Original subtitles

Out of a small island nation came a man driven by ruthless ambition.

At his zenith, he would rule over 70 million people and transform the face of

Europe.

Warrior, emperor, despot, he rode the tiger of revolution to become one of the

most admired and reviled men in history, Napoleon Bonaparte.

On the morning of June 18, 1815, near the small village of Waterloo in central

Belgium, an army prepares for war.

Troops move into position.

Cannons are hauled into place.

The stakes are high.

Napoleon Bonaparte is rolling the dice one last time in a bold bid to regain

former glory.

Before the day is out, he will know if he's destined for triumph or oblivion.

Napoleon's journey to Waterloo began 46 years earlier, on the fiercely

independent island of Corsica, recently annexed by the French.

Born in August 1769, Napoleon was the second of eight surviving children.

As a child, he is shy, moody, and soft -spoken.

Still, his parents have high hopes for their young son.

In 1799, at age 10, he's enrolled in the French military school at Brienne.

There, his schoolmates mock and make fun of his small size.

and thick Italian accent, a memory that will haunt Napoleon and shape his

character in the years to come.

Still, he shows a talent for leadership and for organizing war games.

At 15, Napoleon transfers to France's most prestigious military academy, the

École Militaire in Paris.

A year later, he graduates 42nd in a class of 56.

Napoleon is commissioned a second lieutenant in the artillery in September

For an ambitious man, the choice is fortuitous. New advances in weaponry and

tactics are about to rewrite history.

Already an expert in maneuvering field guns and commanding a detachment,

Napoleon will show a genius for pitting the firepower of cannons against the

manpower of an army.

He plans to use his skill to drive the French out of his native Corsica until a

much larger drama overtakes him.

The first wave of revolution sweeps through France and one of the great

of the age, monarchy versus democracy.

On one side sit a privileged few.

Living in the lap of luxury as they have for centuries, noblemen and aristocrats

are indifferent to the suffering of thousands of their countrymen who've

poverty and starvation.

On the other side, philosophers, like Jean -Jacques Rousseau, are spreading

radical new ideas about human rights.

and rallying around the cry, liberty, equality, fraternity.

For Napoleon, liberty means freedom for Corsica, equality the fast track to

promotion. But while he embraces the ideals of the revolution, he is no

anarchist.

On August 10, 1792, anger in the streets boils over.

A mob invades King Louis XVI's palace.

With them march sections of the Paris National Guard.

From the beginning, it is obvious blood will flow, and Napoleon is there to

witness it.

He sees the king's personal Swiss guard form up to defend the palace.

But they are desperately outmanned and outdone.

Louis and his wife, Marie Antoinette, are dragged away to prison.

The despised monarchy has come to an end.

Now the rebels go berserk.

Venting generations of hatred, they mutilate the corpses of the Swiss guard,

cutting off their ears and genitals.

Napoleon is revolted by the butchery, and for the rest of his life, crowds

terrify him.

But the worst is yet to come.

In 1793, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette are marched to the guillotine.

Their deaths unleash a tidal wave of blood.

Over the next year, during the reign of terror, a quarter of a million people

will be slaughtered.

The killing triggers the new republic's first crisis, civil war.

Thousands of officers resign their commissions.

Seizing the opportunity for advancement, Napoleon pleads for loyalty to the

government and the revolution.

His allegiance will not go unnoticed.

By the summer of 1793, France is at war with itself and most of Europe.

For months, the government has been trying to eject French royalists and 18

combined Spanish and British troops from the great naval arsenal at Toulon.

Napoleon is in command of the artillery.

But his superiors are skeptical.

when he maps out an unorthodox plan to lay siege to the harbor instead of the

town. He proposes to use land -based artillery to pound the British ships

hot shot, preheated cannonballs turned into flaming incendiaries.

48 hours later, to save their ships, the British withdraw.

The victory earns Napoleon the rank of Brigadier General. He is now 24 years

old, with time on his hands.

