Napoleon Bonaparte: Biography
Napoleon Bonaparte (Napoleon I)
Born: August 15, 1769;
Died: May 5, 1821, St. Helena Island
Napoleon Bonaparte also referred to as Napoleon I, was the Emperor of the French from 1804-1814. Napoleone di Buonaparte was born to a Corsican family, he was educated at various military schools, and led various military campaigns where he gained a reputation as an accomplished military commander. His domestic policy included being a patron for the Napoleonic code, a French civil code that is still used in France today, though heavily amended. He also founded a public education system, scrapped feudal policies, and also emancipated Jews. His influence continues to have a lasting impact today on France and the broader world.
In 1798, Napoleon was given command of French forces and launched an invasion of Egypt and Syria during the French Revolutionary Wars. In 1799, Napoleon would invade Jaffa and he sent a messenger to the city demanding their surrender, to which the city’s commander beheaded him. Jaffa would eventually fall to Napoleon as well as other cities such as Haifa, Nazareth, and Tyre. During the Siege of Acre, Napoleon prepared a speech to the Jews of Acre, which he had intended to read in Jerusalem. However, he would not get the chance, as the French were successfully prevented from controlling the city.” Napoleon prepared this letter in the hope that he would win Jewish support for his military campaign in Acre. However, it is evident that most Jews in Jerusalem especially were fearful of the French and thus threw their support behind the Turks and assisted them in defending the city.
The letter was titled, “Letter to the Jewish Nation from the French Commander-in-Chief Bonaparte, Commander-in-Chief of the Armies of the French Republic in Africa and Asia, to the Rightful Heirs of Palestine.” In this letter he writes
“Israelites, unique nation, whom, in thousands of years, lust of conquest and tyranny have been able to be deprived of their ancestral lands, but not of name and national existence!”
Arise then, with gladness, ye exiled! A war unexampled In the annals of history, waged in self-defense by a nation whose hereditary lands were regarded by its enemies as plunder to be divided, arbitrarily and at their convenience, by a stroke of the pen of Cabinets, avenges its own shame and the shame of the remotest nations, long forgotten under the yoke of slavery, and also, the almost two-thousand-year-old ignominy put upon you; and, while time and circumstances would seem to be least favourable to a restatement of your claims or even to their expression ,and indeed to be compelling their complete abandonment, it offers to you at this very time, and contrary to all expectations, Israel’s patrimony!
Rightful heirs of Palestine!
Hasten! Now is the moment, which may not return for thousands of years, to claim the restoration of civic rights among the population of the universe which had been shamefully withheld from you for thousands of years, your political existence as a nation among the nations, and the unlimited natural right to worship Jehovah in accordance with your faith, publicly and most probably forever.
