Professor Brophy
History 102

Napoleon and the Napoleonic Era, 1799-1815

I Introduction: the rise of Napoleon (1769-1821)
-from Corsican petty noble to revolutionary officer
-brigadier general at age 25
-Napoleon's mind
-Napoleon as First Consul in the Consulate, 1799-1804
-1802: Consul for Life
-1804: Napoleon crowns himself Emperor

II. Domestic Policy
-church-state relations:  The Concordat (1801)
-Civil Code (1804): administrative reform and modern rule of law
-centralization of bureaucracy; introduction of prefects; rationalization of tax collection and finance (balanced budget by 1802)
-political stability: network of regional elites consolidate centralized power
-Bank of France, 1800
-education reforms; principle of meritocracy institutionalized; normed primary ed. and technical schools
-negative features:  censorship; police terror; arbitrary justice; no popular sovereignty
-increasing burden of war: conscription, taxation, domestic unrest.

III. Napoleon’s Europe
Triumphs
-stunning military triumphs,
    1797-1807
-reorganization of Europe: the Grand Empire, satellite kingdoms, and allies; dissolution of Holy Roman Empire (1804) and creation of Confederate of the Rhine
-principal belligerents against France:  Britain, Russia, Austria, Prussia
-1810: the empire at its height
-Nap. exports liberal rights: legal equality, religious toleration, meritocracy, economic rationalization
-demands: French economic hegemony and obedience to France’s demands
III. Napoleon’s Europe
Decline
    -the problem of Britain
    -the Continental System, 1806-14
    -growth of nationalism outside France
    -the ‘Spanish Ulcer’
    -the Russian Campaign, 1812
    -Wars of Liberation, 1813-14

IV. Aftermath, 1814-1815
-Defeat, exile, the “Hundred Days”
-the Congress of Vienna
-restoration of Bourbon dynasty, restoration of “throne and alter” in Europe
-was Napoleon the culmination or perversion of Revolution?
-historical and mythic Napoleon

V. Legacies of the French Revolution and Napoleon
-bourgeois political power; transfer of land to peasantry in France
-ideal of popular sovereignty: new doctrines and institutions of rights-bearing citizenship
-nationalism as central element of modern state power
-the permanent reality of revolution; the social order challenged
-Napoleon’s Caesarism: harnessing popular support for demagogic rule--enlightened or despotic?