To what extent would it be correct to consider Napoleon the heir to the French Revolution?

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) is one of the most dramatic and fascinating characters of modern European history, who has captured the imagination of scholars, intellectuals, writers, poets and artists over centuries. Napoleon led a glamorous and heroic life, found admirers like Hegel and Goethe, while at the same time inviting the hatred and detest of people like Leo Tolstoy. As a character Napoleon was an intriguing combination of varying and often contrasting traits. And it was the presence of these very traits that made Napoleon the most suitable man to lead France in a tumultuous period of flux.

The character of Napoleon raises many questions about the relationship between individuals and historical processes, and the extent to which they are dependent on and governed by each other. While it may not be possible to arrive at an answer, Napoleon does show us what an individual can make out of an opportunity given to him by these forces. The issue of historical inevitability is a complex one, which we need to try and understand without putting undue emphasis on either the genius of Napoleon or his circumstances.

The debate over whether Napoleon can be called the heir to the French Revolution still remains open. This question presupposes a ‘revolution’, and a ‘revolutionary legacy’, which would need to be fulfilled. For this it is imperative to get an idea of the Revolution and the forces it released. The French Revolution has been considered by many as marking the turning point in French history, where the Old Order collapsed, paving the way for a new capitalist Order. This perception however is too simplistic and is based on a Marxist understanding, in which the correlation between the nobility, the bourgeoisie and capitalist development is uni-dimensional. The Revolution definitely unleashed many radical forces, which held the potential for a capitalist transformation, but had to face the unexpected challenge of a tenacious, surviving Old Order.

When looking at the French Revolution, we also need to keep in mind that not everyone is agreed on what the French revolution really was. For liberal historians, the Revolution continued till 1791, or the phase of the bourgeoisie revolution. Democratic and radical historians see the true revolution as between 1792 and 1794, when the Jacobins held power. Some historians have even gone on to see the Revolution right up to 1815, the fall of Napoleon. Hence, when we talk about the heir to the revolution, we need to be careful about our interpretation, since the ideology of the revolution changed from 1788 right up to 1799, when Napoleon came to power.

What this traditional perspective of the French Revolution also ignores is that the French Revolution was not even a Revolution in the sense that the Old Order never was overthrown completely. While many things did change, the persistent Old Order did not allow a complete and radical transformation. The ancien regime was not an institution, which could be destroyed from the top. It was a set of attitudes, which had persisted in the minds of the French people in spite of a revolution. Hence, when we speak in terms of fulfilling or betraying the revolution, the continuance of the Old regime in many spheres of social, political, and economic life needs to be kept in mind.

Before we can analyze Napoleon’s work as First Consul and then Emperor, we need to briefly look at the circumstances preceding his coming to power. In 1792, following the bourgeoisie revolution, a government of radicals known as the Jacobins, under Robespierre came to power. He was a committed revolutionary and soon assumed dictatorial powers, creating the ‘reign of terror’, in an attempt to control a France in disarray after the popular revolution. In July 1794, Robesspierre was ousted in what is called the Thermidore, and power was seized by another group of people. This group comprised primarily of men of property who desired above all political stability. They desired a moderate parliamentary regime of property owners and in 1795 tried to push through a new constitution, which was never effected. They were however not counter-revolutionaries and were walking a tightrope between the radical left and the right. Soon, they were forced to turn towards the army. It is interesting to note that as early as 1790, a time when most people had thought that the Revolution was over, Edmund Burke had predicted and warned of a more extreme form of revolution, which was to come. He foresaw that increasing extremism would eventually lead to a situation where the army would become the most powerful institution and power would be seized by a military general.

By the late 1790s it was clear that the army was becoming exceedingly important, especially in the face of a financial crisis in France. Huge war booties also made the government further dependent on it. The financial stability of the government was now closely linked to the performance and victories of the army. It was at this point of time that a group of notables decided to orchestrate a change, which would concentrate greater powers in the hands of the executive, thereby weakening the legislative bodies. This could only be done by a military general, who in this case turned out to be Napoleon. We can see at this point how the coming of Napoleon was governed by forces beyond his control, but the fact that it was a personality like him which came to power changed things in a profound manner for Europe.

