History
First French Empire
The First French Empire was established by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1804 and lasted until 1814. It was characterized by extensive military conquests, administrative centralization, and the spread of revolutionary ideals. The empire's influence extended across much of continental Europe, and it significantly shaped the political landscape of the time.
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12 Key excerpts on "First French Empire"
eBook - ePub- Darcie Fontaine(Author)
- 2023(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
3 The Napoleonic EmpireDOI: 10.4324/b23310-3Introduction
Few individual figures in French history have made as much of an impression on Europe and the wider world as Napoleon Bonaparte. The second son of a minor Corsican nobleman, Napoleon rose through the ranks of the army to eventually crown himself emperor of France and conquer most of Europe. He symbolizes both the greatest accomplishments of the French Revolution and the very dictatorial, monarchical behaviors the revolution sought to overturn. While Bonaparte’s military exploits on the European continent typically take center stage in any history of the Napoleonic era, his campaigns outside of Europe and his political reforms had important global impacts. Amidst growing conf licts with Britain and the loss of colonial wealth due to the revolution in Saint-Domingue, Napoleon played a leading role in the calamitous French invasion of Egypt in 1798. After coming to power, he sent French troops to Saint-Domingue to recapture the island and reinstate slavery; when that campaign failed and the revolutionaries declared the independence of Haiti (formerly Saint-Domingue), Napoleon sold off French territories in North America to U.S. president Thomas Jefferson.His visions of empire did not end with defeats overseas, however. Napoleon’s greatest conquests were within Europe itself. The Napoleonic Wars are often described by historians as the first instance of total war—they directly affected the lives of not just the soldiers on the battlefield but the men, women, and children at home and in the French occupation and war zones. The French occupation of central Europe and Italy as well as the messy Peninsular War in Spain and Portugal had long-lasting consequences for the politics, culture, and populations of those regions, including their own overseas empires. The imposition of harsh occupation taxes and conscription quotas as well as the rampant French pillaging of cultural heritage left diverse groups of people across Europe with long-standing grievances that blossomed into nationalist movements through the nineteenth century.
eBook - ePub- Alexander Grab(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Bloomsbury Academic(Publisher)
The Napoleonic Empire, which constituted the most remarkable French hegemony in Europe, reached the height of its territorial expansion at the end of 1810. Napoleon’s victories cannot be explained, however, solely by his ambitions and military and diplomatic talents. As Martyn Lyons points out, “They reflected the powerful energies released by the French Revolution, and they were made possible by France’s superior resources, both of manpower and agricultural wealth.” 2 He inherited from the Revolution a conscription system that he improved and that was instrumental in building the Grande Armée, his principal tool for gaining control over a good part of Europe. The territories that comprised the Napoleonic “Grand Empire” were divided into three groups: pays réunis (annexed lands), pays conquis (conquered countries), and pays alliés (allied countries). 3 The first group consisted of territories that were annexed to France and were directly ruled by Napoleon. Those lands constituted the “formal French Empire.” The second category included satellite states that were entrusted to French rulers. Finally, the pays alliés constituted allied countries whose territory was expanded by Napoleon in some cases, and which continued to be governed by their native rulers
eBook - ePubTransnational France
The Modern History of a Universal Nation
- Tyler Stovall(Author)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
Napoleon III Frees Abd-el-Kadir , 1852. Source: The History Collection / Alamy Stock PhotoFrance’s relationship to the wider world preoccupied the Second Empire, as it did the first, but with significant differences. Bonapartism retained its paradoxical heritage of support for liberty abroad and commitments to preserve the status quo, and the contradictions between the two positions loomed even larger than they had half a century earlier. Increasingly, France under Napoleon III loomed as an obstacle to the new forces of national unification shaking central and southern Europe. At the same time, the Second Empire, much more so than the First, extended the search for imperial glory well beyond the borders of Europe. Both with his successful ventures in Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific, and with his disastrous Mexican campaign, Napoleon III redefined the meaning of empire to focus on overseas expansion. Finally, France’s long rivalry with Germany essentially began under the Second Empire, as the French emperor faced the brilliant Prussian chancellor Otto von Bismarck, bent on making a united Germany dominant in Europe. Unlike the Restoration and July monarchies, the Second Empire collapsed as a result of foreign military defeat, a theme that would resurface more than once during the twentieth century.During the reign of Napoleon III the French became more conscious of their identity as a nation, a process that would continue and accelerate under the Third Republic to follow. This process owed much to the economic advances of the era, notably the rise of a national market facilitated by transportation and communications improvements. The growth of mass-based nationalism abroad also contributed to this new sense of identity; increasingly surrounded by other unified nations, France could not but become more conscious of its own national character. The regime’s end with the signing of German unification at Versailles, on French territory, dramatically underscored the links between French and foreign nationalisms. The idea of French republicanism as a universal value did not disappear, but was instead complemented by a growing sense of French distinction. Both the decline of provincial economic and cultural autonomy, and increased national awareness elsewhere in Europe, fostered a new sense of the singularity of France. Yet, paradoxically, this awareness rested more than ever before on the heritage of the French Revolution, so that modern views of French identity both challenged and reinforced the idea of France as a universal nation.
