Napoleon Bonaparte arrived at a French military academy as a short, bullied Corsican with an accent, and went on to crown himself emperor. This deep dive examines the mechanics behind the myth, starting with how mathematics and artillery training gave an outsider a path to power.

We follow his failed involvement in Corsican politics, the siege of Toulon, the whiff of grapeshot in Paris, the corps system that won in Italy, his personal newspapers, the Egyptian campaign, and the coup of 18 Brumaire. We also weigh the Napoleonic Code against his censorship and the reinstatement of slavery, the disaster in Russia, the Hundred Days, Waterloo, and the memoirs he dictated on St. Helena.

• How bullying at Brienne pushed Napoleon toward mathematics and the artillery
• The hillfort strategy at Toulon that made him a brigadier general at 24
• The corps system and the propaganda newspapers behind his rise
• The Napoleonic Code as a tool of control, alongside censorship and the reinstatement of slavery
• Russia’s scorched earth retreat, the confrontation at Grenoble, and his campaign to shape his legacy