First French Empire

The First French Empire, commonly known as the French Empire or the Napoleonic Empire, covers the period of the domination of France and much of continental Europe by Napoleon I. Constitutionally, it refers to the period of 1804 to 1814, from the Consulate to the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in the history of the French state, as well as the Hundred Days period in 1815.

The Empire started when Napoleon became Emperor of France on May 18, 1804 and was crowned on December 2 of the same year at the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris. Its existence was immediately threatened by the War of the Third Coalition, but the decisive French victory at the Battle of Austerlitz ensured its survival. La Grande Armée, the Empire's military machine, then fought against Prussia in 1806 and all but destroyed Prussia's armies before swinging into Poland and defeating the Russians at the Battle of Friedland in 1807. After Friedland, the Treaty of Tilsit in July 1807 ended two years of bloodshed on the European continent. French involvement in Iberia eventually sparked the Peninsular War, a brutal six-year conflict that severely weakened the First Empire. In 1809, France and Austria fought the War of the Fifth Coalition; France triumphed again and imposed the Treaty of Schönbrunn on the Habsburgs, but diplomatic tensions with Russia led to the catastrophic invasion of that country in 1812. The War of the Sixth Coalition saw the expulsion of French forces from Germany in 1813 and the abdication of Napoleon on April 6, 1814. Napoleon returned from Elba in 1815, but the French defeat at the Battle of Waterloo caused the ultimate downfall of the First Empire.

At its height in 1812, the French Empire had 130 departments, deployed over 600,000 troops to attack Russia, ruled over 44 million subjects, maintained extensive military presence in Germany, Italy, Spain, and the Duchy of Warsaw, and could count Prussia and Austria as nominal allies. The fate of the Empire was inextricably linked to that of the army, whose early victories exported many ideological features of the French Revolution throughout Europe. Seigneurial dues and seigneurial justice were abolished wherever French armies went, aristocratic privileges were eliminated in all places except Poland, and the introduction of the Napoleonic Code throughout the continent made all people equal before the law, established jury systems, and legalized divorce. However, Napoleon's domination was highly nepotistic as he often placed relatives on the thrones of Europe. Resentment over French occupation was an important factor in the explosion of nationalism in places like Italy and Germany, which would both become nations a few decades later. The French Empire severely upset international relations in the early nineteenth century, but the Congress of Vienna in 1815 finally reversed this trend by instituting a balance of power system in Europe.

Origins

Napoleon Bonaparte was approached by one of a member of the Directory, Sieyès, seeking his support for a coup d'état to overthrow the constitution. The plot included Bonaparte's brother Lucien, then serving as speaker of the Council of Five Hundred, Roger Ducos, another Director, and Talleyrand. On 9 November 1799 (18 Brumaire VIII), and the following day, troops led by Bonaparte seized control and dispersed the legislative councils, leaving a rump to name Bonaparte, Sieyès and Ducos as provisional Consuls to administer the government. Although Sieyès expected to dominate the new regime, he was outmanoeuvred by Bonaparte, who drafted the Constitution of the Year VIII and secured his own election as First Consul. This made him the most powerful person in France, a power that was increased by the Constitution of the Year X, which made him First Consul for life.

Bonaparte attracted more power and gravitated towards imperial status, gathering support on the way for his internal rebuilding of France and its institutions. He gradually dampened opposition and Republican enthusiasm, using exile, systematic bureaucratic oppression, and constitutional means. On May 18, 1804, Napoleon was given the title of emperor by the Senate.

Europe map Napoleon 1811.png|thumb|left|250px|Napoleonic Empire, 1811: France in dark blue, satellite states in light blue]]

Napoleon got most of his support by appealing to common desires of the French people at the time. These consisted of abhorrence for the emigrant nobility who escaped persecution, fear of the ancien régime, a general dislike of foreigners, a hatred of Great Britain, and the wish to extend France's revolutionary ideals created by state propaganda.

Napoleon largely got rid of the pre-Empire government. He saw them as too weak for the regime he wished to create, too dedicated to equality. With the exception of Talleyrand, after 1808 he would have about him only mediocre people, largely without initiative.