By 1700, Napoleon had already distinguished himself as a successful military leader after his campaigns in Italy and Egypt. The existing government in France was becoming increasingly unpopular and a need was being felt for a change. Napoleon found himself allied with three men, who like himself, had survived the Revolution, had served under the Directory, and were now convinced of the need for a new Constitution. These men were Fouché, Talleyrand, and Sieyès. They captured power in a coup d’etat on 18th and 19th Brumaire. .After the coup, Sieyès, Ducos and Napoleon Bonaparte were named the provisional Consuls of the French Republic, with Napoleon being marked out as First Consul. In 1802, Napoleon became Consul for Life and in 1804 he acquired the title of an Emperor.

In calling Napoleon Bonaparte to their aid in Brumaire, Seiyes had hoped to keep the political controls firmly in their own hands. While drafting the Constitution, Seiyès had hoped, by inducing Bonaparte to accept a nominal headship of the state, to confine him to the appointment of ministers and generals, and to the supervision of their work. This idea was nothing new, but this time, the man selected for the job was of a different temperament from anyone before, and far from retaining control over the situation, the Brumairians were soon to find that their would-be auxiliary was fully determined to impose his own pattern on events. Markham writes that Brumaire comprises of two distinct coup d’etet. The first was the victory of the party of the Brumarians over the Jacobins on 18 and 19 Brumaire. The second was the victory of Napoleon over Seiyes and the Brumarians. The second was the unforeseen change, which produced a form of government radically different from the Directory.

Any person who would come to power at this point of time in France would have to tread a middle path in order to survive. One could not rule like a monarch of the Old regime, in the new revolutionary circumstances, or he would fall like Loius XVI. At the same time a completely radical revolutionary like Robespierre would also not survive at a time when French society was in a state of flux and the Old Order had survived. Napoleon successfully balanced the two antagonizing neither left nor right, or at least not giving them the power to show dissent, and thus was able to set up a stable government based on centralized power.

When considering the internal history of France, one sees that the coup d’etat of Brumaire opened the way for the restoration of personal power. However, the essential unity between the Napoleonic and Revolutionary periods cannot be ignored. It was to the Revolution that Napoleon owed his destiny. He was always seen as the son of the Revolution, and it was as such that he made his mark upon European civilization.

The victors in the coup d’etat faced a nation in economic, political, religious, and moral disarray. Peasants worried lest some returning Bourbon should revoke their title deeds. Financers hesitated to invest in the securities of a government that had been so often overturned. The map of Europe had already undergone noticeable change, and the expansion of French territory to the ‘natural frontiers’ had clearly upset European equilibrium. A social conflict existed between the privileged classes and the bourgeoisie. A political conflict existed also because royal despotism, like privilege, had been condemned, and kings, having taken the aristocracy under their protection, ventured the risk of perishing with it. Finally, there was also a religious conflict due to a Church divided. Public spirit, which in 1789 had risen to rare heights of patriotism and courage, was dying in a people weary of revolution and war, skeptical of every leader, and cynical of its own hopes. The situation called not for politics, but for statesmanship, and some sort of a dictatorship.

One of the most important institutions which Napoleon took over from the Directory, and developed, was the Secretariat of State. Napoleon turned this into the Ministry of State which became a central registry, enabling Napoleon to supervise the separate ministries and departments without allowing them any collective responsibility. Napoleon valued experts and was conscious of his own limitations and of his need for a body of specialists, who could provide him with the advice he needed in all fields of government. The Council of State was also to draw up laws and administrative regulations and expound them to the legislative bodies. The Council included ex-members of the Constituent Assembly, moderates, royalists and Jacobins among others. The Council of State was one of Napoleon’s principal instruments in centralization of power.

