With Austria and, subsequently, Spain and Sardinia, out of the war, France still faced a significant threat from the greatest naval power of the time, Great Britain. After realizing the impossibility of crossing the English Channel due to weather constraints, Napoleon consulted the crafty Foreign Minister, Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand, for a design that involved seizing Egypt in order to separate Britain from its overseas colonies. "This base was to serve as a stranglehold on British-owned India, which was where Britain got most of its income." (Smith, 2). On May 19, 1798, the expedition commenced, its first destination being the island of Malta, which was besieged and occupied on June 11-12. The British fleet of Admiral Horatio Nelson was misled by this deception and altered its course toward Malta instead of monitoring the bulk of Napoleon's fleet that managed to reach Alexandria with no intervention from the enemy. The Mamelukes, the wealthy horsemen that composed the elite of Egyptian society, provided fanatical resistance to a French force that they outnumbered by far. However, as a result of superior French equipment and Napoleon's infantry tactics (most notably the "square" formation to counter cavalry charges), they were devastated at Alexandria and, mere months later, at the Pyramids. Egypt was a proving ground for officers, young and old, who would later become Napoleon's most trusted subordinates. The Battle of the Pyramids saw ingenious maneuvers executed by Murat, Desaix, and Kellerman. After three French divisions took advantage of a subtle detour around the Egyptian positions, the Mameluke commander, Murad-Bey, surrendered his forces and swore an oath of loyalty to a man whom he considered worthy of becoming his new overlord.

"Napoleon reorganized the government, the postal service, and the system for collecting taxes; introduced the first printing presses; created a health department; built new hospitals for the poor in Cairo; and founded the Institut d'Egypt. During the French occupation the Rosetta Stone was discovered, and the Nile was explored as far south as the Aswan." (Encyclopedia of World Biography, 308). Napoleon familiarized himself with the inhabitants of Egypt and addressed their concerns as a progressive ruler should. He and his assistant, the General Cleuber, brought Egypt out of Medieval darkness and into a condition where its people could enjoy state-of-the-art European culture and technology. Two short years in the country caused the people of this land to remember their governor from abroad with pride and pleasure. (When an Islamic Fundamentalist fanatic murdered Cleuber in 1800, the people came to his grave by the thousands, bearing flowers to pay homage to their deceased benefactor.) The remaining obstacles to the French promise of Egyptian security were the British fleet and the forces of the Ottoman Empire. The Sultan sent an expeditionary corps to encounter the French near Aboukir Bay while the fleet of Nelson assailed the unprepared armada of Bruaise on August 1, 1798. While Napoleon directed and achieved victory in the land battle, Bruaise lost his fleet to British cannon fire as a result of indecisiveness and a lack of initiative. Vice-Admiral Villeneuve managed to escape to France with the remaining ships, yet the defeat was crippling to French interests in the region. Napoleon was unable to preclude this turn of events, yet throughout Europe they were perceived as a demonstration of his fallibility. Austria re-entered the war, introducing into it its ally, the vast Russian Empire. During Napoleon's absence, the experienced and adamant commander of the Russian armies, Fieldmarshal Alexander Suvorov, managed to cross Alps through the Saint-Gottard and recapture a significant portion of Italy. As he furthered his preparations for an assault on Paris itself, the Directory was crumbling. The royalists began to grumble in Paris and scheme for a counterrevolution in hopes that such would terminate the war. Seeing that the military situation in Egypt had stagnated, Napoleon realized that there was only one means of defeating this crisis. Leaving Cleuber in command of the French armies, he secretly departed from Cairo and headed for Paris after receiving a letter from Barras that promised him the chief administrative role within the French government, that of First Consul. However, upon his arrival in the meeting hall of the National Convention, he was rudely thrown out by hostile delegates who shouted derogatory expletives at him. Realizing that he had been taken advantage of by those who wished woe and misery to France and to his own career, Napoleon resolved that the promise they had given him would be carried out still. He instructed Generals Ney and Murat to prepare his fabled cannon and station them around the centers of Parisian government. Angered and bloody (for the delegates of the Convention attempted to disfigure his face as they rushed him during the meeting), he used his silver tongue to stir up the masses and create popular support for the November 9, 1799 coup d'état. Eventually, the Directory, encouraged by Barras and Talleyrand, agreed to submit themselves to Napoleon's authority and call for national elections to the new Consulate. The three men who were chosen by a nearly unanimous vote of the people to rule the nation were Napoleon and two of his political supporters, Sieyes and Roget. Upon assuming office, the First Consul declared, "We have finished the romance of the Revolution. We must now begin its history, only seeking what is real and practicable in the application of its principles, and not what is speculative and hypothetical." (Holmberg, 1).

