Napoleon Bonaparte Trivia
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This Napoleon trivia quiz has 108 free questions with answers and follows Bonaparte from a bullied Corsican schoolboy with a bad accent to Emperor of the French and back to a damp bungalow on Saint Helena. It covers the rise (Toulon, Egypt and the Rosetta Stone, 18 Brumaire, the mule he really rode over the Alps), the empire (crowning himself, the Code, the Louisiana Purchase, Austerlitz, the brothers he made kings), the fall (Russia at minus 40, Leipzig, Elba, the Hundred Days, Waterloo) and the afterlife (arsenic, four coffins, Les Invalides). Along the way you get the myths sorted from the record: how tall he actually was, whether Chicken Marengo was really cooked on the battlefield, and why Beethoven scratched his name off a symphony. The early questions suit anyone who has seen a film about him; the later ones will test history students and Napoleonic Wars buffs. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia and standard histories, and each question shows its citation once you have answered.
30 of 108 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Napoleon was born in 1769 on which Mediterranean island?
Corsica
Genoa had ceded the island to France only a year earlier; his first languages were Corsican and Italian.
Q 02What was Napoleon's family name at birth, before it was Frenchified?
di Buonaparte
Born Napoleone di Buonaparte, the future Emperor of the French was sent to the mainland at nine to learn the language and long saw himself as a foreigner there.
Q 03In which Corsican town was Napoleon born, at the Maison Bonaparte?
Ajaccio
Ajaccio's Maison Bonaparte was looted after the family, at odds with Pasquale Paoli, fled the island in 1793; it became a national museum in 1967.
Q 04Napoleon stood about 5 ft 6 in, average for his day, but looked small beside the tall soldiers of which elite corps?
The Imperial Guard
The Imperial Guard took the army's tallest veterans, and British cartoonist James Gillray's 'Little Boney' did the rest; his recorded 5 ft 2 was in longer French inches.
Q 05The term 'Napoleon complex' for aggressive short men was inspired by which psychologist's writing?
Alfred Adler
Adler used Napoleon to illustrate the inferiority complex; the joke is that the man himself was of average height.
Q 06The 1793 siege of which French port made Napoleon's name and won him promotion to brigadier general at 24?
Toulon
Toulon had been handed to an Anglo-Spanish fleet by royalists; his plan to take the forts commanding the harbour forced the ships to sail away.
Q 07Who became Napoleon's first wife in a civil ceremony in March 1796?
Joséphine de Beauharnais
Joséphine de Beauharnais was a widow whose first husband had been guillotined during the Terror; two days after the wedding Napoleon left to command an army.
Q 08Which find did a French officer make in 1799 while rebuilding a fort during Napoleon's Egyptian expedition?
The Rosetta Stone
The Rosetta Stone was handed to the British with the expedition's other finds when the French surrendered in 1801, and has been in the British Museum since 1802.
Q 09Which British admiral destroyed Napoleon's fleet at the Battle of the Nile in 1798?
Horatio Nelson
Horatio Nelson caught the French fleet at anchor near Alexandria and all but wiped it out, leaving Napoleon's army trapped in Egypt.
Q 10The coup of November 1799 that made Napoleon First Consul is known by which French Republican calendar date?
18 Brumaire
18 Brumaire is 9 November 1799 on the Revolution's own calendar; a day later grenadiers cleared the legislature and the Directory gave way to a Consulate under Napoleon.
Q 11David painted Napoleon crossing the Alps on a rearing horse, but which animal actually carried him over in 1800?
A mule
A mule led by a guide carried him over in fine weather; Napoleon had asked David to show him 'calm, mounted on a fiery steed'.
Q 12Chicken Marengo is named after Napoleon's 1800 victory in which country?
Italy
Italy's Marengo gave the dish its name; Napoleon's chef is said to have improvised it from whatever he could find on the day of the battle, though food historians doubt the tale.
Q 13In 1803 Napoleon sold which North American territory for $15 million?
Louisiana
Louisiana nearly doubled the size of the young republic that bought it; Napoleon sold after his army failed to crush the revolt in Saint-Domingue, with war against Britain looming.
Q 21Which brother did Napoleon make King of Spain in 1808, provoking the Peninsular War?
