There is no question about Napoleon's overwhelming, single-minded, and for a time triumphant drive to expand his power and rule all of Europe. He set out on that quest already as a young lieutenant in the French Army when, following the 1792 fall of the French monarchy, he left his native Corsica and moved to Paris.
A member of a low-ranking nobility, he made allies with important leaders of the French Revolution and was quickly promoted to general. In 1795, he won his first battle by defeating a royalist uprising, and the same year he fought against the armies of Austria and Italy.
He later told an aide that after one of his early victories, "I no longer considered myself a mere general, but a man called upon to decide the fate of peoples."
Napoleon was 26 years old, and the way he answered his calling was by fighting what one biographer called a series of "unnecessary wars."
In 1798, he persuaded the revolutionary Directorate that ruled the French Republic to put him in charge of an ambitious expedition to Egypt and Syria.

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