"Napoleon Bonaparte, general and hero of the three worlds", translation from french.

That i will.

Civil war - I will rule the universe:

The Irish campaign

When Bonaparte disembarked in Ireland on August 22, 1798, leading some 3,500 men, the United Irish Insurrection had already been crushed, its last supporters holding only a mountainous retreat in Ulster. Nevertheless, the country was deeply hostile to the British and welcomed the French, who easily captured the small town of Kilalla, defended by just 200 English soldiers.

Assisted by General Humbert, who had been considered for the command of the expedition, as well as by his efficient chief of staff Berthier and his future brother-in-law Joachim Murat, at the head of the small cavalry corps of the Army of Ireland, Bonaparte wasted no time, knowing that speed would be his only weapon in the face of disproportionate forces: at the head of a reduced vanguard, he defeated the numerically superior British at Castelbar. As a Republic of Connaught was proclaimed, he took command of 2,500 men and marched on Sligo, hoping to link up with the United Irishmen, while Humbert was tasked with marching with the rest of the French forces on Galway and organizing the Irish forces, in what the Commander-in-Chief hoped would become a powerful Irish army, capable of dealing with British reinforcements.
While the Directoire hoped above all to create a British equivalent of the Vendée, Bonaparte's plans were much more far-reaching: he wanted to drive the British off the island and force them to make peace, as he had done with the Austrians in Italy.



General Humbert

After the capture of Sligo, where the French entered to great acclaim, the general succeeded in rallying some of the united Irish, but soon found himself confronted by the almost 30,000 men of Lord Cornwallis, the defeated man of Yortown, who was determined to crush the sedition and drive out the French revolutionaries. At Ballinamuck, fighting broke out, but the Franco-Irish retreated in good order. Humbert consolidated the rear, while Bonaparte retreated, inflicting a series of defeats on the English, who were poorly supplied and soon forced to divide, in the heart of an island whose population was profoundly hostile to them.

Still mastering the maneuver in a central position, he inflicted defeats at Roscommon and then Ballinasloe, forcing Cornwallis to retreat. Resuming the offensive, the French surprised the enemy as they crossed the Shannon and captured Cornwallis on November 30. The news of victory provoked euphoria in Paris and unprecedented anxiety in London. A Munster Republic is proclaimed in Cork, while Humbert takes Kilkenny and approaches Dublin, where the remnants of the British army have retreated. Ulster was also invaded, although Bonaparte found it impossible to take Belfast, which was too well fortified. A famous engraving of the time mocks the enormous John Bull, assailed by the little revolutionary bee Bonaparte...

The picture was darkened by some grim news: as General Hardy carried 3,000 men and Irish leader Theobald Wolfe Tone to land at Donegal, his squadron was captured by the British. Recognized among the prisoners, Wolfe Tone was executed. Even more than the loss of reinforcements, it was the absence of an undisputed political leader that weighed heavily on the rest of the campaign, despite the proclamation of an Irish Republic, uniting all the liberated territories, on January 1, 1799.



The flag of the Irish Republic

Although the population welcomed the French and actively contributed to the British defeat, through guerrilla actions and refusal to supply Cornwallis, and Bonaparte was initially fascinated by the Celtic land as a great reader of Ossian's ballads, relations soon became strained between the French and the Irish. Ready to take up arms for the insurrection, the island's peasants were reluctant to enlist in a regular army and leave their land to rot. The islanders' fervent Catholicism, and the refusal of some to accept orders from black officers, further widened the gap. Bonaparte himself, realizing that the line troops he sought to raise were four or five times less numerous than he had hoped, was disillusioned and let his bitterness burst forth in his correspondence and notes.

He writes: "there are few true Patriots in this country; in truth there was only one Wolfe Tone, and the English took him. Eager to drive out his ancestral enemy, the Irishman was not in truth seeking to build a free nation, but to return to the barbarism of clans and the oppression of all-powerful monasteries. Whatever civilizing elements there were in this country left after the Battle of the Boyne, leaving only ignorance and backwardness". Later, noting the effectiveness of the Dominican troops, he wrote that "the Irish are called by some the negroes of Europe. Nothing could be more inaccurate: well commanded, the negro makes a very appreciable soldier; the Irish, on the other hand, flinch at the first shot".

