Camp Gagnon - How Napoleon Used An Occult Society For His Own CIA

Episode Date: August 27, 2025

Who was Napoleon Bonaparte, and was he the greatest war general? Today, we take a closer look at the rise of one of the most famous world leaders. We’ll talk about why Napoleon Bonaparte is important, the French Revolution, various battles, the occult figures in Napoleon's life, and other interesting topics... WELCOME TO History CAMP! 🏕️👕🧢 GET YOUR CAMP DRIP HERE: http://camp-rd.com🏕️ Get Today In History Email Here (Free): https://camp.beehiiv.com/🎟️ 🎫 Comedy Tour Tickets Here: https://markgagnonlive.comTimestamps:0:00 Welcome to Camp1:00 Why Napoleon Is Important3:05 The Early Life of Napoleon5:44 Napoleon Denied Entry to Corsica8:43 The French Revolution12:36 Napoleon Sides w/ The Jacobins15:21 Struggles of Being Brigadier General17:39 Coup of Thermidore21:00 Napoleon's Wife + Commanding Army of Italy26:04 Napoleon’s Egyptian Campaign30:23 Sacred Order of The Sophisians 32:58 Napoleon's Contradictions + Returning to France38:11 Napoleon Becomes First Consul41:08 Negotiations w/ The Pope42:31 Victory at The Battle of Marengo46:33 Napoleon's Plebiscite to Rule For Life52:57 The Legacy of Napoleon

Napoleon Bonaparte was born on a small island in the Mediterranean. He had no crown, no army, and no claim to greatness. But within a few short decades, he would go from having nothing to commanding the most powerful empire in Europe. He redrew borders, rewrote laws, and bent kings and nations to his will. To his supporters, he was a military genius and a true leader, but to his enemies, he was a ruthless dictator and a threat to the world order. He won battles that should have been impossible, yet in the end, he was betrayed, defeated, and cast away. to a remote island left to die in isolation. This episode is all about how Napoleon went from just a lowly boy on a small island

to taking over all of Europe, basically, and how he even used secret societies like the Freemasons to spread his message and control the intelligentsia and the powerful people of Europe in this brand new empire that he created. So without further ado, sit back, relax, and welcome to History Camp. What's up, people, and welcome back to History Camp. This is the show where I explain the most interesting, fascinating, controversial stories from around the world from all history from all time ever, sometimes even future history. Thanks for joining me in my tent. As always, I'm joined by a couple of friends. I got my buddy David over here who has sunglasses on. He's not allowed to talk. And of course, on the ones and twos, I have the Greek freak back from the motherland. Christos popadapados. What's up, everybody?

We don't have time to be yapping all day. Go get your own podcast, Chrisos, if you want to just, you know, waste the audience time. Because we don't have time to talk about your travels in Greece because we're talking about a different traveler. One of the greatest, I don't know, you could say war generals of all time, an all-time legend, all right? He didn't get his due in the recent films made about his life. I haven't seen them. That's just what people have said. But today we're going through the life and times of the great Napoleon Bonaparte. That's right. We're going through everything, the wars, the battles, why people loved him, why people hated him.

And then even some of the occult stuff that happened in Egypt. This is going to be a fun one. So sit back, relax, and let's jump in, all right? This is a guy who basically, I don't know, you could say shaped the beginning. beginning of the 1800s militarily, probably more than anyone else, right? I mean, he won more battles than basically any military commander in history. And when you think of, like, you know, the great leaders, like Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Napoleon was greater than them in a few ways. And I'll explain, okay. What made Napoleon special is not necessarily, you know,

like only strategy or, you know, the time that he was in. What made him really unique is how he was loved and respected by his soldiers. And he was able to make them, you know, do things for him that a lot of other leaders couldn't do. And largely because he came from a middle class family, not from, you know, royalty or some aristocratic lineage. Yet he managed to take control of most of Europe from these humble beginnings. So for someone with this background to basically become an emperor and rule the biggest empire in Europe, it hadn't been seen since, you know, like medieval times. And it's truly incredible and this is the story of how Napoleon comes to power. Let's go all the way back, all right?

And yeah, we're not really going to go to France as we know. If we're going to the island of Corsica, August 15th, 1769. There's a simple middle class family in Corsica. This is like a small island that France had just taken control of from another country known as Genoa that year before Napoleon was born. And before the French Revolution happened, Napoleon seemed destined for a pretty basic, ordinary life. He came from, again, this is like middle class. Like, they're not necessarily completely poor. They're not in poverty, but they're like a minor noble family in a part of France that

had only recently become French. So, like, he's barely French by French standards. If you know anything about French people, they're pretty strict with what it means to be French. I mean, I was born in Paris and they look at me like I'm a farm kid, you know? So his family had some influence in a local area, but he's not wealthy or powerful. And Napoleon had a bunch of brothers and sisters, spent time, you know, playing outdoors, didn't have many luxuries, but just kind of lived like a regular, you know, Corsican life. His mother, Letizia, was a practical, sort of no-nonsense kind of strict woman, and his father, Carlo, was involved in local politics, but was terrible with money and had a little bit of a compulsion with gambling. Yeah, he was a little bit of a card player. His poor decisions left the family basically broke by the time, you know, Napoleon was a young boy, and he saw what, you know, entering into the lower classes was like.

Bonaparte and his pregnant wife Letizia had originally fought against the French when they tried to take over Corsica. They supported the Corsican leader named Paolo, who wanted independence. However, when it became clear that the French were just going to come through and take it all over, Carlo decides to switch sides and save his family. Pretty smart thinking, right? You got to back the right horse. That's one thing he learned from gambling. When France took over Corsica, it took them about a year to gain full control. And Carlo Bonaparte and his family went from being freedom fighters against the French to working now with the French government. And this change probably bothered Napoleon in some capacity

as he was growing up, knowing that his family at one point were freedom fighters for their people and for their land, to then immediately just kind of giving in to this greater force and fighting for the other guys. So the French government wanted to make Corsica truly part of France. So they encouraged important local families to send their sons to work for the French government

and basically do this sort of like borderline forced a similar. And a bunch of different countries will do this, right? Like you take over a place and then you take the high-ranking nobility and you basically send them to your schools. And this is like the new way of like, you know, dynastic marriage that would basically keep a culture together. Some of the sons joined the civil service. But in Napoleon's case, he was sent to the French army. So Napoleon managed to become a military officer.

