ACTOR AS NAPOLEON: If only St Helena were France,
I could be happy on this accursed rock.
I am sad.
Bored.
Ill.
In 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte, the former Emperor of the French,
was exiled to live on the island of St Helena in the Atlantic Ocean,
over 4,000 miles away from home.
For five and a half years, Napoleon was a prisoner here of the British.
Depressed and dying, he was a martyr to just one cause...
his own.
I have worn the imperial crown of France, the iron crown of Italy.
England has now given me a greater and more glorious one,
for it is that worn by the saviour of the world, the crown of thorns.
Napoleon once controlled an empire of over 40 million people.
Now he was utterly powerless.
History has consistently lied to us about that power.
Napoleon has even been compared to Adolf Hitler.
He's been caricatured as a monster.
History has chosen to propagate these lies.
They now need to be swept aside,
to make way for a man of astonishing achievement.
Napoleon Bonaparte was the greatest lawgiver, administrator
and soldier of modern times.
He proves that not all despots are evil, not all dictators are tyrants.
Yes, he could be ruthless, even brutal on occasion,
but he was undoubtedly one of the greatest men of history.
For me, he's been a hero since I was ten.
CHURCH BELL TOLLS
I swear to maintain the territory of the republic in its integrity,
to respect and enforce equality before the law,
political and civil liberty,
to govern only in accordance with the interests, the happiness
and the glory of the French people.
On the 2nd December, 1804, at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris,
Napoleon was crowned Emperor of the French.
The coronation was splendid.
Napoleon and his wife, Josephine,
were accompanied by the music of three orchestras
and a crown, sword and sceptre
reminiscent of the first Holy Roman Emperor.
Here was a celebration of an ambitious,
supremely talented soldier,
who embodied the new, revolutionary ideology of the nation.
The coronation of Napoleon Bonaparte at Notre Dame
was the triumph of the self-made man.
Napoleon strode up to the altar, seized the crown,
turned to the congregation,
raised it high and placed it upon his own head.
The symbolism could not be more blatant, or more public.
It had taken years of audacity, bravery and immense good fortune
to get him to where he was that day
and he wasn't going to allow anyone to deny him his moment.
The splendour of the coronation and of the new Napoleonic regime
created a new mythology for France.
History has seen its gilt and mirrors
as an expression of vanity, greed and aristocracy.
Far from it.
To visit the Hotel de Beauharnais in Paris,
lavishly decorated in typical Imperial style,
is to taste the new design for living
that the Emperor offered the nation.
Napoleon had delivered France
from the chaos that followed her revolution.
The lavishness of his regime
emphasised what individual merit could acquire under his leadership.
And that the murderous, egalitarian excesses
of the French Revolution were over.
The luxury of the Empire style had a real political purpose.
Napoleon wanted to emphasise the power of France
and that can't be done without a certain degree of ostentation.
Our modern age despises opulence,
equating it with crudity.
But why should the power of a great new empire
and the achievements of the individual not merit splendour?
I've long been fascinated by Napoleon
and have the medals to show it.
At every available opportunity,
I hunt down objects that remind me of the man
at auction houses and sales.
Like all British schoolchildren,
I was taught to see Napoleon as the great bad man of history.
And as a British historian, I was very much set against celebrating
revolutionary imperialism.
However, I've come to realise, since I started researching Napoleon
some six years ago for a biography of the man,
that the view of him as "the Corsican ogre"
is utterly wrong.
And it was one unique quality, in particular, that won me over.
Instrumental to Napoleon's success was his skill as a leader.
He didn't just inspire people to identify with his cause,
he gave meaning to people's lives,
convincing them that they were following a destiny
that would live in history.
A destiny, a common fate that united France,
the French people and their emperor.
What history has chosen to ignore
is the turmoil that accompanied Napoleon's arrival in politics.
The French Revolution of 1789, was a moment of inspirational hope,
but also of utter chaos.
40,000 people were murdered after the execution of King Louis XVI
and his wife, Marie Antoinette,
and the republic that followed was crippled by corruption
and war with the old monarchies of Europe,
who were terrified of being overthrown.
The situation had got so bad that by the autumn of 1795,
30,000 armed counter-revolutionaries massed in Paris
to overthrow the government.
