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NAPOLEON AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

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NAPOLEON AND THE FRENCH
REVOLUTION
NAPOLEON AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
"We have finished the romance of the Revolution, we must now begin its history, only seeking
for what is real and practicable in the application of its principles, and not what is speculative
and hypothetical."
After Brumaire (9-10 Nov. 1799) --the coup d'etat which first set Napoleon on the path to
becoming the supreme executive of a French empire-- Napoleon declared, "The Revolution is
made fast on the principles on which it began; the Revolution is finished." Since this famous
utterance came so soon after he gained power, it is clear that Napoleon was saying something
significant about what the role of his new-born regime would be to those which had preceded it.
Like the man himself, this quote and the one at the head of this page are both highly complex
and ambiguous. He is declaring that the new regime was both a break from the immediate past
and part of a continuity with that past. What was Napoleon's relationship to the Revolution? To
what extent was he its heir or its betrayer? Did he save the Revolution or liquidate it?
Napoleon clearly felt, like the Jacobins, that an energetic centralized state was essential to
consolidate the advances achieved by the Revolution and, at the same time, he wished to bring
about the stability many French longed for after the upheavals of the past decade. In his eyes
this meant the need for a strong executive. From 1799 until his death on the South Atlantic
island of St. Helena, Napoleon spoke of himself as the man who had completed the Revolution.
By this he meant that the basic goals of the Revolution enumerated above had been obtained
and that now it was time to consolidate and instituionalize those gains. France, after ten years
of revolution, had still lacked the proper foundation upon which to institutionalize the
revolutionary achievements until Napoleon provided it with his administrative framework.
"Bonaparte came, as he said, 'to close the Romance of the Revolution'," H.A.L. Fisher wrote, "
to heal the wounds, to correct the extravagances, to secure the conquests. It was his boast that
he did not belong to the race of the 'ideologues', that he saw facts through plain glass, and that
he came to substitute and age of work for and age of talk...he would create a methodical
government based upon popular consent, and concieved in the interests not of any particular
faction but of France as a whole." As Napoleon himself explained to the Council of State in
1802: "I govern not as a general but because the nation believes that I have the civilian
qualities necessary to govern. If I did not have this opinion, the government could not stand."

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Napoleon is generally credited with having consolidated the gains of the Revolution ("With the
exception of fathering the Civil Code, Napoleon perhaps gloried more in his reputation as
consolidator of the Revolution than in any other one title," Robert B. Holtman observed). In this
sense he can be credited with having 'saved' the Revolution by ending it. Had the Bourbons
come back to power in 1799 instead of Napoleon, they would at that time had less trouble
"turning back the clock" to the ancient regime than they had in 1814. As Francois Furet has put
it, "Revolutionary France was indeed under the spell of the new sovereign, who was its son and
had saved it from the danger of a restoration...France had finally found the republican monarchy
toward which it had been groping since 1789." The Code Napoleon, one of theEmperor's most
enduring achievements, embodied many of the principles of the Revolution and made them
permanent.
To Prince Eugene, his viceroy in Italy, Napoleon wrote, "I am seeking nothing less than a social
revolution." Feaudalism was suppressed and careers were open to all those with ability
regardless of birth ("Wherever I found talent and courage I rewarded it." Napoleon,1816)
Napoleon became the personification of the revolutionary aims of the bourgeoisie. He reformed
and modernized French institutions (historian Jacues Godechot has said that with Napoleon the
medieval era ended and modern history began). He brought much longed for order and stability
to France and forged a sense of unity. He attempted to unite under his wing both the
revolutionaries and the emigres --nobles, clergy and others who chose or were forced to live in
exile under the Revolution ("I became the arch of the alliance between the old and the new, the
natural mediator between the old and the new orders...I belonged to them both." Napoleon.
1816). The sales of the lands taken from the nobles who had emigrated or been declared
enemies of the state, from the Church, or from the Crown (the "biens nationaux") --an important
benefit for the middle classes and the peasants of the Revolution-- were recognized not only in
Napoleon's coronation oath, but also in the signing of the Concordat with the Pope.
Robert B. Holtman observed, "This task of consolidation made Napoleon a conservative in
France, desirous of keeping the gains of the Revolution, but a revolutionary in acien regime
areas abroad." It has been said that many of Napoleon's reforms were just continuations of
reforms begun under the Revolution (just as it has been said that many of the reforms of the
Revolution were continuations of those begun during the ancien regime). It is important to keep
in mind that Napoleon also brought these reforms to the countries with the Empire, where they
were truly revolutionary. Owen Connelly has said that "Napoleon...was a conscious promoter of
Revolution all over Europe. In fact, I firmly believe that this was the reason for his demise. He
was, to the legitimate powers of Europe a crowned Jacobin...[These powers] were able to
mobilize against him in the end the very people who stood to gain the most from the
governments which Napoleon installed." The principles which Napoleon inherited from the
Revolution and consolidated in France, he exported to the countries which fell under the French
imperium. If Napoleon's reforms in France were no longer revolutionary, outside of France

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NAPOLEON AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION NAPOLEON AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION    "We have finished the romance of the Revolution, we must now begin its history, only seeking for what is real and practicable in the application of its principles, and not what is speculative and hypothetical."     After Brumaire (9-10 Nov. 1799) --the coup d'etat which first set Napoleon on the path to becoming the supreme executive of a French empire-- Napoleon declared, "The Revolution is made fast on the principles on which it began;  the Revolution is finished."  Since this famous utterance came so soon after he gained power, it is clear that Napoleon was saying something significant about what the role of his new-born regime would be to those which had preceded it.  Like the man himself, this quote and the one at the head of this page are both highly complex and ambiguous.  He is declaring that the new regime was both a break from the immediate past and part of a continuity with that past. What was Napoleon's relationship to the Revolution?  To what extent was he its heir or its betrayer?  Did he save the Revolution or liquidate it?         Napoleon clearly felt, like the Jacobins, ...
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