, Napoleon trained to become an officer in which branch?

He excelled at mathematics but was poor at French and German, and was commissioned into the La Fère artillery regiment in 1785.

Which fortress did Napoleon fail to capture in 1799, forcing his army to march back to Egypt?

He began with 13,000 men; thousands died of disease, mostly bubonic plague, and he allegedly had plague victims poisoned with opium.

The 1807 Tilsit peace talks between Napoleon and Tsar Alexander began on a raft on which river?

The meeting followed Napoleon's crushing victory at Friedland, which cost the Russians up to 30 percent of their army.

Which general led 24,000 French troops across the Pyrenees toward Portugal in October 1807?

Portugal had been reluctant to enforce the blockade against its traditional ally Britain.

What was the name of the damp, rat-infested 40-room bungalow where Napoleon lived on Saint Helena?

He first spent two months at a pavilion at the Briars before the move; he insisted on imperial formality at dinner.

Both autopsy reports concluded Napoleon died of which disease, the same one that killed his father?

The reports attributed death to internal bleeding caused by the cancer; a later arsenic-poisoning theory followed.

What question did the superstitious Napoleon always ask about his generals?

He believed in omens, numerology, fate and lucky stars.

Which US agency was founded in 1908 by Charles Bonaparte, grandson of Napoleon's brother Jérôme?

The FBI began as the Bureau of Investigation, which Charles Bonaparte set up as US attorney general. He belonged to the family's American line and was born in Baltimore.

Which medieval embroidery was shown in Paris in 1803 to sell Napoleon's planned invasion of Britain?

The Bayeux Tapestry shows William of Normandy conquering England in 1066, a handy precedent. Once the invasion was abandoned its propaganda value was gone, and it was sent home to Normandy.

At Schönbrunn Palace in 1809, Napoleon lost to 'the Turk', a fake automaton that played which game?

Chess was the Turk's trick: a master hid inside its cabinet. When Napoleon reportedly tried the same illegal move three times, the machine swept every piece off the board.

Which dictator had the remains of Napoleon's son moved from a Habsburg crypt to Paris in 1940?

Adolf Hitler ordered the transfer during the occupation of France, though the young man's heart and intestines stayed behind, as Habsburg burial custom required.

A popular myth wrongly blames Napoleon's gunners for shooting off which part of the Sphinx at Giza?

The nose was already missing in drawings made in 1737, six decades before the French reached Egypt, and marks on the face show it was pried off with rods or chisels.

What devastated Moscow just as Napoleon's army marched into the city in September 1812?

A citywide fire burned from 14 to 18 September and consumed most of Moscow. The governor had already had the fire brigade's equipment removed or destroyed.

In portraits such as David's Napoleon in His Study, where does the emperor famously rest one hand?

In his waistcoat: the pose was already a portrait convention by the 1750s, meant to signal calm, firm leadership. Portrait painters across the continent and in America copied it.

Which Paris monument did Napoleon commission in 1806, though it took thirty years to finish?

Arc de Triomphe work halted for years and was completed only in 1836. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier from World War I was later placed beneath its vault.

Napoleon's tomb lies under the dome of which Paris complex, also home to France's army museum?

Les Invalides received his body in 1840, but the crypt and its massive sarcophagus took twenty years to complete and were finished only in 1861.

Which actor played the emperor opposite Vanessa Kirby in Ridley Scott's 2023 film Napoleon?

Joaquin Phoenix was reunited with the director of Gladiator, made 23 years earlier, for a film built around the emperor's rise to power and his first marriage.

Which insect replaced the fleur-de-lis as an emblem on Napoleon's imperial coronation robes?

The bee was copied from golden ornaments found in the tomb of Childeric I, a Merovingian monarch, linking the new dynasty to France's most ancient rulers.

Which composer's overture, complete with cannon shots, marks Russia's defeat of Napoleon's invasion?

Pyotr Tchaikovsky wrote the 1812 Overture in 1880, and since a Boston Pops concert in 1974 its cannon and bells have been a fixture of American Fourth of July celebrations.

Which painter's The Third of May 1808 shows Napoleon's soldiers executing civilians in Madrid?

