The French Revolution introduced a new structure of government and society, but it also unleashed destructive conflicts, within France and throughout the European world. The attempt to create a new society by force through the use of Terror was unsuccessful. Ten years after the Revolution began, the democratic and constitutional system in France was overthrown by one of its own generals, Napoleon Bonaparte (coup d’état of 18 brumaire VIII (9 Nov. 1799).
Napoleon did two things of fundamental historical importance: (1) in France, he created a system that preserved some essential features of the Revolution, while undoing others that had caused too much controversy. This Napoleonic settlement became the basis for a new, more stable social and political order. (2) Through his conquests, he introduced the basic ideas of legal equality and centralized government to the rest of Europe. At the same time, resentment of French domination created a new sense of national identity in many other regions of Europe.
I. The Revolution’s Impact Outside of France
A. The universality of the Revolution
B. The revolutionary war
1. a war of propaganda
2. people’s armies
C. The abolition of slavery (1794)
II. Napoleon, ‘child of the Revolution’
A. Napoleon and the Revolution
B. The Napoleonic settlement
1. preservation of equality
2. limitations on liberty
3. the religious peace treaty (Concordat)
4. the appeal to national pride
III. Napoleon and Europe
A. The expansion of French power
B. Remaking the European map
C. Resistance to Napoleon
1. the independence of Haiti
2. England, Spain and Russia
D. Napoleon’s defeat and the consequences of his rule
Alexis de Tocqueville explains the spread of French revolutionary ideals: “The French Revolution operated, with respect to this world, exactly the same way religious revolutions operate with respect to the other. It considered the citizen in the abstract, outside of all specific societies, just as religions consider man in general, independent of all times or countries. The Revolution asked not what the specific rights of Frenchmen were, but what were the duties and rights of man in general.”
Some sayings of Napoleon: “It was only on the evening after Lodi [1796] that I realized I was superior being and conceived the ambition of performing great things, which hitherto had filled my thoughts only as a fantastic dream.”
“The people need a religion; this religion must be in the hands of the government.”
“When I acquired the supreme direction of affairs, it was wished that I might become a Washington… For my own part, I could only have been a crowned Washington. It was only in a congress of kings, in the midst of kings yielding or subdued, that I could become so… I could not reasonably attain to this but by means of the universal Dictatorship. To this I aspired; can that be thought a crime?”
Reactions to French conquest
Ugo Foscolo, Italian writer (1804): “Devastators of peoples, the French use liberty the way the Popes used the Crusades.”
Hardenberg, Prussian government minister (1807): “Your Majesty, we must do from above what the French have done from below.”
“The French Revolution, of which the present wars are only a continuation, has given France, in the midst of stormy and bloody scenes, an unexpected power. The force of the new principles is such that the State which refuses to accept them will be condemned to submit or perish… Democratic principles in a monarchical government—this seems to be the formula appropriate to the spirit of the times.”