He will not be summoned again

until October 1795, when 30 ,000 Royalists fed up with the new regime.

stage of grief.

Forewarned of the attempt, Napoleon has ample time to conjure up a surprise for

the rebels.

As they surge forward, he rakes them with what he calls A whiff of grape

Clusters of small iron balls fired at point -blank range.

Scores die instantly.

Hundreds more retreat, stunned by Napoleon's cold -blooded attack.

For the smug young general from Corsica, his shocking performance this day is

only the beginning.

By the age of 26, Napoleon Bonaparte has ridden the tide of revolution to the

pinnacle of success.

Now his destiny is about to take another turn.

Legend has it that one day a young boy came to plead for the sword of his

father, an aristocrat who'd gone to the guillotine during the reign of terror.

With him was his mother.

Josephine de Beauharnais.

More

likely

Napoleon met Josephine through a fellow officer, one of Josephine's many lovers.

Whatever the circumstances, Napoleon is completely smitten.

Passionate and worldly, Josephine dazzles him with her elegance and charm.

Against the advice of her lawyer, who thinks Napoleon has nothing to offer but

his cape and sword, she agrees to marry him.

The day doesn't begin well.

Napoleon is three hours late for his own wedding.

Nor does it end well.

While making love on their wedding night, Napoleon is bitten in the leg by

lapdog.

Two days later, The general deserts his bride.

France is surrounded by enemies.

Afraid the spirit of revolution will spread, Britain is spoiling for a fight.

In Italy, France is already at war with Austria, who is allied with Russia.

Two weeks after his wedding, Napoleon arrives in Italy to find an army of 37

,000 men in tatter.

Outnumbered, poorly provisioned, and totally demoralized, his troops need

something to raise their spirits.

Their new general seems hardly up to the task.

He is barely 5 feet 2 inches tall and only 27 years old.

But Napoleon is not short on bravado and brains.

He tells them great provinces will be in their power and promises them glory

and riches if they defeat Austria.

Within hours his men are on the move.

With few supplies to slow them down, they march with lightning speed through

Italy.

To assure a string of victories, Napoleon adopts an unconventional

Strike the first blow at the enemy's center, then attack its flanks.

His success earns him admiration and a nickname, the Little Corporal.

In village after village along the way, Napoleon plants trees of liberty, living

symbols of the revolution taking root throughout Europe.

By April 1797, Napoleon has driven the Austrians back to within 75 miles of

Vienna and secured an armistice.

The peace treaty he negotiates will give France control of thousands of miles of

territory from Belgium to Greece.

Napoleon has defeated an empire and changed the map of Europe.

He has risen to the top of France's ranks.

All that's left to conquer is Great Britain.

But the task is daunting.

The Royal Navy controls the English Channel.

Not wanting to risk disaster, the French dredge up an old plan for invading

Britain indirectly.

In July 1798, 35 ,000 soldiers sail not for England, but for the land

of the pharaohs.

Egypt is the center of Britain's Mediterranean trade and the stepping

India.

Amid the grandeur of the ancient past, Napoleon is conscious of his own place

history. He tells his troops to remember, you have 40 centuries looking

you.

To the Ottoman Turks who rule Egypt, the French are infidels.

In the shadow of the pyramids, they declare a holy war.

outdated tactics are no match for Napoleon's well -disciplined army.

While in Egypt, Napoleon had a secret agenda.

Five hundred artists, engineers, and scientists set out to discover and

all they can of the treasures of ancient Egypt.

Among them is the Rosetta Stone, the priceless key to deciphering the

hieroglyphs and the history of the pharaohs.

But despite its considerable allure, Egypt proves a deadly trap.

Four months after Napoleon's arrival, England's Admiral Horatio Nelson corners

the French fleet on the Nile and destroys it.

Devastated, homesick, and riddled with bubonic plague, The army is stranded in

the desert for another year.

Though Napoleon faithfully writes to his wife, rumors reach him that Josephine

is having an affair.