Francisco Goya completed it in 1814, once the French had been driven out, and it later inspired a series by Manet and Picasso's Guernica.

Which word for irregular warfare entered English from Spain's resistance to Napoleon's armies?

Guerrilla is the Spanish diminutive of guerra, literally 'little war', and English picked it up while bands of Spanish peasants and shepherds harried the occupying French.

Napoleon III, emperor of France from 1852 to 1870, was which relative of Napoleon Bonaparte?

His nephew took a different road to the throne: he was France's first elected president, serving from 1848, before he took the imperial title for himself.

Napoleon's second wife, married in 1810, was the great-niece of which earlier queen of France?

Marie Antoinette was the favourite sister of the bride's grandmother, and Napoleon had the wedding follow the protocol used for hers forty years earlier.

Napoleon's first wife was baptised and raised on a sugar plantation on which Caribbean island?

Martinique was home to her family's estate near Les Trois-Îlets, which survives as a museum, though Saint Lucia also claims to be her actual birthplace.

Which bird, copied from Caesar's legions, topped the standards Napoleon gave his regiments?

An eagle cast in bronze went to each regiment in December 1804, and losing one in battle brought shame on men pledged to defend it to the death.

Which Paris museum was renamed for Napoleon in 1803 and filled with art seized by his armies?

The Louvre became the Musée Napoléon at the suggestion of its director, Vivant Denon, but after the emperor's abdication many of the seized works went back to their owners.

Napoleon's marshal Bernadotte was unexpectedly elected crown prince of which kingdom in 1810?

Sweden chose him to succeed a childless monarch, though the courtier who first proposed his name was arrested for his effrontery on returning home.

Which cavalry marshal married Napoleon's sister Caroline and took the throne of Naples in 1808?

Joachim Murat, an innkeeper's son, was rated the foremost cavalry commander of the age, but he ended in front of a firing squad at Pizzo in 1815.

Which relative of Napoleon reclines semi-nude as Venus in Antonio Canova's famous marble?

Pauline had married into the Borghese family, and her husband commissioned the statue. Whether she really posed unclothed remains a matter of debate.

Countess Walewska used her place at Napoleon's court to press for which country's independence?

Poland had been erased as a state in 1795, when Russia, Prussia and Austria divided what was left of it in the last of three partitions.

Which Italian physicist did Napoleon make a count after a demonstration at the Institute of France?

Alessandro Volta had invented the voltaic pile, the first electric battery, in 1799, proving that electricity could be generated chemically.

Which American engineer built the submarine Nautilus in France in 1800 and pitched it to Napoleon?

Robert Fulton built Nautilus years before the steamboats that made his name, and he went on to devise early naval torpedoes for France's enemy, the Royal Navy.

At which Channel port did Napoleon mass barges from 1803 for an invasion that never sailed?

Boulogne was the base of a 200,000-strong Army of England, and Napoleon kept its bored troops busy with constant training and his own ceremonial visits.

Which island did Napoleon seize from the Knights Hospitaller in 1798 on his way to Egypt?

Malta's knights capitulated almost at once, ending 268 years of their rule. Within months the islanders rebelled, and the besieged French garrison gave up to the British in 1800.

Which maritime republic, independent for some 1,100 years, did Napoleon bring to an end in May 1797?

Venice's last doge, Ludovico Manin, abolished the republic as French pressure mounted, and under a secret deal the city was then handed to Austria.

Which Saint-Domingue leader did Napoleon's troops arrest at a parley and ship to a French fortress?

Toussaint Louverture died at the Fort de Joux in 1803, yet his lieutenant fought on and led the Haitian forces to victory over a French army ravaged by yellow fever.

Which Russian marshal, twice shot through the head in earlier wars, abandoned Moscow to Napoleon?

Mikhail Kutuzov survived bullets through the temple in 1774 and 1788. After a war council in the village of Fili, he chose to give up the city and save his army.

Which warrior caste broke against Napoleon's infantry squares at the Battle of the Pyramids?

The Mamluks charged the French squares again and again, losing thousands of men against about 300 French casualties, and the defeat began the decline of their rule.

