Download Napoleon Bonaparte: A Divisive Historical Figure

Napoleon Bonaparte: A Divisive Historical Figure
by Charles J. Esdaile
Ruler of France from 1799 till 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte is a figure who continues to this day to divide the historical community.
Indeed, to make use of the title of the book written by the leading Dutch historian, Pieter Geyl, it is very much a question of
"Napoleon, for or against." On the one side are those who see the emperor, if not as a great hero, then at least as a great
reformer who was instrumental in dragging Europe into the modern world and supported many of the values of the French
Revolution. On the other hand, are those who regard the emperor as a greedy warlord concerned only for his own glory and
who brought with him nothing but blood and destruction.
Unfortunately for those who persist in admiring Napoleon, amongst academic historians an increasingly critical line has come to
dominate discussion of the emperor. There is general agreement that he was no Hitler or Stalin: he neither engaged in genocide
or mass murder nor set up concentration camps for his opponents. Equally, he enjoys wide recognition as a statesman who
greatly strengthened the French state and exported the principles of 1789 to many parts of Europe. In most of the French
Empire, feudalism was abolished, the estates of the Catholic Church seized and sold off, the Jews emancipated, unified codes
of law based on the French model established, and some form of constitutionalism introduced. Yet none of this makes him a
liberator. Setting aside the often overlooked fact that Napoleon reintroduced slavery in the French colonies, none of the changes
brought about by the French ruler were ever regarded by him as developments that were worth introducing for their own sake.
Rather, they were in each and every case designed either to strengthen his political and military base in France and his evergrowing empire.
We come here to the question of war and foreign policy. Supporters of Napoleon are adamant that the constant wars that so
marked the Napoleonic age were the fruit of the determination of the Old Order to overthrow the French Revolution and all it
stood for, and that, faced by this hostility, the first consul, and, as he later became, emperor, had no option but to maximize his
war-making resources by every means available. This argument, however, has little substance. From 1803, Napoleon certainly
faced the constant hostility of Great Britain, but that did not mean that Britain was necessarily opposed to a peace settlement
with Napoleon. And, even if it is accepted that Britain was not disposed to make peace, it certainly cannot be argued that all of
France's Continental opponents were encouraged to oppose him. Until 1813, British financial aid was generally both somewhat
limited and, except in the case of Spain and Portugal, offered somewhat unwillingly. In consequence, if France faced coalition
after coalition of foreign enemies, it was because Napoleon's actions ensured that this was the case. Austria, Prussia, and
Russia all essayed a policy of détente (peace) with Napoleon at one point or another, but they were all driven one after another
to break with him, and eventually formed a coalition that finally brought down the French Empire in 1814.
Given that all of the powers of Europe could have lived with Napoleon as ruler of France, and, further, that they could probably
have been united in a grand coalition against Britain, one is forced to ask why victory eluded the emperor. This question,
however, is not difficult to answer. As witness his relations with Alexander I of Russia in the wake of the Treaty of Tilsit,
Napoleon was in the first place incapable either of treating other rulers and their states as equals or even of recognizing that
Austria, Russia, and Prussia had legitimate interests. This alone would have been sufficient to ensure his failure as a statesman,
but at the same time the French ruler was also driven by a lust for glory that led him constantly to engage in dramatic actions for
which there was little real rationale (one such is the occupation of Portugal in 1807; a second the overthrow of the Spanish
Bourbons; and a third the invasion of Russia in 1812). Coupled with the expansionism inherent in his adoption of the Continental
Blockade (the exclusion of all British trade from the Continent), this produced a feeling that Napoleon simply could not be
contained within the European diplomatic system and, ultimately, that he had to be overthrown.
To conclude, then, Napoleon was much more of a power-hungry tyrant then he was ever an enlightened revolutionary. While he
certainly stood for reform, what he wanted in the end was more men, more ships, and more money and would stop at nothing to
obtain them. And, if he wanted more men, more ships, and more money, it was not because he was forced into war, but rather
because war was essential to his rule, both as a means of satisfying his own self-image and as a means of giving employment
to the swollen army that had brought him to power in the first place. One can, perhaps, go too far in condemning him—in the end
he was simply an enlightened absolutist of the 18th century —but, for all that, the Napoleonic legend should really be considered
dead.
Enlightened Despotism Comes to France
by Michael V. Leggiere
Napoleon Bonaparte effectively ended the French Revolution in 1799. In that year, he assumed the title of first consul and
became the virtual dictator of France. Like Adolf Hitler, Napoleon overwhelmed those who had put him in power and mistakenly
believed that they could control him. As first consul, Bonaparte concentrated more absolute power in his hands than any
Bourbon monarch before him, even the great Louis XIV. Unlike Louis XIV, no institution existed in France whose authority
Napoleon had to respect or whose power he could not eclipse. Because Bonaparte created both the legislative and executive
branches of the consulate and imperial governments, no national, representative body existed to check his power. Not only did
Napoleon dictate the constitutions of the consulate and empire, but he packed the upper level of the French legislature—the
Senate—with his supporters. As for traditional obstacles to centralized or "federal" power in France, the nobility and the Catholic
Church had been broken during the Revolution.
