Napoleon was either a tyrant or hero, each person has their own opinion in what he was back then when he used to rule in the 1800s. He was born on Corsica in 1769 and attended military school at the age of 9. Right away Napoleon seized power when the French Revolution broke out. Some people who did not like him as much as other people could not do anything because he was the emperor.
Napoleon not such a good leader at this time because he made many bad decisions. Napoleon had a solid grip on France and also all of Europe until 1812 when he started making mistakes which then leads to his downfall. His first mistake was The Continental System which was a blockade to prevent all trade and communication between Great Britain and other European nations.
Overall it was very ineffective and instead Great Britain responds to this by creating their own blockade. Another mistake he made was The Peninsular Wars which was in 1808. They marched through Spain to get to Portugal, and removed Spanish King and places his own brother. During this, they lost 300,00 troops and you can tell it was not successful.
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The last and final mistake he made was The Invasion of Russia which took place in 1812. This mistake was by far the worst one he has ever made, 420,000 soldiers invaded and less than 10,000 soldiers return. After 2 mistakes were made he still kept making plans to do more but I think after mistake 3 he realized he should stop because many people died and nothing was working. Just because he did make bad choices does not mean he is all bad.
We all know that Napoleon was not that successful, but he did make some good decisions. One good thing he did was when he created the Napoleonic code which was a clear set of laws for all members of society. Also in 1802, he made himself 1st consul for life which means absolute ruler. In addition, he crowned himself emperor and that was him reenacting the way Charlemagne ruled not only France but also much of Western Europe. He was a good man he even built many new schools for boys age 10 to 16 because recognized that education was key to growing up. Napoleon was making a brilliant judgment.
Even though he was a good ruler from 1799 to 1812 he made a lot of ineffective decisions that did not lead to anything useful. I think Napoleon was a tyrant because he just seizes power out of nowhere also makes himself emperor not knowing if anyone agrees or disagrees with his decision. Also, he had made too many mistakes and did not learn from them he just kept going with making plans. His plans were not thought out that well, it did not have a lot of detail to actually proceed. Napoleon himself even realized he messed up a lot because he accepts defeat which in his case he got exiled to Elba.
