The Rise and Fall of Napoleon Bonaparte | "The Enlightenment on Horseback"
Thank you for tuning in to this special double-length episode of 15-Minute History. Rather than break up the story of one of the world's most interesting and controversial figures into two episodes, we decided that we'd do an extended podcast and longer discussion of the life and career of Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of the French. This will be our last episode of 2020, and we'll be taking the month of January off to prepare new and exciting podcasts for you next year. Until then, from everyone here at 15-Minute History, we want to wish you a very Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!
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“At the turn of the 18th century, the greatest nations in Europe, separated by only 21 miles of water, offered two distinct ideologies that would shape the new century. In England, there was democratic, constitutional monarchy; in France, the cataclysm of revolution had dragged the absolute King from the throne and replaced him with the Mob. Out of the maelstrom emerged a military leader, Napoleon Bonaparte, commander of the revolutionary army, who went on to conquer Italy and Egypt before returning to Paris to proclaim himself Emperor. As Napoleon gained power in France, the world stood on the brink of total war. For out of the furnace of the Napoleonic Wars, the modern world was born.”
— Robert Harvey, The War of Wars, 2006 —
Carlo Maria di Buonaparte was a lawyer and revolutionary leader on the island of Corsica. When his homeland fell to French invaders in 1768, he became the Corsican emissary to the court of Louis XVI. He was also an ambitious businessman whose risky ventures often failed to pay off, but he hoped that his name might be respected in Corsica as one of honesty and good sense. Carlo and his wife Letizia had fourteen children together, eight of whom survived to adulthood.
Napoleone di Buonaparte was born in August 1769. As he was second-born after his brother Giuseppe, he could not expect to inherit his father's property or business. His mother, Letizia, often had to restrain his rambunctious spirit when he was young, and she taught him that to master the world, he must first master himself. Napoleone moved to France at the age of nine to attend school and then enlisted in the French royal army at fifteen. He showed an aptitude for mathematics, especially geometry, at the École Militaire in Paris and earned a commission as an artillery officer in September 1785. His regiment fought at Toulon in 1793, where he won his first battle by using his field guns to drive off the British fleet, and two years later, he was in Paris for the revolt against the Jacobins. Napoleone's "whiff of grapeshot" saved the government from the rioters, and the new Directory recognized his leadership skills. They gave him command of a field army in 1796 when he was only 27 years old. He departed for Italy two days after marrying his wife Joséphine de Beauharnais and legally changing his name to "Napoleon Bonaparte," a more French version of his birth name.
Napoleon's Rise
Victories in Italy and Egypt brought General Bonaparte great fame among the people and fueled his ambitions for greater leadership. When Abbé Sieyès approached him about overthrowing the Directory, he agreed to work alongside the cleric and another director, Joseph Fouché. Together, these men brought the Directory down and established the Consulate. Napoleon would be first consul and would rule with broad powers to win the war against Britain and Austria. He left the other consuls to manage affairs at home and set out with the army in late 1799 for a second campaign in Italy. Once again, General Bonaparte used his troops masterfully, pushing the Austrians back and defeating them at Marengo in June 1800. Other armies fighting in southern Germany carried the French flag across central Europe, and by 1802 the British were again fighting alone. Affairs in the wider world forced them to offer peace to France, and the Treaty of Amiens put an end to the French Revolutionary Wars.
The consuls of France regularly held national plebiscites on important issues. Each time the people went to vote, local officials told them of their first consul's latest triumph. Bonaparte's popularity soared as the 19th century dawned. Shortly before the Treaty of Amiens was signed, the consuls tried to hold a vote on restricting Consul Bonaparte's powers now that peace was close at hand. Obviously, this did not please the young ruler, and he instead held his own referendum on whether he should be made "first consul for life." Over 99% of the French people voted "oui" in the poll—though many historians believe that Minister of Police Joseph Fouché played a role in this. And yet, like Alexander the Great or Caesar Augustus before him, even this was not enough for this ambitious ruler. In May 1804, France's last referendum decreed that he should be named "Emperor of the French," and Napoleon I placed the imperial crown on his own head during the coronation ceremony in Notre Dame cathedral on December 2, 1804. He then crowned his wife Joséphine as empress.