Worth still, letters to his brother Joseph about the affair are mysteriously

leaked to the British press, making him a laughingstock.

When Napoleon returns home in October of 1799,

He refuses to see his wife.

After Josephine begs him, he takes her back.

From now on he'll also take a string of mistresses.

Napoleon's first love, Desiree Clarie, meets him secretly on his return from

Egypt. But she never forgives him for not marrying her, and will soon wed one

his archenemies.

The famous soprano Giuseppina Grassini wooed Napoleon with her voice rather

her body, and carried his portrait wherever she went.

Pauline Ferret was known as Bonaparte's Cleopatra.

Napoleon orders her husband, one of his lieutenants, back to Europe so he can

live with her in Cairo.

Maria Waleska, a Polish countess, disguised herself as a peasant to

At first a reluctant mistress, she would finally bear him a child, his firstborn

son.

Yet despite his many affairs, no other woman captivates him quite like

Josephine. His anguish over her infidelity is only dimmed by the

turmoil that is tearing France apart.

Napoleon's old allies, including his brother Lucien, stage a coup.

Backed by Napoleon's troops, they seized control of the government without

firing a shot.

Within a month, the ideals of the French Revolution will be swept away and the

leadership of France will fall on the shoulders of one man.

In February 1800, the dictatorship of Napoleon begins.

After years of war and regimes riddled with corruption and incompetence,

Napoleon's first task is to restore order.

He streamlines the government, turning it into an efficient military machine.

He straightens out the country's finances by creating the National Bank

France.

He simplifies the legal system with a new set of civil laws, the Code

regulates virtually every aspect of life.

Though not a believer, he reopens the churches banned during the revolution.

But what the people want most is peace, and France's old rival, Austria, is once

again on the move.

Hoping for a quick victory, Napoleon leads 40 ,000 troops over the Alps to

for a confrontation.

The Battle of Marengo soon turns into a fiasco.

Poor reconnaissance, followed by a surprise attack, catches Napoleon short

two divisions, reducing his strength by half.

The French barely escaped defeat, but in his dispatches to Paris, Napoleon

distorts the truth.

He calls it a crushing victory.

Later, he will rewrite history and elevate the Battle of Marengo to the

legend.

Napoleon had delivered on his promise to bring peace to France through victory.

In 1802, a grateful nation appoints him head of state for life.

A vote is taken to replace the Republic with an empire modeled after

Charlemagne's a thousand years earlier.

Now Napoleon is only a step away from a throne.

On December 2nd, 1804, at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, the coronation

is held.

Dressed in the sumptuous cloak of royalty, Napoleon has brought Pope Pius

from Rome to preside.

But at the crucial moment, Napoleon astounds the Pope by taking the crown

his hands and placing it on his own head.

Then the Emperor of France makes Josephine his Empress.

But not everyone is happy.

His mother refuses to attend the coronation.

Beethoven, a long -time admirer, scratches Napoleon's name from the

to his third symphony.

The self -styled Roman emperor is master of all France.

But beyond the borders, his enemies still plot against him.

In the days ahead, there will be little time to enjoy the throne.

Even before Napoleon's coronation, France was again at war.

His old enemies, Austria and Russia, were forging a new alliance, backed by

British gold.

In 1804, Napoleon orders 200 ,000 troops massed along the French coast.

For years, Napoleon has dreamed of a cross -channel invasion.

The trick is to get past the formidable British Navy.

A hundred years ahead of his time, Napoleon seriously considers tunneling

the channel and using hot air balloons to transport his troops.

He may lose 20 ,000 men during the crossing, but once ashore, the English

be no match for his army.

Alarmed by the threat of an invasion, England's Prime Minister William Pitt

encourages Napoleon's enemies to converge on the Rhine.

In August 1805, Austria and Russia advance on French Bavaria.

To forestall an attack, Napoleon abandons his plans to invade Britain.

Instead, he marches his troops from the channel to the Danube River and renames

them the Grande Armée.

