Napoleon a Reformer

Napoleon Bonaparte is known as a social reformer in European history. During his reign, he carried out many plans and many reform programs for the people of France, which not only improved the nation but also the entire European empire. Dominance was established.

The administrative reform carried out by the Consulate was more permanent than the Constitution and of utmost importance to France. During his reign the Council of State became the head of government, having been created by the first consul and often effectively presided over by him; It was to play an important role both as a source of new law and as an administrative tribunal. Heads of administration of departments, which carried out the policies and traditions of the Ancien Régime of France, supervised the application of laws, and served as an instrument of centralization.

Even as Napoleon transformed the established judicial system in France to the lower levels and judges became nominated by the government, their independence was ensured by their immutability from office. The police system in France was greatly strengthened by him.

Napoleon introduced significant reforms in financial administration, appointing his own special officers, rather than municipalities, to collect direct taxes, thereby stabilizing the treasury; and the bank, which had been created partly by shareholders and partly owned by the state, defaulted. Education was transformed into a major public service, secondary education was transformed into a paramilitary organization and university faculties were re-established. Despite all this, primary education was neglected during his period.

He shared Voltaire's belief that people needed a religion. Personally, he was indifferent to religion, in Egypt he said he wanted to become a Muslim. Nevertheless he believed that religious peace had to be restored in France. As early as 1796, when he was concluding an armistice in Italy with Pope Pius VI he tried to persuade the Pope to withdraw his favor against those French priests who accepted the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. which in practice nationalized the Church.

Pius VII, who succeeded Pius VI in March 1800, was more accommodating than his predecessor, and 10 months after negotiations began with him, the Pact of 1801 was signed between the Church and the Revolution. The Pope recognized the French Republic and called for the resignation of all former bishops new bishops were to be nominated by the First Consul and installed by the Pope; and the sale of clergy property was officially recognized by Rome. The Union, in effect, accepted freedom of worship and the general character of the State.

Codification of civil law

This law was first formulated in 1790, which was eventually completed under the Consulate. On March 21, 1804, a code was promulgated, later known as the Napoleonic Code, which perpetuated the great gains of the Revolution and established individual liberty, freedom of work, liberty of conscience, the general character of the State, and equality before But at the same time, it protected landed property, gave more freedom to employers, and showed little concern for employees. It retained divorce but gave women only limited legal rights.

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He attracted the most attention in the army. The First Consul was retained within the framework of the system established by the Revolution, with an emphasis on forced recruitment but with the public being given the option of selection and all being eligible for promotion to the highest rank. New consuls were mixed with old soldiers. He made a military career easier for sons of bourgeois families by creating the Academy of Saint-Cyr to produce infantry officers. In addition he centralized the army to provide authority to officers for the polytechnics, artillery and engineers established by the National Conference. Yet he was concerned about introducing new technological inventions into his army. He placed his trust in “the feet of his soldiers”: his basic strategic idea was to create a fast-moving army.

Military campaign uneasy peace?

As First Consul he spent the winter of 1799–1800 reorganizing the army and preparing to attack Austria alone, while Russia withdrew from the anti-French coalition. With his usual quick assessment of the situation he saw the strategic importance of the Swiss Confederation, leaving him free to attack the Austrian armies in Germany or Italy. He knew very well that they were perfectly suited for his campaign. His past successes inspired him to choose Italy.

Leading his army across the Great St. Bernard Pass before the snow melted, he unexpectedly appeared in the rear of the Austrian army besieging Genoa. The Battle of Marengo in June pushed French command of the Po valley to the Adige, and in December another French army defeated Austrian forces in Germany.

Austria was forced to sign the Treaty of Lunéville of February 1801, under which France's authority over the natural borders given by Julius Caesar to Gaul – namely the Rhine, the Alps and the Pyrenees – were recognised. .

Great Britain alone remained at war with France, but she soon tired of the conflict. The preliminaries of peace, concluded in London in October 1801, ended hostilities, and peace was signed at Amiens on March 27, 1802.

General peace was restored in Europe. The prestige of the first consul grew even greater, and his friends – at his suggestion – proposed that he should be given a “symbol of national gratitude.” In May 1802 it was decided that the French people should vote in a referendum on the following question: “Shall Napoleon Bonaparte be Consul for life?” An overwhelming vote in August granted him an extension of his consulship as well as the right to nominate his successor.

Bonaparte's concept of international peace differed from that of the British, for whom the Treaty of Amiens represented an absolute limit beyond which they were unwilling to go. The British also hoped to win back some of the concessions they had been forced to make.

