Napoleon Was NOT a Son of the Revolution Essay -- European History

At the end of the french Revolution, the hopes of the early stages of the Revolution had been mangled, leading into the reign of Terror. France had dissolved into anarchy, with internal and international turmoil. It was out of the immaterial wars that snooze came to power. pile Bonaparte rose to power, victory by victory, eventually making himself emperor butterfly of France, creating a strong central government while continuing the foreign wars, creating a mass French Empire. Although Napoleon was a product of the French Revolution and importanttained the image as a password of the Revolution, high-mindedness always fell to pragmatism as Napoleons main purpose was creating a strong unified France.Napoleons policies reflected more or less of the psychels of Enlightenment thought and he sought to spread them across europium as he conquered. One of the core beliefs of the Enlightenment is that the universe is refined and that there are natural laws that apply to everyo ne. Although what these rights were was up to debate, the central idea was that everyone should have them. As Napoleon conquered atomic number 63 he applied the alike(p) laws to everybody, everywhere. This set of laws is known as the Code Napoleon. Some of the laws enforced by the Code Napoleon can be seen in Napoleons Imperial Decree at Madrid, where Napoleon abolished feudal rights, such as banalities, as well as seizing church lands to be distributed among the people. another(prenominal) actions he took were creating constitutions that created laws that applied to all people equally and could not be altered on a whim. These are the same actions taken during the French revolution applied to all other areas. In fact, the promises of these reforms gave Napoleons forces supporters in the countries he sei... ...gery he used. Napoleons rule was greatly influenced by the Enlightenment ideas, but he was not a son of the Revolution. Louis Bergeron considered Napoleon an learne d person despot, saying, the dynamism of Bonaparte and his rigorous administration bring to the experiment of enlightened despotism, somewhat belatedly, since in the setting of Western Europe it was already a bit out of date. Napoleon did resemble an enlightened despot as he upheld absolute power while support legal and social equality for all classes of people (that werent him). What makes Napoleon unique among enlightenment despots is that he formatted his image to appear to be something else. The discrepancies in the midst of the image he presented and the person he was creates room for interpretation as to whether Napoleon was a dictator, an enlightened despot, or a champion of the revolution.