N & E
Napoleon & Empire

Napoleonic Timeline of 1769-1788

Chronology of the Napoleonic era [1769...] [1789...] [1794...] [1796] [1797] [1798] [1799] [1800] [1801] [1802] [1803] [1804] [1805] [1806] [1807] [1808] [1809] [1810] [1811] [1812] [1813] [1814] [1815] [1816...] [1840]

1769

15 August 1769 – Birth of Napoleon Bonaparte at Ajaccio  (Corsica), in the Casa Buonaparte  – the ancestral home of the Bonaparte family  – from Carlo Maria (Charles-Marie) Buonaparte and Letizia (Laetitia) Ramolino.

1771

21 July 1771 – Baptism at  the Ajaccio Cathedral .

19 August 1771 – The Corsica High Council officialy recognizes the Bonapartes' nobility.

1778

15 December 1778 – First trip to mainland France, with his father and his elder brother Joseph Bonaparte.

30 December 1778 – Arrival at Autun, Burgundy.

1779

1st January 1779 – Napoleon Bonaparte is admitted to the Collège d'Autun...

15 May 1779 – ...then at the Military School of Brienne , north-central France .

1784

17 October 1784 – Napoleon leaves the Military School.

19 October 1784 – First trip to Paris with school friends.

22 October 1784 – Entry of Napoleon to the Royal Military School of Champ-de-Mars .

1785

24 February 1785 – Napoleon's father Charles-Marie Bonaparte dies of cancer in Montpellier, southern France.

28 October 1785 – Napoleon Bonaparte gets his Second-Lieutenant's diploma. His first assignment is with the artillery regiment of La Fère, in the garrison at Valence, a city upon the Rhône river.

1786

12 August 1786 – Departure to Lyon, with his battalion. Some days later, he offers the local Academy a dissertation on the following topic: What are the feelings which should be recommended the most in order to make men happy?. 30 August 1786 – Return to Valence.

1st September 1786 – A first leave break enables Napoleon to return to Corsica, via Aix (Provence) where he meets his uncle Joseph Fesch and his younger brother Lucien Bonaparte.

15 September 1786 – Arrival at Ajaccio.

1787

21 April 1787 – Another leave for family reasons.

12 September 1787 – He leaves Corsica to Paris.

22 November 1787 – Napoleon Bonaparte has his first sexual experience with a prostitute at the Palais-Royal in Paris.

1st December 1787 – His leave is extended for a six month period.

1788

1st January 1788 – Napoleon Bonaparte returns to Ajaccio.

1st June 1788 – He joins his regiment at Auxonne, a small town southeast Dijon, Burgundy.

Sources

This page has as its main source the Napoleonic chronology established by Gérard Walter for his edition of The Memorial of Saint Helena, in the French classics series La Pléiade, published by the Éditions Gallimard, Paris.