Napoleon's Reign
The new emperor based his rule on the Roman imperial system rather than the feudal orders of France's Ancien Régime. Using Caesar Augustus as his role model, Napoleon worked to make his empire one that would last for centuries and could be governed easily after his death. He reorganized the French provinces into département and replaced local officials with his own men. His government restored the pope's role as head of the Church in France and opened the parish churches and cathedrals, though it did not return lands taken from them. Napoleon's most significant reform in France was the law code that bears his name. Drawing upon Roman laws like the Corpus Juris Civilis, the Napoleonic Code brought French law into line with the new revolutionary and imperial state. Under the old Bourbon monarchy, laws varied by province and according to local customs. The code replaced this hodgepodge system with national laws passed by the restored Assembly. It also abolished feudalism permanently in all French lands, ended aristocratic privileges, and forced the courts in France to apply the law equally to all imperial subjects.
As a military man, Napoleon also raised new armies and expanded his empire. Unlike the Directory, he saw to it that veterans were cared for and established the Légion d'honneur ("Legion of Honor") to reward the men who fought for him. Police Minister Fouché used propaganda to sway public opinion, muted opponents by arresting or exiling them, and rooted out anyone who might assassinate the emperor—there were at least twenty attempts during his life. The emperor was very aware of his precarious situation. The people of France had already executed one monarch and might try again if they were provoked. Thus, Napoleon did his best to rule in an "enlightened" manner, to keep his people happy and prosperous, and to win wars for the glory of France.
In the wake of the revolutionary wars, pro-French puppets ruled much of central Europe and northern Italy. Napoleon slowly began to exert more control in these states, especially on economic matters. This concerned the trade-minded British government, and when the French overthrew the Swiss government in late 1802, they decided to act. Great Britain withdrew from the Treaty of Amiens and declared war on France, beginning the Napoleonic Wars. Again, the British chose to fight Napoleon at sea and pay allies on the continent to attack him on land. The wealth of British colonies flowed into London and provided funds for this strategy of indirect warfare. Napoleon knew he needed to defeat his British archenemies, but first, he would settle accounts with his rivals closer to home.
The Napoleonic Wars are far more involved than we have time for even in an extended episode, therefore the highlights will have to suffice for today. The most significant part of this vast conflict was the War of the Third Coalition (1803-1806). Napoleon faced the combined might of Great Britain, Austria and its Holy Roman Empire, the Kingdom of Sicily, and the far-off Kingdom of Sweden and the Russian Empire. The French armies triumphed in Germany by early 1805 and then marched into Austria. The Emperor won the greatest victory of his career in December at the Battle of Austerlitz, where his soldiers savaged an Austro-Russian army and captured the city of Vienna. With Austria beaten, the other coalition states made peace with France. Napoleon was now the master of central Europe. He dissolved the Holy Roman Empire by forcing the Austrian Emperor to abdicate the imperial throne and then organized the small states of Germany into the French-dominated Confederation of the Rhine. For the first time in history, nearly all ethnic Germans were part of a single nation—a powerful image in their hearts.
However, 1805 was not an entirely good year for the emperor. Since the early months of the revolutionary wars, the British Admiral Horatio Nelson had plagued the French navy by raiding its ports or sinking its ships and then disappearing before he could be caught. Napoleon knew that to invade Great Britain, he needed to defeat Nelson at sea. Only then could his flat-bottomed invasion barges assembling at Boulogne on the English Channel coast cross the narrow waters and land in southern England. Together with their Spanish allies, the French navy drew Nelson into battle off Cape Trafalgar in October 1805 and hoped to put an end to the Royal Navy. Instead, The Battle of Trafalgar saw Great Britain triumph over their enemies. Nelson won a magnificent victory, though he was killed by a French sailor's bullet in the battle's final hours. Though Napoleon continued to plot and scheme against the British, his chance of crossing the Channel and invading the island ended when the French ships surrendered at Trafalgar.
