Napoleonic Empire Research Articles

Император умер! Да здравствует империя! (Наполеон и его наследие)

In 2023, the collective work «From the Napoleonic Empire to the Age of Empire», edited by Thomas Dodman and Aurélien Lignereux, was published. The recent bicentennial of Napoleon’s death has served as an opportunity for historians to turn to Bonaparte’s imperial legacy and the forms of domination that were established during his era and continued after 1814–1815. The editors argue that such an approach can allow us to move beyond the traditional framework of Napoleonic historiography and away from a purely factual approach. Moreover, the Napoleonic Empire is a key link between the colonial empires of the early modern period and the empires of the nineteenth century, and therefore deserves special attention. The collection consists of three parts: the first is devoted directly to the period of the Napoleonic Empire, in particular, to subjects related primarily to France’s policy in the Middle East; the second examines the individual trajectories of certain individuals or social groups in the context of imperial transformations; and the third examines French foreign policy initiatives in Algeria and Egypt in the post-Napoleonic era.

Наполеоновские войны как мировой конфликт (о новой книге В. М. Безотосного)

A characteristic feature of the study of the Napoleonic Wars in recent years has been the turn to discussing the role and place of these wars in the global history of mankind. This can be exemplified by the publication of a number of fundamental works, including the three-volume Cambridge History of the Napoleonic Wars. A notable place in the series of such publications is occupied by V. M. Bezotosny's monograph The Historical Landscape of the Napoleonic Wars. World Conflict and the Clash of Empires. The author, first, declares the necessity to abandon Eurocentrism and approach the textbook event for domestic historiography – the War of 1812 – in the light of asynchrony of socio-economic and political processes in the world. Pointing out the typological similarity of the Napoleonic Wars era with the First and Second World Wars, the author considers the epoch of the turn of the 18th – 19th centuries as a kind of “zero”, i.e. “World War I”. Describing the general historical landscape of the Napoleonic era, he suggests that along with the main “geopolitical triangle” – Great Britain, Russia and France – to focus on the struggle outside Europe. As for Napoleonic France, which tried to achieve its expansion to all-European borders, the author believes that its demise was historically predetermined. The Napoleonic Empire was systematically subjected to destruction from outside and inside. And the decisive role in this undermining of the Napoleonic Empire belonged to Russia and largely to England. Important consequences of the Napoleonic Wars were the process of consolidation of the German lands around Prussia, the entry of the Austrian Empire into a state of protracted crisis, and the emergence of the prospect of deep discord in Russian society, which in the long term resulted in the events of 1917. While debunking Napoleon as a great historical figure and state strategist, the author nevertheless concludes that the wars of 1792–1815 gave a noticeable acceleration to the process of modernization, contributed to the emergence of new ideological trends and intensified the rivalry of leading countries in the colonial sphere.

Хватит убивать собак! Эпизод кампании 1814 года

The article examines one of the characteristic episodes of the final stage of the Napoleonic Wars, namely the internal political struggle that unfolded in Besancon, besieged by the Austrians during the campaign of 1814. This political confrontation manifested itself in anonymous publications of various satirical epigrams, songs, poems, pamphlets. The most striking example of such literature was the so-called "dog petitions", the reason for the appearance of which was the order of the French Governor-General Marulaz on the complete elimination of stray dogs in the city. These animals were considered "useless mouths" and were subject to total extermination. No other motives for the extermination of dogs were reflected in the sources. Meanwhile, Besancon's urban society was already split under siege: in addition to the contradictions between the Governor-General and the prefect, there was a fierce confrontation between the military and municipal administrations, which had different priorities and interests. To these conflicts should be added the contradictions between Bonapartists and Royalists, which intensified with the approach of the armies of the Sixth Anti-French Coalition. The hidden royalist opposition intensified with the beginning of the siege. Its supporters included Baverel, a member of the city council, who preserved for posterity several samples of anti-government satirical literature. The works collected by Baverel testify to the popularity of the satirical genre in the society of that time. They also demonstrate the variety of methods of intellectual struggle, not to mention the fact that they encourage us to once again turn to a comprehensive analysis of the causes of the collapse of the Napoleonic Empire, to study the role of royalists in this process and to assess the degree of public support for the emperor's policy.

