” There’s no secret behind the hand-in-waistcoat pose associated with Napoleon. It was a common pose used by the period’s painters, including Jacques-Louis David, who created most famous painting of the emperor in 1812.”
“Napoleon was a battlefield genius. He began his military career as an artillery commander and was an expert on military technology. He was an innovator in his development of the visual (signal or semaphore) telegraph for long-distance communication, but during the Napoleonic wars the British were more advanced than the French in some military devices, such as explosive rockets.”
“Despite being characterized as being short in statute, Napoleon may have been slightly taller than the average European at the time he lived.
“Napoleon married Joséphine de Beauharnais in 1796, and later, Joséphine’s daughter, Hortense, married Napoleon’s brother Louis.”
“While on a campaign in Egypt, Napoleon learned that Joséphine was having an affair and wrote a distraught letter to his brother. The letter was intercepted by the British and published in newspapers, causing Napoleon great embarrassment.
“After divorcing Joséphine because she couldn’t bear him heirs, Napoleon married Marie Louise, the archduchess of Austria. The couple had one son, Napoleon Francis Joseph Charles, who ruled France for two weeks in 1814.”
Source: Reader’s Digest