Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna

This is Unit Eight of Western Civilization Two, part one of two: Napoleon, from Brumaire to St. Helena, the second half of the exam's heaviest band. Unit seven ended with a young general dispersing a royalist rising for the Directory. This unit is what that general did with France, and its governing idea, which part two pays off at the Congress of Vienna, is the anchor's argument that the empire's strength and its fall came from one source. The Revolution's armies, conscription without privilege, officers by merit, corps that marched apart and fought together, beat every power on the continent and built an empire of forty-four million people. But rule depended on victory, so he could never stop, and three things he could not beat, Britain at sea, Spain's guerrilla and Russia's winter, brought him down. The empire exported the Code and taught its subjects to be nations. By the end you will be able to describe the rise. To trace the height. To describe the state he built. To explain the wounds. And to describe the fall and the nationalism it provoked.

Four entries on the rise: the anchor's double portrait, the legend made in Italy and Egypt, the coup of Brumaire, and the loot that paid for a million men.

Man of the Revolution, megalomaniac.

WC2 0701 Napoleon: Man of the Revolution, Megalomaniac

Born to minor Corsican nobility and trained as a French artillery officer, Napoleon rose only through revolutionary armies and exported the Revolution's legal equality wherever he conquered. The anchor sets that beside the megalomaniac: puppet thrones for his family, no democracy, everything for personal power, not a trace of democracy. Both halves are the anchor's portrait, attributed.

A legend he helped pay for.

WC2 0702 1795 to 1797: Paris, Italy, Egypt, and a Legend

In seventeen ninety-five he dispersed a royalist rising for the Directory; in ninety-six and ninety-seven he beat Austria in northern Italy; in ninety-eight he invaded Egypt, won on land, lost his fleet to the British, and came home leaving the army behind, a legend built by propaganda he helped pay for. The anchor dates Egypt ninety-seven; the expedition sailed in ninety-eight.

Consuls after Rome, then an emperor.

WC2 0703 Brumaire 1799: The Consulate, Consul for Life, Emperor 1804

On the eighteenth of Brumaire, November ninth, seventeen ninety-nine, the witness's date, a three-man conspiracy overthrew the Directory and installed the Consulate, consuls after Rome, with Napoleon dominant under a constitution that preserved the appearance of a republic. Consul for life in eighteen-oh-two, he crowned himself emperor in eighteen-oh-four, styling himself heir to Caesar and Alexander.

Victory could never stop.

WC2 0704 Total War Paid by Loot: A Million Soldiers by 1812

The levée en masse became permanent. Conquest paid for the next conquest: loot, indemnities and puppet states' levies financed armies that reached, by the anchor's count, a million men by eighteen twelve, the largest force ever assembled. Rule depended on victory, so victory could never stop, and the anchor names his weakness: he could not end a war.

Five entries on the height: Trafalgar, Austerlitz and Jena, the Empire dissolved, Tilsit, and the anchor's answer to why he won.

Britain beyond reach.

WC2 0705 Trafalgar, October 1805: Britain Beyond Reach

A peace with Britain and Austria, Amiens by the witness's name, lasted fourteen months from eighteen-oh-two, and a new coalition formed in late oh-five. At Trafalgar in October a British fleet destroyed a larger Franco-Spanish one; the invasion of Britain was abandoned and the invasion army marched into Central Europe. Britain could never be beaten at sea.

Vienna and Berlin occupied.

WC2 0706 Austerlitz and Jena: Austria, Russia, and Prussia Beaten, 1805 to 1806

In eighteen-oh-five he defeated Austria and Russia, at Austerlitz by the witness's name, and occupied Vienna, with the Treaty of Pressburg after it; in oh-six he crushed Prussia at Jena and occupied Berlin. The anchor puts Prussia's loss at ninety-six percent of over one hundred seventy thousand men. The figures are the anchor's; the battle names are the witness's.

A thousand years, ended.

