Napoleon Bonaparte rose to prominence during the French Revolution, which began in 1789 and ended a decade later.

During that 10-year period, the French people overthrew their monarchy and established a republic,

which was then, for a time, ruled over by a dictatorship, the dictator in this case, being Napoleon.

But before taking on the mantle of dictator, or rather, if we want to use his formal title,

Emperor, though he was a dictator ruling over an empire, if we're being pedantic about it,

but before he rose to that hallowed position, he was a mere artillery officer from a relatively unknown family of Italian

ancestry. There was some minor nobility in his heritage, but it wasn't something he could live

off of. He had potential, you might say, but it wasn't a guaranteed thing that he would end up

making anything of himself.

The French Revolution presented an opportunity for someone like him, someone with the correct

background, but also, it turned out, a keen military aptitude, and he was able to shoot up

through the ranks, becoming a general by the age of 24. Napoleon was given command

over the Army of Italy, which was a French military unit that focused on activity within

the Italian peninsula, and a few years later, when he was 26 years old, he fought a campaign

against the Austrians and the Italians, and ended up conquering the entire

Italian peninsula in the span of a single year.

In 1798, he attacked the Ottoman Empire, carving out a radius of control in Egypt and Syria,

in part to increase France's trade-related influence thereabouts. But this campaign was also part of

a larger series of moves within the Mediterranean region that were intended to give France a springboard

from which they could threaten British India, thereby forcing the British to make peace with France

elsewhere. Now, some important background, if you

don't recall much about this period of European history, is that France was kind of stomping around,

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