Joseph
Joseph was mocked by Spaniards as 'Pepe Botella' (Joe Bottle), a jab at heavy drinking that the abstemious king was merely alleged to indulge in.
Q 22Whom did Napoleon marry in 1810 as his second wife, hoping for an heir?
Marie Louise of Austria
Marie Louise of Austria, daughter of the Austrian emperor, was first married to him by proxy in Vienna, with her own uncle standing in for the groom.
Q 23What title did Napoleon give his son, born in 1811?
King of Rome
King of Rome was his title from the cradle, but after his father's fall he grew up in Vienna under an Austrian title and died of tuberculosis at 21.
Q 14Napoleon reportedly said Waterloo would erase his forty victories, but which achievement of his would 'live forever'?
His Civil Code
His Civil Code of 1804 is still in force in France, heavily amended; he did not write it himself but had it drafted by a commission of four jurists.
Q 15At his coronation in Notre-Dame in December 1804, what did Napoleon do with the crown?
Crowned himself
Napoleon crowned himself with a replica of Charlemagne's crown once he had been anointed, then crowned his kneeling wife as empress.
Q 16Which Beethoven symphony was first dedicated to Napoleon, until the composer struck out his name in 1804?
Eroica
Eroica means 'heroic'; told that Napoleon had made himself emperor, Beethoven is said to have raged that he was now a tyrant and torn the title page in two.
Q 17Napoleon's greatest victory, on 2 December 1805, was fought against Russia and Austria at which battle?
Austerlitz
Austerlitz was a trap: Napoleon feigned weakness and gave up the Pratzen Heights to lure the allies onto his right, then broke their weakened centre.
Q 18Which centuries-old European institution was dissolved in 1806 after Napoleon's 1805 victory over Austria and Russia?
The Holy Roman Empire
The Holy Roman Empire ended when its last emperor, Francis II, laid down the crown under pressure from Napoleon, whose Confederation of the Rhine had drawn away many German princes.
Q 19At which 1805 battle did the Royal Navy smash the French and Spanish fleets, ending Napoleon's invasion hopes?
Trafalgar
Trafalgar was won by sailing straight at the enemy line to cut it apart; the British admiral was shot down at the height of the battle and died as it was won.
Q 20Napoleon's Continental System, launched with the Berlin Decree of 1806, was an attempt to do what?
Blockade British trade with Europe
The bid to blockade British trade with Europe leaked through smugglers, and enforcing it drew Napoleon into Spain and Russia, the wars that broke his empire.
Q 24Roughly what fraction of Napoleon's 450,000-strong 1812 Grande Armée were native French speakers?
A third
Germans, Poles, Italians and others filled the ranks; most never came home.
Q 25Which battle in September 1812 forced the Russians to abandon Moscow to Napoleon?
Borodino
Borodino mauled both armies without destroying either; the Russians pulled back, and Napoleon entered a Moscow that was deserted and soon in flames.
Q 26Which Russian novel follows aristocratic families through Napoleon's 1812 invasion and its aftermath?
War and Peace
War and Peace came out in 1869; Tolstoy, born after the invasion, questioned people who had lived through 1812 and read every history of it he could find.
Q 27Where was the October 1813 Battle of the Nations, Napoleon's decisive defeat, fought?
Leipzig
Leipzig pitted Napoleon against the armies of Russia, Prussia, Austria and Sweden at once; after four days he was beaten and lost his hold on Germany.
Q 28After his first abdication in April 1814, Napoleon was exiled as sovereign of which island?
Elba
Elba left him the title of emperor and a small guard; after ten months of reforming the island he slipped away to France with about a thousand men.
Q 29When the 5th Regiment blocked his road near Grenoble in March 1815, what is Napoleon said to have done?
Dared them to shoot him
He dared them to shoot him, by the famous account walking up alone; the soldiers shouted 'Vive l'empereur!' and marched with him toward Paris.
Q 30Napoleon's 1815 return from exile to his final defeat is known as what?
The Hundred Days
The Hundred Days was coined by the prefect of Paris as he welcomed Louis XVIII home; he was counting the king's absence, and the period really runs to about 110 days.