WC2 0707 1806: The Holy Roman Empire Dissolved, the Confederation of the Rhine

In eighteen-oh-six the Holy Roman Empire, almost exactly a thousand years old by the anchor's arithmetic from Charlemagne's eight hundred, was dissolved and replaced by the Confederation of the Rhine, sixteen German sovereigns under French influence, the witness says, lasting until eighteen thirteen. Unit three's window-dressing Empire was finally gone.

Belgium to Rome.

WC2 0708 Tilsit, 1807: An Empire From Belgium to Rome, 44 Million People

In eighteen-oh-seven an alliance with Tsar Alexander, the Treaty of Tilsit in the standard name, left Napoleon dominant from France to Poland. The empire ran from Belgium and Holland to Rome, nearly half a million square miles and forty-four million people by the anchor's count, ruled directly in some lands and through family puppets elsewhere, dominant to eighteen thirteen.

Sixty battles, all but eight won.

WC2 0709 Why He Won: Logistics, Corps, Conscription, and a Meritocratic Officer Corps

The anchor's answer is logistics and the Revolution: march speeds, supplies and map-reading that let separate corps converge; conscription without noble privilege; officers promoted by merit; permanent divisions and corps of ten to twenty thousand moving on separate roads and concentrating for battle. Sixty battles, all but eight won, the anchor says, and the losses came late, when he could no longer stop.

Four entries on the state he built: the Bank and the Code, what conquest brought the conquered, the Concordat and the lycée, and efficiency as the principle beneath all of it.

Silver, gold, and a code copied for a century.

WC2 0710 The Bank of France, 1800, and the Civil Code, 1804

He ended inflation with tax collection, auditing and a Bank of France in eighteen hundred, paying in silver and gold. The Civil Code of eighteen-oh-four, the Code Napoléon, preserved seventeen eighty-nine's legal equality and, the witness says, spread rapidly through Europe, praised for clarity and copied for a century. Equality before the law, not equality of persons, as the fourth entry of this topic shows.

The Revolution at the point of a bayonet.

WC2 0711 What French Rule Brought the Conquered: Codes, Customs, Serfdom Abolished

In the puppet states French rule meant single customs areas, unified weights and measures, written constitutions, equality before the law, abolished noble privilege, secularized church property, abolished serfdom and religious toleration. Commoners, the anchor says, often experienced conquest partly as liberation, at least early, before looting and conscription followed.

Peace with Rome as policy.

WC2 0712 The Concordat, 1801, and the Lycée

The Concordat of eighteen-oh-one with Pius the Seventh, the witness's detail, restored the Church's position without returning its lands and kept toleration, drawn, the witness says, in Napoleon's interest, not the Church's. The lycée, a secular elite secondary school with scholarships, trained the officials and officers the state needed.

Obedience demanded of everyone, wives first.

WC2 0713 Efficiency as Principle, Obedience as Demand: Censorship and Women Under the Code

The governing principle was efficiency, which is to say power; toleration came from the same impulse. He was no lover of freedom: press censorship, no democracy, and a Code that made women legal subjects of fathers and then husbands, a wife owing obedience in the anchor's paraphrase. The clause is the anchor's paraphrase.

Five entries on the wounds: a boycott that enriched Britain, the Spanish ulcer, a Habsburg bride and an excommunication, six hundred thousand marching east, and the retreat from Moscow.

Even French uniforms came from Britain.

WC2 0714 The Continental System and Why It Failed

The Continental System boycotted British goods to build a self-sustaining European economy; by late eighteen-oh-seven every port but Denmark's, Sweden's and Portugal's was closed. Britain grew richer on smuggling, took the Danish fleet and seized colonies, and even French uniforms, the anchor says, were bought from Britain. Portugal's defiance, the witness says, led straight to Spain.

The little war that named itself.