At the same time, with Bernadotte trapped in Egypt after the destruction of his fleet, and Austria, Russia and the Ottoman Empire joining England in a second coalition, London was not idle and prepared to fight back, mobilizing some 100,000 soldiers. After reinforcing Dublin and Belfast, the Royal Army organized the landing of General Ralph Abercrombie and 25,000 British troops in Limerick, a town that was virtually undefended. While Humbert successfully defended Galway at the head of a predominantly Irish force, another British expeditionary force landed in the southwest and took Cork. The situation of the previous year had been reversed: controlling the coasts, the English were easily supplied by the Royal Navy, while the Franco-Irish were trapped in the center of a poor island.

Seeking to turn this desperate situation around, Bonaparte took the road to Munster and tried to draw the English troops inland, but misinformed about the enemy's movements, he found himself surrounded near Fermoy by a force four times his size. Immobilized by a wounded horse beneath him, he and 1,200 of his men were forced to surrender.
His capture was celebrated with festivities throughout Britain, and dismayed French opinion. Humbert, Berthier and Murat were able to negotiate an honorable surrender and evacuation to France. For thousands of Irish, the defeat heralded a terrible repression... If Irish ballads and nationalist pamphlets were to celebrate the "year of the French" and hail General Bonaparte, it is likely that many of the inhabitants cursed the foreigners who had come with promises of freedom and left behind them a field of ruins.

English Captivity

Immediately transferred to England, even before the surrender of the remaining French troops, Bonaparte was initially placed under guard in a fortress in London, before being left free to move, under an oath not to leave the English capital.

Despite the defeat, he quickly showed energy and tried, through his correspondence, to take care of his image in France in the hope of a future return to the country, while seeking to frequent good English society as much as possible, creating an image of a respectable adversary and conversing with members of the Royal Society about mathematics. Rumors of his romantic success with the ladies of the English aristocracy helped to maintain his popularity in France, although we now know that some were pure inventions (Lady Hamilton, who is credited in particular with an affair with Bonaparte, was in Naples during this period).

However, boredom is gaining ground, maintained by the frustration of being far from events on the continent. Bonaparte thus learned of the initial defeats of the French armies in Italy, before Kléber managed to prevent the fall of Turin, the successes of Archduke Charles on the Rhine, and the less successful campaign of the English against General Brune in Flanders. At the same time, Bernadotte negotiates the evacuation of his expeditionary force, abandoning his short-lived Egyptian Republic.

Family pride, however: on 18 Brumaire, Year II, Lucien Bonaparte, president of the Council of Five Hundred, prevented the coup d'etat by General Moreau and Abbé Siéyès, forcing the two men to join the other Bonaparte in London… The Directory survived another three months, before a second coup, this time organized by Lazare Carnot and supported by Generals Brune and Masséna, overthrew it, this time for good, with apparently the consent of the Bonaparte clan. it was fear, in view of the personalities involved in the event, a triumph of neo-Jacobinism and a new terror, but it is not so: leaving the prestigious title of consul to his two accomplices, Carnot exercises the reality of power under the title of President of the Tribunate. The new assembly elected by indirect universal suffrage, the Comices, will elect Lucien Bonaparte to be its first president.



If Napoleon distinguished himself throughout the world, his brother Lucien had a brilliant political career in France

Despite Carnot's search for peace, it was not until 1801 that Austria agreed to sit down at the negotiating table, after Kléber's victory at Mainz. England did not sign peace in Amiens until a year later. It is an inglorious return for Bonaparte, who finds his family in Paris on April 12, and is received by Carnot the next day. His prestige nevertheless spared him a dismissal.


The Atlantic Expedition


The Peace of Amiens had restored to France the possession of her overseas colonies; there remained to be concretely re-established order and control of Paris. Recently ceded to France by Spain, Louisiana was poorly known, poorly administered, and easy prey for its British or American neighbors. In Haiti, Governor Toussaint Louverture had established an increasingly personal and authoritarian power, which distanced itself a little more from the metropolis every day.