His goal is to stop the Austrians before they link up with the Russians.

On October 20th, Napoleon surrounds the town of Ulm and captures 57 ,000 men

without firing a shot.

By now, the French are exhausted.

and the Russians are closing in.

But for Napoleon to halt or retreat is unthinkable.

He is determined to lure his foes into a decisive battle.

Near the small town of Austerlitz, he sets a trap.

The Russian army, led by Tsar Alexander, and the Austrians, led by Emperor

Francis II, descend on the French, believing they are weak and on the run.

But Napoleon is confident.

He tells his staff, before tomorrow night, this army will be mine.

In a flash of genius, he orders his troops to evacuate Austerlitz and the

surrounding plateau at dawn.

The next day, the centerpiece of his strategy will unfold.

The eve of the battle coincides with Napoleon's first anniversary as emperor,

and his troops stage an impromptu celebration.

As he moves from outpost to outpost, he greets his men by name, laughs, and

tells jokes.

Soon, thousands are lighting torches,

the now famous bivouac fires of Austerlitz.

and cheering, Vive la France.

Vive la France!

Vive la France!

Vive la France!

Vive la France!

Vive la France!

Vive la France!

Vive la France!

The next morning, a thick mist conceals the opening scene of Napoleon's drama.

Then as the sun rises and the fog lifts, the Russians see the French leaving.

Believing they are in retreat, 25 ,000 Russian grenadiers charge in pursuit.

In front of them is a hill which masks the main body of Napoleon's army.

As soon as the Russians hit the flats, Napoleon unleashes his troops, cutting

his bewildered enemy in two.

Napoleon crushed a formidable army and a dangerous alliance with one of the most

brilliant maneuvers in military history.

But in a letter to Josephine, he's uncharacteristically humble.

I have defeated the Russian and Austrian army commanded by two emperors, he

wrote. I am a little tired.

For Napoleon, there will be no rest.

Word has reached him that six weeks earlier, off the Spanish coast at Cape

Trafalgar, Admiral Nelson attacked the French fleet.

knocking half their ships out of command.

Nelson paid for his victory with his life and ended Napoleon's dream of

England.

He will have to settle for the continent.

The French Empire now stretches 1 ,500 miles from the Atlantic Ocean to Central

Europe.

Ruling it becomes a family business.

His brother Joseph is crowned King of Naples and later King of Spain.

Louis, King of Holland.

Jerome, King of Westphalia in Germany.

Each takes Napoleon as his last name, proof of their loyalty to the Emperor.

Only England remains unconquered.

In 1807, Napoleon devises another plan to destroy his neighbor.

He puts an embargo on all British goods.

But he needs Russia to make it work.

Napoleon meets the young Tsar on a raft in the middle of a river.

They charm each other.

After dinner, they drink tea and discuss politics.

and philosophy.

Napoleon leaves convinced he's made a friend.

But enforcing their treaty will now take Napoleon into the very heart of Tsarist

Russia.

By age forty, Napoleon Bonaparte's empire has reached its zenith.

He controls the destiny of seventy million people by force of will and

personality. But without an heir, the empire is doomed.

His only son, by Maria Waleska, is illegitimate.

His marriage to Josephine has spawned countless rumors of infidelity, but no

offspring.

Ironically, after 13 years, she loves him more than ever.

But after a terrible fall from a balcony years earlier, she's unable to bear

children.

One evening in the autumn of 1809, Josephine arrives at Fontainebleau to

discover the door between her bedroom and her husband's walled up.

Josephine is devastated.

I still love you, he says, but politics has no heart.

Josephine was Napoleon's lucky charm.

With her replacement, the great niece of Marie Antoinette, his luck will turn.

In April 1810, Napoleon marries Marie -Louise, the pretty 18 -year -old

of his former enemy, the Emperor of Austria.

Within a year, she gives birth to a son.

Overjoyed, his father dubs him the King of Rome.