The creation of a centralized bureaucratic state system had been the desire of all Bourbon monarchs too. However, this had never been possible due to the existence of numerous localized institutions, which had reduced the effective powers of the monarch. This however changed with the revolution. The utopian classical enlightened idealism behind the Revolution prompted a destruction of all that represented the ancien regime, creating a clean slate on which to begin the construction of the perfect institutions based on universal rationality. Paradoxically, the very Revolution, which spoke about liberty created the perfect circumstances to create an authoritarian government.

In local administration, the Consulate reversed the practice of the Revolution, and returned to the centralization of the Bourbon monarchy. In the Bourbon system there were thirty six provincial units known as generalites or provinces, each under an Intendent. These were very powerful officials but only within their local sphere. By the law passed in 1790, the old provinces of France were replaced by new administrative areas called the Departments. This had deprived the Central government of any effective control over the elected local authorities. By a new law now passed in 1800, the elective principle was done away with. The departments, cantons and communes were retained and between the communes and the departements a new intermediary administrative unit called the arrondissement was created. This was a revived district but of a larger area. Prefects appointed by the First Consul, were to be in sole charge of the Departments. The prefects exercised in their own sphere ample executive authority. The powers of these provincial units were severely curtailed. The idea behind such a system was at one level to increase centralization of power, while at the same time keeping local level officials busy enough so as not to interfere in political affairs.

This system of provincial administration has continued till the present day with only minor modifications. In fact after 1800, the first change in it only came about in 1884. It was much later that popular participation at this level of governance was introduced. To say that such a centralized and authoritarian system was in violation of the spirit of the revolution, a return to the ideals of the ancien regime is a simplistic correlation between revolutionary ideals and the degree of central control. While it may be argued that Napoleon compromised on the libertarian aspects of revolutionary philosophy, it can also be said that this kind of a system was a fulfillment of egalitarian principles, in fact a system made possible by the egalitarian strand of the revolution. Once again the idealistic connection that is drawn between liberty, equality and fraternity as the mutually compatible pillars of revolutionary philosophy needs to be questioned. All three need not have been completely in-sync and may even have pointed in opposing directions. Hence, the very question of the legacy of the revolution can be derived from three or more variable and possibly incompatible values.

The revolutionary period in France had been bedeviled by weak and haphazard financial and banking policy. The new government confronted the problem of an almost empty treasury and consequently, it was forced to appeal to bankers for loans. Credit, however would take too long to establish and it was not the moment for another war of loot. The need for more prosaic measures was felt. Administrative reforms were introduced in the realm of finances, and it was in this area that centralization scored its first success.

Napoleon’s first act was to deprive local officials of the power to assess and in part collect direct taxes, reserving this responsibility for agents of the central government. Bonaparte appointed two sets of officials, one for assessment and the other for collection of taxes, in every department and commune of the country. At the head of the system was a general director for direct taxation and deputy directors for each departement. Below them were auditors (controleurs) and inspectors (inspecteurs) in charge of apportioning taxes among the taxpayers in each commune. There was also a treasurer, a paymaster, revenue agents and tax collectors in each departement. In the year X or 1801 a separate Ministry of the Public Treasury was also created. These reforms were the work of Gaudin, a financial bureaucrat of the ancien regime. 

Banking hadn’t developed in France as it had in the Netherlands or in England. Napoleon felt the necessity to set up a national bank in order to stabilize government finances. After the coup de’etat of Brumaire and Bonaparte’s promise of strong government, some amount of confidence of the bankers was restored and with their active cooperation the Bank of France was founded in February 1800. It was at first an independent corporation, and its constitution was drafted by a leading Paris banker. It assisted the government, in return for the handling of the tax-collectors’ deposits, government pensions and interest on government loans. It essentially acted as a middleman of government collecting and spending. Like many other Napoleonic institutions, the Bank of France has continued till the present day. In 1803, the bank was given the monopoly of the issue of bank-notes.

While internal financial reform was successful, the question of finances is closely linked with the great power ambitions of France, especially since the revolutionary crisis had been precipitated by a financial crunch due to these very ambitions, among other things. Finances in the country had definitely stabilized, but they were still not sufficient to support imperial conquest. Napoleon decided that at this point of time war itself would pay for war. In other words, plunder during the various campaigns would fund the immense costs of war. Spoils, indemnities and even quartering of French troops on foreign soil were part of this. Therefore, we see that success in war was still crucial to maintaining the financial balance in France. Napoleon also tried to raise money by increasing taxes.