Napoleon organized an economic bloc called the Continental System shortly after his victory at Austerlitz. As he now directly ruled every nation from Spain to eastern Germany, he planned to starve the British into submission by cutting off its trade with the outside world. In November 1806, the still-free nations of Denmark-Norway, Sweden, Austria, Prussia, and Russia all agreed to join the Continental System. Only the peripheral European countries of Portugal, Sardinia, and Sicily continued to trade with the British, who also had open markets in the Ottoman Empire, the United States, and their own colonies in Africa and Asia. However, British wealth overwhelmed the fear of Napoleon's armies, and in 1807 Prime Minister Pitt broke the Continental System by landing troops in Portugal and convincing Russia and Prussia to declare war on France once again.
The next five years were a time of constant warfare dominated by three themes. First, what Napoleon called the "Spanish ulcer" grew to the south as the British and Portuguese fought on land against the armies of the emperor's brother Joseph, who was King of Spain. The French sent men, supplies, and money into the Iberian Peninsula that they badly needed for the war in Germany. The chief "infecting agent" in the Peninsular War was Britain's General Arthur Wellesley, a man whose fighting spirit would not be broken even in the most desperate hour. Napoleon's armies destroyed roads, supply depots, and even whole villages and towns. Still, Wellesley reassured his Portuguese allies that their suffering would not be in vain, that Britain's support would not waver, and that the end would come for Napoleon. The second key factor in the Napoleonic War's midpoint was the emperor's growing arrogance. When the legendary armies of Prussia, which had once held off all of Europe under Friedrich the Great, fell before him at the Battle of Jena in 1807, Napoleon became convinced that he could not be beaten. A year later, he triumphed over the Russians at Tilsit and forced Czar Alexander I to the negotiating table. By 1810, Britain stood alone once again except for brave Portugal, and Napoleon believed that he was solely responsible for France's success. The last, and perhaps most important, result of five years' constant warfare was the beginning of French resistance to their emperor. He had come to power promising an end to the abuses of hereditary monarchs and the terror of revolutionary democrats. But as more Frenchmen died on battlefields across Europe and parents saw their sons conscripted and sent off to fight for the emperor's glory, they began to complain. The brother of the murdered Louis XVI, Prince Louis Stanislas Xavier, was in exile in London, and many citizens quietly wondered if a restored Bourbon monarch might be a better ruler for France. Of course, Fouché's police arrested anyone who spoke openly against the emperor.
Unfortunately for Napoleon, his police could not restrain his own actions, and in 1809, he took a step that worsened his standing with the French people and those in many conquered lands as well. For nearly a thousand years, France had protected the pope's earthly kingdom from all invaders. Napoleon discarded this agreement, occupied the Papal States, and exiled Pope Pius VII to Sicily. A year later, the pope became a prisoner of France and was incarcerated at Fontainebleau Palace outside of Paris. Napoleon hoped this would silence Catholic opposition to his rule, but it had the opposite effect. Across Europe, the pope's plight touched the hearts and souls of all Roman Catholics and only increased opposition to the emperor's regime.
As Napoleon's empire swelled to its greatest extent in 1810, the seeds of his downfall began to germinate. The war in Spain continued to swallow up entire French armies. Under the direction of King Friedrich Wilhelm III and General Gebhard von Blücher, the defeated Prussians were quietly planning a renewed campaign against their French overlords. The Russians, who had become close allies of the French after the Treaty of Tilsit in 1807, now grew suspicious of the emperor as he drew closer to their Austrian rivals. In Italy, Catholics were now turning against the kings and princes whom Napoleon had installed to rule over them. Even the people of France who were once the emperor's most fervent supporters grew tired of sacrificing their wealth, their liberties, and their sons for his dreams of military glory. French mothers cried out against the conscription orders that dragged their children off to war, and soldiers who longed for home deserted in droves.
