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NAPOLEONIC EUROPE (1799-1815)
1
...
Under Napoleon, France became a nationalist power, expanding its
territory into Italy and exerting its influence over other powers
...
By 1804, Napoleon was so
powerful that he declared himself Emperor
...

He built a vast empire of dependant states, forced Czar Alexander I to ally with him in the 1807
Treaty of Tilsit, and controlled the majority of Europe
...
Just about the only blemish on his
record during the first decade of the 19th century was a stunning naval loss to Britain at the Battle
of Trafalgar
Seeking to undermine Britain's sea power, Napoleon issued the Berlin Decree in 1806, imposing the
Continental System on Europe, which was meant to stop European countries from trading with
Britain
...
Upset by Napoleonic
rule, Germanic nationalism got its start, and the Germans began to move towards Romanticism as
an intellectual rebellion against French Enlightenment ideas
...

In 1810, Napoleon replaced his wife, Josephine, who had borne him no heir, with a younger wife,
Marie Louise of Austria
...
Napoleon's
happiness did not last, however, because at the end of 1810, Alexander I withdrew Russia from the
Continental System
...
Though Napoleons
army pushed the Russians into constant retreat, the terrible Russian winter decimated Napoleon's
Grand Army
...

In 1814, Napoleon was exiled to the island of Elba and Louis XVIII took the throne of France,
returning a Bourbon to the throne that had been lost by Louis XVI just twenty years earlier
...
Napoleon's army was
defeated by Wellington (Britain) and Blucher (Prussia) at Waterloo in June 1815
...

The chaotic Europe left behind by roughly two decades of war was reorganized by the Congress of
Vienna (1814-1815)
...
The complex and
delicate negotiations in Vienna created a stable Europe wherein no one power could dominate the
others, as Napoleon's France had, for quite some time
...


2
...
The social leveling
reforms in France had led to the destruction of aristocratic privilege and the execution of a king
...
And
as France made these reforms, such as opening positions of leadership to all men based on talent,
the country became more efficient, powerful, and increasingly patriotic
...
Napoleon, a minor Corsican aristocrat who rose to be
Emperor of France, represented the new confidence in social mobility and individual talent the
Revolution had wrought
...
Napoleon represented change
...
Napoleon came closer than anyone else in modern
history to conquering Europe
...
Napoleon's wars echoed in the New World as well, influencing the War of 1812 and Toussaint
l'Ouverture's dictatorship in Haiti
...
The countries he occupied had versions of the Napoleonic
Code imposed on them, forming the legal basis for much of Continental European law today
...
Thus, Napoleon spread the ideas of the French Revolution even beyond
the boundaries of his vast empire
...
In reacting to their French
overlords, some previously disunited linguistic-ethnic groups saw reason to organize
...
Germany even
reacted intellectually,starting to champion Romanticism, a school of thought opposed to the French
Enlightenment Rationalism Napoleon was spreading
...

The Napoleonic period was an extremely complicated time
...
He encouraged many
developments we today consider quite positive
...
The wars were punctuated by
constantly shifting alliances
...

Austria, led by the crafty Metternich, tried to improve relations with France towards the end the
Napoleonic era
...
The only constant through the fifteen years of Napoleon's rule was the continued enmity
between England and France
...
The period was typified
by "Realism" in diplomacy and war, for all sides were simply trying to win whatever advantages
they could
...
Britain emerged in 1815 as a commercial
powerhouse with the world's preeminent navy and a large colonial network
...
Blaming the hard lives of the working class on Napoleon's war mongering, Britain made
it through a critical and dangerous time of its young Industrial Revolution
...
The resultant agreement from the two years of deliberation was
undoubtedly one of the most important and complicated treaties in human history
...
This made Europe fairly stable for the next century, but it also
protected conservative regimes
...
Thus, the Congress of Vienna set the stage for the
coming battle between liberalism and conservatism in the following period, from 1815 to the
revolutionary year 1848
...
Timeline:
1784: Herder publishes Ideas on the History of the Philosophy of Mankind
November 9, 1799: Napoleon and Sieyes overthrow the Directory, form the Consulate, with
Napoleon as First Consulate
1799: Second Coalition formed
June 1800: battle of Marengo (France v
...