eBook - ePub- Michael J. LaMonica, Tom Motley(Authors)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- For Beginners(Publisher)
XIII
NAPOLEON'S TRIUMPH: THE First French Empire
n 1803, the tenuous peace between England and France finally broke down. Neither side signed the Treaty of Amiens in good faith and both sought to circumvent its terms whenever possible; never a recipe for success. England irked Napoleon by refusing to remove her troops from Malta and Egypt as agreed. The British, for their part, complained that Napoleon's invasion of Haiti, sale of France's Louisiana territory to the United States, and continued interventions in both Switzerland and Italy were needlessly belligerent. In May, Britain sent Napoleon an ultimatum to stop at once. When he refused as expected, Britain declared war.For a good long while, the war was fairly boring. Napoleon assembled an army at Boulogne on the Channel coast and trained them for the anticipated invasion of England. As the troops waited, he continued to build up his fleet and even seriously considered an aerial assault of the island via hot air balloon. The British relied on their well-worn anti-Napoleonic strategy – maintain mastery of the seas and use their huge wallet to bankroll France's enemies. In the meantime, another momentous event happened on the home front that would permanently alter the course of the Revolution. The First French Republic was about to transform into the First French Empire.In 1804, French police uncovered an elaborate international plot to overthrow Napoleon's government and put the Duke d'Enghien, a minor Bourbon price, on the throne. Financed by the British once again, what made the plot so terrifying to Napoleon was that two of his generals, Moreau and Pichegru, were in on the conspiracy. While there was little evidence connecting the Duke directly to the plot, Napoleon could take no chances. Even though he was residing in a tiny principality on the German side of the Rhine, Napoleon had the Duke arrested, tried, and executed along with the rest of the conspirators. This caused an international uproar and indirectly served Britain's war aims by driving previously neutral powers away from the French. Paradoxically, it also gave Napoleon the justification he needed to make his office hereditary.