Antoine-Jean Gros painted Napoleon visiting soldiers stricken by which disease at Jaffa?

Plague victims fill the canvas, which Napoleon commissioned partly to quell reports that he had ordered fifty of his sick men given fatal doses of opium.

Which limping ex-bishop was Napoleon's foreign minister, then secretly dealt with his enemies?

Talleyrand resigned the ministry in 1807 yet kept the emperor's trust, all while dealing secretly with the tsar and Austria's Metternich to undermine his plans.

Which novelist, daughter of the banker Necker, spent years in exile for opposing Napoleon?

Germaine de Staël turned her banishment into the Coppet group, a circle of writers spanning the continent, and claimed to have seen his tyrannical ambitions before most others.

Which exiled royal did Napoleon have seized in Baden and shot at Vincennes in March 1804?

The Duke of Enghien was snatched from his home by French dragoons and shot after a hasty military trial, though there was no proof he had joined any plot.

A bomb missed Napoleon on Christmas Eve 1800 as he drove to the Opéra to hear which Haydn work?

The Creation was being performed in France for the first time that night. The blast in the rue Saint-Nicaise killed several bystanders, yet Napoleon drove on and the audience cheered him.

Which general did Napoleon leave in command in Egypt, only to be assassinated in Cairo?

Kléber took over all French forces there when Napoleon sailed home, and in 1800 he was killed by Suleiman al-Halabi, a Syrian theology student.

At which château did Napoleon abdicate in April 1814 and bid farewell to his Old Guard?

Fontainebleau was where his own marshals pressed him to step down. He signed at a small table that is kept on display, then addressed the Guard in the Court of Honor.

Which château did Napoleon's first wife buy in 1799 while he was away campaigning in Egypt?

Malmaison made him furious at first because of its cost, but she kept it after their divorce and stocked its park with kangaroos, emus, black swans and zebras.

Which of these steps in Napoleon's rise to power came first, when he was only 26?

Crushing a Paris revolt came first, in October 1795: his troops scattered a royalist rising in the streets, the feat that set off his rapid advancement.

What became of the French throne between Napoleon's 1814 abdication and his return a year later?

A Bourbon king took it: the allied armies installed the brother and heir of the monarch executed in 1793, and he granted a constitution known as the Charter of 1814.

Which battle against the Prussians on 16 June 1815 was the last victory of Napoleon's career?

Ligny was only a tactical win: the bulk of the beaten army got away in good order, was reinforced, and fought again at Waterloo.

What did Napoleon do just two days after his wedding in Paris in March 1796?

He left to command an army facing the Sardinians and Austrians, and within weeks a run of victories was turning him into a national hero.

Napoleon was a 19-year-old lieutenant when crowds stormed which Paris fortress in July 1789?

The Bastille fell while he was a garrison officer far away in the provinces, and he spent long stretches of the revolutionary years on leave on his home island.

How did Napoleon's second reign end on 22 June 1815, in the week after his defeat at Waterloo?

He abdicated for his son after the chambers turned on him and demanded that he go. He briefly weighed a coup against them, then dropped the idea.

Which of these capitals did Napoleon's army occupy first, weeks before his greatest victory?

Vienna fell in November 1805 after two French marshals seized a Danube bridge by falsely claiming an armistice. Berlin followed in 1806, Madrid in 1808 and Moscow in 1812.

Which five-man government ruled France from 1795 until Napoleon's coup swept it away in 1799?

The Directory had lost the support of every political faction, some of its own members included, and it was one of them, the Abbé Sieyès, who recruited the general for the coup.

Which future foe of Napoleon was born in the same year, 1769, and outlived him by three decades?

Wellington was born in Dublin in May 1769, three months before his rival, and went on to serve as Britain's prime minister before his death in 1852.

Napoleon was briefly arrested in August 1794 for his ties to the brother of which fallen leader?

Maximilien Robespierre had been overthrown the month before, and his younger brother Augustin had been the young general's patron. Napoleon was freed within weeks.

Why did Napoleon delay the start of the Battle of Waterloo on the morning of 18 June 1815?

The ground was sodden after a night of rain and would have bogged down his cavalry and guns. The hours he lost gave the Prussians time to reach the field.