1801: Concordat (France and Rome)
February 1801: Treaty of Luneville ends Second Coalition
1802: Napoleon elected "Consul for Life"
March 1802: Peace of Amiens with Britain
1803: Louisiana Purchase
May 1804: Napoleon changes title from "Consul" to "Emperor"
August 1804: Francis II makes himself "Emperor of Austria"
1805: Third Coalition (Britain, Austria, Russia)
October 21, 1805: Trafalgar
December 2, 1805: battle of Austerlitz
1806: Berlin Decree (begins Continental System)
1806: Holy Roman Empire replaced by Confederacy of the Rhine
October 1806: Prussia badly wounded at Jena and Auerstadt
1807: Napoleon, aided by Spain, invades Portugal
1807: Baron Stein "abolished" serfdom
June 14, 1807: Russians defeated at Friedland
July 1807: Treaty of Tilsit
1808: J
...
Fichte gives Address to the German Nation in Berlin
1808: Stein exiled from Prussia at Napoleon's command
1808: Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon's brother, becomes King of Spain
September 1808: Napoleon's allies meet at Erfurt, Saxony
April 1809: Austria proclaims War of Liberation

July 1809: Napoleon defeats Austria at the battle of Wagram
1810: Hardenberg becomes Prussian chancellor
1810: Napoleon marries Marie Louise, divorces Josephine
December 31, 1810: Russia withdraws from Continental System
1811: Marie Louise gives birth to an heir
1812: War of 1812 (US-Britain)
June 1812: Napoleon enters Russia with the Grand Army
September 14, 1812: Napoleon enters Moscow
December 1812: Napoleon rushes back to Paris
June 1813: Wellington threatens France from Spain
October 1813: Napoleon loses at battle of Leipzig
November 1813: Metternich makes "Frankfurt Proposals" to leave Napoleon in power
...
Napoleon abdicates
...

June 18, 1815: Napoleon defeated for final time at Waterloo

4
...
A brilliant young French general, having already won fame with a series of victories
for Revolutionary France in Italy Napoleon Bonaparte, was then busy fighting a fruitless war in
Egypt
...
On November 9, 1799 (the month of "Brumaire" in the French Revolutionary calendar)
Napoleon Bonaparte and Abbe Sieyes pulled off a coup in France
...
Sieyes and Napoleon both
installed themselves as consuls, though the popular Napoleon became First Consul
...
At the time, Austria was the only
continental country that remained at war with France
...
In February
1801, the Austrians were forced to sign the Treaty of Luneville, reaffirming the earlier Treaty of
Campo Formio, which had created the Cisalpine Republic in Italy
...
On March 1802, France signed the Peace of Amiens with
Britain, ending their warring, and briefly bringing Europe to peace, a rare occurrence in this violent
period
...
He put down rebellions in the
French provinces
...
He centralized the government of the
various French departments under a system of prefects
...
Napoleon ended the exclusion of the nobility from power
that had been the trademark of earlier post- revolution regimes
...
As an example, he took in
Talleyrand as his foreign minister despite Talleyrand's aristocratic heritage
...
On Christmas Eve, 1800, he was nearly killed by a
bomb planted by conspirators wanting to restore the old Bourbon line of kings
...

Though unreligious, in 1801, Napoleon signed a Concordat with the Catholic pope
...
Napoleon did not
give the property back, but he did make Catholicism the official religion of France, admitting, "the
majority of France is Catholic
...
Even under this
new agreement with the Church, Napoleon upheld religious tolerance, which remained a
fundamental principle of French life under his "enlightened despotism
...
He wanted government
power to apply to everyone equally, legal class differences and hereditary government offices to be
abolished, and salaries to be given to his bureaucrats, who were to be selected based on talent, not
birth
...

In 1802, having brought prestige, power, and a sense of patriotism to France, Napoleon was elected
"Consul for Life"
...
In 1804, Napoleon did away with niceties
and started calling himself what he had already been in reality for some time: the French Emperor
...
Technically minor French aristocrats, Napoleon's
family got him a scholarship to go to school in France
...
Next, on the Italian Campaign, in which he defeated Austria and gained territory in Italy for
France, Napoleon became famous as a brilliant strategist and French national hero
...
The
government stated the reason for the Egyptian campaign as a means to threaten British trade with
India, but in reality it seemed mostly a ploy to get the dangerous and ambitious Napoleon away
from Paris
...
The Consulate was outwardly an institution of self-government, with its Council
of Notables and Senate
...
Under his rule, France entered a period of "Enlightened Despotism", or
dictatorial rule by someone who really was intelligent, wise, and in many ways looked to the
welfare of his people
...

Why was it that the French army was so dominant in this period? Although the "great-man" bias in
history makes us want to attribute it all to Napoleon's strategic brilliance, there were other

underlying factors
...
The most talented men, rather
than simply men of noble birth, now gained power at every level
...
While other nations still fought largely with
mercenaries, the French army was a national army of proud and patriotic citizens, who had very
high morale and a sense of heroism
...

