Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna: Revolution Exported and Restrained

From soldier to emperor

Napoleon Bonaparte was born in Corsica in 1769. The Revolution opened army careers to talent, and he rose fast. His victories in Italy (1796–1797) made him a hero. In 1798 he invaded Egypt, then part of the Ottoman Empire, hoping to threaten Britain's route to India. The British navy destroyed his fleet, and the campaign failed militarily. It had other effects: scholars he brought studied ancient Egypt, and French soldiers found the Rosetta Stone in 1799. In Egypt, the invasion weakened Ottoman control and opened the way for the reformer Muhammad Ali (you will meet him in the lesson on reform from within).

Back in France, the Directory was weak. In November 1799 (the month of Brumaire), Napoleon took part in a coup and became First Consul. Voters approved each step in plebiscites, but the votes were managed and the press was censored. In 1804 he crowned himself Emperor of the French.

How Napoleon governed France

Napoleon promised order after ten years of upheaval. He kept some gains of the Revolution and dropped others.

• The Civil Code (1804). One clear set of laws for all of France. Men were equal before the law, feudal privileges stayed abolished, and property rights were protected. But the Code put wives under the authority of husbands and children under fathers; women lost ground compared with the early 1790s.
• The Concordat (1801). An agreement with the Pope that restored the Catholic Church's public role, while the state kept control of church land sold during the Revolution and allowed freedom of worship for Protestants and Jews.
• Careers open to talent. Government jobs and army ranks went to people of ability, not only nobles. New state secondary schools (lycées) trained officials.
• A strong central state. Prefects appointed from Paris ran each department. A national bank, the Bank of France, was founded in 1800.
• No political freedom. Newspapers were censored, opponents were watched by police, and elections did not decide anything.
• Slavery restored. In 1802 Napoleon restored slavery in French colonies where it had not been ended in practice, and sent an army to retake Saint-Domingue (see the Haitian Revolution lesson).

Revolution by conquest

From 1805 to 1812 Napoleon dominated continental Europe. He defeated Austria and Russia at Austerlitz (1805), and ended the Holy Roman Empire in 1806. But Britain's navy destroyed the French and Spanish fleets at Trafalgar (1805), so Napoleon could not invade Britain. He tried instead to strangle British trade with the Continental System.

In conquered lands, Napoleon's officials often abolished feudal dues, introduced the Civil Code and gave Jews equal legal rights. Many reformers welcomed these changes. But occupied peoples also paid heavy taxes and sent young men to fight in French wars. Foreign rule stirred nationalism: a feeling that Germans, Spaniards or Italians should govern themselves.

• Spain (from 1808). Napoleon replaced the Spanish king with his brother Joseph. Spaniards rose up in a long guerrilla war (the word means "little war" in Spanish). The painter Francisco Goya later showed French soldiers executing Spanish civilians in The Third of May 1808.
• The Americas. With the Spanish king removed, colonists in Spanish America formed their own governing councils. That started the road to Latin American independence (next lesson). The Portuguese royal family fled to Brazil in 1807–1808, making Rio de Janeiro the capital of the Portuguese empire.
• Russia (1812). Napoleon invaded Russia with one of the largest armies Europe had ever seen. The Russians retreated and burned supplies. Winter, hunger and disease destroyed most of his army during the retreat from Moscow.

Defeat and the Congress of Vienna

A coalition of Britain, Russia, Prussia and Austria defeated Napoleon at Leipzig (1813). He abdicated in 1814 and was exiled to the island of Elba. In 1815 he escaped and returned for the "Hundred Days", but was finally defeated at Waterloo (June 1815) by British-led and Prussian armies. He died in exile on Saint Helena, in the South Atlantic, in 1821.

Meanwhile the victors met at the Congress of Vienna (1814–1815), led by the Austrian minister Klemens von Metternich. Their goals:

1. Legitimacy: restore "legitimate" monarchs, such as the Bourbon king in France.
2. Balance of power: no single state should dominate Europe again. France was surrounded by stronger buffer states (for example, a united Netherlands, and Prussia on the Rhine).
3. Compensation: the great powers rewarded themselves with territory.
4. Stopping revolution: the Concert of Europe, a system of regular meetings among the great powers, aimed to keep the peace and suppress liberal and nationalist revolts.

The Congress also issued a declaration condemning the Atlantic slave trade, but set no date for ending it.

The Vienna settlement prevented a general European war for about a century, until 1914. But it ignored the nationalism and liberalism that the Revolution and Napoleon had spread. Those forces exploded in 1830 and 1848 and in the unification of Italy and Germany.