If only Father could see us now.

Napoleon and Joseph Bonaparte were grinning like they had just robbed a bank, as they exited the carriage.

Napoleon was wearing crimson robes and a golden wreath crown.

It was Coronation Day, and onlookers were standing on their tippy toes to catch a view of him as he entered Notre Dame.

Inside, the best men and women of France stood at attention.

The Pope had been waiting for hours. The music started and Napoleon strode through Notre

Dom's great front doors and toward his destiny. He took his position at the front. Prayers were

recited, songs were sung, and he was blessed by the Pope. And then he did one of the most remarkable acts in human history.

He picked up his imperial crown and placed it on his own head.

It was a statement of the ultimate self-made man.

No one had the power to crown him other than him.

He had made himself an emperor.

What king or bishop could possibly claim the authority

to confer his crown? I can only imagine what Napoleon must have felt, as the ceremony closed,

clothed and crowned like a Roman emperor of old, in France's most holy cathedral, as the people

cried out in unison, long live the emperor.

30 years earlier, the boy Napoleon played in the streets of Ayaccio Corsica, an island a hundred miles off the southern coast of France.

Corsica wasn't anyone's idea of the center of the world, and no one imagined that anyone

from Corsica could take over the world, least of all, this boy Napoleon. He was the second

son of a second-rate family. He was right, but so were his brothers, and so were hundreds of other boys. I don't think

this boy had any inkling either. All he knew is that he liked to hang out around the French

Garrison station there. He liked to listen to their stories and their jokes. He liked to look at

...