Napoleon also wished to lay down the legislative basis on which the unified administrative machinery was to operate. The idea of an enlightened ruler discovering the perfect laws was central to the concept of an ideal ruler, and his Code of laws is a reflection of this. The idea of fraternite, the unity of the French nation, urgently required a codification of law. In 1789, there was nothing approaching a state of legal unity of the French nation. There were no less than 366 local Codes in force at this time. In the south, property rights were based on written Roman law, the Code of Justinian and in the north, on Teutonic customary law. This situation was further complicated by feudal custom, Canon Law and royal ordinance. The Revolution had brought a drastic upheaval in the property-system of France. It had swept away feudal privilege, and had redistributed a vast amount of land by the nationalization and sale of the lands of the Church and the émigré nobility. In the new situation there could be no confidence or stability in the revolutionary land settlement until the new situation was defined.

The new Civil Code was promulgated as a law on March 21, 1804, under the title Civil Code of the French People, and later renamed as the Code Napoleon in 1807. It essentially defined the relationship between persons and property. The Code of 1804 struck a balance between the two – the traditional Roman law and the Teutonic Customary law. It preserved legal egalitarian principles of 1789, tempered by a new and sharper insistence on the rights of property and on the authority of parent and husband. Napoleon had taken personal interest in the promulgation of family law where he was intent upon strengthening the authority of the father and the husband in the home. The family was conceived of as an important social entity which disciplined the behaviour of individuals. These clauses of the code dealing with marriage, paternity, divorce and adoption are among those strongly influenced by Roman law. While rejecting the democratic principles of 1793, the Code adopted in their entirety the new property-rights and rights of citizenship bequeathed by the revolutionaries of 1789. The destruction of feudalism and feudal privileges was endorsed, as were liberty of conscience and employment.

George Lefebvre sees that like most of Napoleon’s achievements, the Code was also dual in character. On the one hand it confirmed the disappearance of the feudal aristocracy and adopted the social principle of 1789: the liberty of the individual, equality before the law, secularization of the state, freedom of conscience, and freedom to choose one’s profession. However on the other hand, the Code also confirmed the reaction against the democratic accomplishments of the Republic. Conceived in the interests of the bourgeoisie, it was concerned primarily with consecrating and sanctifying the rights of property, which it regarded as a natural right. The Code in some ways also reflected the development of public opinion between 1799 and 1802, which accepted the main results of the Revolution, but reacted against some of its extremer manifestations.

The Civil Code was a compact document, which contained 2,281 articles. It was written in simple and lucid French, and for these reasons it became immensely popular almost as the bible of the new society. In spite of what can be termed as regressive elements, the Civil Code of Napoleon has been widely copied all over the world. The Code is not only reflective of a changing French society, but also Napoleon’s essentially conservative tendencies arising possibly from his Corsican background.

Religion in the France if 1800 was in a state of flux. In August 1789, lands of the Church had been nationalized and Church lost its revenue from tithes and payment for services. In February 1790, all religious Orders were also dissolved. The Civil Constitution of the Clergy in 1791 had provoked a religious schism. A minority of the bishops and a majority of the clergy accepted the Constitution; the remainder became non-jurors and émigrés, and were suspected of counter-revolutionary activities. All bishops and clergy were required to take an oath of fidelity to the nation, the law, and the king and of support to the Civil Constitution. The Civil Constitution had been condemned by the Pope as un-canonical, because it subjected the bishops and the clergy to popular election. The Convention had provoked Civil War in the Bnrittany and La Vendee. At least the superficial character of Catholicism in France had changed by 1799.