Why did Napoleon move to sign the Concordat of 1801, normalizing relations with the Church,
when he wasn't himself religious? Napoleon was a smart politician
...
By gaining recognition from the Pope, who was bound to comply since Napoleon's
armies threatened the Papal States, Napoleon ended this potential source of conflict
...
The Napoleonic Code was one of Napoleon's most important creations
...
Lawyers, not to mention the
people, hardly knew what was legal and illegal anymore, since there were so many confusing and
conflicting laws on the books
...
The
code, however, did have some negative aspects: it was harsher than Anglo- American "Common
Law" in regards to the rights of criminals (Napoleonic law favored the prosecution and downplayed
the "rights of the accused")
...

The other powers in Europe were understandably scared of Napoleon
...
Under a more merit-based system of
selecting France's bureaucrats and officer, France became especially efficient, powerful, and
patriotic
...


5
...
For that reason, they made
several attempts to band together to face the French Revolutionary threat
...
In that year,
Britain recalled its army from the European continent
...
Spain, ruled by a Bourbon King but extremely
concerned with British sea power, allied with France (which had killed its Bourbon king)
...

During Napoleon's ill-fated Egyptian campaign, Admiral Nelson's British fleet demolished the
French fleet at the Battle of Aboukir (The Battle of the Nile) in 1799
...
When,
after getting demolished at the battle of Marengo, the Austrians signed the Treaty of Luneville in
1801, the Second Coalition fell apart
...
A period of Europe-wide peace ensued from 1802-1803, the only time
during Napoleon's rule that no two European nations were at war
...
In 1803, Napoleon sold the Louisiana Territory to
the US for 80 million francs (15 million dollars)
...
Northern Italy had previously
been a French-controlled puppet
...
Napoleon also
changed the name of the French-dominated "Helvetic Republic" to the "Confederation of
Switzerland", himself ruling as the "mediator" of this "new" state
...

Commentary
Even as the other European powers tried to unify against France, they were torn apart by suspicion
of each other
...

During the French Revolution, Toussaint l'Ouverture led the slaves on the French half of modern
Haiti to rebel, and proclaimed himself for the revolutionary Republic, which made him lieutenant
governor
...
Although he had
been involved in a slave revolt, Toussaint encouraged white landowners to return to running their
plantations, but with wage instead of slave labor
...
Napoleon would have none of this and sent
General Charles Leclerc to take French power back in Haiti
...
In 1803,
Toussaint died in a French jail
...
Toussaint's resistance in Haiti, however, turned him
off to the idea of commitments in the New World, which would only be a drain on his European
affairs
...
The takeover of
Haiti by the British in 1803 just reconfirmed his desire to get rid of New World holdings, and since
US President Jefferson had expressed a interest in the Louisiana Territory, Napoleon decided simply
to sell it rather than to get embroiled in a distant conflict, where his supply and communication
ships would be vulnerable to the powerful British navy
...
What is today the German nation was
then mostly contained either in Prussia, or in a sprawl of numerous squabbling tiny kingdoms,
principalities, electorates, and duchies called The Holy Roman Empire (a hollow and grandiose
name for this loose and ineffectual confederation)
...
Hoping to get extra territory by the
realignments, the rulers of many of these Holy Roman Empire states competed with each other in
endearing themselves to the French
...
Through this process, many of the German
states of the Holy Roman Empire were already becoming French satellites
...
Third Coalition (1804-1807):
Summary
On May 1804, Napoleon made himself Emperor of France, and, functionally though not in name,
Emperor of the Italian Republic and the Confederation of Switzerland
...
In 1805, Austria allied with Britain
...
(Prussia, under Frederick William III, stayed out of the
coalition
...
He had forces massed on the French coast of
the English Channel, and was preparing them for an amphibious assault
...
Britain breathed a sigh of relief when word came through that a combined
Russian and Austrian army was marching on France
...
On
October 21, 1805, the British fleet decimated Napoleon's fleet at the battle of Trafalgar, solidifying
its stranglehold on the sea
...
The Russians
retreated to Poland and the Austrians signed the Treaty of Pressburg, which gave Napoleon even
more Austrian territory in Italy
...
Prussia, which had stayed out of the
Third Coalition, became concerned with Napoleon's expansion of power in Germany
...
He was soundly defeated at the battles of Jena
and Auerstadt in October 1806 and forced to retreat east to Konigsberg
...

Next, Napoleon pursued the Russians, overrunning them at Friedland on June 14, 1807
...

Instead, he negotiated the Treaty of Tilsit with Napoleon in July 1807, allying himself with
Napoleon, and horrifying the other rulers in Europe
...