On the other hand, for Bonaparte, the Treaty of Amiens marked the starting point for a new French dominance. He, at first, intended to reserve half of Europe as a market for France without reducing customs duties – to the indignation of British merchants.

To revive France's expansion abroad, he intended to recover Saint-Domingue (Haiti; ruled since 1798 by the black leader Toussaint Louverture), to occupy Louisiana (ceded to France by Spain in 1800). ), perhaps to reconquer Egypt, and to expand French influence in the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean at any cost.

In continental Europe he moved beyond France's natural borders, incorporating Piedmont into France, imposing a more centralized government on the Swiss Confederation, and partnering with secular church states in Germany and the region on the Rhine under the Treaty of Lunéville. Provided compensation to the deprived princes.

In peacetime Great Britain was alarmed by this expansion of France and it was hardly tolerable that one state should command the coastline of the continent from Genoa to Antwerp. However, the immediate cause of the breakdown of the Franco-British peace was the Malta problem.

According to the Treaty of Amiens, the British, who had taken possession of the island after the French occupation, should have restored it to the Hospitallers; But the British refused to abandon the island, on the pretext that the French had not yet evacuated some Neapolitan ports. Franco-British relations became strained and the British declared war in May 1803.

War with Britain?

From 1803 to 1805 Napoleon had only the British to fight; and again France could hope for victory only by landing an army in the British Isles, while the British could only defeat Napoleon by forming a united continental coalition against him. Napoleon began preparations for attack again, this time with more determination and on a larger scale. He gathered about 2,000 ships between Brest and Antwerp and concentrated his Grand Army in camp at Boulogne (1803). Nevertheless, the problem was the same as it had been in 1798: to cross the Channel, the French had to control the sea.

Still greatly inferior to the British navy, the French fleet needed Spanish help, and yet both fleets could not hope to defeat more than one British squadron together. In December 1804 Spain was induced to declare war on Great Britain, and it was decided that the French and Spanish squadrons massed in the Antilles should bring a British squadron to these waters and defeat it. , thus the balance between the Franco-Spanish and British navies would become approximately equal. A battle could be successfully fought at the entrance to the channel.

The plan failed. The French squadron from the Mediterranean, under Admiral Pierre de Villeneuve, found itself alone at the appointed meeting point in the Antilles. Pursued by Nelson and not daring to attack him, it turned back to Europe and took refuge in Cadiz in July 1805; The British stopped it there.

Accused of cowardice by an angry Napoleon, Villeneuve resolved to run a blockade with the support of a Spanish squadron; but on October 21, 1805, Nelson attacked them near Cape Trafalgar. Nelson was killed in the battle, but the Franco-Spanish fleet was completely destroyed. The British had won a decisive victory, which eliminated the threat of invasion and gave them freedom of movement at sea.

The British were also successful in forming a new anti-French coalition consisting of Austria, Russia, Sweden, and Naples. On July 24, 1805, three months before Trafalgar, Napoleon ordered the Grand Army from Boulogne to the Danube (thus ruling out an invasion of England, even if the French had won at Trafalgar).

In the week before Trafalgar, the Grand Army won a brilliant victory over the Austrians at Ulm, and on 13 November Napoleon entered Vienna. On December 2, 1805, in his greatest victory, he defeated the combined Austrian and Russian armies at the Battle of Austerlitz. By the Treaty of Pressburg, Austria renounced all influence in Italy and ceded Venetia and Dalmatia to Napoleon, as well as extensive territories in Germany to its protectorates Bavaria, Württemberg and Baden.

The French began to dethrone the Bourbons in the Kingdom of Naples, which was given to Napoleon's brother Joseph. In July 1806 the Confederation of the Rhine was established – soon to embrace all of western Germany in a federation under French protection.

Prussia entered the war against France in September 1806, and on 14 October the Prussian army was defeated at Jena and Auerstadt. The Russians put up better resistance at Eylau in February 1807, but were defeated at Friedland in June. In Warsaw Napoleon fell in love with Countess Marie Walewska, a Polish patriot who hoped that Napoleon would liberate her country again. Napoleon had a son from her.

Russian Emperor Alexander I could have continued the struggle, but he was tired of the alliance with the British. He met Napoleon at Tilsit in North Prussia near the Russian border. There, on a raft anchored in the middle of the Nemen River he signed treaties that created the Grand Duchy of Warsaw from Polish provinces separated from Prussia and, in effect, divided control of Europe between the emperors, Napoleon and Napoleon. Alexander took the west and the east. Alexander also made a vague promise of a land attack against British occupation in India.