They were perfectly happy to have an empire, which they saw as being based on republican principles, with a Napoleon rather than Bourbon at the top of the tree. Being an emperor and being a king were very different things. I think his military successes first in Italy in 1796 and also in 1800 as well as his creation of the civil code were essential to understanding how they able to recognise that he wasn’t a king. Joining the dots between the French Revolution and Napoleon’s ascendency, how did France go from establishing a Republic and executing their king to welcoming an emperor barely a decade later? When I say a ‘moderniser’, I mean a moderniser in the context of the times, not a moderniser in the context of Tony Blair. So, he had an in-out/in-out policy with slavery.

He did reinstitute it in 1802, but abolished it again in 1814. He went on to abolish slavery, of course, not once but twice. The Code Napoleon was not good for women, but then they were hardly over-endowed with rights before the Revolution. But didn’t he also curtail the rights of women and reinstate slavery in the Caribbean sugar colonies? Some would argue that the main constitution itself was structurally undemocratic, with an unelected senate, even if it was put to the people in a plebiscite. He’d declare things like “I am the Revolution”, and the Napoleonic Code did enshrine revolutionary principles like civic equality into law.

I think there’s something paradoxical about it. You mentioned his relationship with the Revolution. He was the person who brought France into the 19th century with huge reforms of administration and finance. He got rid of the worst bits, like the mass guillotining, the Reign of Terror, the various mad ideas they had like the ten-day week, abolishing Christianity, and so on. The Code Napoleon was still in effect in the Rhineland until 1900, for example, and it underlies modern European legal systems to this day. I argue that although he didn’t have much to do with the French Revolution itself, as he was too young, he nonetheless kept the best bits of the Revolution-equality before the law, religious tolerance, meritocracy-for France and the countries that France conquered. Instead, I’d concentrate on those aspects of his rule that can still be seen in France and in much of Western Europe today. I’d set aside his military achievements-conquering half of Europe in the 16 years of his rule between 17-as all of those had completely disappeared by the time of the Congress of Vienna in 1815. If you were to explain the significance of Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) to someone who knew nothing about him, what would you say?

Foreign Policy & International Relations.

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