HI 209 Final Exam!

THE RISE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE:

In 1799, a charismatic young general took over the French republic and set France on a new course. Within a year, Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) had effectively ENDED THE FRENCH REVOLUTION and STEERED FRANCE TOWARD AN AUTHORITARIAN STATE. As emperor after 1804, he DREAMED OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION in the tradition of Augustus and Charlemagne, but he also mastered the details of PRACTICAL ADMINISTRATION. To achieve his goals, he COMPROMISED WITH THE CATHOLIC CHURCH and with exiled aristocrats willing to return to France. His most enduring accomplishment, the new CIVIL CODE, tempered the principles of the Enlightenment and the Revolution with an insistence on the powers of fathers over children, husbands over wives, and employers over workers. His influence spread into many spheres as he personally PATRONIZED SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY and ENCOURAGED ARTISTIC STYLES in line with his vision of imperial greatness.

A GENERAL TAKES OVER:

It would have seemed astonishing in 1795 that the twenty-six-year-old son of a noble family from the island of Corsica olf the Italian coast would within four years become the supreme ruler of France and one of the greatest military leaders in world history. 1l1at year, Bonaparte was a penniless artillery officer, only recently released from prison as a presumed Robespierrist. Thanks to some early military successes and links to Parisian politicians, however, he was named commander of the French army in Italy in 1796. Bonaparte's astounding success in the Italian campaigns of 1796-1797 launched his meteoric career. With an army offewer than fifiy thousand men, he defeated the Piedmontese and the Austri-ans. In quick order, he established client republics dependent on his own authority, negotiated with the Austrians himself, and molded the army into his personal force by paying the soldiers in cash taken as tribute from the newly conquered territories. He pleased the Directory government by sending home wagonloads of Italian masterpieces of art, which were added to Parisian museum collections (most are still there) after being paraded in victory festivals. In 1798, the Directory set aside its plans to in-vade England, gave Bonaparte command of the army raised for that purpose, and sent him across the Mediterranean Sea to Egypt. The Directory govern-ment hoped that French occupation of Egypt would strike a blow at British trade by cutting the route to India. Although the French immediately defeated a much larger Egyptian army, the British admiral Lord Horatio Nelson destroyed the French fleet while it was anchored in Aboukir Bay, cutting the French off from home. In the face of determined resistance and an outbreak of the bubonic plague, Bonaparte's armies retreated from a further expe-dition in Syria. But the French occupation of Egypt lasted long enough for that largely Muslim country to experience the same kinds of Enlightenment-inspired legal reforms that had been introduced in Europe: the French abolished torture, introduced equality before the law, eliminated religious taxes, and proclaimed religious toleration. Even the failures of the Egyptian campaign did not dull Bonaparte's luster. Bonaparte had taken France's leading scientists with him on the expedi-tion, and his soldiers had discovered a slab of blackbasalt dating from 196 B.C. E. written in both hiero-glyphic and Greek. Called the Rosetta slone after a nearby town, it enabled scholars to finally decipher the hieroglyphs used by the ancient Egyptians. With his army pinned down by Nelson's victory at sea, Bonaparte slipped ollt of Egypt and made his way secretly to southern France in October 1799. He arrived home at just the right moment: the war in Europe was going badly. ll1e territories of the former Austrian Netherlands had revolted against French conscription laws, and deserters swelled the ranks of rebels in western France. Amid increasing political instability, generals in the fwld had be-comevirtual!)' independent, and the troops felt more loyal to their units and generals than to the repub-lic. Disillusioned members of the government saw in Bonaparte's return an occasion to overturn the constitution of 1795. On November 9, 1799, the conspirators per-suaded the legislature to move out of Paris to avoid an imaginary jacobin plot. But when Bonaparte stomped into the new meeting hall the next day and demanded immediate changes in the constitution, he was greeted by cries of"Down with the dictator!" His quick-thinking brother Lucien, president of the Council of Five Hundred (the lower house), saved Bonaparte's coup by summoning tmops guarding the hall and claiming that some deputies had tried to assassinate the popular general. 1l1e soldiers ejected those who opposed Bonaparte and left the remain-ing ones to vote to abolish the Directory and estab-lish a new three-man executive called the consulate. Bonaparte became First Consul, a title revived from the ancient Roman republic. He promised to be a man above party and to restore order to the republic. A new constitution-with no declaration of righls-wns submined to the voters. Millions nb-staincd from voting, and the government falsified the results to give an appearance of even greater support to the new regime. Inside France, political apathy had overtaken the original enthusiasm for revolutionnry idenls. Altogether it was an unprom-ising beginning; yet within five years, Bonaparte would crown himself Napoleon I, emperor of the French. ·n1e French armies would recover from their reverses of 1799to push the frontiers of French in-nuence even farther eastward.

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE:

