Napoleon
In 1795 Napoleon was given an assignment to defend the National Convention from British rebels. He greeted the British with a cannonade and with in a few minutes the British were in retreat. The next year he lead an army into Austria and the Kingdom of Sardinia and had good success. But when he tried to take Egypt he failed and was beaten back.
In 1804 he became Emperor and started to reform France on the inside beginning in 1800. One thing he did was he created the Napoleonic Code which was a set of laws to keep order in France. It also set fair tax codes for everyone in France. He also made sure there was a separation of church and state by creating the concordat.
In 1806 Napoleon attempted to slow Britians trade by setting up a blockade. The blockade was suppose to make trade with Britain and Europe stop, thus causing the British economy to fail and France to become a major power in the world. Napoleon called his system the Continental System. This system didn’t work well because he had a weak navy to enforce his policy and the British navy would escort the “smugglers” from Europe to get what they wanted. And there was foreign traders that would try to get miscellaneous items to France, but the British navy would take them to British ports and “search” search their ships for anything and then tax the ship. In 1806 Napoleon also tried to get Portugal to accept the continental system by sending an invasion force through Spain and into Portugal, however this angered Spaniards and guerrillas began to attack for the next few years and napoleon lost ~300,000 men in combat. Since France had attacked an ally and nationalism had arose in Spain, many other countries in Europe felt that France was becoming overpowering and soon turned against France. In 1812 napoleon made another crucial mistake. He attacked Russia with an army of ~420,000 men. However, the Russians were intelligent and in their retreat. They killed all animals and burned all the crops so the French wouldn't have anything to eat while they acquired new land. And finally when the French made it to Moscow they found it in ruins because the Russian army had destroyed it so the French would have nothing to claim. Since there was nothing to have in Russia that napoleon wanted he began his retreat in mid October and he was attacked by numerous times by Russian raiders and by the time He made it out of Russia he was left with only ~10,000 soldiers. A few weeks later he was able to gather up another army, but these soldiers were ill trained and he lost to the allied forces in 1814. He was then exiled to Elba, but returned to France when he received news that Louis XVIII became unpopular with the french people. He was again emperor for another 100 days until he was in battle and a rain storm made him and his army stop and the allied forces overtook them and he was then exiled to St. Helena off the coast of Africa. He later died in 1821 of what is assumed to be a type of stomach cancer.