He spent the rest of his life in exile on the island of St. This brief return to power is known as the Hundred Days, but ended definitively with the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815.
The next year, he escaped from Elba and marched on Paris, collecting an army as he went.
He was sent in exile to the island of Elba. The defeat at the Battle of Leipzig the next year was the death knell for the Emperor, and he abdicated the next April after the Allied Coalition invaded France. The disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812 marked a turning point. Over the next ten years, the armies of France under his command fought almost every European power, and acquired control of most of continental Europe by conquest or alliance. In 1799, he led a coup d'état and was appointed First Consul within a few years he named himself Emperor and set out to claim an empire.
He rose quickly to general, gaining fame and power as he won victory after victory. He attended France's prestigious Ecole Militaire and was serving in the army when the French Revolution started. Napoleon Bonaparte was born on the island of Corsica in 1769 to an Italian family that was given French noble status nine years later.