Napoleon Bonaparte (French: Napoléon Bonaparte [napoleɔ̃ bɔnɑpaʁt], Italian: Napoleone Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 - 5 May 1821) was a French military and political leader who rose to prominence during the latter stages of the French Revolution and its associated wars in Europe. As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1815, the first monarch of France bearing the title emperor since the reign of Charles the Fat (881-887). His legal reform, the Napoleonic Code, has been a major influence on many civil law jurisdictions worldwide, but he is best remembered for his role in the wars led against France by a series of coalitions, the so-called Napoleonic Wars. He established hegemony over most of continental Europe and sought to spread the ideals of the French Revolution, while consolidating an imperial monarchy which restored aspects of the deposed Ancien Régime. Due to his success in these wars, often against numerically superior enemies, he is generally regarded as one of the greatest military commanders of all time, and his campaigns are studied at military academies worldwide.[1] Napoleon was born at Ajaccio in Corsica in a family of noble Italian ancestry which had settled in Corsica in the 16th century. He trained as an artillery officer in mainland France. He rose to prominence under the French First Republic and led successful campaigns against the First and Second Coalitions arrayed against France. He led a successful invasion of the Italian peninsula. In 1799, he staged a coup d'état and installed himself as First Consul; five years later the French Senate proclaimed him emperor, following a plebiscite in his favour. In the first decade of the 19th century, the French Empire under Napoleon engaged in a series of conflicts—the Napoleonic Wars—that involved every major European power.[1] After a streak of victories, France secured a dominant position in continental Europe, and Napoleon maintained the French sphere of influence through the formation of extensive alliances and the elevation of friends and family members to rule other European countries as French vassal states. The Peninsular War and the invasion of Russia in 1812 marked turning points in Napoleon's fortunes. His Grande Armée was badly damaged in the campaign and never fully recovered. In 1813, the Sixth Coalition defeated his forces at Leipzig; the following year the Coalition invaded France, forced Napoleon to abdicate and exiled him to the island of Elba. Less than a year later, he escaped Elba and returned to power, but he was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815. Napoleon spent the last six years of his life in confinement by the British on the island of Saint Helena. An autopsy concluded he died of stomach cancer, but there has been some debate about the cause of his death, as some scholars have speculated that he was a victim of arsenic poisoning.

THE GRAND ARMY AND ITS VICTORIES (1800-1807):

Napoleon attributed his military success "three-quarters to morale" and the restto leadership and superiority of numbers at the pomt of attack. Conscription provided the large numbers: 1.3 million men ages twenty to twenty-four were drafled be-tween 1800 and t8t2, another I million in t813-18t4. Many willingly served because the republic had taught them to identify the army with the na-tion. Military service was both a patriotic duty and a means of social mobility. 'fltc men who rose through the ranks to become ofllcers were young, ambitious, and accustomed to the new ways of war. Consequently, the French army had higher morale than the armies of other powers, most of which re-jected conscription as too democratic and contin-ued to restrict their officer corps to the nobility. Only in 1813-1814, when the military tide turned against Napoleon, did French n"'orale plummet. When Napoleon came to power in 1799, deser-tion was rampant and the generals competed with one another for predominance. Napoleon ended the squabbling by uniting all the armies into one Grand Army under his personal command. By 18 l 2, he was commanding 700,000 troops; while 250,000 soldiers fought in Spain, others remained garrisoned in France. In any given battle, between 70,000 and 180,000 men, not all of them French, fought for France. Life on campaign was no picnic-ordinary soldiers slept in the rain, mud, and snow and oftenhad to forage for food-but Napoleon nonetheless inspired almost fanatical loyalty. l-Ie fought along-side his soldiprs in some sixty banles and had nine-teen horses shot from under him. One opponent said that Napoleon's presence alone was worth fifty thousand men. A brilliant strategist who carefully studied the demands of war, Napoleon outmaneuvered virtually all his opponents. He had a pragmatic and direct ap-proach to strategy: he went for the main body of the opposing army and tried to crush it in a lightning campaign. He gathered the largest possible army for one great and decisive battle and then followed with a relentless pursuit to break enemy morale al-together. His military command, like his rule within France, was personal and highly centralized. l-Ie essentially served as his own operations officer: "I alone know what I have to do;' he insisted. 1l1is style worked as long as Napoleon could be on the battlefield, but he failed to train independent sub-ordmatcs to take over 111 his absence. He also faced constant ~ifficulties in supplying a rapidly moving army, wh1ch, because of its size, could not always live off the land. One of Napoleon's greatest advantages was the lack of coordmat10n among his enemies. Britain dominated the seas but did not want to field huge land armies. On the continent, the French republic had already set up satellites in the Netherlands and Italy, which served as a buffer against the big powers to the east-Austria, Prussia, and Russia. By ma-neuvering diplomatically and militarily, Napoleon could usually take these on one by one. After reor-ganizing the French armies in 1799, for example, Napoleon won striking victories against the Austri-ans at Marengo and 1-lohenlinden in 1800, forcing them to agree to peace terms. Once the Austrians had withdrawn, Britain agreed to the Treaty of Amiens in 1802, effectively ending hostilities on the continent. Napoleon considered the peace with Great Britain merely a truce, however, and it lasted only until 1803. Napoleon used the breathing space not only to consolidate his position before taking up anns again but also to send an expeditionary force to the Caribbean colony of St. Domingue to regain con-trol of the island. Continuing resistance among the black population and an epidemic of yellow fever forced Napoleon to withdraw his troops from St. Domingue and abandon his plans to extend his empire to the Western Hemisphere. As part of his retreat, he sold the Louisiana Territory to the United States in 1803. When war resumed in Europe, the British navy once more proved its superiority by blocking an at-tempted French invasion and by defeating the French and their Spanish aUies in a huge naval battle at Tra-falgar in 1805. France lost many ships; the British lost no vessels, but their renowned adm1ral Lord Horatio Nelson died in the battle. On land, Napoleon remained invincible. In 1805, Austria took up arms again when Napoleon de~ manded that it declare neutrality in the conflict with Britain. Napoleon promptly captured twenty-five thousand Austrian soldiers at Ulm, in Bavaria, in 1805. After marching on to Vienna, he again trounced the Austrians, who had been joined by their new ally, Russia. 1l1e battle of Austerlitz, often considered Napoleon's greatest victory, was fought on December 2, 1805, the first anniversary of his coronation. After maintaining neutrality for a decade, Prus-sia now declared war on France. In !806, the French routed the Prussian army at jena and Auerstadt. ln1807, Napoleon defeated the Russians at Friedland. Personal negotiations between Napoleon and the young tsar Alexander I (r. ISO 1-1825) resulted in a humiliating settlement imposed on Prussia, which paid the price for temporar}' reconciliation bet ween France and Russia; the Treaties ofTilsit turned Prus~ sian lands west of the Elbc River into the kingdom of Westphalia under Napoleon's brother jerome, and Prussia's Polish provinces became the duchy of\Var-saw. Napoleon once again had lurned the divisions among his enemies to his favor.