But he was an artillery officer, which wasn't really respected, you know, at the time in society. It was kind of like just like a whatever position. So to be an artillery officer, you had to understand math and science. And the upper class looked down on people who had to use their brains to work, right? Like you had to actually think about stuff. You had to actually do things to be an artillery officer. So in the 1780s in France, where the rich nobles controlled everything, Napoleon was someone who had big dreams but lived in a society that never would really let someone from his background become truly great.

I mean, this exists today to an extent. But specifically in this time in France, it was very much like, where were you born? Who were you born to? What kind of work did your parents? to do, and that kind of was your destiny. So for this kid, artillery officer is probably the best he was going to do. So during this period, Napoleon would have encountered the intellectual networks that included, you know, Freemasons and people from other high-ranking aristocratic, wealthy societies. The military officer corps, particularly those with scientific and technical expertise like these

artillery guys, often included men involved in Masonic lodges. Now, this is where it's interesting. These lodges served as centers of enlightenment and, you know, political discussion. And this is exactly the kind of environment that would have appealed to this ambitious young officer seeking to advance and, you know, kind of thrust himself into the higher rungs of society. So Napoleon wasn't happy with his position in the army, so he decided to return to Corsica. He still strongly believed that Corsica should be independent from France and wanted to, you know, find Pauley, this leader that was, you know, the Corsican independence, you know, freedom fighter. And when Napoleon went back to Corsica, Pauley didn't welcome him. Napoleon looked up to this guy as a hero, but, you know, this guy had a different attitude. With the typical Corsican sort of clan thinking, Pauley said, you are a Bonaparte.

You're a collaborator. I don't trust you. Basically saying, like, yo, your family switched up on me. Like, why would I back you in any capacity? Like, I don't have any trust in you at all. And Napoleon, as a young man, getting rejected by his hero, was devastated. You know, I mean, he's still like a teenager this time, and it was a crushing blow. And it became clear to the Bonaparte family that they didn't really have a future in Corsica, right? Like they switched up and, you know, kind of back the French.

So Napoleon was, you know, practical above all else. And if you wanted to build a career, if you wanted a future, if you wanted to accomplish something important, which Napoleon did, he was extremely ambitious, you had to do it in France. Napoleon needed, you know, a massive political and social change that would, you know, destroy the current power system and allow him to quickly rise through the ranks of this French military. You can see he's kind of like a man without a land at this point, right? He's not welcome in Corsica, but he can't rise the ranks in France. So what does he do? As it turned out, he would get exactly what he needed. The people of France were getting ready to rebel against their king and queen. Now, this is going to become very helpful for a young Napoleon as France was heading towards a revolution. So the French Revolution, 1789, had a bunch of deep causes that had been building for a long time.

We won't get into everything, but in brief, what you need to know, The problems came from how badly the French monarchy was run. The government wanted France to be a major world power, obviously, but it couldn't really afford its goals financially. So France had this social system where the rich and the powerful basically didn't have to pay any taxes. They didn't have to contribute to the welfare of the state while everyone else had to. Uh-oh, sounds kind of familiar. This situation reached a breaking point in the 1780s. Ironically, this happened right after France had helped America win its independence from Britain.

However, France had borrowed so much money to pay for that war that the government was now out of money and couldn't collect enough taxes to pay its debts. So again, obviously, if you don't know, the French and the British have been battling for a long time. And France saw it strategically that if they could get America to get independence, it would, you know, cause a rift in the British monarchy and the power in Europe. And that would benefit them. But they invested so much money that, unfortunately, they were now out of cash. French Revolution created this complex situation. So before 1789, back to these Masonic lodges, they had been these centers for like enlightenment and discussion

and bringing together nobles and bourgeois, like intellectuals and military people. And many revolutionary leaders had a lot of these connections that were going to these Masonic meetings, though the revolution itself fractured the Masonic world, as you can imagine. Some lodges were seen as like these aristocratic havens where it was like only the ultra wealthy and many of those were disbanded, while others embraced like revolutionary ideals and they had more like military or sort of lower class

people inside them. And this created both opportunities and dangers within these sort of secret societies or, you know, fraternity clubs in France. Unfortunately, in France at this time, the only way to change the structure of French politics was to basically dismantle it completely. You know, it's like you get like a little like pill on your sweater or something, you know, it starts to fray a little. Like if you start to pull on it, the entire thing. falls apart and this is basically what happened in France. So the French Revolution begins with a lot of hope, excitement. People believe that they could make improvements to the society, but the revolution also started with fear and conspiracy and suspicion. And the reason that

Parisians actually stormed the Bastille on July 14th, which is now their Independence Day, was because that three days before, the King's brother and other high-ranking nobles had fired the reform-minded government and were trying to undo the changes that had already been made. So things are going in the right way. Everything's like, okay, we're going to get this reform government. We're actually going to get the rich people to pay taxes. And then the king's brother said, no, no, no, we're not doing this. We're firing this government.

