Napoleon I of France in the context of "French Directory"

The Constitution of the Year XII (French: Constitution de l’an XII), also called the Organic Sénatus-consulte of 28 Floréal, year XII (Sénatus-consulte organique du 28 floréal an XII), was a national constitution of the First French Republic adopted during the Year XII of the French Revolutionary Calendar (1804 in the Gregorian calendar).

It amended the earlier Constitution of the Year VIII and Constitution of the Year X, establishing the First French Empire with Napoleon Bonaparte — previously First Consul for Life, with wide-ranging powers — as Napoleon I, Emperor of the French. The Constitution established the House of Bonaparte as France's imperial dynasty, making the throne hereditary in Napoleon's family. The Constitution of the Year XII was later itself extensively amended by the Additional Act and definitively abolished with the final return of the Bourbons in 1815.

The Duchy of Milan (Italian: Ducato di Milano; Lombard: Ducaa de Milan) was a state in Northern Italy, created in 1395 by Gian Galeazzo Visconti, then the lord of Milan, and a member of the important Visconti family, which had been ruling the city since 1277. At that time, it included twenty-six towns and the wide rural area of the middle Padan Plain east of the hills of Montferrat. During much of its existence, it was wedged between Savoy to the west, Republic of Venice to the east, the Swiss Confederacy to the north, and separated from the Mediterranean by the Republic of Genoa to the south. The duchy was at its largest at the beginning of the 15th century, at which time it included almost all of what is now Lombardy and parts of what are now Piedmont, Veneto, Tuscany, and Emilia-Romagna.

Under the House of Sforza, Milan experienced a period of great prosperity with the introduction of the silk industry, becoming one of the wealthiest states during the Renaissance. From the late 15th century, the Duchy of Milan was contested between the forces of the Habsburg Monarchy and the Kingdom of France. It was ruled by Habsburg Spain from 1556 and it passed to Habsburg Austria in 1707 during the War of the Spanish Succession. The duchy remained an Austrian possession until 1796 when a French army under Napoleon Bonaparte conquered it, and it ceased to exist a year later as a result of the Treaty of Campo Formio, when Austria ceded it to the new Cisalpine Republic.

A self-proclaimed monarchy is established when a person claims a monarchy without any historical ties to a previous dynasty. In many cases, this would make them a pretender to the throne (when a ruling dynasty is already established). The self-proclaimed monarch may be of an established state, such as Zog I of Albania, or of a micronation, such as Leonard Casley of Hutt River, Western Australia.

This article lists Presidents of the French Parliament or, as the case may be, of its lower chamber.

The National Constituent Assembly was created in 1789 out of the Estates-General. It, and the revolutionary legislative assemblies that followed – the Legislative Assembly (1791–1792) and the National Convention (1792–1795), had a quickly rotating Presidency. With the establishment of the Directory in 1795, there were two chambers of the French legislature. The lower, the Council of Five Hundred, also had a quickly rotating chairmanship. Under Napoleon I, the Legislative Corps had all authority to actually enact laws, but was essentially a rubberstamp body, lacking the power to debate legislation. With the restoration of the monarchy, a bicameral system was restored, with a Chamber of Peers and a Chamber of Deputies. The Chamber of Deputies, for the first time, had presidents elected for a substantial period of time.

The Army of Italy (French: Armée d'Italie) was a field army of the French Army stationed on the Italian border and used for operations in Italy itself. It is best known for its role during the French Revolutionary Wars (in which it was one of the early commands of Napoleon Bonaparte, during his Italian campaign) and Napoleonic Wars.

The Armée d'Orient (English: Army of the Orient) was the French military force gathered by the French Directory to send on the expedition to Ottoman Egypt in 1798. The expedition had the intention of barring Great Britain's route to its colonies in India and was put under the command of Napoleon Bonaparte.

The siege of Acre of 1799 was an unsuccessful French siege of the Ottoman city of Acre (now Akko in modern Israel) and was the turning point of Napoleon's invasion of Egypt and Syria, along with the Battle of the Nile. It was Napoleon's third tactical defeat in his career, being defeated at the Second Battle of Bassano and the Battle of Caldiero three years previously during the Italian campaign, and his first major strategic defeat, along with the last time he was defeated in battle for 10 years. As a result of the failed siege, Napoleon retreated two months later and withdrew to Egypt.

Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson (1758–1805) was a British flag officer in the Royal Navy famous for his participation in the Napoleonic Wars, most notably in the Battle of Trafalgar, during which he was killed. He was responsible for several famous victories that helped to secure British control of the seas, both securing Britain from French invasion and frustrating Napoleon's imperial ambitions. After his death during his defeat of the combined French and Spanish fleets at Trafalgar, there was a public outpouring of grief. Nelson was accorded a state funeral and was buried in St Paul's Cathedral.

A number of monuments and memorials were constructed across the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland to honour his memory. The period of British dominance of the seas that his victories were considered to have ushered in led to a continued drive to create monuments in his name across the British Empire. These have taken many forms.

Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier (French: [ʒɑ̃ lwi ɛʁnɛst mɛsɔnje]; 21 February 1815 – 31 January 1891) was a French academic painter and sculptor. He became famous for his depictions of Napoleon and his military sieges and manoeuvres in paintings acclaimed both for the artist's mastery of fine detail and his assiduous craftsmanship. The English art critic John Ruskin examined his work at length under a magnifying glass, "marvelling at Meissonier's manual dexterity and eye for fascinating minutiae." Meissonier enjoyed great success in his lifetime, becoming, with Gérôme and Cabanel, one of "the three most successful artists of the Second Empire."

Meissonier's work commanded enormous prices and in 1846 he purchased a great mansion in Poissy, sometimes known as the Grande Maison. The Grande Maison included two large studios, the atelier d'hiver, or winter workshop, situated on the top floor of the house, and at ground level, a glass-roofed annexe, the atelier d'été or summer workshop. Meissonier himself said that his house and temperament belonged to another age, and some, like the critic Paul Mantz for example, criticised the artist's seemingly limited repertoire. Like Alexandre Dumas, he excelled at depicting scenes of chivalry and masculine adventure against a backdrop of pre-Revolutionary and pre-industrial France, specialising in scenes from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century life.