Born in 1769 at Ajaccio, died in 1821 on the island of Sainte-Hélène. After having been general in the army of the French Revolution and later First Consul, he officially became Emperor of the French on December 2, 1804; he abdicated on April 6, 1814. He attempted to regain power from March 20, 1815 to June 22, 1815. He was also King of Italy from 1805 to 1814. In 1815, after his defeat at Waterloo at the hands of the troops of the coalition, he was sent into exile on the island of Sainte-Hélène. During his reign, he supported the philosophy of the Enlightenment and established the bourgeois values which had made the overthrow of the Ancien Régime possible. But he was also motivated by vaulting ambition, and wanted to stabilize European political relations by seizing power. After a long succession of military campaigns involving all of Europe and extending all the way to Russia and Egypt, he enlarged the territory of France to the greatest extent it would ever know. In 1812, Rome, Amsterdam, and Barcelona were all French.