The task of saving the republic and averting civil war
fell upon the shoulders of an aggressive, ambitious army officer,
who had won a formidable reputation
in a brilliant attack on foreign occupying forces in the past.
It was in these streets of Paris on 5th October, 1795,
that Napoleon, a young general in the French army,
rose to national prominence in an act of utter ruthlessness.
The challenge...
to save the revolutionary government from an attempted coup d'etat
at the hands of a broad coalition of moderates and monarchists.
Napoleon deliberately charged his cannon with grapeshot,
hundreds of musket balls packed into bags,
which he fired at the crowds at close range.
The counter-revolutionaries
threatened to storm the seat of government, the Tuileries Palace.
Napoleon massed his cannon to command the streets leading to it
and he concentrated his forces on the opposition's headquarters.
The church here at Saint-Roch saw the culmination of the insurrection.
The wounded were brought here
and an intense firefight developed that lasted for over two hours.
There were snipers along the Rue Saint-Honore.
And Napoleon brought his cannon to within 60 paces of this church
before shelling it.
Firing into crowds of civilians at point-blank range.
Bombarding a church harbouring the wounded.
Napoleon's merciless commitment to the cause of revolution was clear.
He was outnumbered five to one
but, nonetheless, he won the day with only 30 killed.
The reputation of the young general was made,
but at the price of the deaths of hundreds of his fellow countrymen.
Rule by the Paris mob had been a curse of the revolution
and Napoleon was adamant that it should not prevail.
There was also a brutality to the man.
As he would later tell his brother...
If you treat the mob with kindness,
these creatures fancy themselves invulnerable.
If you take a few, they get tired of the game
and become as submissive and humble as they ought to be.
Researching my biography of Napoleon, it became clear
that his aggressive belief in and defence of the revolution
dated right back to his youth.
Napoleon was born in 1769 on the Mediterranean island of Corsica.
A year before, it had been bought by France
off the Italian republic of Genoa.
The wars of independence in Corsica against France had been ferocious
and gave the young Napoleon an intense awareness
of the meaning of revolution.
As Napoleon once wrote...
From the heart of a nation that was ruling over our tyrants
flashed the electric spark.
That nation, enlightened, generous and powerful,
remembered its rights and its strength.
It freed itself and wished that we should share its freedom.
Oh, man! Man!
How despicable in slavery!
How great when fired with the love of freedom!
What's more, as Napoleon grew older,
the importance that the revolution attached
to the rights and dignity of the individual
loomed ever larger in his life.
Packed off to boarding school in France when he was just nine,
he had been ridiculed by fellow pupils for his Corsican accent
and relative poverty.
At 15, after his father died,
Napoleon was obliged to look after his mother and seven siblings,
underscoring the importance of equality of opportunity.
Intellectually, he loved ancient history
and withdrew constantly to read and reread
the glorious exploits of its great leaders,
taking them as models of ambition and success.
To my mind, almost turning them into father figures.
When Napoleon went to school at Brienne,
he was taught that the people to follow, the people to emulate,
the role models of his life, ought to be the great ancients,
Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, people like that.
And of course, everyone was taught that
and most people didn't take it to heart.
He, on the other hand, did.
He lived his entire life seeing himself
as somebody who was following in the steps
of Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great.
Now, in a lot of people, that would be prima-facie case
for being considered stark staring mad.
With him, on the other hand, of course he succeeded in that.
We do today think of him
as one of the great seven captains of history,
along with Julius and along with Alexander.
So, the driving force for him was this immense ambition,
but allied to a brilliant talent.
And so you have in Napoleon talent and ability,
together with enormous ambition.
WOMAN: In radiant sunlight,
Josephine made her appearance in a cloud of pale-pink tulle,
sparkling with silver stars,
an extremely low-cut gown.
After he had saved the revolution from civil war in 1795,
the government wanted to reward Napoleon,
so they made him a commander of the Army of the Interior.
He also found himself a wife.
WOMAN: The elegance of her bearing, the charm of her smile
and the sweetness of her expression
made such an impression that I heard many people remark that day
that she outshone her entire entourage.
The relationship between Napoleon and Josephine
was very much born out of revolution.
