French Revolution (part 4) - The Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte | World history | Khan Academy Video Lecture - Class 9

We finished the last video
with the Reign of Terror,
which lasted essentially from
April of 1793 to July of 1794,
where Robespierre himself got
the losing end of the
guillotine.
So it looks like France was done
with the low point of the
Revolution.
And that is true, especially
from the point of view of the
French people.
Then we go into 1795.
France is doing well
in its wars with
essentially the rest of Europe.
And peace is declared with
Prussia and Spain.
So the only two major
enemies left are
Great Britain and Austria.
So slowly, France is dealing
with its enemies.
And this was essentially
a victory for France.
So France victorious with
this huge citizen
army that it created.
And then this was in
April of 1795.
And then in August of 1795-- let
me do that in a different
color-- in August of 1795,
the new republic
constitution gets approved.
And it gets ratified through
a vote of the people, which
makes France officially
a republic.
They don't need kings anymore.
And it set up a governing
structure where the executive
was essentially this group
five directors.
So the executive is called
the Directory.
So you don't have
one president,
you had five directors.
And then the legislature, and
this was significant because
this was the first bicameral
legislature for France, it had
two houses.
It had the Council of 500, which
is analogous to the U.S.
House of Representatives.
It had 500 members in it,
500 representatives.
Let me write that down.
It was by bicameral.
It had two houses, just like
the U.S. Congress.
So it's Council of 500.
And then you had your Counsel
of Elders, which had 250
representatives.
And that, if you want to view it
from a U.S. point of view,
that was analogous to
the U.S. Senate.
And the Directory, the
directors, the candidates were
submitted by the Council of
500 to of the Council of
Elders, who then picked the
five directors-- the five
people who would essentially
be the executive in France.
Already, things are looking
really well.
But, even though they had the
military victories, there was
still a lot of unrest.
You still had Royalist
out there.
You still had Great Britain
causing trouble.
Great Britain was attacking the
western regions of France.
There were Royalists
throughout Paris.
And then, in October of 1795,
there was a Royalist uprising.
And Royalists are the
people who wanted to
bring back the crown.
Or they were against the
revolutionary government.
And to a large degree, they
weren't just upset about the
fact that the royalty is gone.
There were also upset
that they were
excluded from the Directory.
So it excluded the Royalists.
So before the Directory could
even form in any major way,
you had a Royalist uprising
in Paris.
And they stormed
the Tuileries.
This is the same place that you
might remember earlier on,
a couple of videos ago, where
the king and queen were in
house arrest. And later, they
were assaulted by the
revolutionary government.
That was this painting
right here.
This was only three years ago.
This was in 1792 and this is
when they actually took the
king and queen prisoner.
And then they executed
Louis XVI only a few
months after that.
So now it was on
the other way.
Instead of the royalty being
in the Tuileries, and being
sieged by the revolutionaries,
the revolutionary government
was in the Tuileries and it was
being sieged by Royalists.
And actually, the situation
did not look good for the
revolutionary government.
They were out numbered.
It looked like the Royalists
had better numbers.
But lucky for the revolutionary
government,
there was a young, very
ambitious, very egotistical,
military captain at this point,
who had observed the
Siege of the Tuileries when
Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette
were captured.
And back then, he made
a mental note.
He said, they would have been
able to stop the siege if only
they had good artillery.
Remember, he was an
artillery captain.
That's where he first
became famous.
In the Siege of Toulon he was
able to use artillery
effectively to suppress
a rebellion.
So he was actually observing
this scene three years later.
And now, in 1795, as the
revolutionary government is in
the Tuileries and the Royalists
are about to
essentially take it over,
Napoleon, using what he
learned when he observed the
first time, he was able to
place cannons and artillery
in such a way.
And he shot what they
call grapeshot.
And it's essentially like a
shotgun coming out of a canon.
And even though they were
significantly outnumbered by
the Royalists, he was
essentially able to mow them
down with the canons.
So even though you had
more numbers, you
had all these cannons.
Let me draw one.
You had a canon and the actual
ammunition would have these
little pellets.
That's why it was called
grapeshot, it looked like a
bundle of grapes.
And when you shot it out, it
would go in every direction.
So you could imagine, it would
just mow down whoever is in
the way of the canon.
And so essentially, Napoleon
was able to save the
revolutionary government.
And allow the actual Directory
to come to power.
So this once again, Napoleon was
in the right place at the
right time.
And he was very competent
in military tactics.
By all measure he was
egotistical, he narcisistic,
but the dude knew what
he was doing.
And so Napoleon becomes
even more famous.
This event, October 5, 1795
where Napoleon is able to
defend the revolutionary
government, this is know as 13
Vendemiaire.
I know I'm saying it wrong.
But once again, this was the
month of October in the new
French Revolutionary Calendar.
But it made Napoleon even more
of a national hero, or even
revolutionary hero.
People are starting to realize
that this guy, he definitely
knows what he's doing.
But you could imagine at the
same time, the Directory
really didn't like this dude
hanging around too close to
the seats of power.
He was obviously ambitious.
He was obviously competent.
And at some point, he
might be a threat
himself to the Directory.
So they gave him power.
But they made sure that he
was far away from France.
So he was essentially
put in charge of the
campaign into Italy.
Remember, we're still fighting
Austria and Great Britain.
So we're fighting Austria
in Italy.
And Napoleon is made a Commander
in Chief of the
Italian forces.
And he's tremendously
successful.
This was kind of the least
important front of the war
with Austria at this point.
But out of all of the generals
of the different fronts,
Napoleon is the one that
proves himself to be
tremendously innovative
and tactical and an
all-route good general.
So this Napoleon kicking
butt in Italy.
So once again, he becomes
even more famous,
even more well known.
