When was dictatorship founded

During the first years of the Republic, dictators were often called on when Rome faced an invasion or some internal danger. Sulla then banished or killed hundreds of his opponents. Even if it was a success, it was also very expensive for HBO to produce it. The Romans were a lot more disciplined and trained to fight as a unit which made them quite a formidable force. The Vikings have size and strength but remember the romans were equally as strong.

Between battles roman soldiers were builders and engineers. So the Romans were there around 1. Caesar used his money and influence to put supporters like Mark Antony into key positions. Caesar's many enemies in Rome spread rumors that he planned to take power. In 49 B. Foes of Caesar spread the word that Caesar was about to invade Italy with his army. The consul Marcellus declared Pompey the defender of the city.

The Senate demanded that Caesar give up his provincial command. Caesar answered by leading his army across the Rubicon River into Italy. This " crossing of the Rubicon " was an act of war, since a Roman general was forbidden to lead an army outside the province he governed. Pompey and most of the senators fled the country.

Unlike Sulla, Caesar did not butcher his opponents. He attempted to form alliances with them, and he had himself elected consul. Caesar then took his army in pursuit of Pompey and defeated him in Africa. After staying for some time with Cleopatra in Egypt, Caesar returned to Rome. By 45 B. The Senate acclaimed him "Liberator" and made him dictator for 10 years. Caesar distributed bonuses to his troops, gave money to every citizen, and pardoned his enemies.

During the five years of his rule, Caesar decreed many reforms such as a new calendar and relief for debtors. In return, the Roman people heaped honors on him. One of the Roman months was renamed Julius, our July.

Statues of Caesar were raised in different parts of the city. His image appeared on coins. Then, in February 44 B. According to tradition, Mark Antony publicly offered a king's crown to Caesar, who refused it three times. As king, Caesar would no longer need the Senate or even the Roman citizens to stay in power. It is difficult to know if his refusal was sincere because he was assassinated only a few days later. Caesar's death plunged Rome into 17 years of civil war.

The warfare finally ended when Octavian , Caesar's adopted son, became the sole ruler of the Roman Empire. Although the forms of the Republic such as the Senate and the election of the consuls continued, the emperor held all power. Democracy in Rome was dead and dictatorship had won.

Rome Project Huge collection of links. Under Napoleon, a new emphasis towards the destruction, not just outmaneuvering, of enemy armies emerged. Invasions of enemy territory occurred over broader fronts, which made wars costlier and more decisive.

The political effect of war increased. Defeat for a European power meant more than the loss of isolated enclaves, intensifying the Revolutionary phenomenon of total war. However, it was ended for political reasons when it became clear that Josephine was unable to bear an heir. Marie Josephe Rose Tascher de La Pagerie was born in in Martinique to a wealthy white Creole family that owned a sugarcane plantation. The family struggled financially after hurricanes destroyed their estate in However, when Catherine died in , she was replaced by her older sister, Josephine, who married Alexandre in in France.

The couple had two children. The marriage was an unhappy one, leading to a court-ordered separation. In , during the Reign of Terror, Alexandre was arrested and jailed and Josephine, considered too close to the counter-revolutionary financial circles, was also imprisoned.

Josephine met Napoleon, six years her junior, in Napoleon was enamored with Josephine, with whom he had a passionate affair. Until meeting Bonaparte, Josephine was known as Rose, but Bonaparte preferred to call her Josephine, the name she adopted from then on.

His mother and sisters were especially resentful of Josephine as they felt clumsy and unsophisticated in her presence.

Two days after the wedding, Bonaparte left to lead the French army in Italy. During their separation, he sent her many love letters. A letter Charles wrote about the affair was intercepted by the British and published widely in order to embarrass Napoleon.

The relationship between Josephine and Napoleon was never the same after this. His letters became less loving. No subsequent lovers of Josephine are recorded, but Napoleon had sexual affairs with several other women. Josephine was a renowned spendthrift and Barras may have encouraged the relationship with Napoleon to get her off his hands.

