History 242
Lecture 6
9/17/09
Era of Napoleon Bonaparte
- child of the French Revolution
- big debates: whether he fulfilled the ideas/goals of the rev or if he betrayed them
- more accurate to say both
Positive
- Napoleon gave France religious tolerance
oNapoleon wasn’t particularly religious but believed that religion helped
ppl
- Emphasis on merit rather than birth/ancestry
- Highly organized civil code of law (Napoleonic code)
- Secured property rights
- Equality of men before the law
- Centralized and efficient bureaucracy
- Support for scientific and technical inquiry
- Centralized secularized and effective education system
- Reformed system of taxation and banking
- Improved infrastructure of agriculture and industry (roads, bridges, ag, etc)
Negative
- betrayed and suppressed democracy in France (limited women’s rights of liberty)
- dictators
- vigorously suppressed freedom of speech and press
- system of secret police (spies)
- censorship and propaganda
- locked France into a decade and a half of wars with tremendous human and
material costs
o1800-1815, 750,000 French soldiers died due to Napoleonic wars
o400,000 soldiers from allied states
oalso millions of people killed who were caught in between and enemies,
maybe 6 million in all
- lost French colonies (Louisiana and St. Domingue)
- inspiration for 20th century dictators and totalitarian regimes
Background
- born on island of Corsica
- actually of Italian ancestry
- native language: Corsican Italian
- learned French in school and always struggled with it
- spoke French with an Italian accent
- scholarship to attend military academy in France (excelled at history and math)