We're not doing it. The monarchy steps in and the people freak out. So then they storm the best deal. And then after July 1789, the National Assembly, this is like a group of representatives. They spend two years trying to create a new constitution. They wanted to keep King Louis on the throne, but also give people political rights and make everyone pay their fair taxes. So they're trying to do both at the same time, and they hoped that everything would work out perfectly, but of course, this was kind of a frivolous idea. You can't have both,

right? Like if you're trying to reform things, you can't have the old antiquated monarchies still running the show. So the Enlightenment ideas that told people they could reform government also told them that they could reform the Catholic Church, which is another massive power structure that exists in France at the time. However, trying to change the monarchy and the government and the church creates a ton of conflict. Obviously within the church, the high-ranking church officials became pissed, and this caused even further divisions in the French society. By 1791, all the way to like 1792, France was basically in like this hidden civil war with all these different power factions all coming together. And if you've ever seen Game of Thrones, chaos is a ladder. And at the center of the civil war were

the Jacobins, basically led by Maximilian Robes Pierre. You probably heard his name. And the Jacobins were the Republicans of their time. Okay, they were like extreme Republicans. And these are the people that wanted to execute the king and they wanted to completely transform France politically and they didn't just want to change the people in charge while keeping the same system. They wanted to use violence and terror to basically revamp the entire society and create a full-on revolution. So these Jacobins had a strong impact on Napoleon, who's just kind of like a young dude seeing all this happen. And when he returned to France and rejoined his military unit in Nice, in June of 1793, he wrote a report basically expressing his support for this radical revolutionary group. He was like, yes, I support this. And not long after, possibly because of this, you know, pro-Jackman writing, Napoleon was given his first major opportunity. He was called to lead the French artillery as the Republican forces surrounded and attacked the strategic, the strategic port of Toulon. So Toulon, if you don't know, this is a harbor. All right, this is a natural sort of harbor city. And even today, it remains like the main port for French Mediterranean

naval imports and exports. So by 1793, it's extremely important for France's military strategy. About one third of France's Navy is stationed there at the time. And the problem was that from the French revolutionary government's point of view, Toulon was full of royalists, people who basically supported the king and they didn't want everything to get revolutionized and they wanted him to stay in power. So these royalists surrendered the city to the Allied forces. and this included not just British troops, but Spanish forces as well. And these enemy forces occupy this major strategic location, which the French Revolutionary forces, including young Napoleon, had to then recapture.

So this is where Napoleon really starts to make his name. He came up with a plan to capture one of the forts surrounding Toulon that had been successfully fighting off the attacks. And if they could take this fort, they would be able to control the city and the port with their artillery, making the enemy's position basically impossible to defend. So he presents this plan to a policy. politician named Baras, who was born into nobility and become, you know, one of these radical sort of Jacobin representatives. And Napoleon was allowed to care out the plan, and it worked.

So Baras, this politician, he moved in circles that included, you know, all sorts of high society people. And while there's no necessarily, you know, documented evidence that Napoleon was, you know, initiated into like any of these serious society groups, he was certainly operating within these social and professional networks that were connected to many of these sort of underground groups. Napoleon's success during the siege of Toulon earned the 24-year-old, you know, like lower noble-born Corsican artillery officer, the promotion to Brigadier General. Now, things aren't just that simple. The political situation in France is changing so fast and the people are rising up and this time against the Jacobins, whose reign of terror and violence is now coming to an end.

And this newly promoted General Bonaparte, whose connection to the Jacobins had actually helped him reach this position, where he was actually able to do this military operation, now found himself once again in another dangerous political situation. Now, the Jacobins, of course, as we know, they didn't last. They had tried to promote this idea of a republic, and in doing so had executed 40,000 of their political enemies. And people naturally became extremely worried that they would be the next on the list, and they went a little too far.

So being a professional soldier was risky in the French army during this period because governments of Paris came and went quickly. and if you connected yourself to a particular government or a potentially even like a coup within that faction that government would probably collapse at some point and then your career would basically be gone or even your life might get destroyed along with it. And Napoleon, as you can see,

is connected to this sort of radical group that's executing people and he had published a pamphlet that got him noticed by Maximilian Robespierre's brother. So when the Committee of Public Safety under Robespierre was overthrown in the coup of Thermidor, Napoleon was almost brought down with that entire government structure. He wasn't executed, but his career was put on hold, and his rise to power was stopped.

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We got the link in the description. Now let's get back to the show. So at this point, just to recap, you have this guy, born in Corsica, not a noble family, and they're rejected by the Corsicans. They're rejected by the French, but he's able to rise the ranks. And then Civil War basically happens revolution. He backs this government. He's able to do this coup.

He's able to take over, or not a coup rather. He's able to do this military operation, take over this port. Now he has the port, but then the government that he backed falls. So now he's almost back in the same position. he was in before. So this coup of Thermidor, known as the Thermidorian reaction, as the period is known, brought in a new government that hoped to unite the divided left wing and the right-wing politicians. But, of course, this is a much easier plan said than done. So after Robespierre was executed in July of 1794, the people who survived this reign of terror spent the next

year trying to figure out how to rebuild France. And they had to deal with people on both the left and the right who wanted revenge. The new Thermidorian leaders moved toward a political middle ground. And this middle position was still two right wing for some of these surviving Jacobins, but it was also clearly two left wing for many of the surviving royalists

who saw 40,000 of their homies get murdered. So the royalists themselves had many different options, ranging from counter-revolutions who wanted to execute everyone involved in the revolution to people who started thinking, well, maybe having a king with limited power isn't such a bad idea since we've messed things up with this republic like let's

try to find a middle ground and you have all these different political ideas that are brewing together until 1795 when the Thermidorians decide to create a new constitution and this led to what is always called a royalist uprising in the western districts of Paris so for Napoleon this uprising

gives him a chance to once again try to prove himself to this French government so Barras this politician that we mentioned before who was the most important politician in Paris at the time he chose to fight against the royalist plot. And he didn't pick Napoleon because he thought he was amazing, but because he remembered what he had done at Toulon at basically taking back this naval port. So Napoleon Bonaparte, who was still a junior general at this point, got help from a man who would

become very important to Napoleon's later career, a man known as Marat. And he is the Calvary commander of the 12 Chachos de Cheval. So Joachim Marat, so Joachim Marat. So Joaquin Marat, like many of Napoleon's future marshals, was an act of Freemason. Just an interesting connection again. And this is a connection that, again, would prove significant in building the networks of loyalty that sustain Napoleon's empire. So Napoleon ordered Marat to capture some of the nearby artillery. And the artillery was then used very ruthlessly, firing, you know, grape shot, which are basically, like, giant metal balls and, like, fragments into crowds of royalist rebels, just like,

basically just like mortars. It was just like cannibals, basically. And the coup attempt was crushed almost immediately. So this left the French Republican government very grateful to Napoleon. And they felt like they owed him a favor. He was able to once again successfully thwart the royalists. So with these, you know, grape shots going off, Napoleon became famous throughout France, winning favor with the directory, which is the new government in power.