If the lobby of the planters, in favor of the restoration of slavery, had not succeeded in imposing its views on the new power, the supporters of an agreement with Louverture had less and less of an audience, and the supporters of a median solution, like François-Henri de Kerversau or General Rigaud, advocating the elimination of Louverture but the maintenance of armies made up of black soldiers in the West Indies had Carnot's ear...and that of Bonaparte, who was burning with desire to reconnect with victory.

The latter had submitted to the Tribunate a vast plan for the recapture of Santo Domingo, with a metropolitan army which, once the situation had stabilized, was to sail to New Orleans and fortify France's position in North America, and had put all its influence in the balance to impose this solution.

On July 6, 1802, Bonaparte embarked with the 32,000 men of the “Army of the West” to carry out his mission to regain control of French America. On August 22, Admiral Linois was opposite Port-au-Prince, ready to disembark. Louverture's two sons, raised in France, were sent to him, bearing a letter notifying him of the end of his duties and his new post as governor of French Guiana. Faced with the refusal, the Western army seized Fort-Dauphin and Port-au-Prince, forcing Louverture to take refuge inland. After two months of fighting, the rallying of Dessalines and Christophe, the governor's lieutenants, allowed the fighting to end and the latter's arrest, while the news of the abolition of slavery in neighboring Martinique by decree of Paris reassures the emancipated populations.



Fighting in Santo Domingo

The discipline of the West Indian soldiers surprises Bonaparte, who mentions it in his reports, while the epidemic of yellow fever which breaks out among his troops convinces him to leave the guard of the island and the fights against the last rebels to local troops. . After a personal quarrel with General Dumas, who was to take over the leadership of the colony after Bonaparte's departure, he finally appointed Alexandre Pétion, representative of the island's mulatto elites, to this post, while the command and training of the local troops on the ground is entrusted to Jean-Jacques Dessalines, "a man as efficient as he is vain who will be our Cerberus", notes Bonaparte. He set sail for New Orleans with most of his metropolitan troops and arrived there on January 4, 1803.

Toussaint Louverture, deported to France despite promises to let him retire to his plantation, was kept for a few months in a fortress before being released with a ban on returning to Santo Domingo.

The Mississippi proconsul


As soon as he arrived in New Orleans, Bonaparte seized all the levers of local power and showed an energy in the administration of the territory that was in no way inferior to that which he deployed on the battlefield. It was the first time the general had found himself in a position of leadership: Paris was far away, and he had been granted exceptional powers, which he soon exceeded. The regime, happy to keep the popular general at bay, let it happen.



Louisiana at Bonaparte's arrival

The British threat had been removed by the Peace of Amiens, but the proximity of the immense United States was just as worrying. Washington, who had long been considering seizing the territory by force, had taken a very dim view of the 1800 Treaty of San Idelfonso, which provided for its return in exchange for the creation of the Kingdom of Etruria for a Bourbon in Italy. Since then, President Jefferson had been blowing hot and cold with French diplomacy, proposing diplomatic overtures while leaving the possibility of conflict on the table. Having heard of negotiations taking place in Paris between French and American representatives, Bonaparte decided to take the initiative and negotiate directly with the United States. The negotiations, held in Atlanta, Virginia, saw the French categorically refuse to cede New Orleans, but grant American commerce advantageous navigation and storage rights on the Mississippi. Considered at the time to be less important than access to the river, but of vital importance for the future of North American history, negotiations also concerned the northernmost territories of the French domain.

For a relatively low price, Bonaparte ceded what were to become the states of Iowa, Minnesota, Montana and the two Dakotas. Difficult to control, these territories were of no interest to the governor, and their cession also made it possible to get rid of a common border with the British; the expansion of the United States westwards, always hampered, was nevertheless no longer impossible. The warmongering party in Washington now lost its audience: both the merchant lobby and the advocates of westward expansion had been reassured by the Governor.

With his hands now free, Bonaparte set about transforming Louisiana, now renamed the French Provinces of the Mississippi. The new administrative division into provinces and the creation of the position of Prefect marked a strong commitment to centralization. In 1805, the title of governor was changed to the antiquated "proconsul", a republican variation of viceroy. The reforms undertaken were considerable in just a few years: exploration and mapping of the territory, demarcation of Indian territories and lands open to colonization, creation of a land registry.