- Christina B. Carroll(Author)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- Cornell University Press(Publisher)
The term could also invoke the memory of the monarchy’s expansion into North America or the Bonapartist expansion across the continent—as well as the specter of German unification or British overseas conquest. 5 The nature of the empire’s relationship to republicanism, Bonapartism, French national identity, and colonial expansion was thus both shifting and fraught. The multiple valences of empire during this period, moreover, had both political and intellectual consequences: they played an important role in shaping the ways that intellectuals, writers, and politicians articulated their ideas about France’s political organization, its national identity, and its colonial ambitions. The memory of both Napoleonic empires lay at the center of these tangled understandings of “empire” in the early Third Republic. The vividness of these memories owed much to Napoleon III, who, throughout his reign, sought to provide substance to his imperial regime by associating himself with his uncle and by popularizing sometimes contradictory “theories of empire.” In the early years of his rule, Napoleon III usually described empire as an internal form of political organization that drew on the legacy of the French Revolution but tempered that legacy with “order” and “security.” 6 He thus treated “the French Empire” as functionally equivalent to “the French nation.” But in the 1860s Napoleon III began to focus more on France’s overseas territories. He extended France’s investment in Indochina, tried to expand France’s foothold in North America by creating an allied “Latin” empire in Mexico, and sought to reimagine Algeria as a royaume arabe, or Arab kingdom. In Mexico and in Algeria especially, Napoleon III paired this renewed overseas investment with a more comprehensive vision of empire
eBook - ePub- Baur, Hodgson(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Cascade Books(Publisher)
Part OneFrom the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century to 1815
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1
Introduction
Survey of Political Events
The beginning of Part One takes us back to the turbulent times during which the French Revolution completed its course. Since from its beginning it was a world-shattering event, it was the center of gravity of all political movements of the European states. The torrent, which had powerfully and perilously swollen the stream of revolutionary sentiment, had begun to recede, and more fixed points in the newly forming order of things already had begun to emerge amid the widespread destruction and confusion of the previously existing order. By the first days of the new century, a man stood at the pinnacle of power in France. This was a man who managed to forge the chaotically confused elements in France together and to amplify the power delivered into his hands from the revolution, which he would use to determine the fate of Europe for years to come. After he became the First Consul of the French Republic, in 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) demonstrated the great organizing talent that set him apart. Because of him France became a newly organized state, rejuvenated with powers nourished by the revolution. Thus he now exerted the greatest influence on the whole of a Europe crumbling as the result of the revolution, and he effected the most important changes in political affairs and all related matters. The entire period of Napoleonic domination involves a series of events that, to an ever greater extent, caused everything to be torn loose from its old footings and the foundations of a new structure to be laid on the wreckage of the old.
eBook - ePub- William Simpson, Martin Jones(Authors)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
The Second Empire in France, 1851–70Contents
Key dates SECTION A Louis Napoleon Bonaparte and power The flourishing of the Second Empire: the 1850s Failure or fulfilment: 1860–70 SECTION B - TOPICS FOR DEBATE Liberal at home and abroad?KEY DATES1840 Louis Napoleon imprisoned after Boulogne coup fails 1851 1–2 Dec. Louis Napoleon‘s coup sets up ten-year presidency 1852 Jan. Constitution of what became the Second Empire Oct. Napoleon at Bordeaux says ’the Empire is peace’ Dec. Second Empire proclaimed under Napoleon III Press law requires financial deposits from newspapers; Crédit Mobilier founded 1853 Napoleon marries Eugénie, Countess de Montijo 1854 March Crimean war begins; France and Britain ally with Ottoman Empire against Russia 1856 March Treaty of Paris ends Crimean war 1858 Jan. Orsini’s attempt to assassinate Napoleon III July Meeting at Plombieres between Napoleon III and Cavour of Piedmont 1859 June France and Piedmont defeat Austria at battles of Magenta and Solferino 
Available until 11 Jul |Learn more- John R. Barber(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- Collins Reference(Publisher)
CHAPTER 4The French Revolution and Napoleonic Empire (1789-1815)May 1789: Louis XVI convenes the French Estates General. July 1789: The Bastille falls to French rebels. August 1789: French revolutionaries proclaim the Declaration of the Rights of Man. January 1793: Louis XVI is executed in Paris. October 1793-July 1794: The Reign of Terror takes place in France. December 1799: Napoleon becomes dictator of France. October 1805: Britain controls the seas after victory over France at Trafalgar. July 1807: The Treaties of Tilsit mark Napoleon’s triumph on the Continent. June 1812: Napoleon begins the invasion of Russia; ends in defeat in December. March 1814: Napoleon abdicates after his loss to a monarchical coalition. March 1815: Napoleon escapes from exile and resumes war. June 1815: Napoleon suffers his final defeat at Waterloo. Europe became economically and intellectually modern as the changes engendered by the industrial revolution and the Enlightenment spread over the region in the 1700s and after. New political currents joined those that brought industry into European civilization. As these political, economic, and intellectual forces converged in the 1780s, an even more tumultuous transformation began to sweep across the continent.In France, these movements brought about a modernizing political revolution that burst to the surface in 1789. Within that nation, rebels quickly completed the destruction of the old social structure and governing system. The revolution soon spread into other European states. For twenty-five years, the violence of rebellion and revolutionary wars accompanied the birth of a more fully modern European political system.THE ORIGINS OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTIONFrom the latter Middle Ages onward, economic modernization caused the bourgeoisie to grow increasingly rich and ambitious without equivalent gains in political influence or social privilege. This dynamic segment of society thus felt more and more hostile toward the Ancien Regime.