And the directory reinstated the 26-year-old as Brigadier General. and they gave him his first real command, the army of Italy. But before he starts this campaign, Napoleon meets a woman named Josephine de Mojane, and he marries her on March 9, 1796. Josephine was a widow whose husband had been executed by the Jacobins during the reign of terror. Josephine was older than Napoleon. She was very much a part of the inner circle of this directory government, and the directory had been known for some corruption with both money and also some more.

morals. And Josephine was elegant and very charming, and Napoleon was madly in love. Now, what's important is that Josephine was connected to the top levels of the French government, specifically to this man we mentioned before, Boris, who was basically part of the directory leadership. Now, you really needed these kinds of connections for your career to advance, and this marriage happened right before what would be the most important breakthrough in Napoleon's entire career, this appointment as the commanding general of the army of Italy. Now, this army was relatively small, only 20 to 30,000 men, and it was poorly supplied and generally pretty neglected

compared to other military fronts that had seen more fighting over the past year or two. Now, the armies in the north had been winning major victories. So Napoleon went to his army and presented himself as their savior, the man who was going to lead them to greater things. He famously told them, soldiers, you are naked, ill-fed. The government owes you so much.

it can give you nothing. Your patience, the courage you display in the midst of these rocks are admirable, but they procure you no glory, no fame is reflected upon you. I seek to lead you into the most fertile plains in the world. Rich provinces, great cities will be in your power. There will be great honor, glory, and riches. He goes on to say, Soldiers of Italy, will you be lacking in courage or endurance?

And I mean, I mean, he also delivered this in like a sick, you know, French accent or French language, the whole deal. And this is exactly the spirit that he brought to this campaign. There was almost a kind of like treasure hunting pirate-like mix of motives. Like, hey, I'm going to make you guys personally rich. I'm going to make you guys more successful than you could ever imagine if you're willing to be brave. And, you know, at the same time, it's also about France and, you know, glory and representing bigger ideals. So at this point with this Italian campaign, his enemy was the Austrian Empire, whose forces greatly outnumbered his own. Napoleon wasn't scared by the challenge ahead of

him and immediately went on the attack. And he moved fast, and he often moved in ways that the enemy didn't expect, showing like an energy that the Austrian side was really lacking. He followed through on his plans. He had an excellent understanding of geography and he could see where to advance, where to cut off enemy supplies, and where to make the enemy feel trapped so they couldn't retreat along their own supply routes. Napoleonic warfare, which really began during this period, hence the name was marked by this exact quick movement. So in Italy from 1796 to 1797, Napoleon consistently outsmarted the Austrian enemy and pushed them out of many different territories. And by the end of 1797, the Austrians, it just gave up. And Napoleon made it easier for them by acting

practically and making a deal. And the Austrians actually got Venice in exchange for territories that they were forced to give up for France. Now, what's important from the point of view of Napoleon's career is that he was starting to act like a politician as well as a soldier and a general. He was doing everything. He's going in. He's taking land, but he's also being diplomatic. And he was making major international decisions without really asking the government in Paris for permission. You can say that the Paris government basically had to accept whatever agreement he made. So Napoleon was this excellent battlefield leader and he got all of his men really fired up and he was a great commander in a traditional sense. What he also began to show during this was this belief that not only could he do politics and create deals with other governments, but that he deserved to.

And that he deserved to be treated in a political sense, like a noble, like almost like a king. So while he was in Milan, he set up his headquarters in what was basically a palace. And he actually made it bigger and had large mirrors installed in the palace garden so that more people could come and pay their respects to him. It became a kind of place where you had to go if you wanted anything from the French government in this region. And you had to present yourself to Bonaparte who sat in a throne room waiting to meet people. He clearly set this up on purpose to create this air of nobility and sort of see himself as the monarch of the region. Then when he returned to Paris at the end of 1797, he very carefully left it all behind. He entered Paris in a regular carriage dressed in ordinary clothes and presents it himself very humbly to his political bosses because, again, he's playing a very political

Machiavellian game here. He enjoyed being in charge and being the unquestioned leader and the ruler. But he also knew that if he wasn't careful and he went back to Paris, that he would just get killed or wind up in prison. So he was very keen as to how to play this power game. Now, this is where things get interesting. This is a little bit of a fun sort of detour. But when Napoleon returns to Paris, he's a hero. Like, he completely dismantled the Austrians. He sort of led this Italian army as a brave fighter and a commander and a diplomat. And at this point, he's only 28 years old. And he had defeated this Austrian empire, which was more experienced and had more soldiers than the French in basically every sense. Now it was time to focus on France's greatest enemy, the British.

But instead of attacking this northern enemy directly, he looked to the east. And instead of looking eastward toward the Middle East, for some kind of strategic advantage wasn't unusual. It had been a part of France's long-term military planning for years and what they were considering by 1798 was an interesting mix of ideas. One was that the fight with Britain in the Northwest had basically reached a deadlock and that they were looking for another way to break out of that simple like army versus Navy situation that they've been stuck in for, you know, many decades. The Mediterranean Sea would be much more difficult, at least in theory, for the British Navy to control. If you can imagine the geography, you have the straight of Gibraltar that basically cuts them off and France

has full access to it. So Napoleon convinced the politicians in Paris, who were easily convinced because Napoleon was extremely, you know, popular by now. And he was great at publicity and organizing public support and building these networks of influential people. People were saying he should have a bigger political role in Paris. And, you know, the politicians in the directory definitely did not want to hear about. You know, this guy is a general. He's supposed to take care of the army over there. He's not supposed to get involved in the day-to-day political dealings of the French government. So Napoleon was allowed to set off for Egypt, following in the footsteps of two of his greatest heroes from ancient times. So like I said before, Napoleon, he would be operating