Thus began the period of the Consulate, during which Napoleon attempted to, in the words of Tom Holmberg, "consolidate the gains of the Revolution." However, before he could begin any true reformist activity, it was essential that he eliminate the external threats to his country's welfare. Suvorov died in the spring of 1800 and Russia, having lost its most able commander and simultaneously quarreled with Austria, had withdrawn from the war. British efforts in Egypt were checked by the French garrisons there, which managed to defeat the enemy during the Second Battle of Alexandria (1801), when a French bullet claimed the life of General Abercrombie. Thus Austria remained the only able foe of France during this period. Napoleon marched his forces through the Saint-Bernard pass into Northern Italy in order to reclaim the territory that had been allotted France as a result of the Campoformio treaty. The Austrian commander, General Melas, was caught off-balance by Napoleon's audacious act which equaled that of Suvorov one year earlier. Thus, his numerically superior force was, for a time, irresponsive to the French liberation of Piedmont. However, as Napoleon pressed further south, the Austrian resistance intensified. Half of the French force under Desaix remained behind to secure the new foothold while the First Consul, with the remaining 15000 soldiers, encountered 60000 Austrian troops near Marengo on June 14, 1800. At first the enemy grenadiers were impregnable, holding their ground while the stationary Austrian cannon bombarded French positions. Several assaults, including one by the veteran Republican Guard, were repelled with heavy casualties. Melas became so confident of his triumph that he departed for Vienna to report it to the Emperor Francis I. Fortunately, General Desaix had arrived with much-needed reinforcements and conducted an all-out infantry charge that collapsed the Austrian ranks while Kellerman's dragoons devastated the enemy's flanks and rear. Yet Desaix himself was shot dead toward the end to his triumphant assault. Napoleon spent the remainder of the battle weeping over the corpse of his murdered comrade. Thus he returned to his subordinates the same compassion and value that they had given him.