WC2 0715 The Spanish Ulcer, 1808: Guerrilla War

In eighteen-oh-eight he invaded Iberia and put his brother Joseph on Spain's throne. Insurrection followed, Wellington landed, and the guerrilla, the little war that gave the word its name, cost France almost two hundred thousand dead over seven years by the anchor's count. Cities held, countryside lost, and massacres recruited for the enemy.

Marrying the Revolution's enemy.

WC2 0716 1810: A Habsburg Bride and an Excommunication

In eighteen ten he divorced Josephine and married the Habsburg Marie-Louise, a match the witness says was suggested through Metternich, a betrayal of anti-monarchism that cost him supporters. He annexed the Papal States, for which Pius the Seventh excommunicated him. The Revolution's general married into the Revolution's enemy.

The largest army ever seen, mostly not French.

WC2 0717 Russia, 1812: Six Hundred Thousand March

Russia stood outside his control, and beyond it he imagined the Balkans and Constantinople, Rome's empire remade, the anchor says. In summer eighteen twelve six hundred thousand marched, by the anchor's count, more than half non-French, many raw recruits, his best troops still in Spain.

A city its people burned.

WC2 0718 Borodino, Moscow Burned, and the Retreat

At Borodino, seventy miles from Moscow, the bloodiest single day of the wars by the witness's account, he won and moved into a city its people abandoned and burned. After a month's wait the October retreat met ambush, disease, starvation and desertion: forty thousand of six hundred thousand returned, the anchor says. The anchor says August; Borodino was September.

Four entries on the fall and the reaction: Leipzig and Elba, the Hundred Days and Waterloo, St. Helena and the myth, and the nationalism his conquests created.

Two years from Moscow to abdication.

WC2 0719 Leipzig, Abdication, and Elba, 1813 to 1814

Austria, Prussia, Britain and Russia re-formed the coalition; the witness names Leipzig in eighteen thirteen, after which the Confederation of the Rhine collapsed and the allies marched on Paris. He abdicated in April eighteen fourteen, survived his own poison, and was sent to Elba, the anchor says, to deny him martyrdom.

One defection, one battle.

WC2 0720 The Hundred Days and Waterloo, June 1815

Louis the Eighteenth, restored and unpopular, sent troops to arrest the escaped emperor in March eighteen fifteen; they defected. The Hundred Days ended at Waterloo in June against British and Prussian armies, allied, not British alone, and the witness counts ninety-four days on the throne. One defection decided the return; one battle decided the end.

A self-portrait dictated in exile.

WC2 0721 St. Helena, the Myth, and What Napoleon Left

Exiled to St. Helena, he dictated memoirs claiming everything was for France and the Revolution, self-portrait in the anchor's word, and died in eighteen twenty-one. He left a taste for legal equality, a rational code, a weakened nobility, fifty years of European fear of another French invasion, and a myth: romantic hero, modern Caesar, France's greatest hour.

Universalism turned into its opposite.

WC2 0722 Nationalism as Reaction: Spain, Prussia, Austria, Russia, Britain

The empire was so plainly French, despite universalist claims, that its looting taught subjects to think of themselves as Germans, Italians and Spaniards. Nationalism was directly inspired by conquest: Spain's rising, Prussia's and Austria's wars of liberation, Russia's resistance, British pride. The Revolution's universalism turned into its opposite abroad, and unit ten makes it the century's theme.

Look at what you can now do. You can describe the Corsican who rose through revolutionary armies, the legend of Italy and Egypt, Brumaire and the coronation, and the loot that paid for a million men. You can trace Trafalgar, Austerlitz and Jena, the Empire dissolved in eighteen-oh-six, Tilsit, and why the corps system won. You can describe the Bank and the Code, what conquest brought, the Concordat and the lycée, and efficiency as the principle. You can explain why the boycott enriched Britain, why Spain bled France, why the Habsburg marriage cost him, and why six hundred thousand marched and forty thousand returned. And you can describe Leipzig and Elba, Waterloo, St. Helena, and the nations his empire made. Part two seats the Congress of Vienna, works three procedures, and asks why he fell.