From Consulate to empire

Bonaparte, though an emperor, was in a relatively dangerous position compared to other authoritarian European monarchs of the time. Aware that if the French people could overthrow one monarch, they could overthrow another, Bonaparte used propaganda to align the opinions of the French people with his foreign policy. He had no particular ideology, and did not claim to be an absolute monarch. Although he was an autocrat, he was far less autocratic than most other authoritarian monarchs of the time, and had less power than such modern dictators as Adolf Hitler. He was in the tradition of the enlightened despot, embracing certain aspects of liberalism — for example, public education, a generally liberal restructuring of the French legal system, and the emancipation of the Jews — while rejecting electoral democracy and freedom of the press.

Although an enemy of ideologues, Napoleon followed grandiose visions in his foreign policy. A condottiere of the Renaissance living in the 19th century, he used France, and all those nations annexed or attracted by the Revolution, to resuscitate the Roman conception of the idea of Empire for personal benefit. On the other hand, he was enslaved by the history and aggressive idealism of the National Convention, and of the republican propaganda under the Directory; they guided him quite as much as he guided them. Hence the immoderate extension given to French activity by his classical Latin spirit; hence also his conquests, leading on from one to another, and instead of being mutually helpful interfering with each other; hence, finally, his not entirely coherent policy, interrupted by hesitation and counter-attractions. This explains the retention of Italy, imposed on the Directory from 1796 onward, followed by his treatment of Venice, the foundation of the Cisalpine Republic — a foretaste of future annexations — the restoration of that republic after his return from Egypt, and in view of his as yet inchoate designs, the postponed solution of the Italian problem which the treaty of Lunéville had raised.

The Battle of Marengo (June 14, 1800) inaugurated the political idea which was to continue its development until Napoleon's Moscow campaign. Napoleon dreamed as yet only of keeping the Duchy of Milan, setting aside Austria, and preparing some new enterprise in the East or in Egypt. The Peace of Amiens, which cost him Egypt, could only seem to him a temporary truce; while he was gradually extending his authority in Italy by the union of Piedmont and by his tentative plans regarding Genoa, Parma, Tuscany and Naples. He wanted to make this his Cisalpine Gaul, laying siege to the Roman state on every hand, and preparing in the Concordat for the moral and material servitude of the pope. When he recognised his error in having raised the papacy from decadence by restoring its power over the churches, he tried in vain to correct it by the Articles Organiques (1802) wanting, like Charlemagne, to be the legal protector of the pope, and eventually master of the Roman Church. To conceal his plan he aroused French colonial aspirations against Britain, and also the memory of the spoliations of 1763 (Treaty of Paris), exacerbating British jealousy of France, whose borders now extended to the Rhine, and laying hands on Hanover, Hamburg and Cuxhaven.

By the "Recess" of 1803, which brought to his side Bavaria, Württemberg and Baden, he followed up the overwhelming tide of revolutionary ideas in Germany, to stem which Pitt, back in power, appealed once more to an Anglo-Austro-Russian coalition against Napoleon, who by mastering France, Italy and Germany, hoped to revive the empire of Charlemagne; who finally on December 2, 1804 placed the imperial crown upon his head, after receiving the iron crown of the Lombard kings, and made Pope Pius VII consecrate him in Notre-Dame de Paris. After this, in four campaigns, the Emperor transformed his Carolingian feudal and federal empire into one modelled on the Roman empire. The memories of imperial Rome were for a third time, after Julius Caesar, Trajan and Charlemagne, to modify the historical evolution of France. Though the vague plan for an invasion of England fell to the ground, the Battle of Ulm and the Battle of Austerlitz obliterated Trafalgar, and the camp at Boulogne put the best military resources he had ever commanded at Napoleon's disposal in the form of La Grande Armée.

Early victories

In the first of these campaigns Bonaparte swept away the remnants of the old Holy Roman Empire and, out of its shattered fragments, created in southern Germany the vassal states of Bavaria, Baden, Württemberg, Hesse-Darmstadt and Saxony, which he attached to France under the name of the Confederation of the Rhine. The Treaty of Pressburg, however, signed on the (26 December 1805) gave France nothing but the danger of a more centralised and less docile Germany. On the other hand, Napoleon's creation of the Kingdom of Italy, his annexation of Venetia and her ancient Adriatic Empire — wiping out the humiliation of 1797 — and the occupation of Ancona, marked a new stage in his progress towards his Roman Empire.

