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Many have seen Napoleon as a madman for his dreams and ambitions, but he looked at them as goals within his reach that only required strength of character to achieve. Despite his short stature and his heritage of the petty nobility of Italian Corsica, he would grow to become the almighty Emperor of the West in Europe. He is a prime example of one who reached for the impossible, and achieved his dreams, if only for a short time.

Napoleone Buonaparte was born on August 15, 1769, in Ajaccio, on Corsica. His father, Carlo Maria Buonaparte, decided that his first son, Giusseppe, later Joseph, would be an ecclesiastic, and he would make his second son, Napoleone, a soldier. Stories claim that he would go to the citadel every night to watch the maneuvers, and once organized a gang of urchins to fight with the boys from the faubourg (Castelot, P. 4). Between the ages of 9 and 10, Napleone attended two military academies: the Collège d’Autun, and the military academy at Brienne. He was so tormented by the boys for being a foreigner and for his accent that he changed his name to the French spelling, Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1784, he was accepted to the elite military academy Ècole Militaire. He excelled in his studies and graduated within a year of being accepted. At the age of sixteen, he was made a second Lieutenant of artillery in the French Army.

It was then that Napoleon began his distinguished military career. He went on leave to visit his family in Corsica frequently until he was called back to service in 1791. In 1793, his big break came. He was instrumental in capturing Toulon from the British. He was promoted to brigadier general at the age of twenty-four. After the fall of Robespierre he drifted for a while without a purpose. However, in 1795 he was put in charge of keeping an insurrection from getting out of hand. He handled the situation so well that the insurrection completely vanished. He was promoted to major general on October...