The Second Italian Campaign continued into 1801, during which the armies of Massenat and Soult managed to obtain from Melas the control of a vast region of Italy ranging from Genoa to Naples. The following year, Austria affirmed in the Treaty of Luneville the French gains from Campoformio five years earlier. "In 1802 the English and German states were tired of fighting and signed the Peace Treaty of Amiens. It was the first time since 1792 that France was at peace with the whole world." ("A Paper on Napoleon." Norfolk Academy, VA, 3). The First Consul was now free to concentrate on bringing about an era of prosperity that would affect the world for ages to come. "'It was Napoleon's function in history to fuse the old France with the new,' H.A.L. Fisher observed. Napoleon declared that he wanted 'to cement peace at home by anything that could bring the French together and provide tranquility within families.' Like Mirabeau, Napoleon didn't see an incompatibility between the Revolution and monarchy. Napoleon did what the Bourbon King could not-- reconcile the elements of the monarchy with the elements of the Revolution-- which was the failed goal of Mirabeau in 1790. Napoleon was largely successful in attracting men from all parties-- from ex-Jacobins to ci-devant nobles-- to his government. Signing the Concordat (15 July 1801) allowed Napoleon to reconcile the religious differences which had torn France apart during the Revolution. (At the same time the Concordat insured religious freedom. It recognized Catholicism as the religion of the majority of the French, but it did not make it an 'established' religion as the Church of England was in Britain. Protestants and Jews were allowed to practice their religions and retain their civic rights.) A general amnesty signed by Napoleon (26 April 1802) allowed all but one thousand of the most notorious émigrés to return to France. These two actions helped to bring relative tranquility to those areas of France which had long been at war with the Revolution." (Holmberg, 4). Napoleon also abolished slavery in all territories under French control as a result of a slave rebellion in Haiti, which threatened French possessions in the Caribbean. However, even when the rebels were granted the civil rights of French citizens, a radical clique, led by the power-hungry Haitian governor, Toussaint L'Overture, refused to lay down their arms. Napoleon was forced to send a military expedition to the island that captured the subversive and imprisoned him (which was rather lenient, considering the atrocities that L'Overture committed against white Frenchmen who resided in Haiti). L'Overture died behind bars in 1804, this episode having concluded the last internal resistance to Napoleon's abolition of slavery. As was mentioned earlier by Tom Holmberg, Napoleon detested civil inequalities and pledged to ban forced servitude in any nation that came under his control. The Ancien Regime (i.e. Ancient Regime) in the remainder of Europe had bound millions of peasants to their land in intolerable servitude to a wealthy luxury class born into their positions. Of Napoleon Tom Holmberg writes, "...he promoted equality and opened all careers to those with talent.’Risen to the throne,' Chateaubriand wrote, 'he seated the people there beside him. A proletarian king, he humiliated kings and nobles in his antechamber. He leveled ranks not by lowering but by raising them.'" This he wished to occur in all European nations. Although he was practically oriented, he used his realistic insight to materialize goals of tolerance and meritocracy outlined for him by the writings of his philosophical idol, Voltaire. To celebrate his subjects' talents, he founded the Legion of Honor. To ensure that more of them became talented he transformed education into a "free, compulsory, and secular" institution. (Internal Achievements of Napoleon [http://www.csi.cc.id.us/Support/itc/102/tsld025.htm]). He also permitted the former French serfs to gain ownership of the land they cultivated. Napoleon abolished the draft, as he despised the concept of forced servitude. Due to the nearly divine standing to which the populace had elevated him, he never had the need to worry about troop shortages in his Grande Armée. He also reformed measurements and currency so as to achieve his dream of a universal standard by which those two concepts could be approached. The new franc was established and with it, the National Bank of France to assist in proliferating this monetary unit over the varying and inconsistent provincial systems. The Système Internationale (metric system) was also devised to abandon the Medieval methods of measuring relative to the bodily dimensions of King Henry II (of Britain!). The SI, a symbol of the new meritocracy, was spread to all the lands under Napoleon's control, his subjects becoming grateful for obtaining a coherent method of measurement. The First Consul even acted to such an extent as to standardize road traffic (for that time, horse-drawn carriages and other wheeled vehicles) by mandating driving on the right side of the road. During the Ancien Regime, it was customary that the nobility would travel along the left while the pedestrian sans-culottes were bombarded with dust from the carriage wheels while walking on the right. The old system was ludicrous, since it did not permit for two-way traffic in addition to augmenting social differences. The new standard, however, was well-received by nobles and middle-classmen alike. It soon spread to all the nations of the world with the sole exception of Britain, Napoleon's archenemy. But to check Britain Napoleon devised another solution that simultaneously assisted him in gaining much-needed money for the war effort (Britain renewed hostilities in the fall of 1803). To his ally, the United States (Napoleon was a close friend of President Thomas Jefferson, a former ambassador to France and a fellow disciple of Voltaire), the First Consul sold the Louisiana Purchase, which granted him the funds that sustained the Grande Armée for the next ten years while bestowing upon the U.S.A. territory without which subsequent American expansion, exploration, and technological developments would not have taken place. The Americans did not forget the generosity of their ideological partner overseas. Following one decade, during the War of 1812, they provided for a second front to occupy the crack British troops while Napoleon beat back the Allies in Europe (As a matter of fact, the Coalition was only able to defeat France after the conflict in North America ended).

However, Napoleon's greatest reform of the Consulate Period was the creation of a universal system of laws that replaced contradictory and antiquated provincial policies. The Code Civil (more commonly known as the Code Napoleon) was compiled, ratified, and signed under the First Consul's direction. From 1800 to 1804 a commission of jurors worked tirelessly on this project. Finally, in March of 1804, the new laws went into effect. Finally the Reign of Terror had truly come to an end since Frenchmen were now granted the ability to locate and learn all the government's policies and thus ensure that they were not acting contrary to them. "The Code Napoleon represented a compromise between the customary law of northern France and Roman law of the South. It also compromised both the ideas of the French Revolution and older ideas from the south of France that used the old Roman Law. This new code gave liberty to the people, but kept such ideas as the system of inheritance." (Code Napoleon [http://www.cp.duluth.mn.us/~tmcs/CODENAPo.htm]). It was this consolidation of concepts that helped secure the progress made by the Revolution without collapsing the structures needed to maintain order and stability. Thus it seemed optimal for Napoleon to spread this change so that it would benefit his non-French subjects.