After its various tribulations, the Church had finally become disestablished by a law of September 1795. It is interesting that religious persecution during the Revolution had not merely failed to destroy the hold of Roman Catholicism on the people; but had in fact strengthened religious feeling and played a part in promoting a religious revival. During this period a variety of cults had sprung up, and by the time of brumaire various religious practices were observed, by various groups such as Catholics, Protestants, Decadists and Theophilanthropists. This had produced what the radical historian Aulard has called ‘a rich and varied flowering of religious life’. He wrote that cults ‘new and rational, old and mystical’ existed side by side, ‘without coming to blows or civil war’, and ‘without harbouring any serious grievances against the state’ by 1799. The Revolution had clearly failed in its religious policy.

The Concordat with the Papacy (1801) was conspicuously the personal policy of Napoleon, a move which was probably one of the most significant of his career. Napoleon was desirous of restoring stability to the Church and knew that it was imperative to come to a religious settlement. Bonaparte’s approach to the Vatican was eased by the Peace of Amiens in 1802 and the election of Pius VII as Pope, on March 14th, 1800. The Concordat was finally passed in April, 1802 by the Corps legislative. Firstly, the Concordat recognized the Roman Catholic religion as ‘the religion of the great majority of the citizens’ (not as the Pope hoped, as the ‘established’ or ‘dominant’ religion). The Church withdrew its claims to confiscated ecclesiastical property. The schism between the constitutional and non-juror clergy was to be ended by the resignation of all existing bishops, including the émigré bishops and the appointment of a new episcopate, which would contain a proportion of bishops from the Constitutional Church. All ‘constitutional’ bishops were to resign their sees; all orthodox bishops were restored, and the Churches were officially opened to orthodox worship. The control of the government was increased and the payment of clerical salaries by the state was accepted. The right of the First Consul to nominate, and of the Pope to institute, bishops was recognized. The bishop’s control of the diocese was also limited in various ways.

Having secured the agreement, Napoleon proceeded to distort it in his own interest by issuing Organic Articles. By these supplementary Organic Articles Napoleon tried to turn the Concordat into the instrument of a new and stronger Gallicanism. Through the 77 Organic Articles the Church was subordinated to the State in every practicable way. For instance, no papal bull was allowed to be published without the permission of the government and bishops were placed under close control of the prefects. The Vatican to protested against the Organic Articles, but was powerless to so anything. Cobban points out that while the Concordat seemed to be a victory for Napoleon, in spite of this, he failed to obtain any permanent religious sanction for his rule. On the contrary, the Concordat did much to discredit Gallicanism and strengthen the ultramontane tendencies in the French Church. Durant and Durant, however believe that the 121 Organic Articles or ‘Articles Organiques’ were a part of Bonaparte’s attempt to appease his more skeptic critics, to protect the preeminence of the state over the Church in France.

The reason behind the Concordat was not simply to return to the Old Catholic order. This act was motivated by a number of tactical and strategic factors as well. Napoleon was aware of the importance of religion. He maintained that, “The people need a religion; this religion must be in the hands of the government.” Napoleon knew that the peasants were still obstinately attached to their churches and their priests. A religious revival was challenging the atheism of the Enlightenment. Napoleon hoped too that through a religious settlement with the Vatican he could check the Civil War smoldering in the Vendee and Brittany. Napoleon also knew that émigré bishops were still very influential among the French clergy and to destroy their influence the Pope’s authority was required. With the Concordat, Napoleon was disarming the royalists by denying them the support of the clergy. Also, in newly acquired areas like Belgium and the Rhineland, the support of the local clergy was required. Another factor was that with the large-scale transfer of Church lands in the Revolution, a Concordat would also assure the new owners of Church land that it would not be reclaimed by the Church. Hence, pragmatism became the motivating factor behind this policy. One might argue that the Church settlement was a violation of Revolutionary ideals, but we need to remember that while the Church had been physically destroyed, its influence in the minds of the people was immense. Also, protecting the newly distributed Church lands was definitely not a violation of the ideal of equality.