L’art annexé comme source d’inspiration. Un paysage de Rembrandt venu de Cassel à Paris et une peinture de Georges Michel

The article explores the considerable impulses that have been generated by paintings which had come to Paris in the wake of the confiscations of works of art during the Napoleonic Empire. At the centre of the contribution is a revealing case study that shows how, around 1814, the French painter Georges Michel responded to a landscape by Rembrandt and used it as inspiration for his own painting. Based on this example, two questions are addressed : On the one hand, Michel’s painting exemplifies how much contemporary landscape painting in Paris benefited from the unusually good presence of Rembrandt’s landscapes in the years up to 1815. On the other hand, the case study could allow to determine the chronology of Michel’s oeuvre more precisely.

The Napoleonic Mediterranean: Enlightenment, Revolution, and Empire, A Global History of the Napoleonic Wars, The Forgotten War against Napoleon: Conflict in the Mediterranean, 1793–1815

The Napoleonic Mediterranean: Enlightenment, Revolution, and Empire, A Global History of the Napoleonic Wars, The Forgotten War against Napoleon: Conflict in the Mediterranean, 1793–1815

Soviet Architecture of the 1930-1950s

The article is devoted to the Stalinist Empire style, a unique phenomenon in the architecture of the Soviet period. The author defines its place among such architectural styles and movements as Art Nouveau, Rationalism and Constructivism, as well as among foreign architectural movements of the middle of the 20th century. In aesthetic essence, the Stalinist Empire style was closely associated with Imperial Classicism. It was called upon to perform the functions of glorifying the power of the new young state. Stylistically, it inherited the Baroque, Napoleonic Empire style, late Classicism, Art Deco and Neo-Gothic; the details of these styles contributed to achieving a sense of luxury, pomposity and grandeur. The inner meaning of the new architectural theory and socialist realism, in general, was the comprehensibility of architecture to the masses: completeness, orderliness, monumentality. The architecture of the Stalinist Empire style, which to a certain extent contradicted the rather difficult situation of the country both in the pre-war and post-war periods, was called upon to convey the idea of ​​striving for a bright future, embodied the architectural future that awaited people of the Soviet country.

The Afterlives of the Terror: Facing the Legacies of Mass Violence in Postrevolutionary France by Ronen Steinberg

Reviewed by: The Afterlives of the Terror: Facing the Legacies of Mass Violence in Postrevolutionary France by Ronen Steinberg Kate M. Bonin Steinberg, Ronen. The Afterlives of the Terror: Facing the Legacies of Mass Violence in Postrevolutionary France. Cornell UP, 2019. ISBN 978-1-5017-3924-8. Pp. 222. Of course, the French Revolution did not end on 9 Thermidor, Year II (27 July 1794). This was, however, the date of Maximilien Robespierre's arrest. It marks the end of the eighteen-month Reign of Terror, which left tens of thousands of French dead, hundreds of thousands imprisoned, and the rest of the nation struggling to come to grips with the legacies of atrocity and mass violence. How this struggle played out forms the subject of The Afterlives of the Terror, which analyzes the immediate Thermidorian Reaction through the Napoleonic Empire and the Bourbon Restoration's heavy-handed efforts to reconstruct, restitute, and re-sacralize. In an era when governance had become the shared responsibility of all (or most men, rather), which individuals were to be held accountable for mass crimes (other than the excoriated Robespierre, already dead)? In the years after 9 Thermidor, subsequent regimes debated financial reparation for victims' families; restitution of victims' tarnished reputations; and what to do about mass graves (focal points for commemorating the past that threatened to ignite opposition to current authority). Ronen Steinberg has an eye for choosing obscure documents and episodes that both elucidate his point and grip readers' attention. For instance, the chapter that opens with a somewhat-dry meditation on the origins and meanings of "accountability" is livened by its account of the trial and execution of Joseph Le Bon, the last of the government functionaries to be guillotined for his actions during the Terror. Moreover, Steinberg is conscientious in his use of modern tools to discuss historic events. For example, he proposes to examine the Thermidorian Reaction as a period of "transitional justice," or the search for greater equity in societies that are newly emerging from periods of oppression and violence. "Transitional justice" is a term more typically applied to liberal regimes in South Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe, emerging in the 1990s. The value of applying this modern concept to the revolutionary past is in highlighting an ineluctable dilemma of the post-Thermidor period: the need to demonstrate that the Terror was safely in the past, balanced against the fact that dealing with the Terror was still very much the business of the uneasy present. Similarly, Steinberg avoids using the anachronistic terms "trauma" and "post-traumatic stress disorder" in connection with eighteenth- and nineteenth-century men, women, and children who predate these [End Page 258] concepts. Without modern tools to conceptualize and process the events of 1793–94, how did French society work to "liquidat[e] the heritage of the Terror" (118)? To answer this question, Steinberg brings together a series of seemingly-unrelated phenomena, including: the Gothic literary vogue; "phantasmagoria" lantern shows, which purported to "resurrect" the ghosts of Rousseau, Voltaire, Marat, and others; and contemporary medical debates about how long guillotine victims retained consciousness, and whether they felt pain. The very disparateness of these responses evokes the stumbling and irresolution of a society that was far from finished with the appalling spectacle of state-sanctioned mass violence. Gripping reading. Kate M. Bonin Arcadia University (PA) Copyright © 2021 American Association of Teachers of French