Daughter to a white plantation-owning family in Martinique,
Josephine was the divorced and then widowed wife
of an aristocratic general in the French army, who'd been guillotined.
Caricatured for her sexy lubriciousness
and being a slave to fashion and luxury,
Josephine had been imprisoned during the revolution
and lived in fear of execution.
Every reason to become pleasure-loving,
high-spending and greedy for all that life had to offer.
Linked to an increasingly powerful political faction in Paris,
she was fixed up with Napoleon by a former lover.
History would have us believe that the love affair
between Napoleon and Josephine was up there
with all the great love affairs of all time...
Heloise and Abelard, Romeo and Juliet,
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.
Nonsense.
It was a partnership of convenience.
She offered him access to the best political salons of the day.
One of her lovers had been the Prime Minister.
He offered her an escape from a life of bad debts,
bad teeth and fading allure.
Each had their eyes on a larger prize.
The young general's initial sentiment towards Josephine is revealing,
for it betrays a lack of confidence in the man,
a sensitivity that would prove a weakness in later life.
This is attested to in an astonishing catalogue of letters
that he, the young, fast-track army officer, wrote to her,
the sexually promiscuous older woman.
I am going to bed, my little Josephine,
my heart full of your adorable image.
You know that I never forget the little visits.
You know, the little black forest.
I kiss you there a thousand times
and wait with impatience for the moment I can be there again.
Napoleon is often accused of being a monster of over-confidence,
of being a megalomaniac.
But when one reads his letters to Josephine,
one is struck by the exact opposite.
In fact, there's no confidence there at all.
They're the letters of an over-the-top adolescent
writing three times a day,
completely nerve-racked about whether or not Josephine loved him,
whether she was being faithful to him - she wasn't -
and whether or not he was attractive enough to her.
The thought of dying without the certainty of your love
is like the torments of hell,
the very image of utter annihilation.
I experience all the feelings of a suffocating man.
This is the exact opposite of the kind of Napoleon
that we've been told about constantly.
He wasn't particularly calm with women.
He had proposed to a girl, Desiree Clary,
some years before and had been turned down.
Other than that, he doesn't seem to have had any kind of relationship with anyone since his mother.
And so, Josephine, this older woman,
who he was entirely ensorcelled by,
was the great love of his life,
but somebody who he was deeply, deeply unconfident with.
To live in Josephine is to live in the Elysian fields.
Kisses on your mouth, your eyelids, your shoulder,
on you everywhere.
Everywhere!
On Wednesday the 9th of March, 1796,
Napoleon and Josephine, who had only known one another for six months,
got married here, in this very room,
in the town hall of the 2nd arrondissement of Paris.
Rather than a romantic moment,
it was, rather, a tawdry affair.
Both Napoleon and Josephine
lied about their ages on the wedding certificate
and Napoleon turned up three hours late.
And when he did turn up,
he smacked a sleeping mayor on the back and said,
"Get us married quickly!"
Rather more romantic, though,
was the wedding present he gave Josephine,
which was a gold medallion inscribed with the words,
"to destiny".
The reason for Napoleon's haste
was the threat to France from the forces of counter-revolution.
In the week of his marriage to Josephine,
he had been promoted to Commander in Chief of the French Army of Italy
and they were now mobilising to fight.
The absolutist monarchies of Europe
now posed a mortal danger to France and her revolution.
Russia, Austria, Prussia,
these sovereign nations abhorred the universal rights of man
and the end to feudal privileges
that were enshrined in the French constitution.
For three years, Austria, Prussia and Britain
had fought and failed to destroy France.
By 1796, the war in Europe had narrowed
to a fight between France and Austria
over territory in Germany and Italy
and the counter-revolutionary forces were in the ascendant.
The campaign in Italy was not just yet another territorial battle
between France and Austria.
It was part of an ongoing clash of civilisations,
between the meritocratic republicanism of France
and the ancien regime of Leopold II,
the Holy Roman Emperor
and the brother of the guillotined Queen Marie Antoinette.
It was, therefore, part of an ongoing ideological struggle
between two competing and fundamentally different visions
of how to order society.
It was these idyllic foothills of the Alps
and lakes and plains of northern Italy,
that Napoleon now sought to wrest from Austria.