RULE IN THE COLONIZED TERRITORIES:

Napoleon brought the disparate German and Italian states together so that he could rule them more effec-tively and exploit their resources for his own ends. ln 1803, he consolidated the tiny German states by abolishing some of them and attaching them to larger units.In July 1806, he established the confederation of the rhine,which soon included almost all the German states except Austria and Prussia. The Holy Roman Emperor gave up his title, held since the thirteenth century and became simply the emperor of austria. Napoleonestablished three units in Italy: the territories directly annexed to France and the satellite king-doms of Italy and Naples. Italy had not been so unified since the Roman Empire.Napoleon forced French-style reforms on both the an-nexed territories, which were ruled directly from Frnncc, and the satellite kingdoms, which were usually ruled by one or another of Napoleon's relatives but with a certain autonomy. French-style reforms included abolishing serfdom, eliminating scigneurial dues, introducing the Napoleonic ode. suppressing monasteries, and subordinating church to state, as well as extend· ing civil rights to Jews nnd other religious minori-ties. Napoleon's chosen rulers often made real improvements in rot1ds, public works, law codes, and edllcation. The removal of internal tariffs fos-tered economic gmwth by opening up the domes-tic market for goods, especially textiles. By 1814, llologna had five hundred factories and Modena four hundred. Yet almost everyone had some cause for complaint. .Republicans regretted Napoleon's conversion of the sister republics into kingdoms. Tax increases nnd ever-rising conscriplion quotas fomented discontent as well. The n.nncxcd territo-ries and salcllilc kingdoms paid half the cost of Napoleon's wnrs.Almost everywhere, conflicts arose between Napoleon's desire for a standnrdizcd, centralized government' nnd Jocnl insistence on maintaining customs nnd tTaditions. Sometimes his own rela-tives sided with the countries they ruled. Napoleon's brother Louis, for instance, would not allow con-scription in the Netherlands because the Dutch had never had compulsory military service.

PATRONAGE OF SCIENCE AND INTELLECTUAL LIFE:

Napoleon did everything possible to promote French scientific inquiry, especially that which could serve practical ends. He closely monitored the research institt1tes established during the Revolution, some-times intervening personally to achieve political conformity. An impressive outpouring of new the-oretical and practical scientific work rewarded the state's efforts. Experiments with balloons led to the discovery of laws about the expansion of gases, and research on fossil shells prepared the way for new theories of evolutionary change later in the nine-teenth century. The surgeon Dominique-Jean Larrey developed new techniques of battlefield amputa-tion and medica] care during Napoleon's wars, win-ning an appointment as an officer in the Legion of Honor and becoming a baron with a pension. Napoleon aimed to modernize French society through science, but he could not tolerate criticism. Napoleon considered most writers useless or dan-gerous, "good for nothing under any government:• Some of the most talented French writers of the time had to live in exile. The best-known expatriate was Anne-Louise-Germaine de Stael (1766-1817), the daughter of louis XVI's finance minister, Jacques Necker. When explaining his desire to banish her, Napoleon exclaimed, "She is a machine in motion who stirs up the salons." While exiled in the Ger-man states, de Stael wrote Corinne (1807), a novel whose heroine is a brilliant woman thwarted by a patriarchal system, and On Germany (1810), an ac-count of the important new literary currents east of the Rhine. Her books were banned in France. Although Napoleon restored the strong au-thority of state and religion in France, many royal-ists and Catholics still criticized him as an impious usurper. (See "Contrasting Views;' page 666.) Pran~ois-Rene de Chateaubriand (1768-1848) ad-mired Napoleon as "the strong man who has saved us from the abyss;' but he preferred monarchy. In his view, Napoleon had not properly understood the need to defend Christian values against the En-lightenment's excessive reliance on reason. Cha-teaubriand wrote his Genir~s of Christianity (1802) to draw attention to the power and mystery of faith. He warned, "It is to the vanity of knowledge that we owe almost all our misfortunes .... The learned ages have always been followed by ages of destruc-tion:· Chateaubriand's book appeared during a rare lull in wars that soon engulfed much of Europe.

Francesco Petrarca- "Ascent of Mount Ventoux"

-1336 (fourteenth century) -Renaissance humanism -Result of crisis (black death, hundred years war, ottoman conquest, the great schism) -Emphasis on Greek philosophers (ancient world) -"Middle age" -Rebirth of classical learning -Important movement in Italy, France, Spain, Low Countries -Freed individual from domination of society -Beginning of secular society -Francis Petrarch -Architecture, sculptures, paintings, music -Mythology

Niccolo Machiavelli- "The Prince"

-1514/1513 (sixteenth century) -Underlined need for pragmatic calculation -Firm grip on power -Mastery (proper court behavior) -Court life not affected by conflicts of the reformation -Sponsored arts and literature of the Renaissance -Riches of the new world -Religious differences -Court as center of art patronage and religious division -Dynastic wars -Financing war -Proper political behavior -Instructions for tyranny -Virtue -Held great influence on leaders by way of the printing press

Niccolo Machiavelli- "Discourses"

-1514/1517 (sixteenth century) -Political change -Consolidation of power -New powers -Hanseatic League -Powerful states (spain, france, england, burgundy) -Republics (swiss confederation, venice, florence) -Medici family -New taxes (Florentine catasto; inventory of households) -Driving out muslims, heretics, jews -Political history and philosophy -How to learn useful lessons from the past