Dissent even reached the highest levels of the imperial government, especially when Napoleon divorced his beloved wife, Empress Joséphine, because she was too old to have children. He then married the Austrian Princess Marie-Louise, who gave birth to Napoleon II in 1811. The emperor now had a male heir, and his dynasty was secure so he no longer needed his brothers who sat on other thrones in Europe. The Bonaparte family began to undermine his rule. Joseph refused to draft more of his Spanish subjects for the war against Wellesley and the British; his sister, Queen Caroline of Naples, conspired against her own husband and the emperor by supporting Catholic rebels in southern Italy; and his youngest brother Jérôme spent more money on his palaces and mistresses than in preparing the defenses of his kingdom in western Germany. Another high-ranking official outside the imperial family, Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand, committed treason by betraying secret battle plans to the Russians and the Austrians.
Napoleon's agents searched all levels of the French government for the source of these disloyal tendencies. In early 1811, Police Minister Fouché discovered that evidence pointed to Moscow and the person of Czar Alexander I, one of Napoleon's closest allies in Europe. He presented a report to his master that the czar had been secretly aiding various rebel groups across the continent with help from France's old British adversaries. Alexander confirmed these suspicions in April 1812 when he signed a secret peace agreement with King George III of Great Britain and ended nearly five years of hostilities between the two nations. Napoleon was outraged that a man who had pledged eternal loyalty to him could be capable of such a betrayal and began to plan his revenge. He hoped that a war with Russia would finally end all opposition to his rule, but in fact, it would lead to disaster.
Napoleon's Fall
On June 24, 1812, more than half-a-million soldiers of the French Empire's Grande Armée crossed the Niemen River. The emperor marched at its head and planned to drive toward Moscow, the most important city in the vast Russian empire. When Czar Alexander learned of the attack, he proclaimed a "patriotic war" and ordered his millions of subjects who lived in the invaders' path to carry off or destroy everything of value as they retreated east. Rather than fighting the French at the border or along the road to Moscow, Russian soldiers also fell back and aided local populations in destroying anything their enemies could use. This "scorched-earth" defense strategy forced Napoleon's soldiers, who had always lived off the land by foraging for food, to instead rely on ever-lengthening supply lines that ran through hostile German territory back towards metropolitan France. The mighty armies of Napoleon, who had mastered all of Europe, could not long survive off scavenged scraps in the endless space of Russia.
For two months, Napoleon's troops raced through the Russian countryside and swept all local garrisons before them. On September 7th, the czar's army attacked the French for the first time near the town of Borodino. This brutal engagement took the lives of nearly seventy thousand men and was the single bloodiest day in military history until the Great War of 1914. Napoleon triumphed at Borodino and captured Moscow a week later. However, the surviving defenders had burned the city's granaries and storehouses, and the fire was spreading quickly. The French tried to put out the inferno but could not, and more than four-fifths of Moscow was destroyed. Napoleon was now in serious trouble. Winter was coming, Alexander refused to surrender to him, and he could not shelter or feed his armies amidst the smoking ruins of the once-great city. The emperor regrouped in the towns surrounding the burned-out hulk of Moscow for the next five weeks, and then the Grande Armée marched southeast in search of a decisive battle against the Russians. Alexander's armies were waiting for the French to move away from Moscow, and Napoleon now fell directly into their trap.
