Wellesley was commissioned to the British army and, although he was extremely ambitious, his youth sometimes showed. In 1790, Wellesley was elected to the Irish parliament and participated in the unsuccessful campaign of 1794-95 against French forces in the Netherlands. Upon returning to England in 1805, he was rewarded with knighthood.
             After the Revolution began, Napoleon became a lieutenant colonel in the Corsican National Guard but, in 1793, Corsica declared independence, and Bonaparte, a French patriot and a Republican, fled to France with his family. He was assigned, as a captain, to an army besieging Toulon, a naval base that, aided by a British fleet, was in revolt against the republic. Replacing a wounded artillery general, he drove the British fleet from the harbor, and Toulon fell. Napoleon was then promoted to brigadier general at the age of 24 and in 1796 he married Josephine de Beauharnais, the widow of an aristocrat guillotined in the Revolution and the mother of two children.
             Also in 1796, Bonaparte was made commander of the French army in Italy and due to his victories, he became quite well known and respected by the French. In the same year, Wellesley, now holding the rank of colonel in the army, went to India, where he received his first independent command. Wellesley's brother was appointed governor-general of India in 1797, and Arthur took part in several military campaigns and returned to England in 1
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