33.3 Europe: a.d. 1801 to 1900  (Page 13/27)

France

In the last chapter we noted that at the end of the 18th century Napoleon returned to France as consul after his escape from the British in his Egyptian fiasco.

We should add that on November 12, 1799 the Provisional Consuls - Napoleon, Sieyes and Roger Ducos - met in Luxembourg Palace to make plans to rebuild France, a nation in economic, political, religious and moral disarray. Some effects of the French Revolution had been positive, such as peasant proprietorship, capitalism, replacement of feudalism by a free peasantry, encouragement of science, a world view of theology and a national system of schools. But true democracy was given only a nod as all officials from local to national levels were made by appointment by the central government. In effect the central government was soon just Napoleon.

We must pause to give at least a thumb-nail sketch of this man, Napoleon Bonaparte, who has had some 200,000 books and pamphlets written about him and who has been labeled by some as a hero struggling to give unity and law to Europe and by others as an ogre, who drained the blood of France and ravaged Europe. He was born on Corsica in 1.769, only a few months after France had purchased that mountainous island f rom Genoa and Napoleon always remained basically an Italian Corsican of noble Tuscany pedigree. His brother Joseph was initially made King of Naples, then of Spain; his brother Louis married a de Beauharnais and became King of Holland; sister Maria Anna Elisa was the Grand Duchess of Tuscany; Pauline married Prince Camillo Borghese; Maria Caroline married Joachim Mural and became Queen of Naples; while brother Jerome rose to be King of Westphalia.

In his youth Napoleon did well in mathematics, geography, history, and Plutarch. He was selected from his French military school- to receive advanced instruction at the Ecole Militaire and then went on to rapid advancement in the French army. His first wife, Josephine de Beauharnais, widow of a vicomte murdered in the revolution, was older than Napoleon by 6 years and was the mother of 2 before her marriage to Bonaparte. Although devoted to her and yet at times tormented by her occasional- infidelities, Napoleon finally divorced Josephine because she remained childless by him. He then married the Austrian Archduchess, Maria Louise, who did present him with an heir, only about 3 years before his final military defeats

To summarize in advance the information to follow, Bonaparte ruled France for 15 years as First Consul of the First Republic (1799-1804) and as emperor from 1804 to 1814 and during that time conquered almost the whole of Europe, finally being defeated by a coalition of Austria, Prussia and Russia at the Battle of Leipzig in Germany in October 1813 and subsequently again by the British at Waterloo, Belgium in 1814. Louis XVIII was then called to be king. Napoleon himself estimated that his campaigns resulted in the deaths of 1,700,000 Frenchmen, more than were killed in both subsequent World Wars. It is interesting, however, that more soldiers died of typhus f ever in the Napoleonic Wars than in battle. Small-pox was not a problem in his own armies as he had had all his troops vaccinated in 1805, introducing this to Europe. He also pioneered the large scale use of canned food for his troops. The road to defeat was a long one. Napoleon abandoned the idea of siege warfare early and aimed at defeating an enemy by out-maneuvering him.