The people, realizing that they have at last fallen under the control of a benefactor instead of a tyrant, wished to prolong their Age of Enlightenment (for Napoleon's system closely mirrored the dreams of earlier philosophers). They elected Napoleon to be First Consul for life in 1802, but their gratitude extended even further. On May 19, 1804, the Senate called for a popular election to decide whether to reward Napoleon's accomplishments by granting him the title, Emperor of the French. Once again, the decision was nearly unanimous. Soldiers, civilians, nobles, bourgeoisie, and proletarians alike selected the best as their sovereign ruler. In a grand ceremony in the Notre Dame Cathedral on December 2, 1804, the First Consul was crowned Emperor Napoleon I. He lifted his headdress of power off the Pope's hands and onto his head, afterward proceeding to crown his wife, Josephine. Thus the French Empire came into existence.

Having obtained a hold on such tremendous power, Napoleon I possessed the wisdom to entrust some of it to his most devoted followers. He established the rank "Marshal of France" and rewarded with it the most highly distinguished generals in the Grande Armée. Ney, Murat, Davoust, Berthier, Soult, Grouchy, Jourdain, Massenat, and others provided the competence necessary to implement Napoleon's ingenious tactics on the battlefield. The Emperor also divided his domain into manageable districts, each of them controlled by a trusted relative. For example, Joseph Bonaparte became King of Spain, Louis was crowned King of Holland, Jerome-- the King of Westphalia, Eliza-- the Duchess of Tuscany. Joachim Murat, who was married to Napoleon's sister, Caroline, became the King of Naples, having subsequently acquired fame for leading his courageous Neapolitan dragoons and hussars into daring cavalry attacks. Napoleon's new order would soon face baptism by fire. Austria and Russia entered the war in early 1805, and Prussia was on the verge of siding with them.

The naval Battle of Trafalgar in the summer of 1805 disrupted Napoleon's plan for the invasion of Britain. Although the Franco-Spanish fleet incurred heavy casualties and Admiral Villeneuve committed suicide as a result of the battle, the most able British commander, Admiral Horatio Nelson, also perished in the struggle. Many British sailors died. As a result of the encounter, both fleets became demoralized and incapable of resuming their operations. Britain's threat had been delayed at least momentarily. To exploit the moment, Napoleon imposed the Continental Blockade system on all the European states under his control. This new regulation aimed to disrupt the British economy by prohibiting nations from trading with the island power. He also deployed his Grande Armée and marched into Austria, catching the enemy General Mack by surprise through a complex scheme of maneuvers and acts of espionage. The Russians, functioning by the Julian Calendar while the remainder of Europe followed the Gregorian, could not arrive on time to assist Mack and thus did nothing to preclude the Battle of Ulm, Napoleon's first major victory in the Austrian Campaign. Mack's surrender cleared the path to Vienna, which Napoleon's forces occupied in November. However, the Russian and Austrian forces, led by the rulers of the two nations, Francis II and Alexander I, along with the Fieldmarshal Kutuzov, a student of Suvorov, had managed to meet and now outnumbered Napoleon three to one. Kutuzov objected to an armed encounter, planning to retreat and stretch out the French supply lines until they were unmanageable. Napoleon recognized that plan and utilized his ingenuity to counter it. He created an image of weakness for his army, meeting with a Russian representative and pleading for peace when, in reality, he was gaining much-needed organizational time. He ordered Soult to withdraw from his fortified position at the Austerlitz castle so as to stage a retreat and lure the Coalition forces into a trap. For many days Napoleon had studied the land around the Pratzen heights and could wage an optimal battle there. The Allied generals, having dived for the bait and assumed Napoleon's weakness, characterized by his retreat, did not heed Kutuzov's advice and convinced their sovereigns to enter into a battle. The result was the greatest tactical masterpiece of all time... executed by Napoleon! On December 2, 1805, on the anniversary of his coronation, the Battle of Austerlitz ended with a devastating blow to the Coalition. After recapturing the Pratzen heights from the Russian grenadiers, Napoleon stationed his artillery there and fired at the thin ice on the river crossings. As a result, numerous enemy troops perished during the retreat. Kutuzov himself lost an eye as a sharpshooter's bullet entered into his brain and began to wear away at it until his death eight years later (the results were not immediate, but the eventual gangrene did prevent the aging warrior from participating in the crucial Spring 1813 campaign during which Napoleon erased all the Russian gains of 1812). "After Austerlitz, Napoleon reached the height of his career. The Treaty of Pressburg (December 27, 1805) stripped Austria of additional lands and further humiliated the mighty Hapsburg state." (Encyclopedia of World Biography, 309).

