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Natural Sciences     Social Sciences     Humanities     Arts     Applied Arts and Sciences     Recreation An encyclopedia project—and more! Welcome to Citizendium, a wiki for providing free knowledge where authors use their real, verified names. We welcome anyone who wants to share their knowledge by writing and improving articles on virtually any subject. Expert authors can be recognized with a special role, but membership is open to all. See Recent Changes—an overview of articles we are writing now. Join us Join here and start a new article or improve existing ones. Get started: How to collaborate | How to format pages Wikipedians are very welcome! For more details on participation, see Why Citizendium? and Why I Contribute. Our help system Questions and answers to help you find the information you need More about the project We have a Charter to provide a framework for governance. We have 17,709 articles at different stages of development, of which 0 are expert-approved. Our community is collegial and congenial; everyone writes under his or her verified real name. We prefer new material but allow work from other sites to be imported and improved under certain conditions. For a brief guide on what Citizendium is and is not, see Myths and Facts; for more details, see the frequently-asked questions page. Students in higher education write here as part of their courses under our Eduzendium initiative. To learn more about the project, see our article on ourselves, our Help System, our financial report and our Statistics page. Follow us on Twitter (general news; new pages), Facebook or Google+. Comment on articles nominated for approval. You can discuss any article on its Talk page. We Need Support From Donations! Please help! Funds are used to pay for hosting our servers. See our financial report for complete details. Please make your donations here.

Some of our finest Citable Articles (145) Developed Articles (1,149) (17,709 total articles)        —add a quotation about knowledge or writing •Did You Know? •Citizendium Blog - Latest entry: 01-Jan-2013 Monthly Donation Day  |  Monthly Donor Honor Roll CZ:Monthly Honor Roll of Users Editing the Wiki Featured Article about Napoleon (Napoleon Bonaparte or, after 1804, Napoleon I, Emperor of the French) was a world historic figure and dictator of France from 1799 to 1814. He was the greatest general of his age--perhaps any age, with a sure command of battlefield tactics and campaign strategies, As a civil leader he played a major role in the French Revolution, then ended it when he became dictator in 1799 and Emperor of France in 1804 He modernized the French military, fiscal, political legal and religious systems. He fought an unending series of wars against Britain with a complex, ever-changing coalition of European nations on both sides. Refusing to compromise after his immense defeat in Russia in 1812, he was overwhelmed by a coalition of enemies and abdicated in 1814. In 1815 he returned from exile, took control of France, built a new army, and in 100 days almost succeeded--but was defeated at Waterloo and exiled to a remote island. His image and memory are central to French national identity, but he is despised by the British and Russians and is a controversial figure in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. Rise to Power Once the Revolution had begun, so many of the aristocratic officers turned against the Revolutionary government, or were exiled or executed, that a vacuum of senior leadership resulted. Promotions came very quickly now, and loyalty to the Revolution was as important as technical skill; Napoleon had both. His demerits were overlooked as he was twice reinstated, promoted, and allowed to collect his back pay. Paris knew him as an intellectual soldier deeply involved in politics. His first test of military genius came at Toulon in 1793, where the British had seized this key port. Napoleon, an acting Lieutenant-Colonel, used his artillery to force the British to abandon the city. He was immediately promoted by the Jacobin radicals under Robespierre to brigadier-general, joining the ranks of several brilliant young generals. He played a major role in defending Paris itself from counter-revolutionaries, and became the operational planner for the Army of Italy and planned two successful attacks in April 1794. He married Josephine (Rose de Beauharnais) in 1796, after falling violently in love with the older aristocratic widow. Footnotes