His birthright will be a capital worthy of an empire.

Paris, Napoleon decrees, will be something fabulous and unprecedented.

He commissions three new bridges over the Seine and two new monuments.

The Arc du Carousel commemorates the heroic achievements of his Grande Armée.

The Musée Napoléon in the Louvre.

houses all of the art treasures amassed during his campaigns.

But while Paris glitters, Napoleon's own luster is fading.

In a series of paintings, Francisco Goya documents the horrors of French

occupation in Spain.

In Paris, discontent is also growing.

Feeding Napoleon's ambitions has cost France untold millions and an appalling

number of lives.

Now many believe the price is too high.

After several assassination attempts, the pressure is mounting.

For Napoleon, winning becomes an obsession.

When he plays chess with his friends, he cheats.

Convinced he's infallible, he'll soon make one of the biggest mistakes of his

life.

Napoleon leads the largest army ever assembled in Europe across the Neman

into Russia.

Tsar Alexander has backed out of his agreement to blockade England and is

preparing for war.

Napoleon plans to dictate the terms of a new deal on the battle fee.

Seventy miles from Moscow, near the village of Borodino, the Russian army

in.

At dawn on September 7, 130 ,000 French troops smash into the Russians.

Finally, exhausted, the Russians withdraw.

Napoleon has lost 30 ,000 men and 10 generals.

His chief surgeon performs 200 amputations in 24 hours.

The price was high, but the road to Moscow is open.

When Napoleon arrives, He finds the city deserted.

The next day, fire breaks out.

Two -thirds of Moscow is destroyed by arsonists.

For five weeks, Napoleon waits for the Tsar to surrender.

But Alexander has a cunning scheme of his own.

The Russian winter is closing in.

His food supply is dwindling. Napoleon bitterly orders the long march home.

Now the Russians launch their cruelest attack.

They hound the French, forcing them back down the road to Borodino, past the

bloated corpses of their comrades.

Temperatures plummet to nearly zero.

Food runs out.

Stragglers freeze and die, while Napoleon rides comfortably in his

eating three meals a day.

For the French, the campaign becomes a race to the Beretsina River, which means

Poland and safety.

But the Russians get there first.

Napoleon will go home, the architect of one of the worst disasters in military

history.

His once grand army is in ruins.

His empire is crumbling.

His old enemies declare war.

Soon the Allied forces of five nations will march into Paris.

Napoleon's fate is sealed.

Life is unbearable for me, he tells a comrade.

In his darkest hour, he contemplates suicide and asks his doctor to concoct a

poison.

The poison is strong enough to kill two men.

But his body rejects it. Napoleon had wanted to leave life.

Now instead, he must leave France.

Napoleon conquered Europe, and for nearly two decades, ruled it with an

fist.

Now his enemies will accept nothing less than unconditional surrender.

On April 6th, 1814, a humiliated emperor abdicates.

Two weeks later, Napoleon leaves Fontainebleau for the last time.

600 loyal troops and four cannons will follow him into exile.

He is bound for Elba.

a small island in the Mediterranean not far from his native Corsica.

There he will be mocked as emperor and sovereign.

Napoleon's departure signaled a return to monarchy and the dark days before the

revolution.

With the stroke of a pen, Louis XVIII restores France to its former borders

abolishes the empire.

But for some, There's no turning back.

After ten months on a 38 -square -mile island of scrub -covered mountains,

Napoleon is getting bored.

By early 1815, word reaches him that much of France, including the military,

would cheer his return.

Though it's a long shot, Napoleon can't resist the opportunity to recover his

old glory.

In March, he escapes from Elba, aboard a boat disguised as an English brig, and

makes a dash for Paris.

Along the way, every regiment sent by the king to arrest him joins him.

When the news reaches the palace, Louis flees.

Now the people openly embrace their former emperor.

Napoleon promises to save France, to roll back the calendar to the days of

revolution, to restore liberty, equality, and fraternity.