Commentary
To add to the prestige of the ceremony, and to add a mark of validation and authority to his imperial
status Napoleon invited the Pope to his coronation ceremony, held in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame
in Paris
...
The Pope came to Napoeloen because he did not want to make an
enemy, since Napoleon's military power in Italy was steadily increasing, threatening the Papal
States and Rome
...
Instead,
Napoleon, ever the self-made man, placed the crown of empire on his own head, and then crowned
Josephine empress
...
If he
could get his forces past the British naval forces and on to the island, which barely had a land army,
French control of Britain would be virtually insured
...


The Battle of Trafalgar, during which Admiral Nelson lost his life, established Britain's naval
supremacy for the rest of the Napoleonic era, and even for the rest of the 19th century
...
His control of Europe was rapidly growing, and if he was
not stopped soon, control of the resources of all of Europe would eventually allow him to build a
Navy large enough to beat the more skillful British at sea
...
While Britain remained Napoleon's archenemy,
we could well consider Alexander as Napoleon's "foil"
...
Alexander also considered himself an
"enlightened despot"
...
He wanted to rationalize and
modernize the Russian state, and he surrounded himself with educated advisors for that purpose
...
Thus, he
wanted the other nation to ally against whoever was most powerful, at this time France
...
Furthermore, his antiNapoleonic stand was sweetened by a British offer to pay Alexander 1
...
Finally, Alexander wanted what Russian rulers
always want: Poland
...

Why did Alexander ever agree to ally with Napoleon in the Treaty of Tilsit? Napoleon, always
crafty, managed to appeal to Alexander's ego
...
Together, said Napoleon, nothing could stop them
...
Given his dire straits,
Alexander allowed himself to believe Napoleon and signed the treaty
...
The Continental System (1806-1807):
Summary
After his Navy was destroyed at Trafalgar in 1805, Napoleon realized that if his empire was ever
going to be secure, he would have to defeat Britain
...
His plan to bring Britain to its knees was called the
Continental System
...
Napoleon demanded
that his empire close its ports from British goods, and he got the Russians, Austrians, and Prussians
to cooperate in the Continental System
...
Meanwhile, Napoleon was building ships of
his own
...

The Continental System began in 1806 with Napoleon's Berlin Decree, which banned British ships
from entering European ports
...
Napoleon next issued the
Milan Decree in December 1807
...

Britain's retaliated through sea power, creating a blockade of all European ships
...

Commentary
The other nations of Europe were willing to side with Napoleon in the Continental system because
for the most part they did dislike Britain
...
Cranking out textiles on their small island, the British rapidly became the wealthiest
nation in Europe
...
So when Napoleon demanded that a Europe- wide
boycott of British goods take place under his Continental System, there were many who were glad
for a chance to cut Britain down to size
...
Europe was capable of producing its own food and its own
weapons without British help
...
In these days, there were no railways, so most transfer of goods
from city to city and country-to-country was accomplished by boat
...
The British blockade thus severely
handicapped internal European trading, which needed sea-shipping to operate at full capacity
...
The major goal of the
Continental System, like the EEC, was to improve Europe's economy and give it more leverage in
trading
...
Spain and Austria Fight Back (1807-1809):
Summary
The Continental System attempted to strange Britain's economy but ended up hurting France more
...
In fact, Russia, Prussia, and Austria all officially
declared war on Britain during this period
...
Since Denmark contained
ports crucial to British trade, the British Navy bombarded Copenhagen and attacked the Danish
fleet in hopes of keeping this port open
...

Portugal, on the other hand, refused adamantly to join the Continental System
...
The Portuguese royal family fled to Brazil,
and the Portuguese people were discontented under Napoleonic domination
...
Though declining in
stature as a world power, the Spanish remained proud
...
They had a rich culture and
history, and the Napoleonic era was the time of several great Spanish painters such as Goya
...
Britain, seizing the
opportunity to place a few barbs in France's side, sent an army under the Duke of Wellington to aid
the guerillas, called peninsulars
...
Furthermore, the Peninsular War

actually inflicted some defeats on the French Army, proving that they could be beaten, raising hopes
among potential resistance movements in Germany and in Austria
...
His
main goal was to try and impress Alexander I, also at Erfurt, with the power and grandeur of the
Napoleonic Empire
...

