Louisiana Purchase helped fund Napoleon's wars

Everyone has heard of Napoleon, but some probably don’t know much about him.

He was born in Corsica, which used to belong to Italy, but through wars, then became part of France. Napoleon was sent to military school in France at a young age and became a lieutenant in the French Army, Artillery at age 16.

From the start he had a brilliant military mind. Eventually, he was promoted to general, then led the whole army then became Emperor of France. He fought and won many battles from around 1797 to 1812. Eventually he lost to British Lord Nelson at Waterloo (in Belgium), and was exiled to the island of St. Helena in the Mediterranean where he died.

He then wrote his auto-biography and still had a brilliant mind as he recalled hundreds of names, dates and places.

What was the most important thing that he had in connection with the United States? Well, it was what we call the Louisiana Purchase, which about doubled the size of the United States.

Napoleon sold the land because he needed the money to finance his wars.

Napoleon also left France with Code Napoleon, a series of laws and regulations, many of which are still in existence today. In addition, he spread religious tolerance.

His body was later transferred to Paris, where he is entombed in an enormous mahogany casket — a total of caskets inside one another to prevent the entry of air and decomposure of his body. I have visited the Place des Invalides in Paris and seen his casket a couple of times. It is enormous, probably at least 15 feet long and seven or eight feet high.

Roger Gregory is a Vietnam veteran, serving in the 1st Infantry Division, and is business owner in Priest River.