On October 24, 1812, the French attacked a Russian army under General Mikhail Kutuzov at the village of Maloyaroslavets. The battle was small compared to Borodino or what would come later, and Napoleon's men won the day. However, Kutuzov then moved to cut Napoleon's supply lines back toward France, and the emperor made the fateful decision to retreat from Russia. He knew that the falling temperatures and Russian raids would slowly strangle his forces, and he had to move quickly. From late October until early December, the French fought off one Russian attack after another. Kutuzov started small, sending perhaps five thousand men to destroy a supply column or cut down trees across a road, but as the Grande Armée got closer to its supply base at the Berezina River, he began to mount larger attacks. By mid-November, the French were losing ten- to twenty thousand men each day to the Russians. Even worse were the casualties killed by "General Winter," the bitter cold that grips Russia each year. French and allied soldiers could not build shelters in the frozen ground, and many who fell asleep in the snowdrifts never awoke. Estimates vary on the number lost to the weather in the French invasion of Russia, but perhaps one-third of the four hundred thousand soldiers of the Grande Armée who perished succumbed to the cold.
France's defeat in Russia was a catastrophe unmatched in history to that point. When the army reached the Berezina, only 27,000 soldiers were still fit for service. Napoleon returned to Paris to raise a new force to meet the advancing Russians and then marched back to Poland in the late winter of 1813. Alexander's empire was still recovering from the invasion but had the advantage of shorter supply lines and an enormous population that could replenish their armies. As word of the disaster in Russia spread, resistance to Napoleon's rule broke out across Europe. Prussia, Sweden, Austria, and several smaller German states joined Russia and Great Britain in the war against France. Meanwhile, General Wellesley's army in Spain finally broke France's hold on that country. Napoleon moved quickly, striking one enemy army in central Europe and then moving swiftly to counter another. But time was not on his side. With the British and Portuguese now marching toward the Pyrenees border, France would soon be surrounded.
Weather delayed the start of the 1813 campaign season, and both sides were already exhausted from battle. More than a quarter-million soldiers had been killed since the end of the Russian campaign a year earlier. Napoleon agreed to a temporary ceasefire in June that would last for two months. The coalition forces opposing the French used this truce to bring the Austrian into the war—which meant that Napoleon now fought his father-in-law, Franz II. The emperor now faced more than a million enemy soldiers and a population at home on the verge of revolt. The French people had had enough of their emperor's wars. Former ministers in the government reached out to the exiled Bourbon Prince Louis and offered him the French throne. He agreed to take it, but only once the emperor was gone.
Napoleon moved first in August with attacks meant to force Prussia and Russia out of the war. If successful, he could turn south to defeat the Austrians before returning to France to destroy the British and Portuguese coming across the mountains into southern France. Both sides maneuvered in Germany for two months before meeting outside the city of Leipzig in the "Battle of the Nations" in mid-October 1813. Once again, the emperor commanded his army personally, and despite his tactical brilliance, his men were outnumbered and overwhelmed in three days of bitter fighting. Napoleon finally realized he could not overcome the superior coalition forces and began a steady retreat home during the late fall and winter. On March 21, 1814, French soldiers fought on their home soil for the first time in over a decade. A week later, the coalition armies drove Napoleon's exhausted men south from Paris, and Russian soldiers marched into the imperial capital with the czar at their head on March 30th.
Yet Napoleon still vowed to his generals that he would continue the fight. He could not comprehend how far and how fast he had fallen from the heights of power. The emperor issued orders for a million new conscripts—which was impossible given the circumstances. After a week's stubborn resistance to the facts, Napoleon abdicated his throne in favor of his three-year-old son, Napoleon II, and asked the coalition governments for surrender terms. He accepted exile on the island of Elba off the Italian coast, where he would retain his imperial title and receive a handsome pension from the restored Bourbon monarchy. However, he could not see his wife or their son, both of whom remained in Vienna with Emperor Franz. The coalition then restored the Bourbon monarchy and the new king, Louis XVIII, to his rightful throne in France. The nations of Europe signed the Treaty of Paris on April 14, 1814, and inaugurated the peace conference at Vienna a month later. This meeting of all the great heads of state and government intended to put the continent back together after two decades of revolution and war.