In April 1809, Austria rebelled against Napoleonic rule, announcing a "War of Liberation"
...
Fighting alone, renegade Austria was defeated at the Battle of Wagram
...
Napoleon took some of
northern Austria and added it to his new project, the creation of a Grand Duchy of Warsaw
...
However, the system ended up
hurting Napoleon more than it hurt Britain
...
Napoleon himself put tariffs on goods coming into
France, but didn't let anyone in his empire put tariffs on goods coming from France
...
Since land transport was so slow, Eastern Europe had major problems
getting goods from Western Europe
...
In the end, the Continental System damaged France,
but not Britain
...
Britain's Gross National Product (GNP, a measure of national wealth)
actually continued to increase every year under Napoleon's economic sanctions, although the
Continental System may have slowed down the rate of growth of Britain's economy
...
Because of Britain's dominance of the seas, Portugal knew that continuing
trade relations with its colonies depended on good relations with Britain
...
Before
1807, the situation in Spain was as follows
...
Godoy was
gaining power, and Ferdinand, the heir to the Spanish throne (known as the Infante), tried to get rid
of Godoy
...
Godoy released Ferdinand, the frightened Charles IV
abdicated the throne, and, on March 23, 1807, Murat entered Madrid, refusing to recognize
Ferdinand as king
...
Napoleon convinced Ferdinand to give the throne back to
his father, and convinced Charles to abdicate
...
Murat became the King of
Naples, Joseph's old kingdom, but remained personally insulted that Napoleon didn't give him the
Spanish crown
...
Talleyrand's action may be seen as traitorous to
Napoleon, and he was probably trying to play both sides, ensuring that he would have a safe place if
Napoleonic France where to fall
...

Fairly remarkably, Emperor Francis II did not collapse even after the Battle of Wagram, in which
Austria yet again met with embarrassing defeat
...
Still the loss at Wagram led to some change:
Clemens von Metternich took over Austrian foreign affairs
...
Although France had just beaten Austria, the new foreign minister of Austria pursued an
improved relationship with France, believing that Russia was Austria's true enemy over the long
run
...
Napoleon's Vast Empire (1809-1811):
Summary
Between 1809 and 1811, Napoleon's empire stood at its greatest extent
...
Hoping that a younger woman would conceive
more readily, he had his marriage to Josephine annulled and started looking for a suitably
aristocratic second wife
...
In
1811, the new empress gave birth to a son, Napoleon II, known as the "King of Rome"
...
It was
comprised of an enlarged France (which had swallowed Belgium and Holland, parts of Germany,
and the Italian coast all the way to Rome) and various puppet nations actually ruled by Napoleon or
by a Bonaparte subservient to Napoleon
...
Essentially all
of Europe was now "at war" with Britain, their resources and industry and populations being used to
serve the French Empire
...

Napoleon made good use of his large family, appointing his brothers and sisters as royalty
throughout Europe
...
For instance, when Napoleon had to transfer his brother Joseph
from Naples to rule over Spain, he made one of his leading generals, Murat, into the King of
Naples
...

Napoleon's takeovers all followed a similar script
...
Then,
Napoleon would impose his powerful influence on a collaborationist government made up of locals
friendly to France as they drafted a new constitution
...
From this position of power, Napoleon would encourage numerous reforms,
spreading the ideals of the revolution throughout Europe
...
Of course, Josephine was 46 by 1810, and
contrary to the public image of timeless love, both engaged in numerous affairs
...

Napoleon's decision to call this son the "King of Rome" greatly upset Pope Pius VII, though the
Pope stopped protesting after Napoleon had him brought to France to remain under French custody
...


With Napoleon now related to the king the Revolution overthrew, it seemed that France was moving
full circle
...
Within two decades of the French
Revolution directed against aristocracy, a new aristocracy was coming into existence
...
Each of the dependent states
existed under various regimes that gave a poor illusion of self-government
...

Though Czar Alexander I was very vocal that Napoleon should not recreate the old state of Poland,
Napoleon did it anyway, giving it a new name: The Grand Duchy of Warsaw
...

Though in France Napoleon had begun to grant nobility, his dominance of the European continent
continued to spread the liberal ideal of the French Revolution throughout Europe
...
Instead, he was a
"universalist", believing that the same universal truths and laws applied exactly the same,
everywhere
...
Although Napoleon brought conflict
wherever he went, he also spread the idea of societies in which everyone was equal before the law,
and where legal privileges for certain classes did not exist
...
It general, though, the Napoleonic Code was a dramatically
modernizing force, bringing about social reform from its effects on modernizing of the Prussian
bureaucracy into a meritocracy to its creation of the idea of the totally secular state
...

In addition to his social and political reforms, Napoleon also spread the more rational metric system
used in France after the Enlightenment, a major reason why it is used so widely there today
...

Bit by bit, Napoleon's armies carried parts of the French Revolution throughout Europe, provoking
a kind of "Revolution without revolution" on the continent
...
As attempts to take over Europe go, Napoleon's can be seen as a fairly positive event in
many ways
...
Neoclassical French artists like Jacques-Louis
David did their best to associate France with glories of Imperial Rome
...
From
1807-1811, other than the continued threat posed by Britain, Napoleon's dream of a unified Europe
appeared a distinct possibility
...
German Nationalism and Romanticism Under French Rule:

Summary
Though Napoleon's empire remained politically intact, however, strains began to show
...
People were becoming tired of seeing their nations used as pawns against the British
...

