Napoleon Reference
Everything you need to know about Napoleon Bonaparte — in one place.
The single canonical reference
Who was Napoleon Bonaparte? How did an artillery officer from Corsica become master of Europe — and how did he lose it? What did he actually say, and what did he merely get credit for saying? This site answers those questions with cited sources, honest dating, and clear attribution: what the documents record, what contemporaries reported, and what historians conclude.
Start here
New to the subject? The 10-minute primer brings you up to speed fast. Prefer the full story? Read the biography.
Explore
- Timeline — his life in order, from Ajaccio (1769) to St. Helena (1821), with the Revolutionary calendar decoded.
- Campaigns — Toulon, Austerlitz, Jena, the retreat from Russia, Waterloo: what happened, factually and neutrally.
- Sayings — his best-known lines, each with the exact source — and the famous “quotes” that are really misattributions.
- People — Joséphine, Talleyrand, Wellington, Nelson, Murat, and the family and rivals around him.
- Legend vs. scholarship — the height myth, the hand in the vest, and how the Napoleonic legend was made.
- Character stream — the animated-character stream concept, coming to YouTube.
- Glossary — every term defined in plain language.
How this site works
Every quotation cites its source: letter, proclamation, memoir, or official act. Dates are stated plainly, with Revolutionary-calendar dates converted and labeled. Disputed points carry their owner — “the memoirs report…”, “historians generally agree…”. Anything famous but unverifiable is labeled as such, not presented as fact. Read the methodology and sources for the full picture.
Source notes
- This page is the site’s front door; every claim it summarizes is expanded and cited on the page it links to.
- Quotation policy, certainty labels, and dating conventions: Methodology. Bibliography and image provenance: Sources.
- No fact on this page rests on a source not cited elsewhere on the site.