10.4 — Napoleon and the Remaking of Europe

Napoleon Bonaparte spent his last years on a rock in the South Atlantic dictating his memoirs, and in them he said that his true glory was not the forty battles he had won, since Waterloo would efface the memory of them. What nothing would efface, he said, and what would live forever, was his Civil Code.

He was right. The Code Napoléon, promulgated in 1804, is the basis of the legal systems of France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Louisiana, most of Latin America, Egypt, Japan and Turkey. More people live under its descendants than under any other legal tradition except the common law.

How he took power

Born in Corsica in 1769, a year after France annexed it, into minor nobility, educated at French military schools where he was mocked for his accent.

The Revolution made his career possible. Chapter 10.3's "careers open to talent" was not an abstraction — the emigration of aristocratic officers and the expansion of the army created openings that would not have existed.

Toulon in 1793 made his reputation: a young artillery captain who identified the position from which guns could force the British fleet out of the harbour.

Italy, 1796–97, made him famous: a series of victories against superior Austrian forces achieved by moving faster than the enemy could react and by concentrating force at the decisive point.

Egypt, 1798, was a strategic failure — Nelson destroyed his fleet at the Nile, stranding the army — and a propaganda success, because he controlled the reporting. It also produced the Description of Egypt and the Rosetta Stone, found by his engineers and later taken by the British, which is how hieroglyphs were deciphered.

He abandoned his army and returned to France, and in November 1799 took power in a coup, becoming First Consul, then Consul for life, then Emperor in 1804 — crowning himself, in a ceremony the Pope attended.

What he built

This is the part that lasted and it should be given the space.

The Civil Code

What it did. It replaced hundreds of overlapping local customs, feudal rules and Roman law fragments with one written code covering persons, property and obligations, applying equally to all citizens.

Its principles: equality before the law; security of private property; freedom of contract; secular civil marriage and divorce; abolition of feudal tenure; and the requirement that the law be written clearly enough to be read.

And its limits, stated honestly. It substantially reduced women's legal position — a married woman needed her husband's consent for legal acts, was required to obey, and had restricted property rights. In several respects it was more restrictive than pre-revolutionary custom in some regions.

It also restored slavery in the French colonies in 1802, reversing the abolition of 1794 (Chapter 10.5).

Why it spread. It was clear, comprehensive and modern, and French armies imposed it. Then, when the armies left, most countries kept it, because the alternative was returning to a patchwork nobody could navigate.

The administrative state

Prefects — centrally appointed officials running each department, reporting to Paris, a structure that still governs France.

The Bank of France, 1800, stabilising the currency after the revolutionary paper inflation.

A rationalised tax system with a proper cadastral survey — a land register — which made assessment possible.

The lycée system and the grandes écoles, and the Baccalauréat.

The Concordat of 1801 with the Pope, which settled the church question: Catholicism recognised as the religion of the majority, clergy paid by the state, and the church land confiscated in the Revolution not returned. It ended a decade of religious conflict and it left the state in control.

And the Légion d'honneur, an order of merit open to anyone — when criticised for creating baubles, he is reported to have said that it is with such baubles that men are led.

The wars

He fought for fifteen years and his method was consistent.

Speed. The corps system organised the army into self-contained units of all arms, able to march separately and fight independently until concentrated, which let him move faster than opponents who marched as a single mass.

Concentration at the decisive point, accepting weakness elsewhere.

And a willingness to accept enormous casualties to achieve a decision.

Austerlitz in 1805 is the standard illustration: he deliberately weakened his right flank, let the Austro-Russian army commit to attacking it, and split their line in the centre.

The mistakes were two and both were strategic rather than tactical.

Spain. The Peninsular War from 1808 became what he called his Spanish ulcer — a popular insurgency that never gave him a decisive battle to win, supported by a British army, bleeding French forces continuously for six years. The word "guerrilla" — little war — is from this conflict. Goya's Disasters of War is its record.

Russia, 1812. He invaded with an army of around 600,000 and returned with a small fraction of it. The Russians retreated, refused battle, and burned what they left behind. He took Moscow and found it empty and then burning. The retreat in the winter destroyed the army, mostly through cold, hunger, disease and Cossack harassment rather than battle.

