The Decline of Napoleon Bonaparte - Research Paper Example

He willingly served during French Revolution while only few trained French officer did. With nationalistic uprising in Corsica, Napoleon and his family had to flee to France since they were pro-French and Corsican nationalists had won. He became prominent during the siege of Toulon for his performance while serving in artillery. Later, his career rose meteorically. Probably one of the very first and greatest mistakes of Napoleon was that he consistently placed personal interest ahead of everything.

He redesigned a heredity aristocracy in which he was the head and his immediate family was leading nobles. Moreover, he awarded states and kingdoms to his brothers and brother-in-laws and alienated France’s strongest ally, Spain. With his disposition of Spanish king, Spain rebelled and became an ally with Britain. With his continuous conquest, Napoleon solely controlled Europe by 1806, except Britain. When both the powers couldn’t beat each other, they started an economic warfare. Through Continental System, Napoleon tried to chock British trade, but both neutrals and allies ignored these sanctions at every opportunity they found.

Napoleon’s insistence on ensuring French authority at any cost led to his invasion of Russia in 1812 that resulted in his eventual downfall.1 Despite his greatness and genius leadership, Napoleon shaped his reign for failure through flaws in his generalship that led to his consequential downfall. By 1805, Napoleon became the supreme warlord and head of state. His perception of strategy was unconventional,2 as Joly de Maizeroy states, “Strategy…combines times, places, means, various interests, and consider all… [Tactics] reduces easily to firm rules, because it is entirely geometrical like fortification.

”3 In order to achieve strategic objectives, the use of diverse resources, such as, diplomacy, economic power, information war, and military power are not very