On The (Travel) Trail Of Napoleon

22.11.2023 - 01:03 / forbes.com / Napoleon Bonaparte / River Nile / Napoleon Iii III (Iii)

With Ridley Scott’s new cinematic epic Napoleon hitting theaters on Nov 22, there’s renewed interest in the French general and emperor, as well as an upswell in visitation to many of the places that are indelibly linked to his career as a military genius, government reformer and controversial ruler.

Born into a well-off Corsican family, Napoleon Bonaparte was enrolled in a military academy on the French mainland at the age of nine and graduated many years later as an officer in the French Army.

Showing the incredible daring and strategic acumen that would make him master of Europe, Napoleon used the chaos of the French Revolution as a springboard for his rise to power within the military and eventually all of France and half the continent.

More than 200 years after he met the original Waterloo, Napoleon’s legacy endures at numerous destinations in Europe and Africa.

“Nabulio” was born in 1769 in a house on the Rue Saint-Charles in Ajaccio on the Mediterranean island of Corsica, which had only just been ceded to France after five centuries under Italian rule.

Bonaparte family members continued to live there until the 1920s and the residence is now a French national museum with exhibitions and events related to Corsican culture and history, and Napoleon’s family.

Many of the rooms have been meticulously restored with period furnishings (including the room where Napoleon was born). Audio guides for self-guided tours are available in English and other languages.

Having already earned kudos during battles in northern Italy, Napoleon led a 1798 invasion of Egypt, ostensibly to protect French trade routes to Asia.

After capturing Alexandria, he marched his troops toward Cairo and confronted an Ottoman Mamluk army on the west bank of the River Nile within eyesight of the great pyramids.

Napoleon easily triumphed but abandoned the invasion and quickly returned to France where the revolutionary government was in danger of falling.

For years, a myth endured that French soldiers destroyed the Sphinx’s nose with an errant artillery shot. But illustrations rendered much earlier clearly show the colossal statue minus its snout.

The lavish baroque chateau that once dominated this large, riverside park on the west side of Paris was destroyed in the 1870s. But it will long be remembered as the place where Napoleon and his allies staged a bloodless coup d'état against the ruling Directory in November of 1799.

The coup essentially ended the French Revolution and set in motion a series of events that enabled Napoleon’s dictatorship and 15 years of almost continuous warfare in Europe.

In addition to a history museum that revolves around Napoleon Bonaparte and his nephew Napoleon III (who ruled France 1852-1870), the huge