Resilienz und Konstruktion von Sicherheit

Abstract Prospero Balbo, the head of a leading Piedmontese noble family, followed a career path similar to that of the versatile French statesman Talleyrand. In the aftermath of 1789, Balbo served under four different regimes: the Old Regime monarchy, the Russian provisional administration of Piedmont in 1799, the Napoleonic empire, and the restored Savoy monarchy. After the short-lived revolutionary movement of 1821 in Sardinia-Piedmont, Prospero lost his job as interior minister and his son, Cesare, was forced into exile. The revolutionary waves of 1820–1821 were the most recent of numerous disruptive events and regime changes that jeopardized Europe and the Atlantic world between the late 1770 s and the early 1820 s. These five decades of revolutionary upheavals, wars, and persistent insecurity forced the traditional elites to mobilize their material, cultural, and social resources to preserve their prestige and power. Based on extensive archival research, this article examines the resilience-strengthening resources and strategies implemented by members of the Balbo family during periods of political turmoil. In doing so, the article aims to develop an analytical and conceptual framework to describe historical processes in terms of resilience and vulnerability. This new approach enables us to look afresh at elite transformations and at the dynamics of political change and continuity in early nineteenth-century Europe.

«Une littérature qui doive, avec des modifications convenables, servir de règle aux autres»: changes in classical tragedy at the Comédie-Française

In terms of French theatre history, the Napoleonic Empire is frequently recognised as a key turning point in the development of the term “classique”, and thus the evolution of our scholarly understanding of “classicism”. This article concentrates on an 1814 manuscript from the Comédie-Française that details the corrections, cuts, and changes it made to its repertoire. The analysis of this manuscript reveals that the plays at the basis of theatrical classicism – notably the tragedies by Pierre Corneille, Jean Racine, and Voltaire – were much more malleable than current studies acknowledge, which fundamentally challenges our current scholarly understanding of “classique” and “classicism”.

Making Space for the Dead: Catacombs, Cemeteries, and the Reimagining of Paris, 1780–1830 by Erin-Marie Legacey

