Napoleon Bonaparte (Napoleon I) Emperor of the French

« I closed the gulf of anarchy and brought order out of chaos. I rewarded merit regardless of birth or wealth, wherever I found it. I abolished feudalism and restored equality to all regardless of religion and before the law. I fought the decrepit monarchies of the Old Regime because the alternative was the destruction of all this. I purified the Revolution. »

-- Napoleon I

«At the beginning of this century, France was for the nations a splendid spectacle. A man filled it then and made it so large that it filled Europ. This man, left the shade, had arrived in few years at the highest royalty which never perhaps astonished the history. A revolution had given birth to him, a people had choosen him, a pope had crowned him. Each year, he moved back the borders of his Empire...He had erased the Alps like Charlemagne and the Pyrenees like Louis XIV; He has built his State with center of Europe like a citadel, giving it for bastion and for work ten advanced monarchies that he had made enter at the same time in his Empire and in his family. All in this man was disproportionate and splendid. He was above Europe like an extraordinary vision.»

-- Victor Hugo, Speech to the French Academy, June 3, 1841

Napoleon decided on a military career at age 14 when he won a scholarship to a French military academy. He became one of the greatest military commanders in history and pioneered in what we describe today as the "principles of war" which are studied by almost every military academy in the world. The armies of today are based on the organization created by Napoleon for his Grand Army and it has been used ever since.

But his greatest achievements was outside military field with his supervision of the revision and collection of French law into codes. The new law codes—seven in number—incorporated some of the freedoms gained by the people of France during the French revolution, including religious toleration - he insured freedom of religions and equalily to the Protestant sects, and he declared France the homeland of the Jews - and the abolition of serfdom. The most famous of the codes, the Code Napoleon or Code Civil, still forms the basis of French civil law. Napoleon also centralized France's government by appointing prefects to administer regions called departments, into which France was divided.