This was also part of one of the other great social claims of the Napoleonic regime. This was to be a regime in which careers were open to talent. What really mattered was the man of talent, the man of ability, willing to take chances and to achieve.
Learn more about how Napoleon seized power in France in The regime also instituted a reform of the French administration. A rational centralized administration was created under Napoleon. He created a very efficient system of taxation, not a very exciting sort of reform, but obviously, considering the history of France in the 18 th century, it was absolutely essential.
He returned France to a system of centralized administration, where local officials were appointed from Paris. In fact, under Napoleon, one sees the most centralized of all of the various French regimes of the 18 th century and into the 19 th century.
After a decade in which relations between the various French revolutionaries and the Church were strained to put it mildly , Napoleon was determined to restore good relations with the papacy, to bring the Church back into the mainstream of French political life. It was not to be the state religion; the constitution that would be drafted called for freedom of religion—but it acknowledged that Catholicism was the religion of the majority of the French people.
This concordat with the Vatican was enormously popular in France. Learn more about when Napoleon declared himself emperor. But if these factors were consistent with the Revolution, other aspects of this Napoleonic regime were not.
His opponents claimed that Napoleon was really a dictator, if one with great popular support. Certainly the system was maintained by secret police and very strict censorship. The number of newspapers in Paris shrank from 73 in to 13, and then down to four. They were closely censored by the regime.
Secret agents supervised the press and the arts under Napoleon. Surveillance of enemies was common, and arrest of enemies or potential enemies was also commonplace.
One also sees a somewhat chilling development here, which was that some opponents or potential opponents of Napoleon were arrested or taken into a kind of protective custody, and then sent off to mental institutions—not prisons, but mental institutions. Still, for whatever oppressive qualities this Napoleonic regime displayed, the Napoleonic Empire was enormously popular in France, certainly down to — Most of the population clearly believed that the regime had consolidated the most positive gains made during the Revolution.
In addition to this Napoleon had restored grandeur to France. Paris had once again become the center of Western civilization. The Napoleonic Code was established as a code of conduct for all of France, like a constitution with laws, that gave much-needed freedom and structure to life in France.
Napoleon Bonaparte stands as one of the greatest self-made men in the history of the world. But exactly how did the second son of a minor noble on Corsica turn himself into Emperor of France and, arguably, the most influential figure of the 19th century? Napoleon at St. Helena, vintage engraved illustration. History of France Q: Why is Napoleon Bonaparte so historically famous?
As Napoleon I, he was emperor of the French from until , and again in He dominated European and global affairs for more than a decade while leading France against a series of coalitions in the Napoleonic Wars.
He remains one of the most celebrated and controversial political figures in human history. At this time, he was a fervent Corsican nationalist. He spent the early years of the Revolution in Corsica, fighting in a complex three-way struggle among royalists, revolutionaries, and Corsican nationalists. He was a supporter of the republican Jacobin movement, organizing clubs in Corsica, and was given command over a battalion of volunteers. He was promoted to captain in the regular army in , despite exceeding his leave of absence and leading a riot against a French army in Corsica.
He returned to Corsica and came into conflict with the Corsican leader Pasquale Paoli, who decided to split with France and sabotage the French assault on the Sardinian island of La Maddalena. Bonaparte and his family fled to the French mainland in June because of the conflict with Paoli.
The Corsican Buonapartes were descended from minor Italian nobility of Tuscan origin, who had come to Corsica from Liguria in the 16th century. Bonaparte was promoted to brigadier general at the age of From Ormea, they headed west to outflank the Austro-Sardinian positions around Saorge. Following the fall of Robespierre and the Thermidorian Reaction in July , Napoleon, although closely associated with Robespierre, was released from the arrest within two weeks.
He also took part in an expedition to take back Corsica from the British, but the French were repelled by the British Royal Navy. In October , royalists in Paris declared a rebellion against the National Convention. The defeat of the royalist insurrection extinguished the threat to the Convention and earned Bonaparte sudden fame, wealth, and the patronage of the new government, the Directory. He was promoted to Commander of the Interior and given command of the Army of Italy. In the Montenotte Campaign, he separated the armies of Sardinia and Austria, defeating each one in turn, and then forced a peace on Sardinia.
Following this, his army captured Milan and started the Siege of Mantua. Bonaparte defeated successive Austrian armies under three different leaders while continuing the siege. The next phase of the conflict featured the French invasion of the Habsburg heartlands.
That summer, with the political situation in France marked by uncertainty, the ever-ambitious and cunning Napoleon opted to abandon his army in Egypt and return to France.
In November , in an event known as the coup of 18 Brumaire, Napoleon was part of a group that successfully overthrew the French Directory. Additionally, with the Treaty of Amiens in , the war-weary British agreed to peace with the French although the peace would only last for a year.
Napoleon worked to restore stability to post-revolutionary France. One of his most significant accomplishments was the Napoleonic Code , which streamlined the French legal system and continues to form the foundation of French civil law to this day.
In , a constitutional amendment made Napoleon first consul for life. Two years later, in , he crowned himself emperor of France in a lavish ceremony at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.
In , Napoleon married Josephine de Beauharnais , a stylish widow six years his senior who had two teenage children. More than a decade later, in , after Napoleon had no offspring of his own with Empress Josephine, he had their marriage annulled so he could find a new wife and produce an heir. In , he wed Marie Louise , the daughter of the emperor of Austria.
In addition to his son with Marie Louise, Napoleon had several illegitimate children. From to , France was engaged in the Napoleonic Wars, a series of major conflicts with various coalitions of European nations.
However, in December of that same year, Napoleon achieved what is considered to be one of his greatest victories at the Battle of Austerlitz, in which his army defeated the Austrians and Russians. The victory resulted in the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire and the creation of the Confederation of the Rhine. Beginning in , Napoleon sought to wage large-scale economic warfare against Britain with the establishment of the so-called Continental System of European port blockades against British trade.
In , the French defeated the Austrians at the Battle of Wagram, resulting in further gains for Napoleon. During these years, Napoleon reestablished a French aristocracy eliminated in the French Revolution and began handing out titles of nobility to his loyal friends and family as his empire continued to expand across much of western and central continental Europe.
In , Russia withdrew from the Continental System. In retaliation, Napoleon led a massive army into Russia in the summer of In September, both sides suffered heavy casualties in the indecisive Battle of Borodino.
Retreating Russians set fires across the city in an effort to deprive enemy troops of supplies. After waiting a month for a surrender that never came, Napoleon, faced with the onset of the Russian winter, was forced to order his starving, exhausted army out of Moscow. During the disastrous retreat, his army suffered continual harassment from a suddenly aggressive and merciless Russian army. At the same time as the catastrophic Russian invasion, French forces were engaged in the Peninsular War , which resulted in the Spanish and Portuguese, with assistance from the British, driving the French from the Iberian Peninsula.
Napoleon then retreated to France, and in March coalition forces captured Paris. On April 6, , Napoleon, then in his mids, was forced to abdicate the throne. With the Treaty of Fontainebleau, he was exiled to Elba, a Mediterranean island off the coast of Italy.
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