Napoleon instituted the Legion of Honour in May 1802, a personal act which was opposed by most of his advisors in the Council of State, and passed only by narrow majorities in the Tribunate and Legislature. The Orders and decorations of the monarchy had been abolished by the Convention, as relics of privilege and contrary to equality. As First Consul, Napoleon granted ‘swords of honour’ to members of the army. In 1802 he brought forward a comprehensive project for a ‘Legion of Honour’. There were to be sixteen ‘cohorts’ and the different ranks – grand officer, commander, and chevalier – were to be granted varying scales of life-pension. The members could be civil or military. Napoleon disliked the idea of a privileged body which was independent of himself, and was determined that the grant of any privilege or distinction should be under his control. George Rude however believes that with this measure one of Napoleon’s intention was to create a new order of merit open to all.

By a senatus-consultum on April 26 1802, amnesty was granted to émigrés provided they returned to France before September 23, 1802, and agreed to swear fidelity to the Constitution. The return of the émigrés made a deep impression and it is notable that Napoleon received no compliments at all on this measure of his. While they did act with caution now, they still behaved like masters in their villages. Already a number of émigrés had become a part of the Napoleonic regime.

It is not possible to draw any simple causative correlation between the French Revolution, the Napoleonic regime and the rise of a new capitalist class, even as Napoleon sanctioned its social ascendancy, Napoleon distrusted the middle class, and spoke harshly of wealth acquired by such means. He didn’t attack all forms of wealth, but was against masses of liquid capital, which were precisely the origin of bourgeoisie fortunes. This wealth was producing individuals, who determined to preserve their own independence, a consequence of being indebted to no one, tended to shatter the social structures, which Napoleon strove to establish. Napoleon was contemplating a system, where his authority would be based on the support of a landed aristocracy.

In continuance with Napoleon’s policies that tended to point towards the Old Order, a regular hierarchy of titles was reestablished in 1808, comprising of Prince, Duke, Count, Baron, and Knight. Their titles were to be hereditary, if they were supported by an income adequate to the rank, and the endowment attached to the title were to be inalienable. Napoleon viewed the creation of an imperial nobility as an act of policy, intended to efface the prestige of the old noblesse, and promote a fusion of the old and the new aristocracies. But the policy eventually defeated its own purpose. The more he lavished titles and grants, the less they were inclined to risk death or confiscation in further adventures, and eventually his former royalists proved more faithful to him than his marshals or ex-revolutionaries.

According to Napoleon, social hierarchy was to be founded on wealth, especially since he had seized power with the sanction of the bourgeoisie. By making free education available to all, he had intended to introduce men of talent into leading government positions. But wealth naturally tends to reserve this privilege for itself. Whenever Napoleon proclaimed himself the representative of the Revolution, he always referred to the abolition of privileges of which the rise of the properties bourgeoisie was a direct consequence.

Napoleon paid much attention to the question of education, because of his need for trained officers and civil servants; moreover the formation of opinion was an important ‘source of power’. The Revolution had produced grandiose schemes on paper for free state education, but by 1800 primary education had sunk to a level lower than in 1789. The Revolutionary assemblies had set up ecoles centrales or County secondary schools. Napoleon did not like these county schools. He believed that the education they provided was too liberal and detached from political and civic utilities. The decree of May 1, 1802, left the elementary schools (ecoles populaires) to the care of the municipalities, just as under the Old Regime. Like Voltaire Napoleon believed that to educate the poor was politically and socially inconvenient. Secondary institutions of learning would of course educate future leaders. These were patterned on the Prytanee, which was one of the few old schools preserved by the Revolution. But Napoleon’s distinctive creation was the lycee a selective secondary school for the training of leader and administrators, with a militarily strict and secular curriculum and with its direction reserved to the state alone. There were to be forty-five lycees in which 2400 places would be reserved for sons of officers and civil servants. In 1808, a constitution for a ‘University of France’ was produced. This was like a Ministry of Education, which, under its Grand Master, was to control and license all teachers.

In the context of education, Napoleon’s views on women are particularly illuminating. In a Note he dictated in 1807, he said, “What we ask of education is not that girls should think, but that they should believe”. He had no use for the education of women; he dismissed it summarily by saying, “I do not think we need bother about the education of young girls; they cannot be better brought up than by their mothers. Marriage is their only destination.” 

