World History

Unit 4: The Emergence of Modern Nations

Chapter 17: The American and French Revolutions

37. Thu, Jan 23, 2014

When Napoleon Bonaparte seized power from the Directorate, he was in essence just one more in a series of violent seizures of power. The Republic had come to power first by arresting the royal family, then executing them; the Republic itself had then been shaped by the Reign of Terror and the experience of having every state in Europe invade. (England, initially supportive of the Revolution, began to come in against France after the Terror.) The crowds grew accustomed to this, as the quote in the book (pg. 438) about bread and blood makes clear. Bonaparte first came to prominence by halting an angry mob howling for the Directorate's heads with a now-proverbial "whiff of grapeshot" — in other words, he opened fire into a crowded square with cannon. It has been said that the government of France rested on its artillery that day. By the end of this chapter, under the Age of Metternich, it might appear that most every government in Europe came to a similar basis of government.

They came to it both because it had some expectation of success and because they had to. While Napoleon was a despot, he encouraged all liberty and freedom that did not threaten his rule. His Napoleonic Code (loosely based on the Code Justinian from Byzantine times; not Napoleon's first conscious echo of the Romans, nor the last) outlawed hereditary privileges, called for government positions being filled by merit, provided for freedom of religion, and also placed restrictions on the simple nature of law. The Code was written in French, for instance, demanded that all laws be published — positive law, as you'll recall — and also reined in judges making law but allowed them latitude in interpreting law. Thus Napoleon was, even as a tyrant himself, also something of a symbol of liberty and liberalism, which both demonstrated his charisma and provided reinforcement for it. He had great power because his subjects loved him, and they loved him in part because he gave them some freedom and the possibility of advancement. Witness the Hundred Days, where he staged a coup simply by showing up.

Napoleon also maintained power by being perpetually at war — inspiring the loyalty of the French by continually fighting the enemies of France — and so his ideas of advancement by merit and a measure of freedom spread throughout Europe in the wake of his armies. So the ideas of personal liberty and the alternatives to despotism seeped through the whole continent. (The divided and conquered Poles, for instance, loved Napoleon and backed him earnestly, seeing in him their best chance.) Thus Napoleon was both liberty's champion and also an expression of its potential problems… since he rose to power via first a massacre, then a coup d'etat.

Thus the kings of Europe, threatened by both Napoleon rendering them illegitimate and simply conquering them, had to join together to stop the unstoppable Frenchman. They managed it in the end, though it took literally the whole of the continent. After a quarter-century of upheaval that began with the Tennis Court Oath, they restored a Bourbon to the throne of France and tried, through the Congress of Vienna, to set things back to "normal." There were some changes: Napoleon had ended the Holy Roman Empire (perhaps because of his desire to be the only emperor associated with Rome), and it was not resurrected. Instead the small German states became a loose association under the shadows of Austria and a redoubled Prussia, which was granted territory next to France to keep any future Richelieus, Sun Kings, or Napoleons in line. And most importantly, all the monarchs of Europe (Great Britain excepted) pledged to support each other against future revolutions. Having been threatened by the sword of revolution, they now imposed the sword of reactionism.

• How did the character of the French Revolution affect what came after it?
• By 1820 all governments in Europe (even Britain, as the Peterloo Massacre shows) relied upon force of arms to suppress their populations. On the other side, it would appear that revolutionaries seemed to employ violence just as often. Nor was this entirely a European phenomenon: the newborn United States used military force to suppress two rebellions in its early years (to say nothing of near-continual slave revolts), while Thomas Jefferson would famously write that "the Tree of Liberty must occasionally be watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants." Why was violence so common in this era? How does it fit with the war-weariness which helped depose successive governments of France?
• We see some familiar concepts go by in this chapter: Napoleon as a consul, the Code Justinian revived and rewritten as the Napoleonic Code, the concept of "emperor" itself. How did Rome thus influence affairs of this era?
• Speaking of old ideas, how does Aristotle's theory of government align with the events of this era, and with Napoleon and his Code in particular?
• How does political violence in general fit with Aristotle's ideas? How does consent fit?

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