Then the coalitions. Leipzig in 1813 — the Battle of the Nations — and abdication in 1814. Exile to Elba, escape, the Hundred Days, and Waterloo in June 1815. Exile to Saint Helena, where he died in 1821.

The casualty total for the Napoleonic wars is estimated at three to six million, military and civilian.

What his armies spread

This is the paradox of Napoleon and it is why he matters beyond France.

Wherever French armies went, they carried the Revolution's institutional package: the Code, legal equality, the abolition of feudal dues and serfdom, the ending of internal customs barriers and guild restrictions, civil registration, religious toleration including the emancipation of Jews from ghettos, and rational administrative boundaries.

And economic historians have measured the effect. Studies comparing German regions occupied by France with those that were not find higher subsequent economic development in the occupied areas, attributed to the institutional reforms.

He also destroyed the Holy Roman Empire, consolidating hundreds of German statelets into a few dozen — which is the precondition for German unification (Chapter 10.7).

And he provoked nationalism everywhere he went. Occupation by a foreign army teaches a population that it is a nation, and Spanish, German, Russian and Italian nationalism all sharpened in response to him. He spread the idea of the nation by giving people something to be a nation against.

The settlement

The Congress of Vienna, 1814–15, designed the post-war order, dominated by Metternich of Austria, Castlereagh of Britain, Talleyrand of France and Tsar Alexander.

Its principles. Legitimacy — restoring the pre-revolutionary dynasties. Balance of power — no state strong enough to dominate the continent. And containment of France by strengthening its neighbours.

And its treatment of France is worth noting against Chapter 11.4. France was restored to its 1792 borders, admitted to the concert of powers, and not permanently humiliated. The result was that France did not spend the next century seeking revenge, and there was no general European war for ninety-nine years.

The system's costs. It suppressed liberal and national movements for a generation — the Congress system met repeatedly to authorise the suppression of revolutions in Spain, Italy and Greece. Chapter 10.6 is what happened when the pressure could no longer be contained.

The assessment

A book committed to honest ledgers should do one here.

On the credit side: the Code and the administrative institutions, which outlasted him everywhere; the destruction of feudal and guild restrictions across Europe; religious emancipation; and — this is real — a state that functioned, with an examined bureaucracy and a currency that held.

On the debit side: three to six million dead; a police state with censorship, arbitrary detention and an extensive secret police under Fouché; the restoration of slavery in the colonies; the reduction of women's legal status; the systematic looting of art from occupied countries, a great deal of which is still in French museums; and the transformation of a republic into a hereditary empire.

And the honest verdict is that he was both a consolidator and a destroyer of the Revolution. He kept its institutional achievements — equality before the law, careers open to talent, the abolition of privilege — and destroyed its political ones — the republic, the elected assembly, the free press. He offered the trade Augustus offered (Chapter 5.4): order, competence and glory in exchange for self-government, and a large part of France accepted it.

Where this shows up in your life

The civil law tradition governs most of the world outside the English-speaking countries. India's system is common law from Britain, and Indian contract, property and criminal codes are themselves codifications on a model that owes something to this period (Chapter 6.19).

The metric system spread with his armies.

Driving on the right in continental Europe is frequently attributed to French practice spread by occupation, and the claim is more folkloric than documented.

And the strategic lesson has been relearned repeatedly. Invading Russia with a large army in the expectation of a decisive battle was attempted again in 1941 with the same result (Chapter 11.7), and the general problem — an insurgency that will not give you a battle to win — is what Spain taught in 1808 and Vietnam and Afghanistan taught later.

What the next page covers

While Napoleon was restoring slavery in the colonies, one colony had already destroyed it and destroyed his army. Chapter 10.5 covers the Haitian Revolution — the only successful large-scale slave revolt in history, how enslaved people defeated the armies of France, Britain and Spain in succession, why it terrified every slaveholding society in the Atlantic, and how the world punished Haiti for two centuries afterwards in a way that explains a great deal about its present condition.