He had at his disposal an asset unique to revolutionary France,
a new breed of military commander,
who I like to think of as the Enlightenment on horseback.
Promoted to their positions on merit rather than birth,
this new, youthful officer class
granted the young general speed of manoeuvre
and a powerful esprit de corps,
born of a shared ideological heritage.
For Napoleon, here was an invaluable resource,
for, as he once said, in waging war...
The moral is to the physical as three is to one.
From the outset of the campaign in Italy,
Napoleon's leadership was simply superb.
In a series of celebrated battles,
Montenotte, Milesimo, Dego and Mondovi,
the Piedmontese, Austria's allies,
were quickly knocked out of the war
and Napoleon seized the initiative.
People don't need to buy how-to books to learn leadership.
They just need to look at the way Napoleon carried himself
before his men.
Crossing bridges and seizing bridgeheads
in the presence of the enemy
was to be a constant factor in Napoleon's warcraft.
And it was at Lodi, early in the campaign,
that these skills were to be put to their very first test.
Napoleon's ultimate objective for this part of the Italian campaign
was always Milan, the capital of Lombardy.
And on 10th May, 1796,
he got to within a tantalising 22 miles of Milan,
which is just over there, to the northwest.
But between Napoleon and Milan was the River Adda here,
about 200 yards wide,
quite shallow, but fast-flowing.
Now, on that side of the bank were the Austrians,
10,000 of them from the rear guard, including 14 cannon.
And on this side of the bank here were the French.
As soon as Napoleon got here to Lodi
he placed two cannon at the end of the bridge
to stop the Austrians from destroying it.
He also placed snipers in the town
to stop the Austrians from creating a barricade.
But most importantly, he sent his cavalry both south, down there,
and north, up here,
to try to find fords to cross the river
and envelop the Austrians from behind.
It was vital that the French took this bridge.
The operation that followed was remarkable.
The bridge at Lodi was 200 yards long
and just 12 feet wide.
At six o'clock in the evening,
Napoleon gave an inspirational address to his men
over there in the town square,
before sending them across the bridge.
In a first assault,
they managed to get about halfway
before a devastating Austrian cannonade of grapeshot
stopped them in their tracks.
It was carnage.
Then there was a second assault,
led by no fewer than six senior officers,
including three future marshals.
They got further.
They managed to get three-quarters of the way across
and they realised that, if men jumped into the river,
it was shallow enough for them to be able to give covering fire
to a third assault.
And that, led by elite grenadiers,
punched its way across the river and captured the Austrian guns.
It was then, at the key psychological moment,
that the cavalry arrived.
Napoleon had sent them 30 miles up to the north here
and they crossed over at a ford
and came right the way behind the Austrian lines,
forcing the Austrians to withdraw under the cover of night.
It was Napoleon's seventh victory in a row.
Lodi was a turning point for Napoleon.
For the revolutionary army, he became an irresistible leader,
they now called him with affection, "the little corporal".
For Napoleon, it was a pivotal moment of self-affirmation,
revealing, with total clarity, his potential greatness.
As he wrote later...
It was only on the evening of Lodi
that I believed myself a superior man.
After Lodi, I no longer saw myself as a mere general,
but as a man called upon to influence the destiny of a people.
The idea occurred to me
that I could become a decisive actor on the political scene.
When he started winning battles,
from about the Battle of Montenotte onwards,
and especially the Battle of Lodi,
he actually felt that he had the capability, within himself,
to achieve these incredible goals.
And so this is not something that is just a childhood fantasy.
By 1796 and 1797,
it is something that is actually genuinely achievable.
On 15 May, the confidence of the French army
turned to utter triumph as it entered Milan.
This was a glorious moment for revolutionary France,
since the oligarchs of Austria
had controlled the city for more than 80 years.
In his address to troops from his headquarters, Napoleon alluded to
some of the great victories of ancient history.
Soldiers, you have rushed like a torrent
from the heights of the Apennines.
Milan is yours
and the republican flag floats over the whole of Lombardy.
But let the people have no fear.
We are friends to all peoples
and particularly to the descendants of Brutus, of Scipio
and the great men, whom we have taken for models.
To awaken the Roman people,
bombarded by centuries of slavery...
..such will be the fruit of your victories.