Napoleon's domestic program cannot be categorized as that of an enlightened revolutionary, for he never believed in the
revolutionary concept that the right to rule resided with the people. Nor can his domestic policies be likened to those of a powerhungry tyrant. Instead, Bonaparte provided France with a form of enlightened despotism masked by a pretense of democratic
principles. France had missed out on the political ideology of enlightened despotism, which had been popular among the rulers
of Prussia (Frederick II), Austria (Joseph II), to a lesser extent Russia (Catherine II), and a host of secondary states in the midto late 18th century. The key to understanding the ideology of enlightened despotism—as opposed to revolutionary ideology—is
the concept that power resided only with the monarch and not with the people. Enlightened despotism should be viewed as an
intense acceleration of absolute monarchy, which included the suppression of traditional obstacles to the state's centralized
power. Enlightened rulers served their subjects by passing reforms and streamlining government for the improvement of the
state community as a whole. Thus, enlightened despots introduced innovative policies in taxation, economic development,
education, secularization, and religious toleration. They saw themselves as the first servant of their state, as opposed to the
traditional view held by absolute monarchs as stated by Louis XIV: "I am the state, the state is me." Yet, enlightened despots
embraced the ideas of the 18th-century Enlightenment to increase the centralized power of the state and not to incubate
revolution. The wars of the mid-18th century made the monarch's ability to harness the resources of the state (money,
manpower, and material) vital if the state was to survive the intense international competition of the age. France failed and lost
India and North America; Poland failed and disappeared from the map of Europe. Consequently, power and the ability to sustain
their state in the arena of international competition remained the overriding concern of the enlightened despots. Napoleon
proved to be no exception.
As first consul and later as emperor, Bonaparte held true to the principles of enlightened despotism. In short, Napoleon—the
child of the Enlightenment and not the child of the Revolution—succeeded in providing rational order to the chaos, anarchy, and
confusion of the French Revolution. He brought sweeping reforms in education, administration, and finance that still exist today.
He saved the state from bankruptcy, healed the rift with the Catholic Church, and ended a bloody civil war. His most
comprehensive achievement, the Napoleonic Code, made law uniform throughout France and protected the individualism
established by the Revolution by forever abolishing custom and privilege. To Napoleon's credit, the expanded and amended
codes remain the basic law of France as well as many other countries. A true servant of the state, Bonaparte's impact on the
national institutions of France can still be seen today. True to the tenets of enlightened despotism, Napoleon strove to improve
the state community as a whole by giving the people what they needed, yet he never felt inclined to govern according to their
will. His actions indeed represent enlightened thought, but not that of a romantic revolutionary. Instead, Bonaparte reflected the
Enlightenment's rational approach to problem solving, to providing efficient government, to eliminating abuse, injustice, and
corruption, and above all to harnessing the nation's resources for war. If, toward the end of the French Empire, certain aspects
of Bonaparte's domestic program did become despotic, it is not because Napoleon was a power-hungry tyrant. Instead, the
reason is because Napoleon himself was a despot. He never held out the prospect of embracing republican democracy and
surrendering his sovereignty to the will of the people.
The desired end result of Napoleon's domestic policy was indeed the harnessing of France's and later Europe's resources to
such an extent that the French state not only participated in the arena of international competition, but completely changed the
rules of the game. Napoleon was not a man of peace and blame for the wars that shook the Western world between 1803–1815
can be placed squarely on his shoulders. However, it is not accurate to label Napoleon's foreign policy that of a power-hungry
tyrant. Instead, it is more correct to view the Napoleonic Wars as a mere continuation of the wars of the 18th century. France's
enemies certainly pursued traditional 18th-century national objectives until five failed coalition wars finally convinced them to at
least suspend their own agendas for the sake of uniting to defeat France. The difference is that while his opponents expected
Napoleon to stick to the rules of 18th-century diplomacy and peace-making that focused on the concept of compensation for all
belligerents, Napoleon instead brought his concept of rationalism to the negotiating table. As a general of the French Republic
and even as first consul, Bonaparte attempted to negotiate peace treaties that awarded his vanquished foe a degree of
compensation, such as Austria with the 1797 Treaty of Campo Formio and the 1801 Treaty of Lunéville. He soon concluded that
such treaties, which failed to punish the defeated or cripple their ability to wage war, only led to renewed wars. Thus, Bonaparte
brought the concept of the strategy of annihilation—which separated him from the generals he confronted on the battlefield who
employed the 18th-century strategy of attrition—to the peace table. For a rational thinker, signing treaties that would lead to
renewed hostilities in a few years made little sense. Consequently, the only option for Bonaparte was to cripple his adversaries'
ability to wage war against France, as he did to Prussia in 1807, and to create a French-dominated international system (as he
did in 1808) that would produce lasting peace. Napoleon did not fail because he was a power-hungry tyrant. He failed because
in the end he was too much of a rational thinker. Bonaparte refused to believe that his rational version of the Revolution that was
spread by way of French military conquest ultimately would be rejected by the peoples of Europe. He could not understand how
the nations could prefer custom, tradition, local values, regionalism, feudalism, and the Catholic Church over the universalism
and individualism of the French Revolution. French domination produced nationalism; Napoleon survived the Russian campaign
of 1812 and fielded an army of 500,000 men less than six months later. Yet it was too late, the peoples of Europe had rejected
his enlightened rationalism for romantic nationalism.