in this exotic place where Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great had been conquerors. And you can see how this would have really excited Napoleon's ego and his imagination. Napoleon wanted to go east because, as he said, the east is where all the great glory comes from. And he clearly wanted great glory. It wasn't about what he could do for other people. It was very much about what he could do for himself to make him, you know, the greatest military leader of France and the world had ever seen. So he took to Egypt, not only his military force, but also an interesting and amazing scientific team that he puts together several dozen, potentially even hundreds of scientists and their assistants who had established something called the Institute of Egypt, similar to the National Institute of Sciences that have been set up in Paris. And they were going to study Egypt as a source of economic power and raw materials, as well as just a place where the French could gain more influence on the way to India. They were going to Egypt, which had most recently been a part of the Muslim Empire with a language they didn't really know. Almost no one on those ships going to Egypt knew any Arabic.

And what little they knew was like an ancient classical Arabic. It wouldn't have been helpful for conversating on a daily basis. What they had been given to learn about Egypt was what they had read as students. It was accounts from like Herodotus about ancient Egyptian society and culture, but they are now in a different time. So most of these intellectuals had two jobs. They had responsibilities with the military and the logistics and the admin, but in their other role, they were sketching out, you know, the wonderful monuments that they saw and cataloged and collected different objects, and they were discovering items like the Rosetta Stone. And in many ways, they were creating the modern field of Egyptology. Now, the Egyptian campaign would prove to have profound cultural consequences.

that extended far beyond military strategy. So while Napoleon's army struggled in the desert, the scientific expedition was documenting ancient Egyptian civilization in unprecedented detail. Their work would later be published in the monumental description di Le Gippe, which created a wave of fascination with ancient Egypt that swept through France.

I mean, they're showing, you know, tombs and pyramids and mummies. And, you know, there's this Egypt mania, egyptomania that basically comes through France and manifest in ways than Napoleon himself never really anticipated. So to fast forward, in 1801, shortly after the campaign's conclusion, there is a cultural phenomena that emerged in Paris. And this is really interesting, kind of just like a side note.

This is known as the Sacred Order of the Sophesians. And this was founded by Marie Nicholas Ponce Camus, and this was a student of the renowned painter, Jacques-Louis-David. This elaborate society represented the intersection of sort of Republican, I guess, ideals, you know, this populist sort of feeling, artistic expression, and the mystique of ancient Egypt that Napoleon's expedition basically unleashed upon the French society. Now, these Sophisians created what they called the Liv d'Hour, which is the golden book. And this was a richly illuminated manuscript preserved today in the Bibliotech National de France. It's a 17 color plates and 49 black and white illustrations depicting underground labyrinths and pyramid chambers and

temple facades and basically like everything you can imagine about sort of like occult ritual Egyptology. And it all served as set designs for theatrical performances known as tableau vivance. And these are these massive stage spectacles that attempted to recreate what Parisians imagined ancient Egyptian rituals would have been like. So while Napoleon himself had no direct involvement with the Sufizians, their existence reveals just how deeply this Egyptian adventure had penetrated the French culture and the consciousness of the average person living in Paris. And the order borrowed symbols from, you know, Freemasonry and neoclassical art and enlightenment ideas about, like, ancient wisdom. And it created this performative blend of sort of like political

Republican virtue with like this exotic Egyptian mystique. And Egypt at this point had become more than a military objective. It symbolized enlightened science and ancient wisdom. and a civilization that was lost, but like, you know, the ideals of what it means to be an enlightened society. And it really captured a lot of people in France. And this cultural fascination would continue to influence French art and literature and social life all the way through Napoleon's reign and the scientific discoveries and a lot of artistic documentation from the campaign provided material for decades of, you know, culture in France. I mean, opera sets to furniture design to, you know, giant obelists that are erected throughout Paris to this day. And in this way, Napoleon's Egyptian

expedition succeeded in conquering the French imagination, even if it had failed militaristically. But this is where things kind of go sideways for Napoleon. He thought he was safe from the British Royal Navy, but he was caught by surprise when Horatio Nelson destroyed the French fleet in the Battle of the Nile. Now, in typical Napoleon style, the French general doesn't sit still for long. and, you know, he goes fast, and instead he chose to attack, hoping to fight the British-supported Ottomans who were marching towards him directly. The campaign that followed was ultimately a failure for the French and one of Napoleon's first major defeats. They didn't accomplish their goal, which was to stop the Ottoman advance. But there were a couple of events that became important for Napoleon's public reputation.

One was the massacre of Ottoman prisoners, which was a dark episode even by the standards of the time. It was controversial and, you know, many people still see that as a major sort of black eye on Napoleon's legacy. The other was when he was seen healing and touching plague victims. Now, this is fascinating. Plague was still widespread in that part of the world in late 1700s. And there's a very famous painting that shows Napoleon, almost like Christ, touching people who were suffering from the plague. And he was brave enough to do that. it's that kind of like it's the care that he showed for the ordinary French soldier and for the average person and people that were suffering the poor the needy and this is the reputation that he gained that made him so popular with French soldiers so there's two things right there's this you know the murder of these Ottoman prisoners which was bad but then you see Napoleon as this Christ figure that's literally healing people and now of course I don't think Napoleon actually killed anyone but the fact that this permeated into French culture and people saw him almost as