The main site of anti-Napoleonic nationalism was in the German states, some of which had been
absorbed by France, but most of which were in the Confederation of the Rhine
...
The years of French domination saw a remarkable flowering of thought and art in
Germany, with philosophers and artists such as Goethe, Schiller, Herder, Kant, Hegel, and
Beethoven rising to the fore
...
Romanticism challenged nearly every aspect of French Rationalism
...
The
Enlightenment idea of universal laws that applied to everyone came under attack
...
G
...
G
...
In
1800, Fichte proposed a "Closed Commercial State", advocating a centralized state that could
isolate itself from the world to develop its own volksgeist, a word describing a nations distinct sense
of self
...
Unlike Herder, Fichte claimed that the German spirit was better than that of
other nations, and for that reason, it needed to be carefully protected from being perverted by
contact with outside influences, such as the French influence
...

Commentary
Before the Napoleonic era, Germany had never had much of a national identity; it consisted only of
the loose grouping of states united only by a common language, vague cultural ties, and the weak
government of the Holy Roman Empire
...
Politically, the French Revolution demonstrated to the Germans the power of
nationalism to mobilize people
...
As seen in the reforms of Prussia, the
Germans followed suit
...
Many Germans emerged
from Napoleonic rule tired of the petty kingdoms and principalities that made up the Holy Roman
Empire, and they hoped for a unified state
...

The nationalism that developed in reaction to Napoleon usually took one of two tracks
...
On the other hand, there was also
a liberal nationalism
...
Amazingly, opposite
approaches, liberal and conservative, worked in tandem to oppose Napoleon's rule
...
G
...
In 1784, he

published Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind, in which he suggested that every
nation was different, and that every nation had its own particular specialty (of "genius")
...

Herder invoked the Volk (the people) as the root of the true national culture and special nature
(Volksgeist) which every nation should try to express
...
Herder's ideas were radically at odds with ideas of
Enlightenment philosophes like Voltaire who believed that all nations would follow similar paths of
progress from barbarity to civilization, though at different rates
...
Ideas such as what constituted "good" art or literature were challenged, because art
might not apply to everyone in the same way
...
The implication of this way of thinking is that the
concept that there were certain good universal laws, a cornerstone of the French Revolution, was
challenged in Germany
...
The years of Napoleonic rule were
also crucial years in the development of British manufacturing through the Industrial Revolution
...
Unemployment was high
...
Opposition to Napoleon unified Britain, and
may be one factor explaining why workers didn't revolt against the factory system in this still early,
fairly oppressive stage of the Industrial Revolution
...
The Italians, lacking a unified history and broken into several states
under Napoleon, never developed a strong anti-Napoleon nationalist movement
...
Even if it wasn't really independent, at least they had
a state, rather than being split up and controlled by Russia, Prussia, and Austria, which was what
would likely happen if Napoleon hadn't been supporting the Grand Duchy
...
Prussia in the Napoleonic Era:
Summary
During the 1700s, Prussia had been steadily increasing in power and prestige
...
During the Napoleonic period, however, Frederick
William III ruled Prussia, and was proving to be a fairly inept king
...
With these losses, Napoleon lopped off a considerable amount of Prussian
land, adding this territory to the Confederation of the Rhine and the Grand Duchy of Warsaw
...
For all its problems, at least Prussia had stood up to Napoleon instead of bowing and
scraping before as did the sycophant princes of the Confederation of the Rhine
...

After the disastrous defeats of 1806, Prussia undertook a program of army reform under Scharnhost
and Gneisenau
...

Other reformers, such as Baron Stein and Hardenberg, worked to modernize the Prussian state
...
In the Napoleonic era, his goal became

to release the potential dynamics of the Prussian people
...
Although Stein didn't quite abolish
serfdom, he did lessen the restriction of opportunity for the lower classes, paving the way for a
modern, free-market economy
...

Hardenberg basically filled the exiled Stein's shoes when he became the Prussian chancellor in
1810
...
He also started to move Frederick William III toward accepting a
constitutional monarchy, though he did not succeed in this task
...

As these reforms took place, the Prussian people became increasingly excited and unified
...
In June 1808, professors in Konigsberg started an anti-French, Prussian
nationalist movement called the "Moral and Scientific Union", or Tugenbund (League of Virtue)
...

