Napoleon was one of the greatest military commanders in history, even though; he has also been portrayed as a power hungry conqueror. Napoleon denied such accusations and argued that he was building a federation of free people in Europe united under a liberal government. There are not very many people in history that have captured the imagination of their generation and of historians. Possibly, the most compelling of these figures is Napoleon Bonaparte. Perhaps the aspect of his life that fascinated his generation was his humble beginning.
             Napoleon Bonaparte was born in Corsica, as an Italian in 1769, however he was officially a French citizen because France had annexed Corsica in 1768. He spent his childhood hating France, which is ironic because France was the country he would rule one day. His parents were not extremely wealthy, but he was still on a higher social scale than most Europeans. After the French victory, many Corsican rebels fled to the mountains, where they continued to fight on. However, Napoleon's father easily submitted to French rule. Napoleon despised his father for this.
             He attended French schools, and at the age of sixteen became a weapons officer in the French army in 1785. When the revolution started, he was a dedicated supporter of the revolutionary and then Jacobean cause. What he admired about the Jacobeans were their strong centralized government, their commitment to deal with the problems facing the fledging republic, and their attempt to forge a strong stable France while winning the war against its enemies. Napoleon felt, like the Jacobeans, that an energetic centralized state was essential to consolidate the advances achieved by the Revolution, and at the same time, he wished to bring about the stability many French longed for after the upheavals of the past decade.
             His first real military opportunity came as a captain of artillery at the siege of Toulon, where he expertly se...