Reviewed by: Making Space for the Dead: Catacombs, Cemeteries, and the Reimagining of Paris, 1780–1830 by Erin-Marie Legacey Alice J. Strange Legacey, Erin-Marie. Making Space for the Dead: Catacombs, Cemeteries, and the Reimagining of Paris, 1780–1830. Cornell UP, 2019. ISBN 978-1-5017-1559-4. Pp. 210. This work examines the crisis in the burial practices of Paris prior to the French Revolution and the chaos that followed as a new burial culture was created. For centuries the remains of the dead of Paris had been deposited into anonymous mass graves in one of the thirty-two churchyards in the city. The oldest and largest gravesite was the Cemetery of the Holy Innocents in central Paris, in use for more than five hundred years. By the late eighteenth century, it was overflowing with decomposing human remains and was a peril to neighboring residents. Although the space was surrounded by a wall, it emitted noxious airs and underground vapors that invaded surrounding buildings and made their way into living spaces. In 1780, a royal proclamation ordered the closure of this and other cemeteries and the relocation of remains to an underground quarry on the urban periphery, which eventually became the Paris Catacombs. The Old Regime failed to address the burial problem before its own demise in 1789, and cemetery reform was left to successive regimes. Legacey argues that the French Revolution was central to transforming attitudes about the proper treatment of the dead. Revolutionaries called for an end to religious burial practices and a new system based on the ideals of equality and fraternity. They were unable to realize these goals, and during the Terror, the remains of thousands of secretly executed victims were placed in open mass graves, complicating the problem. Instability continued into the Napoleonic Empire. It was gradually accepted that individual burial sites were preferable to communal graves. Architects and urban planners offered innovative reforms. One proposal, for example, argued that the dead should be judged for their civic contributions and assigned a place in a new cemetery according to their worthiness. Finally, in 1804, burial standards were codified by Napoleon in a decree that set forth twenty-six articles governing the design for burial spaces. Cemeteries were to be located on the periphery of cities rather than within urban areas, preferably on an elevated terrain east of the city. Père-Lachaise cemetery was opened in 1804 in accordance with the guidelines. Cemeteries were no longer unpleasant and unhealthy places to be avoided, but aesthetic and attractive sites. The new design aimed to accommodate individual gravesites with monuments, although some communal graves continued to exist. The living were encouraged to contemplate the achievements of the heroic dead. Ideally, the new cemetery would unite Parisians of all classes and instill a sense of shared history. The Paris Catacombs, opened to the public in 1809, were an indispensable component of the new culture. Bones from many cemeteries were arranged artistically to draw visitors, combining a macabre appeal with a reminder of the leveling effect of death. In this thoroughly researched study, Legacey presents compelling archival material to trace the revolution in Parisian cemetery culture and the corresponding transformation of attitudes toward the dead. Her work [End Page 240] makes a significant contribution to the social history of Paris in the early nineteenth century. Alice J. Strange Southeast Missouri State University, emerita Copyright © 2020 American Association of Teachers of French

The Concile National of 1811: Napoleon, Gallicanism and the Failure of Neo-Conciliarism

The concile national of 1811 was one of the greatest flashpoints in the struggle that pitted the Napoleonic Empire against the papacy. This episode, which deserves to be situated within more recent historiographical trends, reveals much about the nature of Napoleonic imperialism and the Church's distrust for the power of the state. This article puts forward the view that the failure of the concile national was not strategic but tactical. Several bishops were frustrated with the pope's recalcitrance over episcopal investiture and fearful of schism. But their initial openness to neo-conciliarism turned to hostility when confronted with the state's intolerance.

The Project that never Happened: Napoleon’s Military Code, 1805

Covering the period from the Old Regime through the turmoil of the Revolution, Consulate, and early Napoleonic Empire, this article aims to examine and analyse the historical evolution of the government’s relationship with the armed forces, which culminated in the establishment of the Commission on the Military Code. In the early spring of 1805, following the initiative of Emperor Napoleon and under the experienced military administrator Pierre Daru they established a Commission meant to work on examining the laws inherited by the Napoleonic military administration and compile them in a new code based on the Civil Code (1804). The result of these labours was a draft produced and reflected in seven voluminous books, which were supposed to regulate all aspects of the armed forces, i.e. recruitment, discipline and police, accounting and subsistence, military uniform, aspects of military justice, etc. Although, in theory, the start of the war with the Third Coalition prevented Daru and his collaborators from fully completing this project, it is questionable as to how far Napoleon really wished to proceed in implementing the Military Code having been proclaimed king of Italy in May, 1805 in addition to being an emperor, and whether he suspected that a Code as a system could provide his army with certain flexibility and legal rights to challenge some aspects of his still non-hereditary monarchy. On the other hand, the work of the Commission on the Military Code led to many useful administrative reforms, which helped create a professionally organised military force — Napoleon’s Grande Armee.

