Napoleon Bonaparte
The short Corsican who crowned himself emperor of France, conquered most of Europe, and ended his life exiled on a rock in the Atlantic.
Origin
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) rose through the French Revolutionary army, seized power in a 1799 coup, and was crowned emperor in 1804 — famously taking the crown from the Pope's hands and placing it on his own head. He overhauled French law (the Napoleonic Code, still the backbone of civil law in much of the world), conquered most of continental Europe, then lost it all in the Russian winter of 1812. After exile to Elba, he escaped, lost again at Waterloo in 1815, and was shipped to Saint Helena, where he died.
Modern usage
Two metaphors run on his name. 'Napoleon complex' is the folk-psychology claim that short men overcompensate with aggression — he was actually average height for the era, but the British press caricatured him as tiny. 'Meeting your Waterloo' means the decisive defeat after a long winning streak. The self-coronation gesture is shorthand for any leader who refuses to wait for anyone else's blessing.
In the wild
The merger looked unstoppable until antitrust — that was his Waterloo.— business press
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