Napoleon's Return
From Elba, the emperor-in-exile watched events taking place in France with unease. The Congress of Vienna, planned to reduce France to its prewar borders and nullify his great military conquests. He also read letters from loyal veterans and members of the Legion of Honor complaining of their treatment by the restored Bourbon regime. Most importantly, Napoleon saw that major political differences were emerging at Vienna and might tear the coalition apart. This, he believed, was an opportunity for France to reassert herself if she had the right leader. The emperor slipped away from Elba on February 26, 1815, and landed in France three days later, where he received a hero's welcome. Soon, supporters flocked to Napoleon's side, among them several former marshals of France who had previously urged the coalition's leaders to execute the deposed emperor. These men begged Napoleon for forgiveness, which he granted, and as he traveled north toward Paris, his army swelled by the day.
On March 19, as Napoleon reached the capital's southern gate, King Louis XVIII and his family fled out of the northern gate for safety with the occupying army, commanded by Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington. When word reached Vienna that their nemesis had returned, the coalition's leaders declared war on France and vowed to continue the fight until they had destroyed Napoleon. They did not believe his public declaration that he was ready to govern as a constitutional monarch and respect neighboring countries' sovereignty. Both sides prepared for a last battle to decide the fate of Europe. The French government pressed a quarter-million men into service, while the Austrians, Russians, Prussians, and British collectively raised nearly two million fresh soldiers. What historians call the "Hundred Days," Napoleon Bonaparte's last stand before his many foes, had begun.
For three weeks, the emperor's troops maneuvered north from Paris in an effort to place itself between the two chief threats: a British army under the Duke of Wellington and a Prussian army under General Blücher. Napoleon finally managed to split the two coalition forces in mid-June and drove the Prussians off. After leaving a small force under one of his marshals to continue the pursuit, the emperor turned to face the hated British, who had fortified the small Belgian town of Waterloo.
Rain had soaked the battlefield the previous night, so at dawn on June 18, 1815, Napoleon ordered his men to wait for several hours until the ground had dried a bit, wanting it hard enough so that cannonballs would bounce into the British lines. The delay allowed Wellington to position his men around Waterloo and present the emperor with an imposing obstacle. The fighting began shortly before noon, and the French slowly pushed forward. At this point in his life, Napoleon was suffering from several health problems, and he grew fatigued as the day wore on. Michel Ney, a marshal of France who had previously denounced the emperor to the coalition, suggested that Napoleon rest in his tent and turn over command to him. Ney was an aggressive man and eager to take decisive actions, so when Napoleon agreed, he ordered a massive charge of French cavalry right at the British center. This was a serious mistake, as the British formed infantry squares and cut down the French riders and their horses by the thousands. When Napoleon returned to his command tent several hours later, he found the situation much changed. His cavalry was spent, and the British were still holding the line. The emperor commanded his artillery to fire on the enemy center, at one point coming so close to the Duke of Wellington that his adjutant was killed, and by the late afternoon, things were looking brighter. If he could drive the British off, he might be able to keep his throne.
But it was not to be. Unbeknownst to the emperor, Blücher's Prussian army had outmaneuvered their pursuers, and as the hours grew late, they appeared on Napoleon's right flank. The emperor sent his imperial guard, the best men in the army who had fought at his side since the campaigns in Italy and Egypt two decades earlier, to engage the Prussians. They did their best to save their master's cause, but it was not enough. Most died rather than surrender, and their fall sparked a general retreat. As Napoleon watched his men flee before the British and Prussians, he realized that it was all over. The defeated emperor returned to Paris the next day, and on June 22nd, he abdicated the throne for a second time. He then surrendered to coalition agents three weeks later and was taken to England.