Meanwhile, in Vienna, Napoleon's enemies have been busy carving up his empire.

When news of Napoleon's return reaches them, they officially declare him an

outlaw.

Immediately, the Duke of Wellington heads for Belgium to join up with Field

Marshal Gebhard Blucher and the Prussians.

Although they outnumber Napoleon almost two to one, Wellington is too smart to

underestimate his opponent.

Having Boney in command is worth 40 ,000 men, he remarks.

Napoleon has two choices, stand and defend Paris, or head east and drive a

between the English and the Prussians.

On June 15, 1815, he marches into Berlin.

Next day, Napoleon attacks the Prussians on two fronts.

For hours, he pounds the enemy.

but with his army thinned out, he can't clinch a victory.

Only a last -ditch assault by the elite French guard drives the Prussians to

retreat.

That night, they head north to join Wellington, near the village of

On the 18th, The French and the British face each other along a three -mile

ridge.

Napoleon's plan is simple and familiar.

Open with a bombardment, then attack Wellington Center.

He ranges four divisions on the right wing and another three on the left.

Wellington has taken the high ground, drawing up his forces along the crest of

Mont Saint -Jean.

He leaves his left flank open, expecting the Prussians to arrive and reinforce

him.

At 11 .30 a .m., gunfire signals the beginning of the Battle of Waterloo.

Two hours later, Napoleon launches the main attack.

But his men line up in an outdated formation that presents Wellington with

perfect target.

5 ,000 are quickly cut down.

Meanwhile, the Prussians are getting closer and closer.

Napoleon has no choice but to hurl every last man at Wellington before they

arrive.

The first assault fades.

Then his commanders order a cavalry charge.

British form into 20 squares interspersed with cannons.

For the next two hours, waves of French cavalry break and die on the British

line.

When the first group of Prussians arrives late in the afternoon, they

Napoleon's right flank with fury.

Still, the French fight bravely on, even breaking through Wellington's line

before they're repulsed.

Then a second group of Prussians appears out of nowhere.

As if on cue, Wellington charges down the hill to meet them.

Stunned and terrified, Napoleon's army collapses.

It cost Wellington 20 ,000 men to win the Battle of Waterloo.

It cost Napoleon twice as many to lose it.

A month later, he surrendered to the British Navy for his second and final

journey into exile.

To prevent another escape, the Emperor is taken to St. Helena, an island in the

Atlantic a thousand miles away, and a thousand miles from nowhere.

Napoleon did not like Longwood, his home on St. Helena.

a small wooden house converted from a cattle shed.

It sits on a plateau where it can be watched from a nearby military camp.

Patrols constantly crisscross the island.

Napoleon cuts spy holes in the shutters so he can see without being seen.

He complains to his jailers that he's an emperor, not a prisoner of war.

But the British refuse to acknowledge his title.

To pass the time, he writes his memoirs to his own advantage.

He says of his renowned military genius, I have fought sixty battles, and I have

learned nothing that I did not know in the beginning.

In the spring of his sixth year on St. Helena, his health deserts him.

Racked by razor -sharp pains in his stomach, he dictates his last will and

testament.

In it, he expresses his wish to be buried on the banks of the Seine, amid

French people he loved so well.

He died on May 5, 1821.

According to the autopsy, he died of cancer, but rumor has it he was poisoned

his British servants.

Napoleon was buried in a valley on St. Helena.

His aides fight over the inscription, and in the end, It's left blank.

Nineteen years after Napoleon's death, King Louis -Philippe petitioned England

to return his remains to France.

Today he lies in state at the military church Les Invalides in Paris, a fitting

tribute to an extraordinary man.

He rose from obscurity to become perhaps the greatest military genius of all

time.

He marched an army of half a million men, a million miles, and conquered a

continent.

He dragged a beleaguered nation out of revolution and transformed it into an

empire.

Passionate, ambitious, egocentric.

He was also a visionary, a hero, a conqueror.

He was Napoleon Bonaparte.