#Napoleon dominated European affairs for almost two decades while leading France against a series of coalitions in the Napoleonic Wars.
He won the large majority of his battles and seized control of most of continental Europe before his ultimate defeat in 1815. One of the greatest commanders in history, his #campaigns are studied at #military schools worldwide and he remains simultaneously one of the most celebrated and controversial #political figures in European #history.
In civil affairs he implemented a wide array of liberal reforms across Europe, as summarized by British historian Andrew Roberts:
The ideas that underpin our modern world—meritocracy, equality before the law, property rights, religious toleration, modern secular education, sound finances, and so on—were championed, consolidated, codified and geographically extended by Napoleon.
To them he added a rational and efficient local administration, an end to rural banditry, the encouragement of science and the arts, the abolition of feudalism and the greatest codification of laws since the fall of the Roman Empire.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJgNrRZPHi8