in 1799, during napoleon's military campaign in Egypt, a French soldier named Pierre Francois Bouchard discovered the Rosetta Stone. This artifact provided the key to cracking the code of Egyptian hieroglyphics, a written language that had been dead for almost 2,000 years, as a boy , Napoleon attended school in mainland French, where he learned the french language, and went on to graduate from a French military academy in 1785. he then became a second lieutenant in an artillery regiment of the French army.
the French Revolution began in 1789 , and within three years revolutionaries had overthrown the monarchy and proclaimed a French republic. During the early years of the revolutions, Napoleon was largely on leave from the military and home in Corsica, where he became affiliated with Jocobins, a pro-democracy political group. in 1793, following a clash with the nationalist Corsican governor, Pasquale paoli, the Bonaparte family fled their native island for mainland France, where Napoleon returned to military duty.