Enlightenment 5

1. Napoleon became a lieutenant in the French artillery in 1785 and rose rapidly in the revolutionary army. After becoming commander, he won victories in Italy in 1796 and 1797. His campaign in Egypt was a disaster, but he arrived back in France before it was known about, leaving his reputation unharmed. Because people became wary of political turmoil, they favored a firm ruler. On November 9, 1799, Napoleon, with the help of legislative conspirators, kicked out the Directory, and the next day, soldiers broke up the legislature. Napole-on was named the first consul of the republic and in December 1799, the new constitution affirmed his posi-tion.

2. Napoleon issued the Civil Code of 1804 for the middle class to ensure equality of all male citizens under the law and security of wealth and private property. With the leading bankers of Paris, Napoleon established the privately owned Bank of France the served the interests of the state and financial oligarchy and helped the peasants. He centralized the sate by making a network of prefects, subprefects, and appointed mayors that served him. In 1800 and 1802, he pardoned 100,000 émigrés in return for a loyalty oath. He created an im-perial nobility to reward his most talented generals and officials. Napoleon and Pope Pius VII signed the Con-cordat of 1801 that allowed for French Catholics to practice their religion freely in return for Napoleon to have the ability to appoint bishops, pay the clergy, and exert greater influence over the church. Many of his legal and administrative laws remain to this day. His domestic laws gave France order, stability, and, with military victories, nationalism.

3. The Napoleonic Code made women dependents of their fathers or their husbands and forbid them from mak-ing contracts or having bank accounts in their names. Women lost many of the gains they had made in the 1790s. Freedom of speech and the press were violated, elections were limited and jokes, and harsh penalties were made for political offenses. Joseph Fouché, a prominent man during the Reign of Terror, was in com-mon of the new police state and he developed a spy system that kept many citizens under continual watch. People suspected of anti-Napoleon activities were arrested, placed under house arrest, or put in asylums. Po-litical suspects were then held in state prisons. The new government was not as equitable as the pre-Revolutionary government. Louis XVI allowed for freedom of speech and the press and women had more rights then.

4. In 1799, Napoleon sent peace feelers to Austria and Great Britain; when they were rejected, French armies defeated the Austrians, causing them to accept the Treaty of Lunéville in 1801 that caused Austria to lose al-most all of its Italian possessions, and German territory on the west banks of the Rhine to France. He forged the Treaty of Amiens with Great Britain in 1802 that allowed him to remain in control of Holland, the Austrian Netherlands, the west bank of the Rhine, and most of the Italian peninsula, with the ability to reshape the German states. Napoleon threatened British interests in the eastern Mediterranean and attempted to restrict British trade with all of Europe, leading to war in May 1803. Hoping to invade England, Napoleon sent his Me-diterranean fleet to northern France, but was defeated by Lord Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar on October 21, 1805. Austria, Russia, and Sweden joined Britain to form the Third Coalition due to Napoleon’s assumption of the Italian crown. However, the Austrians and Russians were defeated at the Battle of Austerlitz in De-cember 1805, with Russian retreating and Austria accepting large territorial losses in return for peace.

5. In 1806, Napoleon abolished many of the small German states and the Holy Roman Empire. He established the German Confederation of the Rhine, a union of fifteen German states without Austria, Prussia, and Saxo-ny, and made himself protector of the confederation. Napoleon’s Grand Empire had three parts. The core and first part was France, which by 1810 included Belgium, Holland, parts of northern Italy, and German territory on the east bank of the Rhine. The second part contained a number of dependent satellite kingdoms, of which he appointed members of his family to rule. The third part was the independent but allied states of Austria, Prussia, and Russia.

6. Napoleon introduced many French laws that abolished feudal dues and serfdom where the armies had not done so already. Some peasants and the middle class benefited from these reforms, but Napoleon also im-plemented heavy taxes in money and men for his armies to maintain France prosperity. In 1808, a Spanish group of Catholics, monarchists, and patriots rebelled against Napoleon’s attempts to make Spain a French satellite. French armies occupied Madrid, but the rebels fought endless guerrilla warfare. In 1810, Britain was still helping the guerrillas in Spain and Portugal, so Napoleon established the continental system that banned British goods from the continent. Britain made a counter-blockade, and Alexander I of Russia openly opposed the system, causing Napoleon to invade Russia.

7. In June 1812, with 600,000 men of which only one-third were French, Napoleon invaded Russia. He forwent his plans to winter in Smolensk and decided to push for Moscow. The Battle of Borodino was a draw and the Russians retreated. Moscow was evacuated and then burned, and Alexander refused to negotiate with Na-poleon. After spending five weeks in Moscow, Napoleon retreated, leaving 370,000 dead and 200,000 cap-tured when he reached Poland in December because of the Russian army, the Russian winter, and starvation. Napoleon raced back to Paris to make an army, but abdicated his throne on April 4, 1814, after Austria, Prus-sia, Russia, and Great Britain created the Fourth Coalition and the Quadruple Alliance with the Treaty of Chaumont. The Alliance was to last for twenty years, give Napoleon the island of Elba as his state, restore the Bourbon dynasty with a constitutional monarchy, and treat the French leniently until Napoleon came back, in which the allies treated France harshly.

8. Olympe de Gouges argued that sexism had no basis and instead was non-enlightened, and that the belief that men were superior by strength and talents was wrong. She believed in natural law because men only sup-press women because they want power. “Scorn for the rights of woman” have created public misfortunes and corruption of governments. De Gouges stressed political rights at the expense of social and economic rights so that women could have complete control over their lives and then change it according to them.


1. Civil Code of 1804—a law providing for equality of all male citizens before the law and absolute security of wealth and private property.

2. The Continental System—Napoleon’s failed plan to exclude British goods from the continent. Alexander I of Russia openly criticized it, causing Napoleon to invade Russia and consequently begin to lose control over Eu-rope.

3. The Confederacy of the Rhine—Napoleon’s union of fifteen German states without Austria, Prussia, and Sax-ony.

4. Concordat of 1801—a treaty between Napoleon and Pope Pius VII that allowed for French Catholics the right to practice their religion in return for Napoleon to appoint bishops, pay the clergy, and have greater influence over the church in France.

5. Klemens von Metternich— Austria’s foreign minister who proposed that Napoleon would be able to save his throne if he accepted France’s historical size.