Jean Calvin- "Institutes of Christian Religion"

-1536 (sixteenth century) -Protestant reformation -Invention of printing -Popular piety -Christian humanism -Martin Luther (salvation; sinner saved through faith) -Calvinism (branch of PR) -Reform challenging Catholic authority -Extensive research on Christianity (systematical, logical, coherent) -Predestination as conclusion of salvation -Belief in the Trinity -Faced criticism -Persecuted dissenters

William Shakespeare- "A Winter's Tale"

-1611 (seventeenth century) -Prompted by religious conflict -Elizabeth I's defense of Protestantism -Puritans (Calvinists) -Fuel between Elizabeth and Phillip II (Phillip wanted catholic) -England defeats Spain -Clash of faiths and empires in eastern europe -Thirty years war followed -Peace of westphalia -Plays as outlet during religious conflict -Nature of power -Crisis of authority -Psychological drama

Galileo Galilei- "Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina"

-1615 (seventeenth century) -Rise of science/scientific worldview -Secularization -Religion more private -Scientific revolution -Search of a method to determine laws of nature (scientific method) -Revolution in astronomy -Supported heliocentrism -Challenged doctrine that the heavens were perfect and unchanging -Built telescope (observed moon, planets, sun, etc) -Earth revolved around the sun -New science was for the wise -Attacked the bible's use of common language as literal -Ideas met with much resistance -Breakthroughs in medicine -Bacon -Descartes -Newton

Adam Smith- "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations"

-1776 (eighteenth century) -Rise of consumption -Advanced agricultural techniques (agricultural revolution) -Increase in population -Migration to cities -Individual interests facilitate common good -Invisible hand (supply and demand) -Market forces brought individual and social interests in line -Division of labor -Laissez-faire (free international trade) -Government provides the secure framework for market activity -Prompted by enlightenment -Controversy between philosophers and the church -Secular society -Reason -Free markets

Olaudah Equiano- "Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano"

-Eighteenth century -Realities of slavery -Prompted opposition of slavery -Atlantic system -Slave trade (money used to buy raw commodities) -Altered power structures -Created political instability -Slaves suffered greatly -Middle passage -No identities -As slaves died, more were imported -Economic gain -Influenced politics -Mental, physical, emotional mistreatment -Extended world trade

...

-Supreme ruler of France -Great military leader -Success in Italian campaigns (1796-1797) -Given command of the army by the Directory -Failures of the Egyptian campaign didn't phase him -Becomes first consul in 1799 -The end of the republic -Task of bringing alienated Catholics back -

NAPOLEON'S CONQUESTS:

Building on innovations introduced by the repub-lican governments before him, Napoleon revolu-tionized the art of war with tacttcs and strategies based on a highly mobile army. By !812, he ruled a European empire more extensive than. any smce ancient Rome (Map 20.1). Yet th~t emptre had al,-ready begun to crumble, and with It went Napoleons power at home. Napoleon's empire failed because It was based on a contradiction: Napoleon tned to reduce virtually all nations of Europe to the status of colonial dependents when Europe had long con-sisted of independent states. The result, mevltably, was a great upsurge in nationalist feehng that has dominated European politics to the present.

THE NEW PATERNALISM: THE CIVIL CODE:

As part of his restoration of order, Na~ol~on br~~~g~~t a paternalistic model of power~~ his state. lie~ 1-ous governments had tried to unify and st.andald-ize France's multiple legal codes, but only Napoleon successfully established a new one, part.ly .because he personally presided over the cotmmss.IOn that drafted the new Civil Code, complete~ Ill 1804. Called the Napoleonic Code as a way of further ex-alting the emperor's image, it reasserted l~1e ?ld Regime's patriarchal system of mal~ dommatiOn over women and insisted on a fathers ~ont.rol over his children, which revolutionary legislatiOn hadlimited. For example. a child under :tgc sixteen who refused to follow his or her father's commands could be sent to prison for llp to a month with no hearing of any sort. Yet the code :tlso rcquirc.::d t'athc.::rs to provide for their children's welfare. Moreover, the Civil Code protected m:myofthe gains oft he French Revolution by defining and ensuring property rights, guaranteeing religious liberty, and establishing'' uni-form system or law that provided equal ln.:: at mcnt for all adult males and atlirmcd the right nr men to choose their proft:ssions. Napoleon wanted to dis-courage abortion and infanticide, not uncununon among the poorest classes in the fast-grmving mban areas, so he helped set up private charities to help indigent mothers and made it easic.::r for women to abandon their children anonymously to a govern-men! foundling hospital.Although the code maintained the equal divi-sion of family property between all children, both male and female, it sharply curtailed women's rights in other respects. Napoleon wanted to restrict women to the private sphere of the home. One of his leading jurists remarked, "Women need protec-tion because they are weaker; men are free because they are stronger:· The law obligated a husband to support his wife, but the husband alone controlled any property held in common; a wife could not sue in court, sell or mortgage her own property, or contract a debt without her husband's consent. Di-vorce was severely restricted. A wife cou.ld petition for divorce only if her husband brought his mis-tress to live in the family home. In contrast, a wife convicted of adultery could be imprisoned for up to two years. The code's framers saw these discrep-ancies as a way to reinforce the family and make women responsible for private virtue, while leav-ing public decisions to men. The French code was imitated in many European and Latin Arnerican countries and in the French colony of Louisiana, where it had a similar negath•e effect on women's rights. Not until 1965 did French wives gain legal status equal to that of their husbands. Napoleon took little interest in girls' education, believing that girls should spend most of their time at home learning religion, manners, and such "fe-ma]e occupations" as sewing and music. For boys, by contrast, the government set up a new system of lycees, state-run secondary schools in which stu-dents wore military uniforms and drumrolls sig-naled the beginning and end of classes. The lycees offered wider access to education and thus helped achieve Napoleon's goal of opening careers to those with talent, regardless of their social origins. (lhe lycees have dropped the military trappings and are now coeducational, but they are still the heart of the French educational system.) 'The new paternalism extended to relations be-tween employers and employees. ·1he state required all workers to carry a work card attesting to their good conduct, and it prohibited all workers' orga-nizations. The police considered workers without cards to be vagrants or criminals and could send them to a workhouse or prison. After 1806, arbi-tration boards settled labor disputes, butt hey took employers at their word while treating workers as minors, demanding that foremen and shop super-intendents represent them. Occasionally strikes broke out, led by secret, illegal journeymen's asso-ciations, yet many employers laid off employees when times were hard, deducted fines from their wages, and dismissed them without appeal for be-ing absent or making errors. These limitations on workers' rights won Napoleon the support of French business.