A gaze on the linguistic geography of the Napoleonic Italy through the letters of Jacques Boucher de Perthes

The territorial expansion of the First Napoleonic Empire and the mobility of French soldiers and officials created the conditions for bringing together people of different nationalities and languages. In Italy, the many French serving Napoleon clashed with local linguistic habits, in which each city had its own dialect to the detriment of Italian. Jacques Boucher de Perthes, who is considered one of the fathers of the prehistoric sciences, was employed in the imperial customs in Italy and through his correspondence, he described the linguistic practices of the cities in which he served, Genoa, Livorno and Foligno, and the territories surrounding them. He noted that the dialects were spoken in all social classes and were different from city to city. His letters represent a unique source for the description of the linguistic geography of Italy at the time, which testifies to the Italian linguistic variety. In addition, Jacques Boucher de Perthes describe the oral practices, on which it is often difficult to find sources.

Czubaty, Jaroslav Ursula Phillips (review)

SEER, 96, 3, JULY 2018 574 Czubaty, Jaroslav. The Duchy of Warsaw, 1807–1815: A Napoleonic Outpost in Central Europe. Translated by Ursula Phillips. Bloomsbury Studies in Central and Eastern European History. Bloomsbury Academic, London and New York, 2016. vii + 246 pp. Maps. Notes. Bibliography. Index.£65.00. Although it has always been a staple of romantic versions of Polish history, there have been surprisingly few scholarly studies of the Duchy of Warsaw. Up until now, only two key works have stood out, Fryderyk Skarbeck’s history of 1860 and Barbara Grochulska’s, published in 1966. Yet the Duchy’s short but eventful life offers important insights both into the nature and workings of the Napoleonic empire, and into the slow process by which Poland was ultimately reconstituted after her disappearance from the map in 1795. For many Poles then and now, the mere fact of the Duchy’s existence, however ephemeral, was the stepping-stone to a greater and more permanent revival of their country in the future. In the poetic words of Adam Czartoryski: ‘As the ghost of a former Poland, the Duchy of Warsaw conjures up an inexpressible spell; it is as though, having lost a dear friend, his shadow stood before us and prophesied his imminent resurrection.’ In its broadest aspect, the Duchy’s history sheds light on the perennial question of whether the new states the Emperor created were anything more than cynical exercises in French hegemony. One cannot discount the possibility that Napoleon had genuine sympathy for Polish national aspirations. It is more likely, however, that he saw the Duchy in more instrumental terms: as a source of manpower and tax revenue for his armies and treasury, and as a useful bargaining chip in his complex relationship with Russia. The human and financial cost of this policy is very clear. Fully aware that the key to Napoleon’s favour was the size of their contribution to the Grande Armée, the Duchy’s authorities supplied between 160,000 and 180,000 soldiers between 1806 and 1813, or 4.2 per cent of the population, a significantly greater proportion than other French satellites such as Westphalia and the Kingdom of Italy. Of these, up to 100,000 were killed, wounded, taken prisoner or died of disease or starvation. The cost of maintaining this swollen army in a poor and predominantly agriculturalcountryswiftlydestroyedtheDuchy’sfinances.By1811thenational debt had reached 55.5 million zlotys, roughly the same size as the annual budget, and bankruptcy loomed. Although its effects seem to have varied, the continental blockade did little to help. While overland trade increased and the removal of British competition boosted sectors of the economy, many staple exports lost their most important markets, especially after Russia closed her borders to Polish goods in 1811. Czubaty’s conclusion on the Duchy’s economy is sombre: ‘it is hard to question the vision of total disaster descending on the REVIEWS 575 country as a result of wars, the rigours of the continental blockade, high taxation, the cost of expanding the army, and the general financial crisis’ (p. 105). Thisgloomypicturewas,however,redeemedbyshaftsoflight.Czubatymakes a convincing case that political life in the Duchy was much more vigorous than in other Napoleonic protectorates. In a reaction against the perceived political anarchy of the old Polish Commonwealth, the new bicameral Sejm formed in July 1807 was much more streamlined than its predecessor and also, befitting a Napoleonic creation, had strictly limited powers. Nonetheless, a lively opposition soon developed, criticizing high taxation and the introduction of the Code Napoléon, and demanding detailed budgets from the government. These protests culminated in 1811, when the Sejm, going well beyond its powers, presented the Duchy’s ruler, King Frederick Augustus of Saxony, with a letter advocating radical reform to avert the imminent collapse of the state. Remarkably, Frederick Augustus did not reject it. More broadly, there is much evidence that, as across so much of Europe, Napoleon’s legal and social reforms hastened the emergence of the modern Polish state. The introduction of equality before the law, the career open to talent and personal freedom were developments of epoch-making importance. They created a civil service based on merit...