- Alan Forrest, Matthias Middell, Alan Forrest, Matthias Middell(Authors)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
The legacy of the French Revolution Annie Jourdan DOI: 10.4324/9781315686011-11En épousant une archiduchesse, j’ai voulu unir le présent et le passé; les préjugés gothiques et les institutions de notre siècle.1The legacy of the French Revolution during the First Empire is a well-known issue in Napoleonic history. But until now no consensus has been reached.2 Some still deny that Napoleon was the heir of the Revolution – at least from 1804 onward – while others distinguish important continuities in his judicial, cultural and political institutions or in his foreign, religious, economic or social policies. Is the problem badly formulated? Can we resolve the question of Napoleon’s relationship to the revolutionary legacy by approaching it differently? We have not only to ask what can be considered revolutionary and what cannot, but also to distinguish the internal French situation from Napoleon’s policy in Europe.3 Indeed, the history of the Napoleonic Empire is inseparable from the French Revolution in global perspective. The conquest of Italy and part of Germany was achieved during the Directory and was at the very root of Bonaparte’s popularity and power. From 1802 onwards Napoleon was also implicitly active in the Caribbean and in Louisiana and later still (but indirectly) in South America and in Java.4
eBook - ePub- Jeremy D. Popkin(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
Although military defeat was now certain, it was not clear that the Napoleonic regime would also fall. Royalist conspirators’ efforts to set off demonstrations in favor of a Bourbon restoration enjoyed only limited success, and the victorious allies wanted to be sure that France had a stable government that would not be totally dependent on them for support. The Napoleonic regime’s fate was sealed by Napoleon’s own top officials, led by his foreign minister, Talleyrand. Determined to keep their own positions, they prepared to reinstate the Bourbons, but on their own terms. Louis XVI’s long-exiled brother would be put on the throne, but he would have to accept a written constitution limiting his power and maintaining the principal features of the “Napoleonic settlement.” Those who had obtained high governmental positions under Napoleon would keep them, and purchasers of church and émigré property would not be disturbed. Talleyrand, who had served every successive French government since the Old Regime, and the much-feared police minister Fouché retained their offices.Napoleon, betrayed by his own ministers and warned by his generals that the army would not continue the fight, abdicated his throne on April 6, 1814. The victorious allies allowed him to retire as ruler of the island of Elba off the coast of Italy. His departure brought to an end an extraordinary 25 years of French history. In one respect, 1814 really did mark the end of an era. For nearly two centuries, France had threatened to dominate the European continent through its military might. The revolutionary and Napoleonic armies had come closer than any of their predecessors to conquering all of Europe. But Napoleon’s defeat ended the possibility that France might achieve lasting control over its neighbors.In domestic affairs, however, Napoleon’s fall left more uncertainties than answers. Would the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy mean a full-fledged restoration of the Old Regime, with its privileged classes and its state-imposed religion? If not, which aspects of the revolutionary and Napoleonic periods would be incorporated into the new system?Note1 Cited in Patrick Boucheron, ed., Histoire Mondiale de la France
eBook - ePub- James Robinson, Charles Beard(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Jovian Press(Publisher)
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
~ BONAPARTE’S FIRST ITALIAN CAMPAIGNThe French army had undergone a complete transformation during the Revolution. The rules of the ancien régime had required all officers to be nobles, and many of these had left France after the fall of the Bastille. Others, like Lafayette and Dumouriez, who had at first favored the Revolution, deserted soon after the opening of the war. Still others, like Custine and Beauharnais (the Empress Josephine’s first husband), were executed because the “deputies on mission” believed that they were responsible for the defeats that the armies of the French republic had suffered.The former rigid discipline disappeared, and the hundreds of thousands of volunteers who pressed forward to defend and extend the boundaries of the Republic found new leaders, who rose from the ranks, and who hit upon novel and quite unconventional ways of beating the enemy. Any one might