Napoleon

Napoleon Bonaparte & His Legacy, 1768 – 1815

Main Points:
 * 1) Napoleon’s rise to the positions of dictator, then emperor of France effectively ended the French Revolution. His regime was, in many ways, even more autocratic than that of Louis XVI, which the French had fought to replace.


 * 1) Napoleon completed the rationalization of French legal, governmental, and military systems. In this sense, he was very much a man of the enlightenment. His rational system of governing, finance, and law contributed to the sense that France was one nation, and made the government and law effective and accessible for all with far less discrimination than the old regime. However, it also put French society under much more complete control than ever before.


 * 1) Napoleon’s conquest of most of Europe left a legacy of nationalism and liberalism throughout the continent that would play a major role in political and social changes outside, as well as inside France for the next 200 years.

Lecture: [|Napoleon Bonaparte] was born in1769 to a minor noble family on the island of Corsica. Enrolled in a military academy by the age of 10, he received his commission as an officer in the French Army of Louis XVI when he was 16. This was the beginning of an extraordinary rise to power. Napoleon, unable to rise in the king’s army because of the low standing of his family within the nobility, was able to advance his career in the army created by the Jacobins. After the Duke of Brunswick’s 1792 address to the French people in which he stated his intention to invade France with an international army to put a Bourbon monarch back in absolute control of France, the Levee en masse encouraged French men to serve in the army to preserve France and the Revolution. This nationalist appeal generated 800,000 men for the army, and the new office corps that was to command them was made up of professionals, like Napoleon, with military know-how, and experience in the field. These men were advanced up the ranks through demonstration of skill and effectiveness in action, not according to how close their family was with the king. Napoleon’s skill and intelligence thus soon won him command of ever larger units of the French army. By October, 1795, Napoleon was prominent enough in the army that the Directory, under threat from Parisians in revolt, chose him to defend them at an apparently very critical moment. He was able to disband the rowdy mob relatively easily, and the members of the Directory credited him with saving their lives as well as upholding their dictatorship of France.
 * 1) The fear of a conquering French army once again ravaging Europe caused the Congress of Vienna to create an international system that both kept the general peace for 99 years, and made direct contributions to the modern map of Europe and the world.

In 1796 and 1797, Napoleon was given command of one of three armies the French were sending against Austria. His was supposed to be a sort of decoy, to distract the Austrians to the south while the two larger armies would invade Austria north of the Alps. Nevertheless, while the other two armies were held to a standstill, Napoleon conquered large parts of Italy, and pressed toward Vienna, prompting the Austrians to sign the treaty of Campo Formio with him in 1797 – a treaty which he negotiated himself. This victory made him a hero in France. After returning from a failed adventure in Egypt – abandoning his army there, in fact – Napoleon learned of a coup being plotted against the Directory, and when he was asked to help, agreed. On November 9, 1799, Napoleon and his soldiers arrested the Directors, and Napoleon dissolved the Legislative Assembly the next day under threat of arms. His fellow conspirators named Napoleon First Consul of the Republic, and a new constitution which legalized the new government was promulgated after receiving a landslide of voter approval in a plebiscite designed to create legitimacy for Napoleon’s position – what amounted to a dictatorship. Napoleon, while holding absolute power in his own hands, went on to consolidate many of the reforms that had been attempted at various stages during the revolution. His Civil Code (Code Napoleon) of 1804 was a rational legal code that guaranteed private property, equality of all citizens (therefore all males) before the law, and set down clear legal principals that applied everywhere in France. He also centralized state power, and created a sophisticated bureaucracy to administer the government of France in a uniform way. In 1801, Napoleon made a move that brought Catholics back into the fold of the French government by renewing the relationship between France and the Catholic Church. With the Concordat of of 1801, Napoleon removed government restrictions on the church, and allowed French Catholics to renew their connection to Rome and the Pope. However, the Pope agreed to allow Napoleon to nominate bishops and pay the clergy. He also renewed the legality of Protestantism in France. In 1804, to consolidate his reforms, and his power, he had himself crowned emperor of France – an act which he ultimately carried out himself, taking the crown from the hands of the Pope and placing it on his own head. This emphasized the fact that Napoleon owed his power to himself, and to the revolution – in a sense, that power, in Napoleon’s mind, came from people, not from God, however much he might acknowledge the power of the Catholic Church. Napoleon also brought peace and international order to France, increasing his popularity. Most of this peace came on French terms. In 1799, Austria signed a peace with Napoleon, rather than continue to lose to his armies. England held out until 1801, but, with no toe-hold on the continent, and no active allies against Napoleon, finally signed as well. Between 1802 and 1812, Napoleon proceeded, with a combination of military brilliance, charisma, and luck, to conquer or subdue most of Europe. He controlled Spain, Italy, and all German states west of the Rhine. East of the Rhine, the Habsburg influence was reduced by increasing the size of other major German states including Prussia and Bavaria, and revising the constitution of the Holy Roman Empire to reflect the new physical power structures in Germany. In nearly all of the territories where his influence was felt, the Code Napoleon, or a rational law code that resembled it, was put in place. The rights of all citizens to access justice and government systems, and to own private property were guaranteed. All of this was accomplished with French power, augmented by the nationalism created in the Jacobin phase of the revolution, and promoted by Napoleon’s charisma. In June of 1812, Napoleon left Tilsit, in Prussia, on an invasion of Russia. He took with him an army of more than 600,000 men from various nations. The Napoleonic army moved swiftly, and nearly unopposed by the Russians up to Borodino, where Napoleon’s army, much smaller now due to desertion, starvation, and disease, confronted and defeated a smaller Russian force. They then moved on to take Moscow. The Czar refused to surrender, however, and with his Western European territories threated by a new alliance between Austria, England, and Prussia, Napoleon had to rush back to France. He returned with only about 35,000 men. In April, 1814, Napoleon, having lost Paris and pressed hard by the Austrians, British, and Prussians, surrendered, and was sent into exile on the island of Elba. He returned once, in the spring of 1815, promising that he would restore France’s empire. 300,000 French followed him to battle, though he was eventually defeated by Prussians and British at Waterloo, and sent into absolute exile on the island of St. Helena, where he eventually died of cancer in 1821. Napoleon left a legacy that continues to live on, however. His promotion of rationalized, centralized government, and his support of the middle class through law and private property protection provided the subjects for political and social debate for the next 200 years. His conquest of Europe in the name of French nationalism prompted a reactionary nationalism among those conquered and those threatened alike. Finally, Napoleon’s shake-up of the political order in Europe made it impossible for states to return to absolute models of rule following his defeat, and created a general fear of French aggression that was the motivating factor in the 1815 re-drawing of the borders of Europe by the congress of Vienna to create a cordon around France. Whatever the ultimate evaluation of Napoleon as a person, his presence at a critical moment in Europe’s history began the definition of the modern world, and consolidated changes that would define the next century or more of human history.