Napoléon Bonaparte was actually an Italian, born in 1769 on the island of Corsica, which had just come under the control of France. He began his career as a low-ranking artillery officer in the French military. When the French Revolution broke out, Napoléon rose quickly through the ranks, becoming a general in 1793. He gained fame and notoreity by conquering most of the Italian city-states, turning them into "sister-republics," and repeatedly beating the Austrians throughout the 1790s. In 1798, he led a dramatic invasion of Egypt, which was supposed to disrupt British access to India but wound up being a public relations campaign for Napoléon.
By the time he returned to France in 1799, his popularity was at such a high pitch that he easily staged a coup, replacing France's Directory with the Consulate, and establishing himself as "First Consul." A few years later, he had himself crowned Emperor of the French. To get France's overseas situation under control, he sold Louisiana to the United States and tried but failed to pacify a slave revolt Saint-Domingue. He then had to turn his attention back to Europe. In 1805, Great Britain, Austria, and Russia declared war on France (Britain had actually never signed a peace treaty), but Napoléon's Grand Armée thrashed them so hard at the Battle of Austerlitz that the millennium-old Holy Roman Empire was dissolved in the wake of the defeat.
Prussia joined the war the following year, but was also defeated, along with the Russians, leaving Napoléon in control of most of Europe.
Britain continued to resist Napoléon, leading the emperor to invade Spain, Britain's ally, in 1808. The Spanish launched a guerilla ("little war") resistance that proved a continual drain on French resources, and which Napoléon referred to as his "Spanish ulcer." France invaded Russia in 1812, but Tsar Alexander responded by burning their own farms, towns, and cities and withdrawing, luring the French further and further into the country. The Grand Armée had to make their way back across thousands of miles of Russian tundra with no resources, continually harrassed by Russian cossack attacks. Of the 685,000 troops Napoléon marched into Russia, 530,000 were lost.
Following this, every major European power declared war on France, and Napoléon was finally defeated at the Battle of Leipzig in 1813. The allied nations captured Paris the following year, forced Napoléon to abdicate, and exiled him to the island of Elba in the Mediterranean. The Bourbon monarchy was restored under King Louis XVIII.
Napoléon escaped exile in 1815 and took over France once again, but was defeated by the British at the Battle of Waterloo. He was exiled once again, this time to Saint Helena, an island in the South Atlantic, where he died in 1821.
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