Napoleon reportedly said that the only thing to come between them was her debts. Despite the affairs of both spouses and the eventual divorce, evidence suggests that Napoleon and Josephine loved each other deeply throughout their lives. Shortly before their coronation, Josephine caught Napoleon in the bedroom of her lady-in-waiting, Elisabeth de Vaudey, and Napoleon threatened to divorce her as she had not produced an heir.

When it became clear Josephine could not have a child, Napoleon began to think seriously about the possibility of divorce. Napoleon began to create lists of eligible princesses. In November , he let Josephine know that—in the interest of France—he must find a wife who could produce an heir.

Despite her anger, Josephine agreed to the divorce so the Emperor could remarry in the hope of having an heir. The divorce ceremony took place in January and was a grand but solemn social occasion. Both Josephine and Napoleon read a statement of devotion to the other. Despite his divorce from Josephine, he showed his dedication to her for the rest of his life.

When he heard the news of her death while on exile in Elba, he locked himself in his room and would not come out for two days. Her name would also be his final word on his deathbed in After Habsburg-controlled Austria declared war in , France returned to a war footing. Emergency measures were adopted and the pro-war Jacobin faction triumphed in the election.

Prior to the coup, troops were conveniently deployed around Paris. The plan succeeded. On the morning of 18 Brumaire, Lucien Bonaparte falsely persuaded the Councils that a Jacobin coup was at hand in Paris and induced them to depart for the safety in the suburbs, while Napoleon was charged with the safety of the two Councils and given command of all available local troops.

On the same day, three of the five Directors resigned, which prevented a quorum and thus practically abolished the Directory. The two remaining Directors protested but were arrested and forced to give up their resistance. By the following day, the deputies of the Councils realized that they were facing an attempted coup rather than being protected from a Jacobin rebellion. Faced with their recalcitrance, Napoleon stormed into the chambers, which proved to be the coup within the coup: from this point, it was a military affair.

Both chambers resisted but under the pressure of the events, they succumbed to the demands of the plotters. The Directory was crushed, but the coup within the coup was not yet complete. With the Council routed, the plotters convened two commissions, each consisting of 25 deputies from the two Councils. The lack of reaction from the streets proved that the revolution was indeed over. Resistance by Jacobin officeholders in the provinces was quickly crushed.

In December , two new members in the portrait above joined Napoleon. Bonaparte thus completed his coup within a coup by the adoption of a constitution under which the First Consul, a position he was sure to hold, had greater power than the other two. In particular, he appointed the Senate and the Senate interpreted the constitution. Napoleon, at least in theory, still shared the executive power with the two other Consuls.

Military victories in the ongoing war increased his popularity and royalist plots served as an excuse to eliminate political opponents, usually by deportation, even if they were innocent. France declared war on the Habsburg Monarchy of Austria in April and the Kingdom of Prussia joined the Austrian side a few weeks later. These powers made several invasions of France by land and sea, with Prussia and Austria attacking from the Austrian Netherlands and the Rhine and the Kingdom of Great Britain supporting revolts in provincial France and laying siege to Toulon.

A number of smaller states, including Spain, Portugal, and the Dutch Republic, were also part of the First Coalition over the course of the war.

Napoleon did not enter the war as the leader of the French army until , although he faced the British forces at the Siege of Toulon, where he played a major role in crushing the royalist rebellion by expelling an English fleet and securing the valuable French harbor. Promoted to general in , Napoleon was sent to the battlefields of the French Revolutionary Wars to fight the Austro-Piedmontese armies in Northern Italy the following year. He was successful in a daring invasion of Italy.

In the Montenotte Campaign, he separated the armies of Sardinia and Austria, defeating each one in turn, and then forced a peace on Sardinia. His army then captured Milan and started the Siege of Mantua. Bonaparte defeated successive Austrian armies sent against him while continuing the siege.