However, behind the elevated myth rested a vicious reality.
The French government back home was nearly broke.
It ordered Napoleon to pillage Italy,
a sanctioned part of French revolutionary army behaviour.
50 million francs in cash was exacted from local citizens.
The cities of Milan and Padua alone were squeezed for 22 million.
Works of art were seized from local rulers and churches
and shipped back to Paris by carriage,
including masterpieces by Michelangelo,
Raphael and Correggio.
The scale of looting has been condemned by critics of Napoleon,
the rape and pillage of a culture.
They need to get over themselves.
It's easy to get on one's moral high horse about Napoleon's looting.
And, yes, he did take Titians and Michelangelos and Rembrandts
and all sorts of fabulous sculpture back to the Louvre
from Italian collections and churches.
But show me a war in history where there hasn't been looting.
The British Museum would hardly be the place it is
if it didn't have looted treasures.
So, there's a sense, I think, of hypocrisy.
While Napoleon in public was the invincible, ruthless patriot,
in private, he was a vulnerable, needy lover.
Josephine, his wife of just two months,
was refusing to join him in Italy.
Since their marriage, and for no fewer than 123 successive days,
Napoleon wrote to Josephine at least once a day,
begging her to join him.
But she seldom even bothered to reply,
not least because she was having an affair with another man.
Napoleon's letters betray a puppy-dog love.
Josephine, no letter from you since the 28th.
Has she forgotten me?
Or doesn't she know that there is no greater torment
than not to get a letter from mio dolce amor?
Here they have given a great ball for me,
with 500 or 600 pretty and elegant creatures trying to please me.
But not one was like you.
Not one had that sweet, harmonious figure
that is so well-graven on my heart.
I saw only you,
thought only of you.
Unrequited in love, Napoleon found what solace he could
in the brilliant unfolding of his military campaign.
After the French had seized Milan, the Austrian army retreated,
leaving the whole of northern Italy in French hands,
save their garrison in the walled city of Mantua.
In a series of battles,
the French army repelled continued Austrian attempts
to seize back territory.
But the enemy hung on to Mantua,
even reinforcing their military presence there.
Part of Napoleon's leadership technique
was to convince his followers that there was strength in shared destiny
and all of the resilience that that implied
was now called upon at Mantua.
Napoleon would have to take the city by siege,
an immense military challenge,
but with a great reward.
As he said, "If fortune smiles upon us,
"Mantua will be taken and with it, Italy."
In all his 60 military engagements,
Napoleon only fought three sieges.
He much preferred campaigns of manoeuvre.
But when he came here to Mantua,
he found a city surrounded by water on three sides
and by formidable defences on the fourth.
It could only be taken by siege.
Now, to make matters worse,
a large body of Austrians were coming from the north,
tens of thousands of them,
to relieve the city.
Napoleon was going to have to fight both a siege
and a campaign of manoeuvre.
It wasn't going to be easy.
Napoleon's response sealed his reputation
as an expert military strategist.
From June 1796,
more than 9,000 Austrians
and Mantua's 25,000 inhabitants
laid in for a siege.
Outside the walls of the city,
the French fought Austrian armies
and resisted an astonishing four attempts to relieve the city.
Revolutionary forces bombarded Mantua with cannon
night after night.
In a bulletin, Napoleon sought to buoy his troops,
reminding them that all that the revolution had secured for them
was now at stake.
NAPOLEON: Soldiers, Mantua is without bread,
meat and forage.
I will say only two words,
they are enough for Frenchmen.
Italy!
Mantua!
The peace of Europe and the happiness of your families
will be the outcome of your courage.
The Austrians were subjected to
a gruelling eight-month siege of this city.
They were reduced to eating horses and dogs and even rats to survive.
Over 8,000 people died of malnutrition and disease.
The city finally surrendered to Napoleon on 7th February, 1797.
After almost a year,
total victory in the Italian campaign was in sight.
Revolutionary France now truly became "La Grand Nation"
and a precedent had been set for her revolutionary ideas
to be pollinated across Europe by her army.
Within a year, Austria had surrendered.
Napoleon signed a peace treaty with Pope Pius VI.
Major cities and states were captured.
Napoleon organised a new pro-French state in Italy,
which was proclaimed to be at the heart of a new Italian nation,
the first since ancient Rome.