The main problem was settling the territory, as the proconsul was well aware that the influx of Anglo-Saxon settlers was inevitable in the medium term. After encouraging freed ex-slaves to migrate north, to the protest of landowners, the colonial authorities launched a campaign to promote the new lands in France and Italy, promising numerous advantages to new arrivals. Success, however, was relative.

The Amerindian question was soon marked by an ambivalence between the tradition of cooperation that had existed since the Ancien Régime and the brutality of the central government's imposition. The desire to strictly demarcate Indian territories met with reluctance from the tribes, and Murat was forced to wage a rapid campaign against the Natchez. But at the same time, New Orleans could not ignore the need to get along with the natives in an under-populated territory. The final division of the territory reflects a desire to make the Indians the limits of the Mississippi, with tribal territories often stretching along the trails used by American settlers, who it was hoped would find it impossible to cross. This strategy would come to fruition some thirty years later, with the migration of the "civilized tribes" from the left bank of the Mississippi.

Following the sale of the northeastern territories to the United States, the map of the Mississippi was again altered in July 1805, when Spain ceded the strip of territory west of New Orleans. It was on this occasion that Bonaparte remarried to a wife from the Mexican Creole aristocracy. Their children were Alexandrine Bonaparte in 1806, Paul-Emile Bonaparte in 1807 and Octavie Bonaparte in 1810.


In New Orleans itself, the proconsul's life increasingly resembled that of a head of state, if not a monarch, rather than that of a mere administrator. As a result, the Proconsular Guard numbered twice as many soldiers as the guards of the two consuls combined, and a veritable courtly lifestyle was established. "The Bonapartes were definitely Florentines," mocked one of Carnot's envoys. Alongside the Emperor and his wife were the Beauharnais family (Hortense had married Napoleon's brother Louis), as well as Jérôme, who had married an American, Elisabeth Paterson. The writer Chateaubriand, passing through after Bonaparte's insistent requests for advice on North American affairs, did not take up residence, but brilliantly described the atmosphere around the proconsul.


War in North America

The resumption of the Franco-British war in 1807 came as a surprise to few; despite Carnot's cautious international stance, London was concerned by France's policy of fortifying its colonies and developing its fleet, under the energetic Minister of the Navy Decrès. Austria's entry into the war against France, as part of the Third Coalition, was also foreseeable, given the weight of the warmongers in Vienna. But Spain's declaration of war on France, at the instigation of Prime Minister Manuel de Godoy, took the whole of Europe by surprise.

While the joint Anglo-Spanish attack on Santo Domingo isolated the Mississippi, New Orleans was threatened by a Spanish land offensive. The supply of weapons to the Comanches, eternal enemies of New Spain, disrupted preparations, before Joachim Murat, at the head of the Mississippi Cavalry Legion (a motley crew of Indians, Creoles and metropolitans detached from their units), led an in-depth raid on Texas, ruining Spanish logistics.


The greatest danger, however, came from the sea: with the unofficial support of the United States, confident of being able to buy back the territory after the English conquest, the British fleet planned a vast expedition to seize New Orleans. On November 19, 30,000 British troops under the command of General Moore landed nearby and engaged in the first fighting. However, underestimation of the French fortifications made progress difficult. On December 2, the final confrontation was won by Bonaparte and his motley army of metropolitan and Creole regulars and 300 South American volunteers, who had been earmarked for an expedition to Venezuela and were commanded by Francisco de Miranda. The English army withdrew with heavy losses, due as much to fighting as to disease.



Venezuelan adventurer and independence fighter Francisco de Miranda.

1808 saw a return to the French offensive and victory in the Texas campaign, which definitively eliminated the Spanish threat. At the same time, Miranda's expedition to Venezuela proved a failure: lacking popular support, the adventurer was defeated and executed. A raid on Veracruz was more successful, but made no real strategic gains.

On July 3, the announcement of peace between France and Spain following the French invasion of Aragon arrives in New Orleans.

That would be as a Texan would say "NOT TOO GOOD".

What do I mean?



Think of them as American "Mongols".