Christ-like was massive for his reputation. So this Egyptian campaign was a military failure, but Napoleon managed to get himself and his close friends back to Paris quickly before the politician of Paris realized that it had been a massive, you know, backfire. So what Napoleon did was basically abandon his army in Egypt. And that is one of those major turning points in his life that we have to recognize. He had no order to return to France. His army had sort of partly succeeded and partly failed in expanding the area under their control. But it was becoming clear to him that they would be stuck in a stalemate. They would just be, you know, in a deadlock. And he started to hear rumors that things were happening in France that might create new opportunities for him. So in the

middle of 1799, he was ironically welcomed back to France as a hero. And all the people in France had heard about, you know, these paintings where he's healing people and they're seeing different, you know, Egyptian artifacts and they're getting some of this culture that's coming in. And they're looking at Napoleon thinking like, wow, this guy's amazing. He did so much great work in Egypt. This guy's a hero. So instead of facing execution for, you know, potentially war crimes and losing this battle and abandoning his army, Napoleon receives a hero's welcome when he returns to France at a time when the country's political situation was still pretty dire. France was now fighting a new coalition of enemies, you know, as always, not only Britain and the Ottomans, but also the Russians and the Austrians again. So from an international standpoint, things look bad. back exactly where they started, battling, you know, wars on all fronts. So at home, the directory,

the political party in Paris, is falling apart. It had been swinging from left to right and was just completely unstable. And there was a group of politicians in France who said, enough. This needs to stop. We need to change the government fundamentally, and we need a strong leader to take us there. We need a general. We need someone with military force to carry out what is going to be a coup d'etat. Basically, we're going to overthrow the government. But these coup plotters, were centered around Ab S.S. who was an oddly refined intellectual to find at the center of like a revolutionary coup plot. He had been around since 1789 with good but a lot of overcomplicated ideas about how to run a country. And he was still there in 1799 trying to find people who would

join him in actually throwing, overthrowing this government, this directory and to create a more, you know, authoritarian sort of simple, almost dictatorial government. And this was the situation that Bonaparte stepped into. After they had considered various other military leaders, once Bonaparte got involved with their group, he very clearly made himself the leader of what was going to happen. He said, I want this. Give me the ball. And it didn't go exactly his plan for an appointment because despite all of his amazing, his amazing ability to basically fire up his soldiers and create strategy, he's not the best public speaker. He might have been good at like, you know, talking to the troops, but he's not very good at functioning in a parliamentary setting. You know, he's a proper general. So he was basically

called like an outlaw and the coup almost failed. But his brother, Lucien Bonaparte, and his troops intervene to protect him from what he claimed was basically an assassination attempt, though it may have just been a fight that had broken out and nothing worse than that. Who's to say? In the end, the whole thing was decided quite brutally by armed soldiers pushing the legislators out of the assembly where they had gathered and telling them, hey, it's done. You're over. There's no way back. Having physically dissolved the legislature, the coup plotters were now in a position to decide what to do next. So now Napoleon is 30 years old. He managed to seize power and declare himself the first consul supported by two other consuls.

He now found himself at the head of the French government, a position that was soon confirmed by something completely new to France and French politics, a plebiscite. So as the first consul, Napoleon began to recognize the political value of, different political structures that exist in France at the time. So, you know, Freemasonry and other secret societies. So, for example, the Masonic lodges, which had been fractured and scattered during this revolutionary period, represented networks of these influential men, again, aristocrats and merchants, intellectuals, and they could be seen as valuable in stabilizing the French government. So rather than suppressing these groups, as some revolutioners had done, Napoleon chose to encourage the revival under some state oversight, right? You want all of it.

of the most well-connected, smart people in a place that the state can kind of see them. So the idea of every male, regardless of how much tax they paid, getting a vote sounded, very revolutionary. It was liberating for many, and I mean, generally pretty equal. You know, every person, every dude, regardless of how much money you make, you get a vote. But of course, the question they were asked was actually very limited. It was, are you going to accept Nebolean, Camberse, and Lebrun as three, consuls or are you not? This was basically the offer. And there was no alternative choice. In addition, Napoleon's brother Louis, who counted the votes in the plebiscite, may have even manipulated the numbers

a little bit. So the thing is that this new government wanted nearly unanimous support. It wanted to show that it had brought all French people together, that it was above all political parties, and that, you know, you can't really show that if you simply get a 51% vote compared to a 49% vote. So that's why they wanted to make it unanimous. Not. Not that, you know, you want to win, but you want to show that everyone is on the same page. So they do this vote. And, you know, again, it's not like, hey, who do you want to vote for? It's just like yes to us or no to us. And they do the vote and the consul presents itself very successfully as a peace-making government. They get the vast majority of the vote and they are going to bring peace to France.

And there are a bunch of different levels of which this is actually true in a lot of ways. So a lot of law and order had really broken down in the later 1790s, as we know. People no longer trusted authority when it came to court or, you know, trials or really anything. The army had already been used extensively to fight bandits and other unrest. So an openly authoritarian government was widely accepted as something that would just stop the threats to property and individual safety and these feuds that have been raging throughout the country throughout the 1790s. They just wanted a strong military leader to come in and make things safe. They just wanted security. So a well-organized military effort to suppress all these problems was very successful by 1799.

One of Napoleon's first orders of business was to negotiate with the Pope. He negotiated a return to a basically cooperative relationship with the Catholic Church, ending the deep-rooted conflict that had existed all through the end of the 1700s, and while at the same time not having the Catholic Church back any of its money. It was a very good deal for France in that respect, And it was an even better deal for France because Napoleon added some additional articles to the document after the Catholic Church representatives had left. You know, he said they had gotten more out of it than the Catholic Church knew that they were giving away. But that was, again, a very Napoleonic move.

The Napoleonic government was more conservative and it started to talk about bringing back old institutions that would help preserve a stable France. And that meant a kind of male-dominated system among other things. And that was bad news for those who had been arguing for things like, you know, abolition of slavery. or, you know, women's rights or anything like that. So women, as a result of this Napoleonic code, had no real civil rights kind of going back to the old system. They almost stopped kind of existing. And a father had control over his children

and, you know, how they were going to be raised and where they'd be raised and where they'd be educated and married and basically everything like that. He made those decisions. And he even made the decision about where his wife was to live. And in theory, he can assist that his wife except a mistress living in the same house. You know, it was ultimately whatever the patriarch of the home.

wanted, they got. So Napoleon was now the actual official ruler of France as the head consul. But his hold on power was weak, to say the least, right? This is still a very new government, and there are still many enemies that are on the forefront. So Austria had just taken back Northern Italy, and a French garrison was under attack in Genoa. And Napoleon had to act quickly and decisively in order to secure his control over France. He needed quick victories over Austria and so he followed in the footsteps of Hannibal and he marched his army over the Alps. Now, marching your army over the Alps is very ambitious, but a classic Napoleon move. It caught the Austrians by complete surprise and it meant that the French had quickly positioned themselves

in such a way that they threatened the Austrian supply lines back to Austria and it forced the Austrian commander to turn around and head towards the French army, which now he had to deal with. They were trapped. Napoleon met the Austrian forces for a single decisive. of battle near the town of Marengo. Marengo started with Austrian advantage in numbers, something like 28,000, 30,000 troops, outnumbering the French forces under Napoleon Bonaparte, which had been closer to like 20,000 troops. But Napoleon had been caught by surprise there.