Eventually, Austria admits that
hey gee, we're not going
to beat the French anymore.
They're really taking care
of us quite well.
And they make peace with the
French in October of 1797.
The Italian campaign
occurred in 1796.
So he defended the
revolutionary
government in 1795.
He kicks butt in
1796 in Italy.
In 1797 there's peace
with Austria.
So you only have Great
Britain left.
But this peace with Austria
is actually
going to be very temporary.
This is from the Treaty
of Campo-Formio.
Let me write that down.
And once again, this was
peace with Austria.
But France was the victor.
So this is another
French victory.
And the only real enemy left
was Great Britain.
But the main problem was that
Great Britain had the dominant
navy in the world at the time.
So France, and especially
Napoleon, wasn't in a position
to confront Great Britain
on the water.
And this was kind of a
controversial decision.
In 1798-- and remember, the
Directory really didn't want
Napoleon hanging
around France.
They're like OK, you're hugely
popular, you're a good
general, you're a
great general.
You go do what you want.
Whatever you think is proper.
So Napoleon gets it into his
head to attack Egypt.
And people aren't 100% sure what
was the main strategic
goal of attacking Egypt.
So in 1798, he leaves
from Toulon.
Remember Toulon was the port
that he helped suppress.
He leaves from Toulon, he takes
Malta along the way.
And then eventually, he
arrives in Egypt to
essentially take over Egypt.
And people believe that his
desire to take over Egypt was
essentially to, at some
point, undermine
the British in India.
He'd maybe make some Muslim
allies in Egypt and then maybe
befriend some of the Muslim
insurgents, if you will.
Especially they were talking
about Tipu Sultan, who he
wanted to meet up with and
maybe help undermine the
British in India.
But people aren't quite sure.
It might have been just Napoleon
having some visions
of grandeur.
And he wanted to go to Egypt
because Egypt was a formerly
great empire.
So in 1798, Napoleon
goes to Egypt.
These are paintings
of him in Egypt.
And once again, he was able to
kind of route the Mamluk
forces who are in power
at the time in Egypt.
This is the Battle
of the Pyramids.
Once again, Napoleon is
hugely successful.
Except for one problem.
He brings his 20,000 troops into
Egypt, obviously by ship.
They're sitting here, they're
kicking butt in Egypt.
But they're still at war
with the British.
So what the British do, with
their dominant Navy, they send
Horatio Nelson in charge
of a fleet.
And he comes here where the
French navy was parked.
And he just destroys them.
So Horatio Nelson destroys
the French fleet in the
Battle of the Nile.
And this is a depiction.
This is Horatio Nelson
right here.
This is a depiction of the
Battle of the Nile, which
essentially strands Napoleon's
20,000-person army.
They're stuck in Egypt.
So not knowing what else to do--
they can't leave with all
of their forces-- Napoleon
then goes into
Damascus and Syria.
And then he causes all sorts
of havoc in raping and
pillaging and whatnot.
But still that kind of begs the
question of, how are they
going to get back?
And you could imagine, for
someone as ambitious and
egotistical as Napoleon, he
didn't really care a lot about
what happened to his troops.
And so when an opportunity
arose in 1799, he left.
He left his entire army.
This gives you a lot of view
into Napoleon's character,
that he was willing to leave his
entire army in Egypt and
in Syria to essentially be left
to die at the hands of
the Ottomans.
And then he sneaks his
way back to France.
So in 1799, Napoleon goes
back to France.
Let me write this down.
And once he gets back there, he
sees that the Directory is
unbelievably unpopular.
And the main reason is the
reason that every government
in France throughout this whole
series of videos has
been unpopular.
People are still hungry.
France is still poor.
Notice in everything I've talked
about, in all of these
videos, we still haven't
addressed the issue that
France is essentially broke
and that people are still
going hungry.
So throughout all of the
violence, all of the wars, the
Directory is hugely unpopular.
And then a few of the directors,
two in particular,
actually three of the directors,
want to plot with
Napoleon, who was
hugely popular.
And they essentially
plan a coup.
And the way that they allow
themselves to come to power is
they resign.
And then they tell the
legislature that's meeting at
the Tuileries, hey, there's
a Jacobian revolt
and you're in danger.
Why don't you go to this
estate west of Paris.
So that's Paris, where
they normally meet.
They tell them to go to an
estate west of Paris.
So the legislature goes
here to this estate.
And you'll be protected
by Napoleon.
And they're protected by
Napoleon and his army.
Now once they're there, Napoleon
goes in and starts
making these speeches about
you guys being essentially
illegitimate.
And he looks like he really
wants to take power.
And they just jostle him
out of the room.
But once he gets jostled out
of the room, his brother
points to the bruises
on Napoleon.
He tells the guards outside of
where the legislature is
meeting, hey those
guys in there,
they're becoming violent.
You have to go in there
and take order.
So that convinces
the military.
And they go in and they
essentially dissolve the
Council of 500.
So essentially, you've dissolved
the legislature,
Napoleon is in charge of the
military that dissolved the
legislature.
And so that allowed Napoleon
and two of the plotting
directors to take power.
They became the three
consuls of France.
They form the Consulate, or the
new executive of France.
And very shortly they'll have
their own constitution.
But this really marks the point
where Napoleon takes
power of France.
Because even though he took
power with these other two
dudes, he eventually is able to
scheme his way to be called
First Consul.
At which point he is the
authoritarian ruler of France.
So we've gone from, over the
course of the French
Revolution, from 1789 where we
had an absolute monarch in
Louis XVI, now we go all the way
to 1799, 10 years later,
after all of this bloodshed,
after multiple revolutions and
counter revolutions.
We end up with Napoleon,
essentially being
in charge of France.