The return to France


The Treaty of Bayonne between France and Spain accorded little importance to the Americas, with the exception of the eastern part of Saint-Domingue, which was to be ceded to France, but which Pétion and Dessalines were unable to take effective control of. Spain ceded Texas, but the rest of its colonial empire remained intact.

Having taken no part in the negotiations, Bonaparte confined himself to attending border commissions, which are best remembered for the effect produced by Joachim Murat's extravagant uniforms, inspired by Amerindian dress. The two countries also established the borders of an independent Comanche nation, but this made little sense for a people of horsemen, and the French soon faced them in their turn. Frustrated to find himself far from the decisive battles, Bonaparte resigned as proconsul and set sail for France, arriving on November 10, 1809.

Alas for him, he learned on arrival that General Davout had won a decisive victory over the Austrians at Stuttgart, while Moreau, back in favor, had taken Trieste.

The armistice was signed a few days later, once again leaving Great Britain as France's sole adversary and depriving Bonaparte of the prospect of a major command. His networks in France had nevertheless been active in spreading the news of his victories across the Atlantic and maintaining his popularity, which he intended to capitalize on to launch a political career.

Rejecting the post of commander of the Channel army, knowing that landing in England was not a serious option, he was elected deputy for Paris at the Comices in 1810. Nevertheless, his inability to reach agreement with his brother Lucien, who had become a loyal supporter of the regime, and his position, which stood in stark contrast to public opinion, prevented him from taking on important responsibilities: criticizing the prudence of Carnot and Talleyrand after their military victories, he championed a complete reorganization of Europe, and the mobilization of all available resources to subdue Great Britain, in a country that ardently desired peace. He maintained his positions after signing a truce with the British, which was tantamount to making himself inaudible.



Napoleon Bonaparte, member of the Comices

Bitter, he wrote in a letter to his son-in-law Eugène that he had "exchanged a kingdom for an armchair", and lost interest in political affairs to prepare, behind the scenes, future military operations, without referring to the Tribunate or the consuls (Masséna and Brune had been replaced by Jean-Jacques-Régis de Cambacérès and Martin-Michel Charles Gaudin, Duc de Gaëte, while Carnot remained President of the Tribunate for another year). In particular, he developed a plan to invade Australia with 600 soldiers, with the aim of provoking a rebellion among the convicts and establishing a Republic in New South Wales.

The resumption of hostilities against the British in 1811 was an opportunity for Bonaparte to exercise military command once again, while at the same time getting rid of Carnot, who resigned. But Bonaparte was soon unpleasantly surprised to learn that he himself had been appointed commander of the Australian expedition, as punishment for having organized it without any supervision. Embarking for Mauritius, he was unaware of the proportions the expedition would take.

From Australia to Ceylon

Bonaparte embarked on a long crossing to Mauritius before launching his expedition, under the command of Admiral Linois, to attempt a landing in New South Wales. While the Atlantic remained dominated by the British, the strengthening of French and Dutch strongpoints under Carnot enabled French squadrons to operate with some freedom in the Indian Ocean, and to hinder British trade there.

Although he was not thrilled at the idea of fighting on the other side of the world, Bonaparte hoped for rapid success, which would enable him to carry out other operations against the British; he was already considering action against the British Indies, as he wrote to Talleyrand.

The operation soon turned into a fiasco: delayed by bad weather, the fleet landed several dozen kilometers from the area defined upstream. The French were unable to make contact with the prisoners and were attacked by the garrison, forcing Bonaparte to reembark, leaving around 50 men on the ground. It was the shortest and least glorious of the general's actions... While Linois wished to return to Mauritius, Bonaparte imposed a sail to Java, where he was well received by the Dutch colonial administration, who were worried about the British threat and saw unannounced reinforcements arriving.

While the assumption by some that the former proconsul had deliberately botched the landing in Australia so that he could then carry out his project in South Asia seems highly dubious, it is clear that he very quickly began to propose to the Dutch an offensive action against the British. His plan to land in Ceylon was in line with the views of several Dutch officers, despite the reluctance of Governor Janssens.

On June 6, 1813, Bonaparte landed in southwest Ceylon with 1,800 men, two-thirds of them Dutch.