Police Minister Joseph Fouché became head of a provisional government, and he ordered Foreign Minister Talleyrand to negotiate an end to the war. The coalition's representatives and Talleyrand signed the Second Treaty of Paris on November 20, 1815, and brought the Napoleonic Wars to an end. Peace in Europe was finally at hand. Louis XVIII returned to Paris later that month and received a joyous welcome from the mob which had once murdered his own brother. The coalition's leaders then returned to Vienna to continue their work to put an end to revolution and restore Europe to a measure of stability. Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of the French, was ultimately exiled to the island of St. Helena in the middle of the South Atlantic—where he died in May 1821.
Learning from History
The impact of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Era on Europe can never be fully measured. Twenty-five years of war and civil unrest transformed Europe from a land of feuding kings and princes into a continent dominated by centralized states. Constant warfare had weakened many nations, but none more so than France, whose dominant role in European affairs came to an end—for a time. Its chief rival, Great Britain, now rose to become the most powerful nation on earth.
The idea of a "nation at arms," first introduced by Maximilien Robespierre and then wielded by Napoleon Bonaparte, was the period's overriding military theme. Nations no longer waged war with small professional armies but instead would press their full resources into service during wartime. This was unheard-of in previous centuries, but advances in technology and medicine now made it possible. The rising populations in European countries, helped along by better sanitation in the cities, allowed rulers to draw upon vast numbers of subjects for military recruits. Additionally, the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution allowed states to equip large armies with weapons and supplies. Each of these factors led to a massive increase in the size of national armies. The precedent of conscription and vast armies came into play again when the continent of Europe plunged back into war a century later.
The most critical social and political effect of the Napoleonic Wars was the spread of French revolutionary ideals across Europe. Back in 1789, the National Assembly had adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and codified these principles as "liberty, equality, and brotherhood." Three years later, Robespierre added a fourth: "or death." French soldiers were steeped in these revolutionary traditions, and they intended to educate the conquered peoples of Europe in them. An emerging middle class in many European states embraced the ideas of democracy, due process, and equality before the law—even though France itself failed to live up to them. This made it difficult for the monarchs restored to their thrones by the Congress of Vienna to hold on to their absolute powers. The people had tasted a different life, and they wanted more liberty, more equality, and more brotherhood.
The Napoleonic Code only accelerated this process, as nearly every country conquered by the emperor adopted it as the basis of law and justice. Restored monarchs tried to reimpose feudalism and aristocratic or clerical privileges but met furious resistance from the population. To this day, the code remains the basis of legal precedent in Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, and Portugal. The Germans used it until the 1930s, and its fundamental principles are still in place in Austria, Switzerland, and even far-off Romania.
Another important ideology spread by the French armies as they marched across the continent was nationalism. When Napoleon unified the German states into the Confederation of the Rhine, created the Kingdom of Italy, and established the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, he gave the German, Italian, and Polish peoples a sense of national identity had never possessed before. Even after the Congress of Vienna dissolved these entities, nationalist sentiments remained in the hearts and minds of those who lived in these lands. They longed for truly unified and independent states that would encompass all Germans, all Italians, and all Poles. By the late 19th century, nationalist groups had sprung up across Europe and were demanding political change. Nationalism also weakened Spanish power in the New World and led to independence movements in its colonies supported by the United States and Great Britain. In the end, nationalism played a vital role in Europe's political and social affairs in the coming century.
Historians will probably always debate the question of whether Napoleon Bonaparte was a hero or a villain. Winston Churchill compared him to Hitler, whereas the 21st Century historian Andrew Roberts said he was, “The Enlightenment on Horseback”. More books have been written about the great emperor than any other figure in human history. Napoleon ended the violence of the revolution in France and spread its ideas of equality and national pride across Europe, which paved the way for the modern world, but he also plunged that continent into a cataclysm of war unequalled until the 20th century. He was a man of great vision and also of great repression. While not as barbaric as other leaders of the past, his life inspired controversy in France and across the globe. It is perhaps best to summarize his life by saying that Napoleon Bonaparte gave to future generations a more free and democratic world but also one made far more complicated by the ideas his armies spread.