To cap it all, Josephine had finally joined him in Italy
and she was much feted.
Flush with his success in Italy,
Napoleon turned his military headquarters here in Milan
into a political court.
The victories of the army of Italy
felt like the triumph of a new generation.
"There was grandeur, hope and joy,"
wrote the 22-year-old General Marmont.
"We were all very young then.
"We had unlimited confidence in our destiny."
On his return to Paris,
Napoleon was lauded as the hero of a new age of revolution.
The street in which he lived was renamed Rue de la Victoire
and dozens of popular songs and poems were written in his honour.
In time, Napoleon would set himself and his wife up comfortably,
buying for Josephine the lovely Chateau de Malmaison,
a country house just outside Paris set in 300 acres of parkland.
Napoleon would spend many hours working in its library.
In 1797, instead of capitalising on his popularity
and pursuing political ambitions,
Napoleon, in what I believe to be
a critical moment in the building of a personal mythology,
did the most mature and remarkable thing.
He kept quiet.
He played little part in domestic politics,
stood above the melee of post-revolutionary factions
and joined the ranks of France's intellectual elite,
winning his election to the first class of the Institut de France,
the pre-eminent academic institution of the nation.
After his victories in Italy,
Napoleon wanted to become a director of the government,
but, at 28, he was still 12 years too young.
And anyhow, he realised that people want more in a leader
than just a soldier.
They want sophistication, intellect, culture.
So, he went about creating a political hinterland for himself.
It was genuine, but also it was great PR.
An opportunity then emerged that enabled Napoleon
to associate himself with romantic legend,
worthy of the giants of ancient history whom he so admired.
Since the Hundred Years' War in the 14th century,
enmity between Britain and France
had been a key feature of world politics.
In the Napoleonic era,
rivalry between the two nations
has been likened to that between a whale and a wolf.
With her superiority at sea,
Britain was the most prosperous, powerful
economic nation in the world.
With her revolution, France the most progressive, in terms of ideology.
Amidst the sovereign nations of Europe,
Britain was one of the most fervent
in wishing to rid the world of the French Revolution.
Over 20 years, Britain would finance enemies of France
to the tune of more than £60 million.
Napoleon knew that Britain under her sovereign, King George III,
wanted to end the French Revolution come what may.
Napoleon said that France must...
Destroy the Anglican monarchy,
or expect itself to be destroyed
by the corruption of these intriguing and enterprising islanders.
Britain's trade with the eastern Mediterranean
was a key to her strength.
French control of Egypt would threaten that.
As Napoleon told the French government in 1797...
To destroy England thoroughly,
the time is coming when we must seize Egypt.
In May 1798, he set sail for Egypt,
in command of an armada of 400 vessels
and some 35,000 men.
This was to be no ordinary invasion.
For Napoleon invited 167 intellectuals to join him.
Scientists, mathematicians, astronomers, naturalists,
chemists, architects and writers.
It cost him nothing to take these savants with him.
What's more, they could help characterize the operation
as a voyage of discovery,
devoted to the acquisition of knowledge of ancient civilisations.
Here was the Enlightenment impulse of Napoleon at work.
But the expedition would also expose the cold-blooded cynicism
that he was prepared to employ in the service of France.
Militarily, there were triumphs,
such as the Battle of the Pyramids and the capture of Cairo.
But then also disasters,
such as the naval defeat by the British at the Battle of the Nile.
To make matters worse,
to secure French gains made in Egypt,
Napoleon was obliged to take on the Turks,
invade the Holy Land and cross the Sinai.
Conditions were atrocious,
with problems of food, water, heat and hostile tribesmen.
As Napoleon wrote in January 1799...
We have crossed 70 leagues of desert,
which is exceedingly fatiguing.
We had brackish water and often none at all.
We ate dogs, donkeys and camels.
It was in the Holy Lands that an event took place
that has since been ruthlessly exploited by historians
as evidence of Napoleon's capacity for cruelty.
The governor of that part of the Turkish Empire was Ahmed al-Jazzar,
infamous for beheading his enemies,
and known as "the butcher".
On the 7th March, 1799,
on the surrender of the city of Jaffa,
Napoleon ordered the bayoneting to death of prisoners
on the beach outside the city.
