Napoleon

Born on Corsica in 1769 to an Italian family, Napoleon joined the French Royal Army in 1785 and threw his weight behind the Revolution four years later. He shot to prominence at the siege of Toulon in 1793, crushed royalist insurgents in Paris in 1795, and within a year was leading campaigns that humiliated Austria and made him a national hero. An Egyptian expedition and a coup in November 1799 put him at the head of the Republic as First Consul; by December 1804 he had crowned himself Emperor of the French. For a decade he shattered coalition after coalition - Austerlitz dissolved the Holy Roman Empire, Jena broke Prussia, Friedland brought Russia to terms. But the 1812 invasion of Russia ended in catastrophic retreat from Moscow, and by 1813 the coalition had him cornered. He abdicated in April 1814, escaped Elba ten months later, reclaimed France, and lost it all again at Waterloo in June 1815. Exiled to Saint Helena, he died of stomach cancer in 1821, leaving behind the Napoleonic Code, public education, and the emancipation of religious minorities - alongside reinstated slavery, a silenced press, and a continent littered with the wreckage of his wars.