The short and snippy answer to why Napoleon advanced so quickly is because of the French Revolution. But for all the brevity, such an answer is not facetious. The Revolution created a series of unique conditions that allowed a man of Napoleon's talents to vault quite high at a young age.

First off, and most obviously, the Revolution did create a shortage of officers within the French armies as the pre-1789 institution was dominated by the nobility, especially its upper echelons. Although Revolutionary zeal did not eliminate all nobles serving under French colors, the Revolution did decimate the officer corps. Some of the pre-1789 officers were executed during the Terror while other officers abandoned their commissions and fled the country. The outflow of officers meant that there were now positions open for men from the technical services or middle classes and the minor nobility. Napoleon belonged to the latter category, but he was not alone in this regard. His great Marshal Davout also came from the minor nobility and Napoleon's future chief of staff Berthier came from an established military family with close connections to the old nobility. These relative outsiders managed to seize the opportunity presented to them by the Revolutionary upheavals within the officer corps to advance their positions.

But opportunity was only one factor in climbing atop the greasy pole. The Revolution may have stressed meritocracy, but the politics of the Revolution could not eliminate patronage completely. The shifting factions within various Revolutionary governments meant that politicians often cultivated their own generals. In Napoleon's case, his connections with Antoine Salicetti led to the young man's advancement early in his career. But political patronage was a double-edged sword in the tumultuous politics of the Revolution. Napoleon's connection with Jacobins made him politically suspect in the Thermidorian reaction after the Terror. But Napoleon was lucky in his choice in political friends. Salicetti was able to save Napoleon from house arrest and later managed to cultivate a relationship with Paul Barras. These networks helped Napoleon gain commissions in what were subsidiary theaters for the French Revolutionary Wars, Italy and Egypt.

Napoleon managed to make the most of these appointments. Although Italy lacked the prestige of Germany, Napoleon succeeded in Italy while his compatriots in Germany failed. The military successes helped connect Napoleon to one of the Revolution's popular elements, military gloire. Generals and military exploits became one of the legitimizing components of the Revolution, especially as the more radical social levelling had led to the Terror. So military generals assumed a greater deal of political capital in the closing days of the Revolution than they possessed at its strat. Emmanel Sieyès, one of the key plotters in Brumaire, would famously quip, "I need a sword," in other words, a man who could command the loyalty of one of the few powerful institutions that possessed a great deal of popular legitimacy within the Republic, the army.

Napoleon was only thirty years old when he became First Consul, but many of his own contemporaries were not that much older than Bonaparte. His main military rivals to be the Brumaire coup's "sword"- Bernadotte, Jourdan, Hoche, and Moreau - were all born in the same decade as Napoleon. The youthfulness of this cohort underscores how the French Revolution created the right constellation that meant a young man with the right talents and connections could advance farther and faster than he could in the pre-1789 military.