This documentary follows Napoleon from obscure Corsican artillery officer to emperor of most of Europe and back to a rock in the South Atlantic, arguing that his rise was made possible by the revolution he eventually replaced.

It opens in 1793 at Toulon, where a twenty-four-year-old nobody wins a siege and is a general within months, then explains the vacuum that made this possible: a France that had executed its king, purged its officer class, and was at war with every monarchy in Europe.

It traces the Italian campaign that made his name, the Egyptian expedition that made his myth, and the coup that made him ruler. The middle section covers what he actually built and why it outlasted him, from the Civil Code to the modern administrative state, before turning to the wars that spread it across the continent at bayonet point.

It then examines the two things he could not defeat, the British navy and Russian distance, and shows how Trafalgar and the retreat from Moscow between them destroyed everything.

It closes with Waterloo, Saint Helena, and the awkward verdict: the man who ended the French Revolution is also the reason its ideas ended up written into the law of half of Europe.