Step 1 : Introduction to the question "A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon. This great strategist ended his career making some very bad decisions before being exiled. Who was he?"
...Napoleon was born in Corsica, which had just been taken over by France. He rose to power in France and after a successful military career became a bit full of himself, and ignoring his own apt advice that "an army travels on its stomach" he attempted an invasion of Russia. The Russians, using the scorched earth policy left nothing in the wake of their retreat, so most of Napoleon's ill-equipped army died of starvation, exposure or disease. Arriving finally in Moscow, they found the city in flames and nothing to conquer. Both Russian and German composers commemorated his defeat in their music: Tschaikovski in the "1812 Overture" and Beethoven by erasing his dedication of the 3rd symphony to Napoleon and calling it instead the "Eroica". Later in 1813 Napoleon did not fare well in the disastrous and costly Battle of Leipzig (the Battle of Nations). In 1815 he met Wellington at Waterloo, where the British, aided by Prussian troops as well as contingents from the Netherlands and Hanover, defeated Napoleon in his final downfall. One of the theories of Napoleon's death is that he was poisoned by arsenic on St. Helena, his final place of exile.