Otto von Gierke: The Social Role of Private Law

Otto von Gierke wroteThe Social Role of Private Law (Die soziale Aufgabe des Privatrechts)in an age of extraordinary belief in progress and pride. In 1889, the Eiffel Tower was inaugurated, Britain's Royal Navy was required by law to outdo its next two rivals combined, and Germany was forging a massive new Civil Code (Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch). Within a year, Kaiser Wilhelm II had dismissed Otto von Bismarck: The old Iron Chancellor, who had unified a ‘Second’ Reich but no longer moved fast enough to secure a “place in the sun.” Ages of great confidence often see codes of law: Justinian'sCorpus Juris Civilisin a reunited West and Eastern Rome; theCode Civilof the Napoleonic Empire; the Penal, Contract or Trust Acts from 1860 to 1882 across the British Empire; and the US Code of 1926. A desire for legal certainty sometimes drives reform, but rarely as much a desire to display superiority. The flicker of history must be made to seem timeless, like laws seem in printed word.

A Revolutionary Narrative of European History: Bonneville's History of Modern Europe (1789–1792)

A Revolutionary Narrative of European History: Bonneville's <i>History of Modern Europe</i> (1789–1792)

Improving useful species: a public policy of the Directoire regime and Napoleonic Empire in Europe (1795-1815)

When the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Armies conquered most of Europe, they found unknown or hardly known plant and animal species. French naturalists, particularly the so-called agronomists led by botanists and zoologists, supported by the financial and political backing of the State, shaped an ambitious “Nature Policy”. They imported new species of plants and animals from the occupied territories to introduce them into France. The biological regeneration of French herds and agriculture was the main goal of this public policy. A unidirectional circulation from throughout the European continent towards France occurred from 1799 to 1815. But the continental blockade in 1806 cut off the supply of certain products and raw materials such as sugar, indigo and cotton. On a continental scale, in the most adapted parts of its Empire the Napoleonic State implemented an impressive policy of introducing and acclimatizing exotic plant species from many regions of the world. Many questions arise from this unprecedented circulation of plant and animal species within “French Europe”: How was it organised? On which circuits and networks did it rely? What was the role of the French state in that biological challenge? Finally, why were the results of that biological policy so disappointing?

Bonapartism in Algeria

Between 1852 and 1870, Napoleon III and his Bonapartist entourage successfully established a Second Napoleonic Empire that encouraged a ‘cult of the emperor’, emphasizing the strong and even mystical bond between the sovereign and the people. While the ‘spectacular politics’ of the Bonapartist regime have been examined in detail, far less attention has been given to how Bonapartist patriotism was applied within a colonial context and, more specifically, in relation to Algeria. This article examines iterations of Bonapartist dynastic patriotism and nationalist politics in North Africa. It argues that an evaluation of French imperial sovereignty and practices in the years prior to the Third Republic can help to diversify our understanding of the French colonial experience and propose models that diverged from the narrative of republican colonialism in crucial ways during the post-revolutionary period.

Return and Exile: Symbolic Political Legitimacy after Napoleon in France and Britain (1814/15–c.1820)

Return and Exile: Symbolic Political Legitimacy after Napoleon in France and Britain (1814/15-c. 1820)The downfall of the Napoleonic Empire not only brought forth radical political change in France...

Fragments d'un voyage en France

In 1802, Chateaubriand plans a Voyage en France that will never be achieved. A few fragments of this project remain: a chapter of the Memoires d'outre-tombe about a journey to the Midi in 1802, the French sections of the Voyage en Italie , a short stay in Auvergne in 1805 ( Cinq jours a Clermont ), as well as some mentions of other trips. Tales of the Consulate and the Napoleonic Empire are mixed with the impressions of visits to the same places in the 1830s, producing thematic echoes and historical depth. This article proposes an analysis of this galaxy of texts. In his sketches of provincial, feudal and Christian France, Chateaubriand often hides behind erudition and history to avoid the shock of post-revolutionary reality, but the present reappears: in his argument's assumptions and his dysphoric gaze. A political impasse prevents Orleanist France from becoming the subject of a coherent work. (In French)