The French Empire

History of the FrenchEmpire including Cartier and Northwest Passage, New France, Ohio and Mississippi.

France had colonial possessions, in various forms, from the beginning of the 17th century until the 1960s. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, its global colonial empire was the second largest behind the British Empire.

One of the most fascinating figures to ever live was born 246 years ago. For Napoleon Bonaparte's birthday, here are 15 things you might not know about the general-turned-emperor-turned-icon.

Napoleon Bonaparte was a military general who became the first emperor of France. His drive for military expansion changed the world.

The First French Empire, also known as the Greater French Empire or Napoleonic Empire, was the empire of Napoleon Bonaparte of France and the dominant power in much of continental Europe at the beginning of the 19th century.

By 1810 to 1811, Napoleon's empire included nearly all of Europe except for the Balkans. It was comprised of an enlarged France (which had swallowed Belgium and Holland, parts of Germany, and the Italian coast all the way to Rome) and various puppet nations actually ruled by Napoleon or by a Bonaparte subservient to Napoleon.

The Napoleonic era is a period in the history of France and Europe. It is generally classified as including the fourth and final stage of the French Revolution, the first being the National Assembly, the second being the Legislative Assembly, and the third being the Directory.

Napoleon Bonaparte was the greatest general of his day, but he was more than a great warrior. He was also a statesman concerned to make France a great and modern state, a dynast ambitious to make the Bonapartes the leading family in Europe, and a ruler whose influence was to mould the history of Europe at the outset of its most influential century. What is too easily forgotten is that he was a young man when he set out to do this. Born on August 15th, 1769, Napoleon seized power in 1799 and in 1804 proclaimed himself Emperor.

Outside metropolitan France and, in part, even within it, the Napoleonic empire was in no sense a popular institution. Consciously administered by and for elite groups, for the populace it constituted a burden that was both wearisome and excessive.

Establishment of the French First Empire under the military prowess of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. Learn about how he rose from the ranks.