FROM RUSSIAN WINTER TO FINAL DEFEAT:

Despite opposition, Napoleon ruled over an ex-tensive empire by 1812. Only two major European states remained fully independent-Great Britain and Russia-but once allied they would successfully challenge his dominion and draw many other states to their side. Britain sent aid to the Portuguese and Spanish rebels, while Russia once again prepared for war. Tsar Alexander !made peace with Turkey and allied himself with Great Britain and Sweden. In 181.2, N;~poleon invaded Russia with 250,000 horses and 600,000 men, including contingents of Italians, Poles, Swiss, Dutch, and Germans. 1l1is daring move proved 10 be his undoing.

FRENCH REVOLUTION:

Experiencing an economic crisis exacerbated by the Seven Years' War and the American Revolutionary War, the common people of France became increasingly frustrated by the ineptitude of King Louis XVI and the continued decadence of the aristocracy. This resentment, coupled with burgeoning Enlightenment ideals, fueled radical sentiments and launched the Revolution in 1789 with the convocation of the Estates-General in May. The first year of the Revolution saw members of the Third Estate proclaiming the Tennis Court Oath in June, the assault on the Bastille in July, the passage of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in August, and an epic march on Versailles that forced the royal court back to Paris in October. The next few years were dominated by struggles between various liberal assemblies and right-wing supporters of the monarchy intent on thwarting major reforms. A republic was proclaimed in September 1792 and King Louis XVI was executed the next year. External threats shaped the course of the Revolution profoundly. The Revolutionary Wars began in 1792 and ultimately featured spectacular French victories that facilitated the conquest of the Italian Peninsula, the Low Countries and most territories west of the Rhine - achievements that had eluded previous French governments for centuries. Internally, popular agitation radicalized the Revolution significantly, culminating in the rise of Maximilien Robespierre and the Jacobins. The dictatorship imposed by the Committee of Public Safety during the Reign of Terror, from 1793 until 1794, caused up to 40,000 deaths inside France,[1] abolished slavery in the colonies, and secured the borders of the new republic from its enemies. The bloody rule of the Jacobins sparked an internal backlash and ultimately sent Robespierre to the guillotine. After the fall of the Jacobins, the Directory assumed control of the French state in 1795 and held power until 1799. In that year, which marks the traditional conclusion of the Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte overthrew the Directory in the Brumaire coup and established the Consulate. The primary successor state of the Revolution, the First Empire under Napoleon, emerged in 1804 and spread the new revolutionary principles all over Europe during the Napoleonic Wars. The First Empire finally collapsed in 1815 when the forces of reaction succeeded in restoring the Bourbons, albeit under a constitutional monarchy. The modern era has unfolded in the shadow of the French Revolution. French society itself underwent an epic transformation as feudal, aristocratic, and religious privileges evaporated under a sustained assault from various left-wing political groups, the masses on the streets, and peasants in the countryside.[2] Old ideas about tradition and hierarchy regarding monarchs, aristocrats, and the Catholic Church were abruptly overthrown under the mantra of "Liberté, égalité, fraternité." Globally, the Revolution accelerated the rise of republics and democracies, the spread of liberalism and secularism,fi the development of modern ideologies, and the practice of total war.[3] Some of its central documents, like the Declaration of the Rights of Man, expanded the arena of human rights to include women and slaves.[4] The fallout from the Revolution had permanent consequences for human history: the Latin American independence wars, the Louisiana Purchase by the United States, and the Revolutions of 1848 are just a few of the numerous events that ultimately depended upon the eruption of 1789.

INVASION OF RUSSIA:

Napoleon followed his usual strategy Russia, 1812 of trying to strike qLrickly, bllt the Rllssian generals avoided confron-tation and retreated eastward, destroying anything that might be Lrseful to the invaders. In September, on the road to Moscow, Napoleon finally engaged the main Russian force in the gigantic battle of Borodino (see Map 20.1, page 660). French casual-ties numbered 30,000 men, including 47 generals; the Russians lost 45,000. The French soldiers had nothing to celebrate around their campfires: as onesoldier wrote, "Everyone ... wept for some dead friend:' Once again the Russians retreated, leaving Moscow undefended. Napoleon entered the de-serted city, but the victory turned hollow because the departing Russians had set the wooden city on fire. Within a week, three-fourths of it had burned to the ground. Still Alexander refused to negotiate, and French morale plunged with worsening prob-lems of supply. Weeks of constant marching in the dirt and heat had worn down the foot soldiers, who were dying of disease or deserting in large num-bers (see Document, ''An Ordinary Soldier on Cam-paign with Napoleon:· page 665). In October, Napoleon began his retreat; in No-vember came the cold. A German soldier in the Grand Army described trying to cook fistfuls of raw bran with snow to make something like bread. For him, the retreat was "the indescribable horror of all possible plagues:· Within a week the Grand Army lost 30,000 horses and had to abandon most of its artillery and food suppLies. Russian forces harassed the retreating army, now more pathetic than grand. By December only !00,000 troops remained, one-sixth the original number, and the retreat had turned into a rout: the Russians had captured 200,000 sol-diers, including 48 generals and 3,000 other officers. Napoleon had made a classic military mistake that would be repeated by Adolf Hitler in World War II: fighting a war on two distant fronts simul-taneously. The Spanish war tied down 250,000 French troops and forced Napoleon to bully Prus-sia and Austria into supplying soldiers of dubious loyalty for the Moscow campaign; those soldiers de-serted at il1e first opportunity. The fighting in Spain and Portugal also exacerbated the already substan-tial logistical and communications problems in-volved in marching to Moscow. The End of I Napoleon's humiliation might

FROM REPUBLIC TO EMPIRE:

Napoleon had no long-range plnns to establish himself as emperor and conquer most of Europe. The deputies of the legislature who engineered the coup detnt of November I 799 picked him ns one of three provisional consuls only because he was a fa-mous general. Napoleon immediately asserted his leadership over the other two consuls in the pro-cess of drafting another constitution-the fourth since 1789. He then set nbout putting his stamp on every aspect of French life, building monuments and institutions that in some cases have endured to the present day.

THE END OF NAPOLEON'S EMPIRE:

Napoleon's humiliation might have Napoleon's been temporary if the British and Empire Russians had not successfully orga-nized a coalition to complete the job. Napoleon still had resources at his command; by the spring of 1813, he had replenished his army with another 250,000 men. With British financial sup-port, Russian, Austrian, Prussian, and Swedish armies mel the French outside Leipzig in October 1813 and defeated Napoleon in the Battle of the Nations. One by one, Napoleon's German allies de-serted him to join the German nationalist "war of liberation:· 1l1e Confederation of the Rhine dis-solved, and the Dutch revolted and restored the prince of Orange: Joseph Bonaparte fled Spain, and a combrned Spanrsh-Portuguese army under British command invaded France. In only a few months, the allied powers crossed the Rhine and marchedtoward Paris. In March 1814, the French Senate de-posed Napoleon, who abdicated when his remain-ing generals refused to fight. Napole.on went rnto exile on the island of Elba off the ltahan coast. H1s wife, Marie-Louise, refused to accompany him. The allies restored to the throne Louis XVIII (r. 1814-1824), the brother of Louis XVI, beheaded during the Revolution. (Louis XV!'s son was known as Louis XVII even though he died in prison in 1795 without ever ruling.) Because Louis XVIII lacked a solid base of sup-pori, Napoleon had one last chance to regain power. The new king tried to steer a middle course through a charter that established a British-style monarchy with a two-house legislature and guaranteed civil rights. But he was caught between nobles returning from exile, who demanded a complete restoration of their lands and powers, and the vast majority of ordi-nary people, who had supported either the republic or Napoleon during the previous twenty-five years. Sensing an opportunity, Napoleon escaped from Elba in early 1815 and, landing in southern France, made swift and unimpeded progress to Paris. Although he had left in ignominy, now crowds cheered himd former soldiers volunteered to serve him. The period eventually known as the Hundred Days (the length of time between Napoleon's escape and his final defeat) had begun. Louis XVIII fled across the border, waiting for help from France's enemies. Napoleon quickly moved his reconstituted army of74,000 men into present-day Belgium. At first, it seemed that he might succeed in separately fight-ing the two armies arrayed against him-a !'rus-sian army of some 60,000 men and a joint force of 68,000 Belgian, Dutch, German, and British troops led by British general Sir Arthur Wellesley ( 1769-1852), duke of Wellington. ll1e decisive battle of Waterloo took place on june 18, 18!5, less than ten miles from Brussels. Napoleon's forces attacked Wellington's men first with infantry and then with cavalry, but the French failed to dislodge their op-ponents. Late in the afternoon, the Prussians ar-rived and the rout was complete. Napoleon had nochoice but to abdicate again. This time the victori-ous allies banished him permanently to the remote island of St. Helena, far ofl"the coast of West Africa, where he died in 1821 at the age of fifty-two. 111e cost of Napoleon's rule was high: 750,000French soldiers ~nd 400,000 others from annexed and satellite states died between i800 and 1815. Yelhis impact on world history was undeniable.

IMPERIAL RULE:

Napoleon's outsize pe;sonality dominated the new reg1me. HIS face and name adorned coins, engravings, histo-ries. paintings, and public monuments. His favorite painters embellished his legend by depicting him as a warrior-hero of mythic proportions even though he was short and physically unimpressive in per-son. Belie\'ing that "what is big is always beautiful;' Napoleon embarked on ostentatious building proj-ects tl1at would outshine even those of Louis XIV. Government-commissioned architects built the Arc de Triomphe, the Stock Exchange, fountains, and even slaughterhouses. Most of the emperor's new construction reflected his neoclassical taste for monumental buildings set in vast empty spaces. Napoleon worked hard at establishing his repu-tation as an efficient administrator with broad intel-lectual interests: he met frequently with scientists,jurists, and artists, and stories abounded of his un-flagging energy. When not on military campaigns, he worked on stnte affnirs, usually until 10:00 p.m., taking only a few mjnutes for each meal. "Authority;' declared his adviser the abbe Sieyes, "must come from above and confidence from below." To estab-lish his authority, Napoleon relied on men who had served with him in the army. His chief of staff Alexandre Berthier, for example, became minister of war, and the chemist Claude Berthollet, who had organized the scientific part of the expedition to Egypt, became vice president oftl1e Sennte in 1804. Napoleon's bureaucracy was based on a patron-client relationship, with Napoleon as the ultimnte patron. Some of Napoleon's closest associates mar-ried into his family. Combining aristocratic and revolutionary val-ues in a nev.• social hierarchy that rewarded merit and talent, Napoleon personally chose as senators the nation's most illustrious generals, ministers, pre-fects, scientists, rich men, and former nobles. In-tending to replace both the old nobility of birth and the republic's strict emphasis on equality, in 1802 hetook the first step toward creating a new nobility by founding the Legion of Honor. (Members of I he legion received lifetime pensions along w1th the1r titles.) Napoleon usually equated h01~or with mili-tary success; by 1814, the legion had thnty:two thou-sand members, only 5 percent of them Clvthans. In 1808, Napoleon introduced a complete hier-archy of noble titles, ranging from pri.nces down to barons and chevaliers. All Napoleunu: nobles ha(t served the state. Titles could be inherited but had to be supported by wealth-a man could not be a duke without a fortune of 200,000 francs or a chevalier without 3,000 francs. To go along with their new titles, Napoleon gave his favorite g~nerals huge for-tunes. often in the form of estates 111 the conquered territories. Napoleon's own family reaped the greatest bene-fils He made his older brother, joseph, ruler oflhe ne1~1y established kingdom of Naples in t806,_1hc same year he installed his younger ?rot her Latus as king of Holland. He proclaimed hiS twenty-three-year-old stepson, EugCne de Bea~ha~·11a1S, vtcc~·o~· of Italy in 1805 and established l11s SISler Carol me and brother-in-law General Joachun Murat as kmg and queen of Naples in 1808 when he moved Joseph to the throne of Spain. Napoleon wanted lo eslab-lish an imperial succession, but .he ~~~ked an l~eir. Jn thirteen years of marriage, hts '1-\'ttc,. Joscphu1c, had borne 110 children, so in 1809 he d1vorced her and in 1810 married the eighteen-year-old. princ~ss Marie-louise of Austria. TI1e next year Mane-Louise gave birth to a son, to whom Napoleon immediately gave the title king of Rome.

PRESSURE FOR REFORM IN PRUSSIA AND RUSSIA:

Napoleon's victories forced 111 Prussoa and Russo a defeated rulers to rethink their political and cultural nssumptions. After the cwshing defeat of Prussia in 1806left his country greatly reduced in territory, Frederick William Ill (r. 1797-1840) appointed a reform commission, and on its recommendation he abolished serfdom and allowed non-nobles to buy and enclose land. Peasants gained their per-sonal independence from their noble landlords, who could no longer sell them to pay gambling debts, for example, or refuse them permission to rnarry. Yet the lives of the former serfs remained bleak; they were left without land, and their landlords no longer had to care for them in hard times. 1he king's advisers also overhallled the army to make the high comrnand more efficient and to open the way to the appointment of middle-class officers. Prussia insti-tuted these reforms to try to compete with the French, not to promote democracy. As one reformer wrote to Frederick William, •<we must do from above what the French have done from below." Reform received lip service in Russia. Tsar Alexander I had gained his throne after an aristo-cratic coup deposed and killed his autocratic and capricious father, Paul (r. 1796-1801), and in the early years of his reign the remorseful young ruler created Western-style ministries, lifted restrictions on importing foreign books, and founded six new universities. In addition, reform commissions stud-ied nbuses, nobles were encouraged voluntarily to free their serfs (a few actually did so), and there was even talk of drafting a constitution. But none of these efforts reached beneath the surface of Russian life, and by the second decade of his reign Alexander be-gan lo reject the Enlightenment spirit that his grand-mother Catherine the Great had instilled in him.

RESISTANCE TO FRENCH RULE:

Smuggling British goods Rule, 1807-1812 was only one way of op-posing the French. Almost everyvvhere in Europe, resistance began as local op~ position to French demands for mon~y or .dr~ftees 11 ompted a more natoonahsttc pa-but eventua y pr s of bandits triotic defense. In southern Italy, gang "Europe was at My Feet": Napoleon's Conquests harassed the French army and local ofticials, who arrested thirty-three thousand Italian bandits in 1809 alone. But resistance continued via a net work of secret societies called the carbonari ("charcoal burners"), which got its name from the practice of marking each new member's forehead with n char-coal mark.1l1roughout the nineteenth centu~y, the carbonari played a leading role in Italian nat tOnal-ism. In the German states, intellectuals wrote pas-sionate defenses of the virtues of the German nnt ion and of the superiority of German literature. No nations bucked under Napoleon's reins more than Spain and Portugal. In 1807, Napoleon sent 100,000 troops through Spain to invade Portugal, Great Britain's ally.111e royal family fled to the Por-tuguese colony of Brazil, but fighting contonued, aided by a British army. When Napoleon gol hos brother joseph named king of Spain in place ol the senile Charles IV (r. 1788-1808), the Spanish clergy and nobles raised bands of peasants to fight the French occupiers. Even Napoleon's taking personal command of the French forces failed 10 quell the Spanish, who forsix years fought a war of nationalindependence that pinned down thousands of French soldiers. Germaine de Stael commented that Napoleon "never understood that a war might be a crusade .... He never reckoned with the one power that no arms could overcome-the enthusiasm of a whole people:· More than a new feeling of nationalism was aroused in Spain. Peasants hated French requisi-tioning of their food supplies and sought to defend their priests against French anticlericalism. Span-ish nobles feared revolutionary reforms and were willing to defend the old monarchy in the person of the young l'erdinand VII, heir to Charles IV, even while l'erdirwnd himself was congratulating Napoleon on his victories. l11c Spanish Catholic church spread anti-French propaganda that equated Napoleon with heresy. As the former archbishop of Seville wrote to the archbishop of Granada in 1808, "You realize that we must not recognize as king a frecmason, heretic, Lutheran, as are all the Bonapartes and the l'rench nation:· In this tense atmosphere, the Spanish peasant rebels, assisted by the British, countered every l'rench massacre with atrocities of their own. ll1ey tortured their French prisoners (boiling one general alive) and lynched collaborators.

THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM:

The one power always stand-System i ng between Napoleon and to-tal dominance of Europe was Great Britain. 1l1e British ruled the seas and financed anyone who would oppose Napoleon. In an effort to bankrupt this "nation of shopkeepers" by choking its trade, Napoleon inaugurated the Continental System in t806.lt prohibited all commerce between Great Britain and France or France's dependent states and allies. At first, the system worked: in 1807-1808, British exports dropped by 20 percent and manufacturing by 10 percent; unemploymentand a strike of sixty thousand workers in northern England resulted. The British retaliated by confis-. eating merchandise on ships, even those of powers neutral in the wars, that sailed into or out of ports from which the British were excluded by the system. In the midst of continuing wars~ moreover, the Continental System proved impossoble to enforce, and widespread smuggling brought Bnttsh go~ds into the European market. British gr?"''_th contm-ued, despite some setbacks; calico~pn~tmg wo:ks, for example, quadrupled their productoon, and om-ports of raw cotton increased by 40 percent. At the same time, French and other contine~talmdustn~s benefited from the temporary protectoon from Bnt-ish competition.

THE END OF THE REPUBLIC:

When the constitution of 1799 made Napoleon the First Consul, 1t gave hun the nght to piCk the Council of State, which drew up nil laws. He ex-erted control by choosing men loyal to him. Gov-ernment was no longer representative in any real sense: the new constitution eliminated direct elec-tions for deputies and gmnted no independent powers to the three houses of the legislature. Na-poleon and his ndvisers chose the legislature's members out of a small pool of"notnbles." Almost all men over twenty-one could vote in the plebi-scite (referendum) to approve the constitution. but their only option was to choose yes or no. Napoleon's most urgent task wns to reconcile to his regime Catholics who had been alienated by revolutionary policies. Although nominally Catho-lic, Nnpoleon held no deep religious convictions. "How can there be order in the state without reli-gion?'' he asked cynically. "When n mnn is dying of hunger beside another who is stuffing himself, he cannel accept this difference if there is not nn au-thority who tells him: 'God wishes it so."' In 1801, a concordat with Pope Pius VII (r. 1800-1823) ended a decade of church-state conflict in Fmnce. ll1e pope validnted all sales of church lands, and the government agreed to pay the salaries ofbishops and priests who would swear loynlty to the state. Catholicism was officially recognized as the religion of"the great majority of French citizens:· (1he state also paid Protestant pastors' snlaries.) TI1us, the pope brought the huge French Catholic population back into the fold and Napoleon gained the pope's support for his regime. Napoleon continued lhe centralization of state power that had begun under the absolutist monar-chy of Louis XIV and resumed under the Terror. As First Consul, he appointed prefects who directly supervised local affairs in every department in the country. He created the Bank of France to facilitate government borrowing and relied on gold and sil-ver coinage rather than paper money. He improved tax collection but balanced the budget only by ex-acting tribute from the territories he conquered. To achieve order and end the upheavals of ten years of revolutionary turmoil, the regime severely limited political expression. Napoleon never relied on mass executions to maintain control, but here-fused to allow those who opposed him to meet in clubs, influence elections, or publish newspapers. A decree reduced the number of newspapers in Paris from seventy-three to thirteen (and then finally to four), and the newspnpers that remnined become government organs. Government censors had to npprove all operas and plays, and they banned "of-fensive" artistic works even more frequently than their royal predecessors had. The minister of police, joseph Fouche, once n leading figure in the Terror of I 793-1794, imposed house arrest, nrbitmry im-prisonment, and surveillance of political dissidents. Political contest and debate shriveled to almost nothing. When a bomb attack on Napoleon's cnr-riage failed in 1800, Fouche suppressed the evidence of a royalist plot and instead arrested hundreds of former Jacobins. More thnn one hundred of them were deported and seven hundred imprisoned. When it suited him, Napoleon nlso struck against royalist conspirators. In 1804, he ordered his police to kidnap the duke d'Enghien from his residence in Germany. Napoleon had intelligence, which proved to be false, that d'Enghien had joined a plot in Paris against him. Even when he Jenrned the truth, he insisted that a military tribunal try d'Enghien, a close relntive of the dend king Louis XVI. After a summary trial, d'Enghien was shot on the spot. By then, Napoleon's political intentions had be-come clear. He had named himself First Consul for life in 1802, and in 1804, with the pope's blessing, he crowned himself emperor. Once again, plebiscites approved his decisions but only yes/no alternativeswere offered. Still, though the democratic political aims of the French Revolution had been trampled, some aspects of daily life continued to be affected by egalitarian ideals (see "Seeing History;· page 656).

THE IMPACT OF FRENCH VICTORIES:

\Alherever the Grand Army conquered) Napoleon's influence followed soon after. B)' annexing some ter-ritories and setting up others as satellite kingdoms with much-reduced autonomy, Napoleon attempted to colonize large parts of Europe (sec Map 20.1, page 660). But e1•en where he did not rule directly or through his relatives, his startling string of vic-tories forced the other powers to reconsider their own methods of ruJe.