Commentary
It is odd that Prussia would become such a focus of German nationalism
...
Further, after the defeats of 1806, Prussia stood in a sorry state, led by an
unexciting king
...
By 1815, the Prussian state, economy, and army were
once again powerful, and played a substantial role in bringing down Napoleon at Waterloo
...
Yet whereas the French made these changes from the "bottom up", in response to a
revolution by underprivileged classes, Prussia made similar changes, but from the "top down
...
Prussia's modernization of its military and
economy were pragmatically rather than philosophically based: Prussia wanted to keep up with the
French
...
Gneisenau had seen similar developments in France, and knew that the
French army derived much of its strength from a similar sense patriotic pride
...
The army, then, is a perfect
example of the fact that liberalization of Prussian institutions took place not for ideological reasons,
but out of a desire to beat France
...
The
reformer's intent may have been to prepare Prussia for battle, but the ultimate result was a
considerable amount of progressive change
...
Napoleon's Defeat (1810-1814):

Summary
On December 31, 1810, Czar Alexander I withdrew Russia from the Continental System, and began
trading openly with Britain
...
The Grand Army consisted of over 600,000 troops, and it was a great
threat as it waited, menacingly, on Russia's border
...
After playing a
waiting game, Napoleon moved his army into Russia in June 1812
...
In
September, at the Battle of Borodino, the Grand Army finally confronted the Russians, and won a
victory
...
As the French occupied the city, the Russian winter began to take hold unusually early
...
Lacking food and adequate shelter to face the winter,
Napoleon tried to negotiate with Alexander, who refused
...
Napoleon emerged from Russia with only a handful
of the soldiers he took in
...
He left his shattered army, and hurried back across
Europe to Paris
...

Napoleon's intuition was correct
...

Meanwhile, in June 1813, Wellington threatened France from his position in Spain
...
"
Napoleon lost
...
Talleyrand suggested Louis XVIII, a Bourbon, as the new king of France
...
Louis XVIII had the good sense not to try and
return France to the way it was before the Revolution
...

On May 30, 1814, Louis XVIII signed the Treaty of Paris, which constrained France to its 1792
boundaries
...

Commentary
Although his Continental System was a disastrous failure, by 1811, Napoleon was undoubtedly the
dominant force in Europe
...
French dominance inspired local nationalism in Germany and Spain, and
Napoleon's more established enemies bided their time
...
Furthermore, the exiled Prussian Baron Stein was now in Alexander's court,
whispering against Napoleon in Alexander's ear
...

The Russian handling of Napoleon's onslaught was very skillful
...
Instead of fighting, the Russian's scorched-earth policy, in
which they retreated and burned all the farms and other resources left behind, seriously hurt
Napoleon's army
...

The scorched-earth policy left the Grand Army little to feed itself
...

Interestingly, at the same time France was fighting with Russia, Britain became embroiled in war

with the US
...

Napoleon lifted the ban on US shipping, in exchange for a promise not to trade with Britain
...
The war ended in a standoff, effectively establishing
the United States' sovereignty in the Western Hemisphere, as eventually articulated in the 1823
Monroe doctrine
...
In fact, it is perhaps
because of the events in Europe that the British did not fully commit themselves to war against the
US, and the US was able to achieve the result it did
...
Alexander I wanted to put his own puppet king on the
throne and the British wanted a Bourbon back on the throne
...
Napoleon rejected the
offer
...

Metternich and Castlereagh immediately teamed up, secretly agreeing to prevent Russia from
becoming to strong
...

The Treaty of Paris, which restored France to its 1792 borders, was surprisingly mild
...
In terms of land power,
the Treaty was a great success, establishing such a balance that no war broke out in Europe for a
century
...


12
...
All the powers of Europe sent delegates to
decide the issue of the day: the reorganization of the chaotic Europe Napoleon's conquest had left
behind
...
The Netherlands and the Italian Kingdom of Piedmont were created to this end
...
In Naples, Murat actually kept his throne for a while
...

Restoring Germany to its previous status as the chaotic, fragmented Holy Roman Empire served no
one's purposes
...
However, no unified Germany would emerge
...

The future of Napoleon's Polish Grand Duchy of Warsaw remained the most problematic issue
...
The Prussians entered an agreement with Russia, under which Russia would
support Prussia's bid for Saxony and Prussia would support Russia's bid for Poland; in addition,
Prussia would hand over its share of Poland to Russian
...
To combat the Russian-Prussian alliance, on January 3,
1815, Metternich, Castlereagh, and Talleyrand signed a secret treaty agreeing to oppose the
Prussians and Russians
...
With Russia satisfied, Prussia lost its ally and only

was able to get a minor piece of Saxony
...
On March 1,
1815, Napoleon appeared in France, having escaped from exile in Elba
...
Louis XVIII quickly fled, and
Napoleon made a last-ditch effort at conquest in a period called the Hundred Days
...