To create satellite states, Napoleon rested on the idea of installing his close relatives as rulers of many European nations. The clan of the Bonapartes began to mingle with European monarchies, wedding with princesses of blood-royal, and adding kingdom to kingdom. Joseph Bonaparte replaced the dispossessed Bourbons at Naples; Louis Bonaparte was installed on the throne of the newly formed kingdom of Holland carved out of the Dutch Batavian Republic; Joachim Murat became grand-duke of Berg, Jerome Bonaparte son-in-law to the King of Württemberg, and Eugène de Beauharnais to the King of Bavaria; while Stéphanie de Beauharnais married the son of the Grand Duke of Baden.

Meeting with less and less resistance, Napoleon went still further and would tolerate no neutral power. On August 6, 1806 he forced the Habsburgs, left with only the crown of Austria, to abdicate their title of Holy Roman Emperor. Prussia alone remained outside the Confederation of the Rhine, of which Napoleon was Protector, and to further her decision he offered her British Hanover. In a second campaign he destroyed at Jena both the army and the state of Frederick William III of Prussia, who could not make up his mind between the Napoleonic treaty of Schönbrunn and Russia's counter-proposal at Potsdam (14 October 1806). The butchery at Eylau and the vengeance taken at Friedland (14 June 1807) finally ruined Frederick the Great's work, and obliged Russia, the ally of Britain and Prussia, to allow the latter to be despoiled, and to join Napoleon against the maritime tyranny of the former.

At the crossroads

After the Treaties of Tilsit, however (July 1807), instead of trying to reconcile Europe to his grandeur, Napoleon had but one thought: to make use of his success to destroy Britain and complete his Italian dominion. It was from Berlin, on 21 November 1806, that he had dated the first decree of a continental blockade, a conception intended to paralyze his inveterate rival, but which on the contrary caused his own fall by its immoderate extension of the Empire. To the coalition of the northern powers he added the league of the Baltic and Mediterranean ports, and to the bombardment of Copenhagen by a Royal Navy fleet he responded by a second decree of blockade, dated from Milan on 17 December 1807.

But the application of the Concordat and the taking of Naples led to the first of those struggles with the pope in which were formulated two antagonistic doctrines: Napoleon declaring himself Roman emperor, and Pius VII renewing the theocratic affirmations of Pope Gregory VII. The Emperor's Roman ambition was made more and more plainly visible by the occupation of the kingdom of Naples and of the Marches, and by the entry of Miollis into Rome; while Junot invaded Portugal, Radet laid hands on the pope himself, and Joachim Murat took possession of formerly Roman Spain, whither Joseph Bonaparte transferred afterwards;.

(See main article on the Peninsular War)

But Napoleon little knew the flame he was kindling. No more far-seeing than the Directory or the men of the year III, he thought that, with energy and execution, he might succeed in the Peninsula as he had succeeded in Italy in 1796 and 1797, in Egypt and in Hesse, and that he might cut into Spanish granite as into Italian mosaic or "that big cake, Germany". The Spanish were resilient, however; and the trap of Bayonne, together with the enthroning of Joseph Bonaparte, made the contemptible Prince of Asturias the elect of popular sentiment, the representative of religion and country.

Napoleon thought he had Spain within his grasp, and now suddenly everything started slipping from him. The Peninsula became the grave of whole armies and a battlefield against Britain. Dupont capitulated at Bailen into the hands of Francisco Javier Castaños, 1st Duke of Bailén, and Andoche Junot, Duke of Abrantes at the Cintra, Portugal to Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington; while Europe trembled at this first check to the hitherto invincible imperial armies. To reduce Spanish resistance Napoleon had in his turn to come to terms with the Tsar Alexander I of Russia at Erfurt; so that, abandoning his designs in the East, he could make the Grand Army evacuate Prussia and return in force to Madrid.

