Goofs

At Waterloo, Napoleon is shot through his hat on the left (his right). Later on, the hole is on the right (his left).

After being defeated at the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon surrendered to the British on-board HMS Bellerophon. Although receiving many guests, he never met the Duke of Wellington face-to-face in real life.

Napoleon is shown charging with his troops at the end of the Battle of Waterloo. This absolutely never happened; not only had Napoleon been running his army from the rear for years, he was also reportedly physically sick during the battle and could barely ride a horse.

During Napoleon's campaign in Egypt, the top of pyramids are shown to be targeted by cannon fire. There is no proof Napoleon's army targeted the pyramids. Napoleon himself was a great admirer of Ancient Egypt and its pyramids, and would have unlikely ordered to damage them.

The depiction of the Battle of Waterloo emphasizes that Napoleon was trying to defeat Wellington before the Prussians could join him. The reason the Prussians were separated from the British in the first place was because Napoleon had just beaten them a few days earlier at the Battle of Ligny. That battle is not shown or even mentioned. There is also no mention of the 1806 Battle of Jena where Napoleon destroyed the Prussian army, one year after Austerlitz. However, when Wellington later tells Napoleon that some of the other allies wanted to to have him shot, this is a reference to Marshall Blucher, the commander of the Prussian troops at Jena, Ligny, and Waterloo, who despised Napoleon.

Napoleon did not fight on a frozen lake at the Battle of Austerlitz. The battle took place on December 2, 1805, near Austerlitz in the Austrian Empire. Napoleon's forces defeated the Russian and Austrian armies in a decisive victory. The idea of Napoleon fighting on a frozen lake might be confused with a different event, the Battle of Brienne in 1814, where some fighting occurred on partially frozen ground.

During Napoleon's exile on Elba, there is a shot of him overlooking the harbour with an artistically placed dead tree to his left. As the camera cranes up you can see that the trunk of the tree has been crudely wedged in between a few casually placed rocks.

When Napoleon has an argument with Josephine at a table, the shoes she is wearing are too big for her feet.

French battle flags depicted in the film have a modern appearance. Flags from that era would typically have had honors or regiment names sewn into them.

A Belgian flag is seen in one of the battle squares, but it was not created until 1830, fifteen years after Napoleon's final defeat at Waterloo and nine years after his death.

A British marksman at the Battle of Waterloo is seen using a scoped rifle. Iron sights were common but scopes on rifles were rare and not practical due to poor optics and range. The first reliable tube scopes were made after 1835, 20 years after Waterloo, by US manufacturer Chapman-James.

At the siege of Toulon, the British three deck ship of the line that Napoleon focuses on is HMS Victory, as she has her distinctive coat of arms figurehead, held by cupids, and a characteristic stern in black and gold with the name of the ship. However, while HMS Victory was present at Toulon, her appearance would have been the 1758 original hauling, with open stern balconies, brown and black hull and a larger, gold-plated figurehead. Her distinct features were only added later, when she was decommissioned and overhauled, and only recommissioned fourteen years later in1805, just before the Battles of Cape St. Vincent and Trafalgar.

When Napoleon asks Emperor Francis if he can marry his younger sister, he's told she is only 15. At the time this scene is set the age of consent in France was 11.

Marie-Antoinette was executed at place de la Concorde not at Le Palais des Tuileries and Napoleon wasn't there to see the execution.

The pyramids were more than 10 miles away from the battleground of the Battle of the Pyramids in 1798. Even with large siege cannons it wouldn't be possible to hit a pyramid.

Belgium is mentioned but didn't exist in time of Waterloo. Belgium came into existence at least 15 years after Waterloo.

Poland was mentioned several times in the movie. Poland, as an independent and sovereign state, did not exist during much of this time. By the late 18th century, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had been partitioned by neighboring powers, including Russia, Prussia, and Austria. During his rule, Napoleon created the Duchy of Warsaw in 1807 from parts of the Prussian-occupied territories.

In his letter to Josephine after the Battle of Borodino, Napoleon tells her that Moscow is only 200 miles away. In fact Borodino is well under 100 miles away from the Kremlin (125km, or 78 miles, using the exact route he took).

Napoleon eats breakfast on a ship with his knife in his left hand and his fork in his right hand. This is normal for most Americans but the French in that time were raised with etiquette dictating fork left and knife right.