He had managed to surprise the Austrians by going through the Alps, but on this occasion, he didn't believe that he was facing the main Austrian force. He thought it was a side army. So when Napoleon had been doing, perhaps unwisely, was spreading out his own troops to try to cover various supply lines and force them to be in. in more panic, but this scattered his forces. So the battle didn't really go very well for the French. Matter of fact, they were forced to fall back, and the Austrian commander basically thought he had won. He actually retreated himself to report that success had been achieved and he went back to his

superiors, but he had done it a little before the fighting was actually over. The French managed to call up reinforcements, and Napoleon brought in his consular guard, and he filled some gaps in the French line. When they arrived, they came at a crucial moment, and now they officially caught the Austrians, who at that point, again, they had thought they won. They thought that the French were too spread out, and they had actually won. The French bring in reinforcements, and they finished the battle. He pushed them back to where they had started and caused substantial casualties on the Austrian side in terms of, you know, soldiers killed, wounded, and specifically captured soldiers. And that's ultimately what destroys this Austrian army. You can imagine a point. He surprises the Austrians going to

over the Alps. He then spreads out his army because he doesn't think he's fighting the main Austrians. The Austrians now come down with their main army and the French or two spread out. The Austrians think they won. They now send their people to go tell, you know, the heads in Vienna like, hey, dude, we got this thing locked down. And then they send in reinforcements the French actually went in at the last minute. Crazy game-winning buzzer-beater. Now, Napoleon was, again, saved from a possible defeat by a general known as DeSalle, who charged into the battlefield of Marengo and actually got himself killed while basically saving the day for Napoleon, but Napoleon was able to claim all the credit. France found itself in

1801 able to be at peace, more or less, even able to bring the British to a peace negotiation for the first time in this entire period, because the British now had no continental allies and no idea how they could continue any type of military progress any further. So the peace of Amiens was initially agreed in late 1801 and formally signed in 1802. And so for the next year, or so, Napoleon really did appear as the peacemaker of Europe. I mean, every country is basically exhausted. Britain had no allies. And France had a pretty strong military, those winning battles around Austria, and they said, you know what, let's just make a deal. So he had established a settlement where France was as dominant as a nation might want to be in that area of Western Europe,

but it would turn out to only be a pause in a larger military story. As a result, the government became increasingly secure, which no government had been since 1789. And it's important to realize that this was three years of relative stability compared to the past two decades. Napoleon, you know, having achieved this relative piece, comes up with an idea. He wants to do a new plebiscite. And like I said before, if you don't know what a plebiscite is, it's basically a vote of all the people. It's just a yes, no. Everyone gets the other, they can cast a ballot. Do you want this or do you not want this? And it's just a popular vote. Whatever the people want, they get. And this vote to all the people, he basically says, I want to be consul for life. Yeah. For as long as I live, I want to be in charge of this country. Do you say yes or do you say no? They cast the vote and it results in a victory of about three million yeses and only about a few thousand nos. And he was never going to lose any of these votes. It was simply the question of deciding how much he wanted to win them by. And this was a pattern that continued from the life consulate into his appointment as emperor.

which we'll get to, which would happen after the war restart. So during this period of increasing power, Napoleon made a strategic use of the intellectual communities around France, including the Freemasons. In 1804, he placed his brother Joseph Bonaparte as the grandmaster of the Grand Orient of France, effectively bringing French freemasonry under imperial control. And this wasn't about his personal beliefs about secret knowledge. It was just purely politics. He wanted to control the Masonic hierarchy, which, again, for any government, you have a secret group of people that are all, you know, cohabitating that have different networks to media and, you know, economics and intellect and science, all gathering together without any approval or oversight from the government.

You can't have that happen. So by controlling the Masonic hierarchy, Napoleon could then influence networks of influential men throughout France and eventually throughout the entire empire. So many of Napoleon's most trusted generals became prominent. freemasons during this period. So when Napoleon later created the kingdom of Holland, he placed his brother Louis as the grandmaster of Dutch freemasonry. And when he established the kingdom of Westphalia, his brother Jerome took a similar role. So he's placing his family members as the heads of all these free Masonic lodges to then be able to manipulate sort of the conversation that exists within these sort of titanid secret societies. And this pattern again reveals Napoleon's

sort of systemic approach to using Masonic networks as tools. of imperial administration and loyalty. And the argument which Napoleon and his supporters used was that if you remove Napoleon through, you know, assassination or bomb, and there were many assassination attempts against Napoleon in this period, the only way of preventing that was to create a hereditary system where it didn't really matter if you killed Napoleon because you had a clear line of secession.

So without a doubt to be proclaimed emperor was going to be his greatest achievement yet. I mean, he's already the consul of France and controlling this entire country. and especially for a nation of men educated in classical history, to have an emperor was better than to have a consul. And that was approved by a plebiscite in the spring of 1804, leading to the famous coronation at the beginning of December where Napoleon was very famously crown himself. He would not give up to anyone else the right to basically put a crown on his head. So he took it from the hands of the Pope and he put it on his own head, saying, I am the emperor. of France, I am the only person who could appoint myself as the emperor because I already am. So at that point, it became very clear in a deliberate sort of propaganda choice. You could see

exactly who Napoleon Bonaparte thought he was and ultimately who he would become. Napoleon knew his history. He was educated. He knew the story of Charlemagne, the leader of the Holy Roman Empire who had been crowned by the Pope on Christmas in the year 800. And of course, that relationship it meant that the emperor of the West owed his authority in legitimacy to the church. And it was kind of a go between connecting God and this sort of secular earthly power. And this, again, this is a story throughout all of history, that you have sort of the priestly class and you have the political sort of governmental class. And they're constantly at odds with each other.

