Napoleon Bonaparte Trivia
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This Napoleon trivia quiz has 110 free questions with answers and follows Bonaparte from a bullied Corsican schoolboy with a bad accent to Emperor of the French and back to a damp bungalow on Saint Helena. It covers the rise (Toulon, Egypt and the Rosetta Stone, 18 Brumaire, the mule he really rode over the Alps), the empire (crowning himself, the Code, the Louisiana Purchase, Austerlitz, the brothers he made kings), the fall (Russia at minus 40, Leipzig, Elba, the Hundred Days, Waterloo) and the afterlife (arsenic, four coffins, Les Invalides). Along the way you get the myths sorted from the record: how tall he actually was, whether Chicken Marengo was really cooked on the battlefield, and why Beethoven scratched his name off a symphony. The early questions suit anyone who has seen a film about him; the later ones will test history students and Napoleonic Wars buffs. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia and standard histories, and each question shows its citation once you have answered.
30 of 110 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Napoleon was born in 1769 on which Mediterranean island?
Corsica
Genoa had ceded the island to France only a year earlier; his first languages were Corsican and Italian.
Q 02What was Napoleon's family name at birth, before it was Frenchified?
di Buonaparte
His paternal ancestors were minor Tuscan nobles who moved to Corsica in the 16th century.
Q 03In which Corsican town was Napoleon born, at the Maison Bonaparte?
Ajaccio
He was baptised Napoleone di Buonaparte; the house is now a museum.
Q 04Napoleon was famously mocked by the British as short. What was his height, according to modern estimates?
About 168 cm (5 ft 6 in), average for the time
British cartoonists called him 'Little Boney', and a nursery rhyme warned children he ate naughty people.
Q 05The term 'Napoleon complex' for aggressive short men was inspired by which psychologist's writing?
Alfred Adler
Adler used Napoleon to illustrate the inferiority complex; the joke is that the man himself was of average height.
Q 06The 1793 siege of which French port made Napoleon's name and won him promotion to brigadier general at 24?
Toulon
It brought him to the attention of Augustin Robespierre, brother of Maximilien.
Q 07Whom did Napoleon marry in a civil ceremony on 9 March 1796?
Joséphine de Beauharnais
She was the former mistress of Paul Barras and had been born in the French Caribbean; the marriage produced no children.
Q 08Napoleon's 1798 expedition to Egypt took along 167 scholars whose discoveries included what?
The Rosetta Stone
Their work was published in the Description de l'Égypte; the stone itself ended up in the British Museum after the French surrendered.
Q 09Which British admiral destroyed Napoleon's fleet at the Battle of the Nile in 1798?
Horatio Nelson
All but two French vessels were captured or destroyed.
Q 10The Battle of the Pyramids in July 1798 was actually fought roughly how far from the pyramids?
About 24 km (15 miles)
The name was good propaganda; the French square formations held off the Mamluk cavalry.
Q 11The coup of November 1799 that made Napoleon First Consul is known by which French Republican calendar date?
18 Brumaire
It overthrew the Directory; 13 Vendémiaire was his earlier crushing of royalist rebels in Paris.
Q 12David's portrait shows Napoleon crossing the Alps on a rearing horse. How did he really cross in 1800?
On a mule, led by a guide
The weather was fine; Napoleon asked to be shown 'calm, mounted on a fiery steed', and Paul Delaroche later painted the mule version.
Q 13Chicken Marengo is named after Napoleon's 1800 victory in which country?
Italy
The story that his chef improvised it after the battle is probably myth; tomatoes would not have been available.
Q 21At which 1805 battle did Nelson smash the French and Spanish fleets, ending Napoleon's invasion hopes?
Trafalgar
Nelson died in the action on 21 October 1805.
Q 22Napoleon's Continental System, launched with the Berlin Decree of 1806, was an attempt to do what?
Blockade British trade with Europe
Enforcing it drew him into Spain and Russia, the two campaigns that broke his empire.
Q 23Which brother did Napoleon make King of Spain in 1808, provoking the Peninsular War?
Joseph
Louis got Holland and Jérôme Westphalia; Joseph had first been given Naples.
Q 14In 1803 Napoleon sold which territory to the United States for $15 million?
Louisiana
The purchase doubled the size of the United States; Napoleon needed cash for the coming war with Britain.
Q 15The civil code Napoleon promulgated in 1804 is still what?
In force in France, heavily amended
Napoleon did not draft it himself, but chaired many sessions of the four-jurist commission that did.
Q 16At his coronation in Notre-Dame on 2 December 1804, what did Napoleon do that surprised observers?
Crowned himself
Pope Pius VII had anointed him; Napoleon then placed a replica of Charlemagne's crown on his own head and crowned Joséphine.
Q 17Which pope travelled to Paris for Napoleon's coronation?
Pius VII
The same pope later excommunicated Napoleon in 1809.
Q 18Beethoven dedicated his Third Symphony to Napoleon but withdrew it in 1804. What is the symphony called?
Eroica
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'.
Q 19Napoleon's greatest victory, on 2 December 1805, was fought against Russia and Austria at which battle?
Austerlitz
The 'Battle of the Three Emperors' was fought exactly one year after his coronation.
Q 20Which centuries-old European institution was dissolved in 1806 after Napoleon's 1805 victory over Austria and Russia?
The Holy Roman Empire
Napoleon replaced it with the Confederation of the Rhine, a group of German client states.
Q 24Napoleon divorced Joséphine in 1810 because she had not given him an heir. Whom did he marry that April?
Marie Louise of Austria
The Habsburg princess bore him a son the following year, styled the King of Rome.
Q 25What title did Napoleon give his son, born in 1811?
King of Rome
The boy briefly became Napoleon II when his father abdicated in 1815, though he never ruled.
Q 26Roughly what fraction of Napoleon's 450,000-strong 1812 Grande Armée were native French speakers?
A third
Germans, Poles, Italians and others filled the ranks; most never came home.
Q 27Which battle in September 1812 forced the Russians to abandon Moscow to Napoleon?
Borodino
The occupation lasted weeks before the catastrophic winter retreat began.
Q 28The Grande Armée crossed the Berezina in November 1812 in temperatures reaching what?
Minus 40 degrees
Minus 40 is the one temperature where Celsius and Fahrenheit agree.
Q 29Where was the October 1813 Battle of the Nations, Napoleon's decisive defeat, fought?
Leipzig
It was the largest battle of the Napoleonic Wars, and it opened the road to Paris.
Q 30After his first abdication in April 1814, Napoleon was exiled as sovereign of which island?
Elba
It had 12,000 inhabitants and lay just 10 km off the Tuscan coast, which made escape easy.