Austria having withdrawn from the war, the Prussian king, Frederick-Wilhelm II, began to feel increasingly threatened by encroaching French ideals that had the potential of weakening the stranglehold of the Ancien Regime on the people of Prussia. He offered Napoleon an ultimatum, threatening to unleash the best-trained military in the world upon France if the latter did not withdraw its forces beyond the Rhine. Instead of responding, Napoleon, knowing that to surrender all he had worked to earn was not an option, marched the Grande Armee into Prussia and overran several enemy garrisons prior to coming into contact with the main enemy force. "The overconfident Prussian army sang as it marched to total destruction at the battles of Jena and Auerstadt (October 14, 1806), and Napoleon entered Berlin in triumph." (Encyclopedia of World Biography, 309). Napoleon's maneuverability and the devotion of his troops outweighed the rigidity and inflexibility of the Prussian military discipline. Subsequently, all the major Prussian armies and fortress garrisons surrendered without firing a shot. During one occasion, Napoleon had instructed Murat on the matter of the newest batch of prisoners. "Take away their guns!" he spoke. "They have twice our number!"

Yet the campaign did not end once Prussia signed armistice and consented to an alliance with France. Napoleon realized that Poland, its people long oppressed, censored, and exploited by the Russian nobility, yearned for an independent existence and a national identity in addition to the reformist changes that had recently occurred in France. While the Russian military under Bennigsen amassed at the border between Poland and Prussia, Napoleon led his forces on to Konigsberg, a wealthy trading port that would serve as his base of operations and a supply point. During the winter of 1806-1807 numerous skirmishes had taken place, the indecisive Bennigsen withdrawing his forces every time, even when there was a potential for a Russian advantage. On February 8, 1807, the two sides encountered each other at Eylau. The assaults by Russian grenadiers were commendable, and Napoleon came within a hair of losing his own life when enemy cannon bombarded the cemetery at which he was stationed. However, the French held their positions and, at the end of the day, the Russians withdrew once more, opening the path to Konigsberg. After resting and replenishing his forces, Napoleon was prepared to begin a full-scale liberation of Poland. At Friedland on June 14, 1807, Bennigsen's indecisiveness proved fatal to the Russian army. While he dallied, Napoleon "drove the Russians from the field." (Encyclopedia of World Biography, 309). Alexander I soon met with Napoleon in Tilsit (June 25, 1807), and the two leaders signed a treaty that promised mutual cooperation and a division of influence in Europe. Russia entered the Continental Blockade system, thus dealing a crippling blow to the British Empire. In the meantime, the Grand Duchy of Warsaw was forged and an independent Polish government established. The Polish were grateful to Napoleon for having accomplished what years of civil upheaval could not and agreed to supply him with troops and material goods. An entire corps was therefore generated under the leadership of Marshal Joseph Poniatowski, one of the new progressive Polish elite whose devotion to Napoleon equaled that of the French commanders.

Beginning in 1807, radical adherents of the Ancien Regime in Spain began to aggressively plot a return to the old Hapsburg monarchy. Their guerilla tactics enabled small groups of partisans to ambush and brutally torture groups of French soldiers. Joseph was forced to flee Madrid and appeal to his brother for military assistance. Thus the French armies entered Spain and dealt numerous crushing blows to the subversives. Madrid was soon regained after Napoleon's prized artillery bombarded the city from above. Joseph was reinstated as King and the rebels driven into Portugal. Unfortunately, the fanatical juntas of renegade Spanish nobles began to receive British support as an army led by Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, landed in Portugal and thus created a stalemate that stagnated the campaign for the next four years. In the meantime, the pro-feudal elements in Austria stirred up the masses to declare war on Napoleonic France. The Emperor of the French was forced to shift his attention to the Eastern Front in order to devastate the armies of the Archduke Karl at Wagram in 1809. As a result of this, Emperor Francis II dissolved the Holy Roman Empire and entered into an alliance with Napoleon that guaranteed Austrian assistance in France's future conflicts.