And so Napoleon takes it in his own hand and says, you know what, I'm the only person that can ordain myself. And he didn't really want to give the impression to the people that in any way was the church, higher than the government or himself. So this coronation ceremony itself incorporated elements that have been familiar to many people that were involved in freemasonry, but also, you know, different, I guess you could say, like esoteric traditions. There was elaborate symbolism and ceremonial regalia and sort of like rituals that emphasize the transformation of an individual through, you know, initiation into this higher status. And whether it was intentional or not, Napoleon's self-coronation

echoed a lot of themes of like self-improvement and the power of reason to elevate a person above their original status and above God himself, which, you know, in some ways is reminiscent of Masonic themes. Did he get this from his brothers that were involved? Who's to say? But needless to say, it resonated throughout all the people of France that, oh yeah, Napoleon is that guy. He's making himself emperor. He said, Pope, give me that, crown himself. So this has been a pretty crazy ride so far. You can see in just 10 years, Napoleon goes from an unknown artillery officer to the emperor of the largest empire in Europe and maybe the largest empire that Europe had ever seen in like a thousand years. I mean, it's like remarkable that in 10 years this guy can go from just like a kid in Corsica,

I mean, maybe 15 years, like a kid in Corsica trying to like make it, getting sort of, you know, pushed the side by his heroes to literally becoming the emperor, the consul for life of the French people. had the opportunity and he had the opportunity before to settle into being this great power. But once again, the future would prove that it was never, it was never enough for someone like Napoleon. You know, you become emperor and you want to strive for more. I mean, there's like a great saying from Alexander the Greats that after he conquered the entire known world, he looked to the moon and wept because he could not conquer it. I think it is just the sort of inert nature of these, you know, people that do conquest, that there's never enough conquest. You want to keep on going. And so, of course, after 1804,

he began the greater part of his territorial conquests, which would take him to Spain after 1808 and to Russia in 1812. So an important thing to note, like with Napoleon and very many other sort of military generals that then become, you know, emperors or dictators, is that if what sort of got you into power was military victory and being seen as a strong leader that's able to expand the empire and sort of a conquistador and not through democracy or policy or you know coming up with ideas that are meant to you know help the people at home then in order to stay in power you need to continue to spread the empire you need to continue to have military victories and that ultimately is what led napoleon after being elected as emperor to continue his conquest without limit and

And although Napoleon's military success is ultimately failed in the long run and his control over Europe proved to be short-lived, his legacy has lasted to this day. I mean, if you look at France, it's really under Napoleon's direction that the institutions of modern France, as we know them, were created. I mean, everywhere you look around France, you could say, like, oh, that's kind of Napoleon's influence. And I know we've touched on Freemasonry a few times here, but it's actually interesting to note that his influence on Freemasonry was also equally lasting. I mean, the structure that he imposed on French-Masonry was. with, you know, these hierarchies and the centralized control, and even like Egyptian symbolism that was popularized during his campaign, became permanently embedded in Masonic rituals and imagery to this day. And in this way, Napoleon shaped not just the political landscape of Europe, but also the symbolic and organizational culture of some of the most influential intellectual movements around France, despite himself never being a member. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is part one of the Napoleon story. This is the rise of Napoleon through France, how he went from a low-level boy in Corsica to actually becoming an artillery general to then becoming a military commander,

to then becoming the leader of France, then becoming the emperor of one of the largest empires in all of Europe. But it's only part of the story. I mean, there's much more that happens. There's exiles and losses in battle and his, you know, relationship with his wife and many more details that we need to go through, but we will save that for another episode. You don't want to miss it, so make sure you subscribe to the channel and you will get updates whenever that drops. I mean, I find Napoleon a fascinating guy. I mean, especially like his role with like the masons and stuff. This thing is so interesting. Again, that's kind of how I've always felt about Freemasonry is like, yeah, this is a group for, you know, well-to-do, affluent, intellectual people to gather together and

share ideas. And those ideas might be occult in nature, but I think they're just generally ideas that, you know, people can share about business and what's going to happen politically and who to back and who to meet. And it's just like a fraternity network. And Napoleon saw this and was able to then utilize them to spread his messages and control the intellectuals and the aristocrats and the powerful people of any new city all under his watch. I mean, a fascinating guy. I mean, truly, like, I mean, beyond ambitious. Like, I mean, to become the emperor and be like, no, we still need more. We need to keep going.

Like, in a lot of ways, I mean, he admired Alexander the Great. And I think he kind of is carrying on that legacy of just like, dude, nonstop. I'm going to keep on going until the day I die. And in a lot of ways, he does. But again, that is a, you know, a topic for a different episode. I love to know. What do you guys think? Have you heard this before?

Is there anything I missed? Please drop a comment. If you'd never heard anything about Napoleon's rise to power and how he actually went from, you know, a low-level guy and a small island to the leader of the biggest empire ever, drop a comment. Let me know what you think. What did I miss? Crestos, what did you think?

I think this was a service to the original short king. Truly the short king himself. Did you see the Joaquin Phoenix movie? I haven't, but I want to. I've heard it was not a lot of people liked it. But some people really messed with it. Well, it might be worth a watch. I will tune in.

I will check it out. as a, you know, as like my service to the channel. Okay, I'll watch that if you guys keep on watching these episodes. Anyway, there's been another episode of History Camp. We will be coming at you very soon with a episode on the downfall of Napoleon and ultimately what went wrong. But thank you guys so much for watching. I really appreciate it. And I will see you in the future to talk about the past.

Peace.