Napoleon had created a strong institutional basis of state, a system not just dependent on the personality of the emperor, yet inextricable linked with the figure of Napoleon. This was a state system, which was followed by so many nations in later, but, could only have been instituted by a personality with as much talent and foresight as Napoleon.

Napoleon lashed out at individualistic society which had been born out of the Revolution. He characterized it as many ‘grains of sand’ and he stressed the necessity ‘to erect some pillars of granite upon the soil of France’, so as to ‘give the French people a sense of civic direction’. He wanted to create clusters of interests attached to the regime, who in return for advantages and honours were expected to secure the loyalty of the populace by virtue of the influence they had upon them. This was tantamount to the revival of the kind of corporate bodies and institutions prevalent under the Old Regime, with the safeguard that they would not be able to degenerate into oligarchies. The creation of these social bodies, would however be left to him and to him alone.

Napoleon was a despot, often enlightened, often hastily absolute. Some of his tyranny could be excused as control by the government in the time of war. Napoleon preferred monarchy to all other forms of government even to defending hereditary kingship. He said, “There are more chances of securing a good sovereign by heredity than by election.” People are happier under such a stable government. He recalled that Robespierre had recommended a dictatorship as needed to restore order and stability to a France verging on the dissolution of the state. He did not feel that he had destroyed democracy. He felt that he had destroyed the liberty of the masses, but that liberty was destroying France with mob violence and moral license, and only the restoration and concentration of authority could restore the strength of France as a civilized and independent state. Like the reforming despots of the eighteenth century, Napoleon pursued, behind a façade of humanitarian pretexts, the basic program of administrative consolidation.

From the standpoint of national policy Napoleon had reached his pinnacle with the Treaty of Amiens. He gave the French people their much desired peace, and in the eyes of the people he has preserved the social accomplishments of the revolution. They still hadn’t contemplated that he had started to abuse his power. Lefebvre believed that Napoleon by 1802 had in his heart broken with the Republic and with the notion of egalite. The reforms of the Consulate, considered as a whole, look both ways. From one aspect, they are a continuation of the Revolution; from another, a surreptitious return to the institutions of the Bourbon monarchy. They confirmed and secured the national gains of in equality, legal and administrative unity, the career open to talents etc. In this sense Napoleon’s claim to represent the Revolution is justified.

“Napoleon was a man of strange paradoxes and contradictions: a modern romantic hero cast in the mould of a Caesar or an Alexander; a man of action and rapid decision, yet a poet and dreamer of world conquest; a supreme political realist, yet a vulgar adventurer who gambled for high stakes; an organizer and statesman of genius, and yet as much concerned to feather the nests of the Bonaparte clan as to promote the fortunes of greater glory in France; a product of the Enlightenment who distrusted ideas and despised intellectuals and ‘systems’; a lucid intellect with a vast thirst and capacity for knowledge, yet strangely impervious to forces that he had himself helped to unleash” (George Rude). An understanding of the contradictions in Napoleon is helpful in assessing the dual characteristics of Napoleonic policies. Napoleon Bonaparte was a man caught in between an ingrained enlightened ethos and a romantic temperament. Yet, what surpassed all these tendencies in him was his realism and unfailing pragmatism. Napoleon himself, even in his wildest moments of renunciation, always acknowledged his debt to the Revolution; and certainly no career illustrates better than his own, the justice of the revolutionaries’ claim to have opened careers to talent.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

  • Alfred Cobban A History of Modern France – Volume II
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  • FMH Markham Napoleon
  • FMH Markham Napoleon and the Awakening of Europe
  • JM Thompson Napoleon Bonaparte: His Rise and fall
  • George Rude Revolutionary Europe: 1783 – 1815
  • Will and Ariel Durant The Age of Napoleon
  • Pieter Geyl Napoleon: For and Against
  • Geoffrey Bruun Europe and the French Imperium, 1799 – 1814
  • David Thomson Europe since Napoleon