It was this alliance that Napoleon hoped to secure when he married Marie-Louise, the daughter of Francis II, for political purposes. Despite their strong attachment to one another, Napoleon and Josephine agreed to a divorce in order to expand the formidability of Napoleon’s domain. Napoleon also required an heir to his throne in order to secure the regime that he had created in the French Empire. In the fall of 1810, Marie-Louise gave birth to Napoleon II, who was dubbed "King of Rome" by his adoring father. However, Napoleon II, despite his subsequent wealth and connections to two ruling families, would never equal his namesake's glory due to his early death by tuberculosis in 1831.

In numerous ways the year 1811 was the apogee of Napoleon's power. The Continental System was still secure, and the undersupplied British forces in Portugal were suffering defeat after defeat by Napoleon's more maneuverable veterans. The meritocracy prospered, and numerous individuals born into lower-class families had taken advantage of the opportunity to ascend up the social hierarchy. The Emperor ordered massive fireworks displays over the Seine river to be arranged for the anniversaries of the 1799 coup (November 19) and the 1804 coronation (December 2). The Grande Armee numbered over 600000 troops, all either French volunteers or allied soldiers. "[Napoleon] brought much longed for order and stability to France and forged a sense of unity. He attempted to unite under his wing both the revolutionaries and the émigrés-- nobles, clergy, and others who chose or were forced to live in exile under the Revolution . ('I became the arch of the alliance between the old and the new, the natural mediator between the old and the new orders... I belonged to them both.' Napoleon. 1816.)" (Holmberg, 3).

However, one threat remained to France's welfare that possessed the potential to unravel all that Napoleon had accomplished thus far. Russia's Alexander I, wishing to maintain positive relations with all the nations of Europe, began to lift the Continental Blockade in his own domain and traded clandestinely with Britain. The French Foreign Minister, Charles-Maurice du Talleyrand, deserted to the Russians along with the Prussian strategist, Karl Klausewitz, in order to convince Alexander I that violating the Treaty of Tilsit was to Russia's advantage. Thus, the Russian emperor's disobedience assumed a greater degree of overtness. He halted the wars against Finland and the Ottoman Empire that Russia had begun in order to demonstrate its willingness to assist Napoleon. The Emperor of the French was taken aback that his ally would abandon him at such a crucial time. Thus he was forced to withdraw a vast majority of his troops from Portugal in order to make possible a punitive expedition into Russia. On June 22, 1812, the Grande Armée traversed the Neman River and entered into the vast lands of its enemy. The contingent of Cossacks that they encountered near Vilnius fled the battlefield after a short skirmish. General Barclay, the commander of the Russian forces, resolved to retreat in the direction of Moscow with only minimal armed encounters so as to gather any troops that he would find along the way and organize an effective resistance force. However, after Napoleon's successful siege of Smolensk, Barclay was relieved of his command by the impatient Alexander I and replaced by Mikhail Kutuzov, now a crippled, sick old man who nevertheless devised a most controversial strategy to counter Napoleon. Kutuzov wished to disrupt Napoleon's three-year plan for the invasion of Russia. This crafty leader decided to lure the French into the heartland of the Russian Empire, stretching their supply lines that partisans would attempt to disrupt even further. In the meantime, the Russian armies mercilessly devastated their own cities and territories so as to destroy any use that they might have had to Napoleon. This scorched-earth policy took a heavy toll on the common man of Russia, and numerous militias, especially from the West of the country, resolved to join the French and contribute to the planned destruction of the feudal regime and the liberation of the serfs that followed every one of Napoleon's conquests. However, despite the incredible following the Napoleon had, it was to no avail against the starvation and disease that began to take its toll on the Grande Armée. On September 7, 1812, Napoleon drove the Russians from the field at Borodino, inflicting 44000 casualties while incurring only 30000. Kutuzov then executed an audacious move, the abandonment of Moscow. Prior to leaving the city, Russia's center of culture, the Russian army set fire to it so as to render it inhabitable for the French. Napoleon's forces entered the flaming capital on September 13 and quickly established a military government that hunted down the enemy partisans, terrorists, and saboteurs within the city. Marshal Ney, the Prince of Moscow, made it a priority to send carriages loaded with food to nearby Russian villages as winter began to set in. However, the remaining partisans managed to intercept and destroy those aid workers, thus contributing to the starvation of their own people. While Kutuzov retreated toward Kaluga and destroyed everything in his path, Napoleon dallied in Moscow for too long a time, expecting a brilliant end to this campaign and Alexander's consent to yet another treaty. However, after failing to receive a response, the Emperor set off from Moscow in pursuit of Kutuzov. He left behind five thousand wounded in the Hospital in Moscow, hoping that the Russians would be generous enough to assist their fellow human beings. However, when the partisans re-entered the city, they ruthlessly slaughtered the wounded and nearly burned the capital to the ground. In the meantime, Napoleon thwarted a Russian attempt to outflank him at Tarutino and encountered the bulk of the enemy forces, now twice his own, at Maloyaroslavets. The city switched hands six times, finally falling under French control. However, Kutuzov retreated his forces across the nearby river and detonated the bridge, precluding the possibility of pursuit by Napoleon. By this time, the French supply lines were stretched to the utmost. The winter decimated the Grande Armée, and Napoleon could not afford further advances. Thus, he began to retreat from Russia without having lost a single battle! Following the crossing of the Berezina River, Napoleon departed for Paris in order to rally a new force that would relieve the old upon the completion of the retreat into Germany. As a result of this new boost of manpower as well as Kutuzov's death, the tides of the Russian campaign had turned. At the Battles of Bautzen and Dresden in the spring of 1813, Napoleon tore apart the Russian army and Barclay (who had been reinstated as Commander-In-Chief) agreed to unconditional surrender. In his magnanimity Napoleon permitted the Russian soldiers to return home unharmed. Once again, order and prosperity became the social paradigms of the French Empire. Once again Napoleon could shift his attention to the war in Spain and to domestic affairs. However, this would not last.