Thus Spain swallowed up the soldiers who were wanted for Napoleon's other fields of battle, and they had to be replaced by forced levies. Europe had only to wait, and he would eventually be found disarmed in face of a last coalition; but Spanish heroism infected Austria, and showed the force of national resistance. The provocations of Talleyrand and Britain strengthened the illusion: Why should not the Austrians emulate the Spaniards? The campaign of 1809, however, was but a pale copy of the Spanish insurrection. After a short and decisive action in Bavaria, Napoleon opened up the road to Vienna for a second time; and after the two days' battle at Essling, the stubborn fight at Wagram, the failure of a patriotic insurrection in northern Germany and of the British expedition against Antwerp, the Treaty of Vienna (14 December 1809), with the annexation of the Illyrian provinces, completed the colossal Empire. Napoleon profited, in fact, by this campaign which had been planned for his overthrow.

The pope was deported to Savona beneath the eyes of an indifferent Europe, and his domains were incorporated in the Empire; the senate's decision on 17 February 1810 created the title of king of Rome, and made Rome the capital of Italy. The pope banished, it was now desirable to send away those to whom Italy had been more or less promised. Eugene de Beauharnais, Napoleon's stepson, was transferred to Frankfurt, and Murat carefully watched until the time should come to take him to Russia and install him as King of Poland. Between 1810 and 1812 Napoleon's divorce of Josephine, and his marriage with Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria, followed by the birth of the king of Rome, shed a brilliant light upon his future policy. He renounced a federation in which his brothers were not sufficiently docile; he gradually withdrew power from them; he concentrated all his affection and ambition on the son who was the guarantee of the continuance of his dynasty. This was the apogee of his reign.

Intrigues, unrest and corruption

But undermining forces already impinged: the faults inherent in his unwieldy achievement. Britain, his chief enemy, was persistently active; and rebellion both of the governing and of the governed broke out everywhere. Napoleon felt his impotence in coping with the Spanish Uprising, which he underrated, while yet unable to suppress it altogether. Men like Stein, Hardenberg and Scharnhorst had secretly started preparing Prussia's retaliation.

Napoleon's formidable material power could not stand against the moral force of the pope, now a prisoner at Fontainebleau; and this he did not realise. The alliance arranged at Tilsit was seriously shaken by the Austrian marriage, the threat of a Polish restoration, and the unfriendly policy of Napoleon at Constantinople. The very persons whom he had placed in power were counteracting his plans: after four years' experience Napoleon found himself obliged to treat his Corsican dynasties like those of the ancien régime, and all his relations were betraying him. Caroline Bonaparte conspired against her brother and against her husband Murat; the hypochondriac Louis, now Dutch in his sympathies, found the supervision of the blockade taken from him, and also the defence of the Scheldt, which he had refused to ensure; Jerome Bonaparte, idling in his harem, lost that of the North Sea shores; and Joseph, who was attempting the moral conquest of Spain, was continually insulted at Madrid. The very nature of things was against the new dynasties, as it had been against the old.

After national insurrections and family recriminations came treachery from Napoleon's ministers. Talleyrand betrayed his designs to Metternich and suffered dismissal; Fouché corresponded with Austria in 1809 and 1810, entered into an understanding with Louis, and also with Britain; while Bourrienne was convicted of speculation. By a natural consequence of the spirit of conquest Napoleon had aroused, all these parvenus, having tasted victory, dreamed of sovereign power: Bernadotte, who had helped him to the Consulate, played Napoleon false to win the crown of Sweden; Soult, like Murat, coveted the Spanish throne after that of Portugal, thus anticipating the treason of 1813 and the defection of 1814; many persons hoped for "an accident" which might resemble the tragic ends of Alexander the Great and of Julius Caesar.

The country itself, besides, though flattered by conquests, was tired of self-sacrifice. It had become satiated; "the cry of the mothers rose threateningly" against "the Ogre" and his intolerable imposition of wholesale conscription. The soldiers themselves, discontented after Austerlitz, cried out for peace after Eylau. Finally, amidst profound silence from the press and the Assemblies, a protest was raised against imperial despotism by the literary world, against the excommunicated sovereign by Catholicism, and against the author of the continental blockade by the discontented bourgeoisie, ruined by the crisis of 1811.

Napoleon himself was no longer the "General Bonaparte" of his campaign in Italy. He was already showing signs of physical decay; the Roman medallion profile had coarsened, the obese body was often lymphatic. Mental degeneration, too, betrayed itself in an unwonted irresolution.

