First French Empire

State · 1805–1814 CE · at its largest around 1811 CE

Napoleon Bonaparte's empire, which dominated continental Europe until coalition armies forced his abdication in 1814; his brief return ended at Waterloo.

Its battles, in Battle View

Battle of Austerlitz (1805 CE)
Battle of Waterloo (1815 CE)

In the guided tours

The Age of Revolutions: From Philadelphia to Paris, Port-au-Prince and Caracas, ideas of popular sovereignty and rights overturned empires and kings between 1776 and 1848.

On its lands while it lasted

Kingdom of Dahomey (c. 1600–1904 CE): Fon kingdom centred on Abomey in present-day Benin, known for its female soldiers and its role in the Atlantic slave trade; conquered by France in 1894.
Oyo Empire (c. 1600–1836 CE): Yoruba state that rose to dominate much of present-day western Nigeria and Benin from the 17th century using cavalry, before collapsing in the 1830s.
Ashanti Empire (1701–1901 CE): Akan state founded by Osei Tutu with its capital at Kumasi, which grew wealthy on gold and trade and resisted British expansion in a series of wars.
Francisco Goya (1746 CE – 1828 CE): Spanish painter and printmaker, court painter in Madrid, whose work runs from royal portraits to the Disasters of War and the Black Paintings.
Edward Jenner (1749 CE – 1823 CE): English country doctor in Berkeley, Gloucestershire, who in 1796 showed that inoculation with cowpox protected against smallpox, pioneering vaccination.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 CE – 1832 CE): German poet, playwright, novelist and scientist who lived in Weimar from 1775. Author of Faust and The Sorrows of Young Werther.
Industrial Revolution (c. 1760–1840 CE): The shift from hand production to machines, factories and steam power that began in Britain around 1760, centred on textile towns such as Manchester. It spread to Europe and North America and transformed work, cities and the world economy.
Napoleon (1769 CE – 1821 CE): Corsican-born general who seized power in France in 1799 and crowned himself Emperor in 1804. He conquered much of Europe before his defeat in 1815 and died in exile on Saint Helena.
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 CE – 1827 CE): Composer born in Bonn who worked in Vienna from 1792. Despite growing deafness he wrote works bridging the Classical and Romantic eras.
Jane Austen (1775 CE – 1817 CE): English novelist whose six novels, including Pride and Prejudice (1813) and Emma (1815), portray the lives of the landed gentry with wit and irony.
Michael Faraday (1791 CE – 1867 CE): English scientist at the Royal Institution in London who discovered electromagnetic induction in 1831, laying the basis for the electric motor, generator and transformer.
Victor Hugo (1802 CE – 1885 CE): French poet, novelist and dramatist of the Romantic movement, author of Notre-Dame de Paris (1831) and Les Misérables (1862), who spent nearly twenty years in exile as an opponent of Napoleon III.
Alexandre Dumas (1802 CE – 1870 CE): French novelist and playwright of The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, among the most widely read French writers. The grandson of an enslaved woman, he wrote with a workshop of collaborators and travelled from Russia to Garibaldi's Sicily.
Battle of Trafalgar (1805 CE): Nelson's British fleet destroyed a Franco-Spanish fleet off Cape Trafalgar in October 1805, ending Napoleon's hopes of invading Britain. Nelson was killed.
Congress of Vienna (1814–1815 CE): A conference of European states chaired by Metternich in 1814–1815 that redrew the map of Europe after Napoleon's defeat and created a lasting balance of power.