"==selected anniversary==
An event in this article is a February 26 selected anniversary (may be in HTML comment)

link to Napoleon's portrait
The link to Napoleon's portrait at the beginning of this article is a broken link.  Please fix.  Thank you.

Neutrality, please!
This following passage isn't exactly neutral in its tone:
""After all, the military record is unquestioned—17 years of wars, perhaps six million Europeans dead, France bankrupt, her overseas colonies lost. And it was all such a great waste, for when the self-proclaimed tête d'armée was done, France's ""losses were permanent"" and she ""began to slip from her position as the leading power in Europe to second-class status—that was Bonaparte's true legacy.""[10]"".... Please remove.... 

 Please sign your talk posts; and please place new threads at the bottom of the page.
 As to your comment, it is a direct quotation, and therefore not suppposed to be neutral; after all, it is in a section of the article that describes conflicting views about Napoleon. It is an accurate portrayal of one of those conflicting points of view.   (talk) 

Ah, yes, but we probably need a quotation from another view that conflicts it. Would anyone be able to find one? |heru|nar 

Some comments regarding France's utter defeat in the Napoleonic Wars should be part of the article, nonetheless. The fact that France slipped from being the top European power to a secondary level, clearly below Britain's and soon also below Germany's and even Austria's, is hardly contentious. It must be remembered that the Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars came hard on the heels of what appeared to Europe's intellectuals as Britain's final, unavoiding loss of great power status, following the independence of the U.S. (just six years before the assault on the Bastille)  
Actually France was the dominate continental power until the Franco-Prussian war and remains a great power to this day.  

 I must respectfully disagree with this latest assertion, since France was smaller in size and less influential than both Austria and Russia before the Prussian war. Even if one were to concede that it was the main ""continental"" power, that would imply a loss of status - before the Napoleonic Wars, it was the main European power, including Britain, and had beaten combined enemy armies time and time again. As for keeping great power status to this day, I'm sure that that should come as great surprise to the French, humiliated by Nazi occupation and resolutely defeated both in Vietnam and Algeria. Now, it's true they can veto stuff in the UN - just like the (then) underdeveloped island of Taiwan did until 1973, for whatever that's worth. 
Aussiesta who cares about your stupid POV? you are telling nonsense. nazi humiliation etc, pff. weren't the US humiliated in vietnam, in cuba and now in iraq? so they aren't great anymore then right? didn't the soviet retreated from afghanistan? what about them? the german were defeated and occupied in 1918 and 1945 what about them? what about the old good british? they were wiped by the germans in the campaigns of 1939 (Norway) then 1940 (France) and Dunkirk, a defeat transformed into a great victory, what a joke! actually in indochina and algeria the french had 10 times less casualties than their opponents, is this a defeat? a defeat is supposed to happen when one is loosing a war not when he is winning it. these two decolonization wars were wasted by politics. the very same happened in the overlooked Suez Crisis of 1956. the british surrendered there. they left their french and israeli ""allies"" without warning. ever heard about the Madagasacar war of independence? no? why? because france smashed the rebellion in a such violent way there are ashamed of. no one knows what happened in madagascar in 1946 so it is not in history books. moreover france is still a great power with remaining overseas territories and a strong nuclear force (the third one in terms of warheads after russia and usa) your beloved austrian and german doesn't have. so watch your tongue. quoting a non neutral POV is just the same as giving your own opinion. who do you think you can fool with your francophobic tricks?  
 Ah, the legendary French manners. Brushing insults and rants aside, my point remains unchallenged: following Napoleon's defeat, France slipped