Amongst the dead were soldiers from the town of El-Arish,
who had promised not to fight the French,
but then reneged on their deal.
The exact number of prisoners murdered by the French is disputed,
but might have been up to 4,000.
The massacre on the beach of Jaffa in 1799
is easily the biggest blot on Napoleon's career.
Today, it would be considered a war crime.
It wasn't, though, in the late-18th century.
Those Turkish soldiers at El-Arish
had promised not to fight against the French again
and when they were caught, only a couple of weeks later,
they had forfeited their lives.
So, it was not any legalistic sense
that he was breaking a rule of law.
But morally, of course, it was indefensible.
He did it because he was up against
one of the most vicious warriors in the Middle East of the day, Jazzar.
And he needed to prove to the Holy Land
that he could be just as tough, just as brutal,
just as ruthless.
It's not his finest hour
but, in terms of the warfare of the period,
it is, in fact, understandable.
It was in Egypt that Napoleon's reputation
as a conqueror of the East
and a towering figure of myth was made.
What is important is that France needed that myth like never before
and the idea of Napoleon as valiant hero of the East,
as well as the supreme defender of the revolution,
now took powerful hold.
For, while Napoleon was in Egypt,
France had disintegrated into a failing, almost feral state,
corrupt, demoralized,
with rampant inflation, mounting debts
and no effective leadership.
After learning of the victories of a resurgent Austrian army,
now allied to Russia, a new counter-revolutionary foe,
Napoleon rushed back home from Egypt.
And when people discovered that he had returned,
there were massive celebrations.
People were dancing in the open spaces
and the air rang with cries of,
"Hurrah for Bonaparte! He will save the country!"
Since his earliest days suppressing the mob in Paris,
Napoleon had long thought a change of government
was a vital pre-requisite for regenerating France.
Powerful factions in French politics
were now lobbying for a change of government
and a credible conspiracy formed to mount a coup d'etat.
The plotters needed a general to lead it.
One preferred candidate had died in battle.
Others had turned the task down.
The conspirators then called upon Napoleon
and he was up for it.
As he told his friend, General Marmont,
"When the house is crumbling, is it time to busy oneself in the garden?
"A change here is indispensable."
On the 18th day of Brumaire in the revolutionary calendar,
Napoleon rose at 5am to save the nation.
He addressed the French parliament,
told them that he had uncovered a conspiracy
and that they would be well-served
to conduct their business in Saint-Cloud,
a palace six miles outside the city.
And they agreed.
The scene was now set for the epic transformation
of Napoleon's service to the revolution.
A moment that, to my mind,
is a landmark in the history of Europe.
The following day, Saint-Cloud was surrounded by 3,000 troops,
some of them, but crucially not all,
under Napoleon's command.
On 10th November, 1799,
Napoleon Bonaparte came here to the Palace of Saint-Cloud
to effect a coup d'etat.
His message to the two houses of the French parliament
was that he wanted to save the nation.
So, he first met the Upper House, the Council of Elders,
down there in the palace.
He told them that he wanted to save France from a British plot.
And they listened to him with respect...
Citizen Representatives,
you find yourselves in no ordinary circumstances.
You are on a volcano.
I am no intriguer, you know me.
I believe I have given enough proofs of my devotion to my country.
He then came up to give the same message to the Lower House,
which met here in an orangery.
That's where that line of trees is.
And there he met with a completely different reception.
They shouted at him, "Outlaw! Caesar! Tyrant! Cromwell!"
They roughhoused him
and his bodyguards had their uniforms ripped.
And he lost his cool.
He lost his composure...
Should any orator in foreign pay
dare pronounce against your General the word "outlaw",
let the thunder of war crush him on the instant.
Remember that fortune and the god of war march beside me.
He actually had to leave the whole of the chamber
and it wasn't until his younger brother Lucien came out
to try to prove to the troops that he was trustworthy.
He did this by taking out his sword and holding it to Napoleon's breast
and said, "If Napoleon, if my brother turns into a dictator,
"I will actually stab him in the heart."
And then they sent in the troops to the chamber and cleared it.
If Paris had risen that night,
the Bonaparte brothers would have been guillotined.
