Page 31 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol IV

1332 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

I hold the immortality of the soul to be the remembrance which we leave
behind in the minds of men. • Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821)

standardized political system; the old orders were swept the cadastre, although indirect taxes became very high
away in every area the French took under their definitive under Napoleon. The prefects proved able and honest
control.Taken together, the areas under Napoleonic hege- local administrators, all of which left a deep, favorable
mony before 1805 became an “inner empire,” the true impression on the elites of western Europe, even among
core of Napoleonic power. Here, French public institu- those politically opposed to Napoleon.
tions and legal and administrative practices were readily However, democratic politics formed no part of
assimilated, at least by the local elites, and usually en- Napoleonic rule.The western European experience of the
dured after Napoleon’s military eclipse and fall in 1814– new Napoleonic state did not include meaningful repre-
1815. This was crucial for the future development of sentative, parliamentary government.Also, as the core of
Europe, because the embedding of the Civil Code and the Napoleonic empire took shape, that core was not
the centralized state laid the legal and institutional foun- wholly French. Many non-French areas, particularly the
dations of many western European states. allied German states, the Rhineland, the Low Countries,
These reforms were aimed primarily at increasing state and northern Italy, absorbed French institutions and
power, and that new power was enforced by the creation proved better sources of taxes, conscripts, and adminis-
of the gendarmerie, a paramilitary police force mainly trators than western or southern France, where resent-
devoted to patrolling the countryside. Particularly after ment of the revolutionary reforms of the 1790s persisted.
1805, when large-scale war erupted again in Europe, this When the empire expanded through war from 1805
new force was used primarily to impose mass conscrip- onward, these areas came to form an “inner empire”
tion and heavy taxation on peasantries for whom central around the new territories to the east and south.
authority had been a mere shadow before Napoleonic By 1805, the Napoleonic empire had emerged as a
rule. Even in the more stable period of peace, 1800– direct challenge to other European empires in several
1805, the arrival of the new state came as a traumatic senses. Its territorial expanse and the material and
shock. Much of southern and western France remained human resources it controlled made it an obvious mili-
under virtual martial law in these years; northern and tary threat and a regional power of the first order, at least
central Italy saw widespread, if localized, peasant revolts; in western and central Europe. At a more structural
very traditional forms of local justice and government, level, its compact territorial nature and, above all, its cen-
based on arbitration, were expunged from rural parts of tralized, uniform administrative system marked it out as
the Rhineland for example. Independently, the German very different from the looser, more arbitrational imperial
princes met similar opposition within their own borders. model of the Holy Roman Empire and of the Hapsburg
Some aspects of Napoleonic rule, such as the religious monarchy. On one level, Napoleon now chose to imitate
settlement or the ruthless imposition of conscription, his rivals; on another, they chose to imitate him. In
were never really accepted outside France, or over much December 1804, Napoleon crowned himself “Emperor
of the south and west of France itself. of the French,” and according to the new constitutional
Nevertheless, the propertied classes, which also in- formula, “the French Republic was entrusted to a hered-
cluded much of the peasantry, benefited from the higher itary dynasty” (quoted from the coronation oath). In line
levels of law and order brought to the countryside by the with this, the Italian and Batavian Republics became
gendarmerie, particularly the extirpation of brigandage. kingdoms, the former under Napoleon but effectively
Justice became quicker and cheaper to obtain under the ruled by his stepson, Eugène de Beauharnais, the latter
Code than in the past, and was administered by an hon- under his brother, Louis. However, the real changes in
est, professional magistracy.The fair and equitable repa- the European order came in the years immediately follow-
ration and administration of property taxes was largely ing the creation of the empire. Fearing that the change of
achieved by the compilation of accurate land registers, title heralded an attempt by Napoleon to become Holy