The Hundred Days came to climax and conclusion at the Battle of Waterloo, where the British army
under Wellington was joined by a revitalized Prussian force under Blucher
...
A second Treaty of Paris was signed, and Napoleon was
exiled much farther away this time, to the island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic, were he lived
out the last six years of his life
...
Even Murat, who previously had
been left as king of Naples, was now deposed and the Bourbon monarchy restored
...
Czar
Alexander I, still looking for a collective security system that would prevent anyone from ever
building such a large European empire again, convinced most European nations to sign a Holy
Alliance
...

Commentary
The Congress of Vienna was one of the most important international summits of European history;
it determined the future boundaries of Europe, boundaries that still impact Europe today
...
Austria sent
Metternich, Britain sent Castlereagh, Russia sent Alexander I himself, Prussia sent Hardenberg, and
France sent Talleyrand
...
Prussia wanted to enlarge its territory
...
And Austria and Britain simply
wanted a balance of power that would maintain stability and the status quo in Europe
...
Their hope was to design a political landscape wherein
no one power could dominate
...
Europe had just spent two
decades dealing with the French menace, and already, the anti-French coalition was split up,
with Britain actually allying with France! Still, despite the efforts to minimize Russian and Prussian
encroachment in Central Europe, both countries did manage to extend their influence west through
the Congress of Vienna
...
All of the major powers agreed to
this, but only Britain actually did anything to stop the trade, setting up an anti-slaving naval
squadron
...
The Congress also stopped
potentially explosive issues from getting out of hand: the Poland issue could have led to war or
further hostility, but it was handled with extreme care by a group of very capable diplomats
...
True, there were some criticisms
...
Also, the
stability the Congress created helped keep reactionary regimes in power and may have slowed
social progress, and much of the years between 1815 and 1848 were animated by the interaction of

liberal and conservative ideals
...
It created enough
powers of similar strength and influence that none of them could go too far without being
overwhelmed by a coalition of the others
...
Furthermore, the Congress created so little hard feeling and dispute
that the whole of Europe did not all go to war at once for a century
...
In that sense, the Congress of Vienna was a
triumph of diplomacy
...
(2) France was the most populous nation in Europe at the time
...

Why did Napoleon sell the Louisiana Territory to the US in 1803
...
However, after putting down Toussaint
l'Ouverture insubordination in Haiti, Napoleon realized that conflict in the Americas could be a
huge resource drain
...

How did Napoleon influence European institutions?
On one hand, many Enlightenment and French Revolution ideas, such as legal equality for all
classes, were spread to his empire via the Napoleonic Code
...

In Prussia, reforms happened from the "top down" under Baron Stein and Hardenberg, rather than
bottom up as in a revolution by the masses
...
This
movement was called nationalism
...
Certain Romantics, especially Herder and Fichte,
tied their anti-Enlightenment ideas into German nationalism, proclaiming a unique German
volksgeist that was at the core of the German people and nation-to- be
...
The various anti-Napoleonic coalitions were constantly breaking up
...
Austria and Prussia were often more afraid of Russia than of
Napoleon
...
Czar Alexander I,
after opposing Napoleon, signed the Treaty of Tilsit and allied with him, only to turn against
Napoleon again in 1810
...

How did Czar Alexander I manage to destroy Napoleon's Grand Army?
In 1812, instead of fighting, Alexander's army simply retreated and retreated further back into
Russia
...
When the Grand Army
pursued Alexander's forces, it had nothing to eat (it lived off the land, being to large and far from
home for supply trains)
...
The majority of the 600,000-700,000 men in the
Grand Army died on this march
...
In
actuality, however, Britain managed to increase its industrial growth even without European trade,
while imposing a retaliatory blockade on Napoleon's Europe
...
People became discontent with Napoleon's rule
...

What motivated Czar Alexander I?
Czar Alexander I had several (often conflicting) motivations
...
Alexander envisioned himself as an "enlightened despot" as well, and considered the
"upstart" Napoleon to be stealing the show
...
In this (at the time) fairly original idea, Alexander hoped that the nations could all agree
to make sure that none of them ever got too powerful
...
(3)
Alexander had his opposition to Napoleon sweetened by 1
...
(4) Alexander wanted Poland, which Napoleon controlled under the name
of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw
...
Prussia would support Russia's bid
for Poland if Russia would support Prussia's bid for Saxony
...
Talleyrand, from defeated France, allied with Metternich and
Castlereagh in secret
...
With Alexander
satisfied, Prussia lost its ally in negotiations, and only was able to obtain a small area of Saxony
...
Talleyrand's
participation in resolving this crisis shows the power France had in the Congress of Vienna despite
being the defeated power
...
France didn't lose very much; it just returned to the way it had been in 1792
...
However, if there was one
winner, it was Britain
...
It had an even greater industrial base than it had before the wars
...




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