now become a general if he could prove his ability to lead troops to victory. Moreau was a lawyer from Brittany, Murat had been a waiter, Jourdan before the Revolution had been selling cloth in Limoges. In short, the army, like the State, had become democratic.Among the commanders who by means of their talents rose to take the places of the “aristocrats” was one who was to dominate the history of Europe as no man before him had ever done. For fifteen years his biography and the political history of Europe are so nearly synonymous that the period we are now entering upon may properly be called after him, the Napoleonic Period.Napoleon Bonaparte was hardly a Frenchman by birth. It is true that the island of Corsica where he was born, August 15, 1769, had at that time belonged to France for a year, but Napoleon’s native language was Italian, and he was descended from Italian ancestors who had come to the island in the sixteenth century. His father, Carlo Buonaparte, although he claimed to be of noble extraction, busied himself with the profession of the law in the town of Ajaccio where Napoleon was probably born. He was poor and found it hard to support his eight boys and girls, all of whom were one day to become kings and queens, or at worst, princes and princesses. Accordingly he took his two elder sons, Joseph and Napoleon, to France, where Joseph was to be educated for the priesthood and Napoleon, who was but ten years old, after learning a little French was to prepare for the army in the military academy at Brienne.
eBook - ePub- Carlton Hayes(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Jovian Press(Publisher)
To describe in any detail the brilliant campaign of 1814 lies outside our province. Suffice it to state that, after the most stubborn fighting, resistance was broken. Paris surrendered to the allies on 31 March, and thirteen days later Napoleon signed with the allied sovereigns the personal treaty of Fontainebleau, by which he abdicated his throne and renounced all rights to France for himself and his family, and, in return, was guaranteed full sovereignty of the island of Elba and an annual pension of two million francs for himself; the Italian duchy of Parma was conferred upon the Empress Maria Louisa, and pensions of two and a half million francs were promised for members of his family. Another seven days and Napoleon bade his Old Guard an affecting farewell and departed for Elba. In his diminutive island empire, hard by the shore of Tuscany and within sight of his native Corsica, Napoleon Bonaparte lived ten months, introducing such vigor into the administration as the island had never experienced and all the while pondering many things.Meanwhile, in France order was emerging from chaos. In 1793 European sovereigns had banded together to invade France, to restore the divine- right monarchy of the Bourbons and the traditional rights of the privileged classes, and to stamp out the embryonic principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity. The most noteworthy significance of the Era of Napoleon was the simple fact that now in 1814 the monarchs of Europe, at last in possession of France, had no serious thought of restoring social or political conditions just as they had been prior to the Revolution. Their major quarrel was not with principles but with a man. The Tsar Alexander, to whom more than to any other one person, was due the triumph of the allies, was a benevolent prince, well-versed in the revolutionary philosophy, considerate of popular wishes, and anxious to promote a lasting peace. Talleyrand, the man of the hour among Frenchmen, who himself had played no mean rôle throughout the Revolution and under Napoleon, combined with a desire to preserve the frontiers of his country a firm conviction that the bulk of his countrymen would not revert to absolute monarchy. Between Talleyrand and Alexander it was arranged, with the approval of the Great Powers, that in the name of “legitimacy” the Bourbons should be restored to the throne of France, but with the understanding that they should fully recognize and confirm the chief social and political reforms of the Revolution. It was likewise arranged by the treaty of Paris (30 May, 1814), also in the name of “legitimacy,” that France should regain the limits of 1792, should recover practically all the colonies which Great Britain had seized during the course of the Napoleonic wars, [Great Britain kept Tobago and St. Lucia in the West Indies, and Mauritius (Île de France) on the route to India.] and should pay no indemnity. “Legitimacy” was a brilliant discovery of Talleyrand: it justified the preservation of France in the face of crushing defeat, and, if it restored the Bourbons, it did so as limited, not as absolute, monarchs.
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