As it was, it didn't.
It stayed quiet.
The coup was completely successful.
A new age now dawned for France, with Napoleon named First Consul.
Notwithstanding the soothing words of his brother,
Napoleon began to create a benign dictatorship
that dragged France into the 19th century
and was easily the very best part of his rule.
The backbone of France and her revolution
had been the richer peasantry,
businessmen, employers and strivers.
These were Napoleon's people.
They wanted their interests protected, especially those assets
that revolution had enabled them to acquire,
assets that once belonged to the monarch,
the Church and aristocrats.
France needed a narrative of success.
A revolution finalised,
her new 30-year-old leader vowed to realise it
and protect the new nation.
NAPOLEON: People of France, you want peace.
If any power still insists on attempting the fate of arms,
the First Consul has promised peace.
He will conquer it at the head of those warriors
he has more than once led to victory
and he swears to fight for nothing but the happiness of France
and the repose of the world.
A form of conservative republican government was now established
that history has chosen ever since to slander
as crypto-fascist.
It was nothing of the sort.
Yes, Napoleon curtailed the freedom of the press
and he replaced over 3,000 elected judges,
prosecutors and court presidents with his own appointees.
But Napoleon did not turn France into a police state like Hitler's
and he extended the rights of certain communities,
such as the Jews.
Authoritarian rule secured order
and wholesale reform of the public life of France,
of her education, finance and government.
It institutionalized many of the rights and privileges
that had been so bitterly fought for, and won, during the revolution.
His reformed legal system, known as the Code Napoleon,
consolidated those rights
and remains the basis of much of European law to this day.
It was at the Conseil d'Etat that Napoleon chaired the meetings
that ended the revolution and set France on a new footing.
The Code Napoleon was his greatest achievement.
It was certainly his longest-lasting.
It endures even to this day.
It brought together all the laws of France...
Buying and selling, divorce and inheritance,
even the role of fathers in French family life.
"I want to throw some blocks of granite onto the soil of France,"
Napoleon said, "in order to give direction to the public spirit."
Those blocks of granite expressed a new self-confidence in France,
and Napoleon, the charismatic military leader,
refugee from Corsica
and student of authority figures such as Julius Caesar,
now chose to render it in stone.
As he would say in later life,
"Men are only great through the monuments they leave behind."
He made plans for a triumphal Roman column
to be designed and built in the Place Vendome.
Architects were commissioned to reconstruct and redecorate
the Tuileries Palace,
scene of the First Consul's bloody defence of the revolution.
Grand new engineering works were started,
including new quays for the River Seine and sewers for citizens.
These works were nothing to do with the vanity of Napoleon.
They were inspired by the vision
of Athens, Rome, Babylon and Memphis
and they symbolised the self-belief of the new nation.
Napoleon wanted to take away the constraints on the French people
and to allow them, therefore, to make the advances for themselves.
He believed in the French people
and the great thing about Napoleon's advances,
be it in education or finance or administration,
was to try to liberate the French people to be even greater.
With Napoleon as First Consul,
the political environment of France now stabilised
and the fortunes of the economy began to improve.
Military victory in Italy,
a charismatic campaign in Egypt,
a successful coup d'etat
and ruthless loyalty to "la patrie"
had consigned government
by a ragtag group of corrupt political hacks to history.
A new, modern state was now being built in France
that represented the triumph of the strivers,
led by the greatest striver of them all.
However, beneath all the propaganda and bravado of Napoleon,
remained a personality who was prone to fragility.
He would be obliged constantly to defend
the value and purpose of the revolution against a hostile world
and assert the civilian nature of his rule.
As he was once quoted as saying...
We cannot argue on the analogy of the Dark Ages.
We are 30 millions of man held together by enlightenment,
property and commerce.
300,000 or 400,000 soldiers are nothing in such a mass.
The soldiers themselves are the children of the citizens.
The army is the nation.
A military coup had transformed Napoleon
from a provincial outsider
to the ultimate political insider role of First Consul.
Napoleon was a dictator,
who delivered peace, prosperity and reform to a failed state.
He'd ended the revolution
and he believed passionately in "la gloire de la France".
Any attack on that glory would meet with a devastating response.
As the great powers of Europe were shortly to discover.