At Eylau, at Wagram, and later at Waterloo, his method of acting by enormous masses of infantry, artillery and cavalry, in a mad passion for conquest, and his misuse of his military resources, were all signs of his moral and technical decline; and this at the precise moment when, instead of the armies and governments of the old system, which had hitherto reigned supreme, the nations of Europe themselves were rising against France, and the events of 1792 were being avenged upon her. The three campaigns of two years (1812–14) would bring the final catastrophe.

The endgame

Napoleon had hardly succeeded in putting down the revolt in Germany when the czar of Russia himself headed a European insurrection against the ruinous tyranny of the continental blockade. To put a stop to this, to ensure his own access to the Mediterranean and exclude his chief rival, Napoleon made a desperate effort in 1812 against a country as invincible as Russia. Despite his victorious advance, the taking of Smolensk, the victory on the Moskva, and the entry into Moscow, he was vanquished by Russian patriotism and religious fervour, by the country and the climate, and by Alexander's refusal to make terms. After this came the lamentable retreat, while all Europe was concentrating against him. Pushed back, as he had been in Spain, from bastion to bastion, after the action on the Berezina, Napoleon had to fall back upon the frontiers of 1809, and then — having refused the peace offered him by Austria at the congress of Prague, from a dread of losing Italy, where each of his victories had marked a stage in the accomplishment of his dream — on those of 1805, despite Lützen and Bautzen, and on those of 1802 after his defeat at Leipzig, when Bernadotte (now Crown Prince of Sweden) turned upon him, Jean Victor Moreau also joined the Allies, and the Saxons and Bavarians forsook him as well.

Following his retreat from Russia came Napoleon's retreat from Germany. After the loss of Spain, reconquered by Wellington, the rising in the Netherlands preliminary to the invasion and the manifesto of Frankfurt which proclaimed it, he had to fall back upon the frontiers of 1795; and then later was driven yet farther back upon those of 1792 — despite the wonderful campaign of 1814 against the invaders, in which the old Bonaparte of 1796 seemed to have returned. Paris capitulated on 30 March 1814, and the Delenda Carthago, pronounced against Britain, was spoken of Napoleon. The great empire of East and West fell in ruins with the emperor's abdication at Fontainebleau. Only the Hundred Days revived the flame for a final flicker: France returned to a restored Bourbon monarchy in the person of Louis XVIII.

Notes

Todd Fisher & Gregory Fremont-Barnes, The Napoleonic Wars: The Rise and Fall of an Empire. p. 146. Additionally, with 300,000 troops in Spain and 200,000 scattered throughout Central Europe, the Empire had an army whose numbers exceeded a million.
Martyn Lyons, Napoleon Bonaparte and the Legacy of the French Revolution.'' p. 232
Martyn Lyons p. 234-236

References

Chandler, David G. The Campaigns of Napoleon. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995. ISBN 0025236601
Colton, Joel and Palmer, R.R. A History of the Modern World. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1992. ISBN 0070408262
Elting, John R. Swords Around a Throne: Napoleon's Grande Armée. New York: Da Capo Press Inc., 1988. ISBN 0306807572
Fisher, Todd & Fremont-Barnes, Gregory. The Napoleonic Wars: The Rise and Fall of an Empire. Oxford: Osprey Publishing Ltd., 2004. ISBN 1841768316
Tolstoy, Leo. War and Peace. London: Penguin Group, 1982. ISBN 0140444173
Lyons, Martyn. Napoleon Bonaparte and the Legacy of the French Revolution. New York: St. Martin's Press, Inc., 1994. ISBN 0312121237
McLynn, Frank. Napoleon: A Biography. New York: Arcade Publishing Inc., 1997. ISBN 1559706317
Roberts, J.M. History of the World. New York: Penguin Group, 1992. ISBN 0195210433
Schom, Alan. Napoleon Bonaparte. New York: HarperCollins, 1997. ISBN 0060929588
Uffindell, Andrew. Great Generals of the Napoleonic Wars. Kent: Spellmount, 2003. ISBN 1862271771

External links

Napoleon, His Armies and Battles

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