In October of 1813, Russia, once again manipulated by Talleyrand, Klausewitz, and the traitor Moreau, a former Marshal of France, resumed hostilities despite its promise of peace. This time, however, Prussia, Austria, and Sweden (ruled by Bernadotte, another former Marshal of France) also violated their alliances with Napoleon and united to form the Sixth Coalition. These developments tipped the balance in Spain, and Wellington began to make decisive strides into the Iberian Peninsula. Over a million coalition troops had been deployed against Napoleon's 200000. The two sides fought the decisive battle at Leipzig on October 16-18, 1813. Napoleon managed to gain ground on the first day of the encounter. However, when Saxony backstabbed him and joined the enemy, the Emperor of the French became hopelessly outnumbered. Thus, the Coalition marched through Europe, suppressing freedom, reinstalling serfdom and the obsolete hierarchy of birth. Despite the death of Moreau at Leipzig, the subtle influences on the Allied leaders, especially Alexander I, continued to manifest themselves. In early 1814, the Coalition forces crossed the Rhine into France. "[Napoleon] waged a brilliant but futile campaign during the first three months of 1814." (Encyclopedia of World Biography, 309). During that time, Napoleon managed to perform miracles with his outnumbered forces, but even those were not sufficient. On March 31, when Napoleon fought battles far from the capital, Marshal Marmont foolishly surrendered Paris to the Allies, thus robbing France of any hopes of recovery from the recent turn of events. "The hopelessness of the military situation led the Emperor to abdicate at Fontainebleau (April 4, 1814) in favor of his son Napoleon II. However, the Allies refused to recognize the 3-year-old boy, and Louis XVIII was placed on the French throne." (Encyclopedia of World Biography, 309). "I would embrace every one of you to display my affection," Napoleon addressed his Imperial Guard as he departed for the Mediterranean island of Elba, "but I will kiss this flag, for it represents all of you. But know that I shall return to France when the violets will bloom." There have been numerous interpretations of this quote, the simplest of which reveals to us that even then Napoleon planned to return to claim his rightful place at the throne the next spring. However, others have been able to locate deeper meanings of the phrase, the "violets" being the desire for civil liberties and the new meritocratic order. Indeed, by the beginning of 1815 the populace became increasingly irritated with the stagnant and deconstructive reign of Louis XVIII. Riots were becoming increasingly more frequent, secret organizations planned to coordinate Napoleon's return to France. During the Congress of Vienna, delegates from various Coalition states squabbled over every minute issue. The Coalition was falling apart now that it had no common foe to unite it. Indeed, the political stage was ripe for Napoleon to execute his triumphant comeback. The violets had bloomed.