In February, Napoleon finally captured Mantua, with the Austrians surrendering 18, men. Archduke Charles of Austria was unable to stop Napoleon from invading the Tyrol and the Austrian government sued for peace in April. At the same time there was a new French invasion of Germany under Moreau and Hoche. The ancient Republic of Venice was partitioned between Austria and France. The Mediterranean campaign of was a series of major naval operations surrounding a French expeditionary force sent to Egypt under Napoleon Bonaparte that serves as a bridge between the War of the First Coalition and the War of the Second Coalition.

The French Republic sought to capture Egypt as the first stage in an effort to threaten British India and thus force Great Britain to make peace.

They were followed by a small British squadron under Rear-Admiral Horatio Nelson, later reinforced to 13 ships of the line. John and theoretically granted its owner control of the Central Mediterranean.

When Nelson learned of the French capture of the island, he guessed the French target to be Egypt and sailed for Alexandria. Unable to find Bonaparte, Nelson turned back across the Mediterranean, eventually reaching Sicily. While Nelson was returning westwards, Bonaparte reached Alexandria and stormed the city, capturing the coast and marching his army inland.

Nelson returned to the Egyptian coast and ordered an immediate attack on the French. Fighting continued for the next two days until all of the French ships had been captured, destroyed, or fled.

At the Battle of the Nile, 11 French ships of the line and two frigates were eliminated, trapping Bonaparte in Egypt and changing the balance of power in the Mediterranean. With the French Navy in the Mediterranean defeated, other nations were encouraged to join the Second Coalition and go to war with France.

The Russians and Turks participated in the blockade of Egypt and operations in the Adriatic Sea while the Portuguese joined the Siege of Malta, distantly conducted by Nelson from his lodgings in Naples. Their goal was to contain the spread of chaos from France. Alerted to the political and military crisis in France, Napoleon returned from Egypt, leaving his army behind, and used his popularity and army support to mount a coup that made him First Consul, the head of the French government.

Napoleon sent General Moreau to campaign in Germany and went to raise a new army at Dijon and march through Switzerland to attack the Austrian armies in Italy from behind. Narrowly avoiding defeat, he defeated the Austrians at the Battle of Marengo and reoccupied northern Italy. Moreau meanwhile invaded Bavaria and won a great battle against Austria at Hohenlinden. He continued toward Vienna and the Austrians sued for peace. In one of the famous paintings of Napoleon, the Consul and his army are depicted crossing the Swiss Alps on their way to Italy.

The daring maneuver surprised the Austrians and forced a decisive engagement at Marengo in Victory there allowed Napoleon to strengthen his political position back in France. In Egypt, the Ottomans and British invaded and finally compelled the French to surrender after the fall of Cairo and Alexandria. Britain continued the war at sea. In December , an expedition was sent to Saint-Domingue to quell the revolution that had started there in once and for all, but the blockade of the Caribbean island by the British fleet made the sending of reinforcements impossible.

In , the British and French signed the Treaty of Amiens, ending the war. The treaty is generally considered to mark the transition between the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. The peace, however, did not last long.

In December , an Anglo-Swedish agreement became the first step towards the creation of the Third Coalition. By April , Britain had also signed an alliance with Russia. Austria had been defeated by France twice in recent memory and wanted revenge, so it joined the coalition a few months later.

The Constitution of the Year VIII, adopted in and accepted by the popular vote in , established the form of government known as the Consulate that presumed virtually dictatorial powers of the First Consul, Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon became the First Consul for ten years, appointing two consuls with consultative voices only. The constitution preserved the appearance of a republic but in reality established a dictatorship. Napoleon then abolished the Senate and continued to reform the constitution.

He named himself consul for life, and in , crowned himself emperor. He continued his military pursuits, fighting across Europe. Napoleon controlled every facet of government and had a network of spies. He also controlled the press, ensuring that his propaganda machine continued. But his reign began to falter when his invasion of Russia was a failure.

Generals in the French Army mutinied and Napoleon was forced to abdicate the throne. After a brief return to power, he was exiled for good in So from ancient dictators to modern ones, dictators have several different commonalities. Let's look at what makes a dictator a dictator in the next section. Sign up for our Newsletter! Mobile Newsletter banner close.