Episode 36 The Young Napoleon
Living the French Revolution and Age of Napoleon
Dr Suzanne M Desan
Film Review
Napoleon was born into a minor, Italian speaking family in Corsica. His father was a lawyer who dabbled in business ventures and fought in the independence movement after France annexed Corsica in 1769.
When Napoleon was nine, his father sent him to a private religious school in France. After winning a scholarship to a prominent military academy, Napoleon graduated in 1785 as an officer in the French artillery corps. When the revolution started in 1789, 20-year-old Napoleon became a revolutionary and was elected lieutenant colonel in the Nation Guard. He helped bring the revolution to Corsica, supporting his older brother’s campaign for office in the revolutionary government, and bought nationalized church property.
After clashing with Corsican revolutionary Pasquale Paoli over his desire to win independence from France, Napoleon relocated to France where he became a Jacobin and Robespierre supporter. In 1793, he was in charge of the artillery in the siege of Toulon that won the southern French city back from its British occupiers. This won him promotion to brigadier general at age 24. When Robespierre was arrested an guillotined in 1794, Napoleon, along with with other Robespierre supporters spent 2 1/2 weeks in jail. A year later he was promoted to major general after leading the artillery in crushing a royalist protest.
In his spare time he hung around Parisian salons and was a prolific writer (mainly short stories and military essays). In 1796 he married an older widow (Marie-Joseph-Rose Tascher de La Pagerie – Napoleon renamed her Josephine), just before leaving Paris to lead the French Army of Italy.
By 1796, the French republic had defeated and formed an alliance with Spain and had driven the Austrians out of Belgium. After supporting a popular revolt to drive the House of Orange princes from Netherlands, the French army marched into Amsterdam and declared the Batavian (from the Roman name for Holland) Republic.
Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.
The Most Revolutionary Act 