first french empire

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First French Empire

The French Empire1, 2 (1804-1814/1815), also known as the Greater French Empire, First French

Empire or Napoleonic Empire, was the empire of Napoleon Bonaparte I in France. It was the

dominant power of much of continental Europe during the early 19th century.

Napoleon became Emperor of the French ( L'Empereur des Français) on 18 May 1804 and crowned

Emperor on 2 December 1804, ending the period of the French Consulate, and won early military

victories in the War of the Third Coalition against Austria, Prussia, Russia and Portugal, and allied

nations, notably at the Battle of Austerlitz (1805) and the Battle of Friedland (1807). The Treaty of

Tilsit in July 1807 ended two years of bloodshed on the European continent.

Subsequent years of military victories known collectively as the Napoleonic Wars extended French

influence over much of Western Europe and into Poland. At its height in 1812, the French Empire

had 130 départements, ruled over 44 million subjects, maintained an extensive military presence in

Germany, Italy, Spain and the Duchy of Warsaw, and could count Prussia and Austria as nominal

allies.6 Early French victories exported many ideological features of the French Revolutionthroughout Europe. Seigneurial dues and seigneurial justice were abolished, aristocratic privileges

were eliminated in all places except Poland, and the introduction of the Napoleonic Code

throughout the continent increased legal equality, established jury systems, and legalized divorce.7

Napoleon placed relatives on the thrones of several European countries and granted many noble

titles, most of which were not recognized after the empire fell.

Historians have estimated the death toll from the Napoleonic Wars to be 6.5 million people, or 15%

of the French Empire's subjects. In particular, French losses in the Peninsular War in Iberia severely

weakened the Empire; after victory over the Austrian Empire in the War of the Fifth Coalition

(1809) Napoleon deployed over 600,000 troops to attack Russia,8 in a catastrophic French invasion

of that country in 1812. The War of the Sixth Coalition saw the expulsion of French forces fromGermany in 1813.

Napoleon abdicated on 11 April 1814. The Empire was briefly restored during the Hundred Days

period in 1815 until Napoleon's defeat at the Battle of Waterloo. It was followed by the restored

monarchy of the House of Bourbon.

Origin

In 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte was confronted by Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès – one of the fiveDirectors who constituted the executive branch of the French government – who sought his support

for a coup d'état to overthrow the French Constitution of 1795. 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, An VIII under the French Republican

Calendar), and the following day, troops led by Bonaparte seized control. They dispersed the

legislative councils, leaving a rump legislature to name Bonaparte, Sieyès and Ducos as provisional

Consuls to administer the government. Although Sieyès expected to dominate the new regime, the

Consulate, 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.

The Battle of Marengo (14 June 1800) inaugurated the political idea that was to continue its

development until Napoleon's Moscow campaign. Napoleon planned only to keep the Duchy of



Milan for France, setting aside Austria, and was thought to prepare a new campaign in the East. The

Peace of Amiens, which cost him control of Egypt, was a temporary truce. He gradually extended

his authority in Italy by annexing the Piedmont and by acquiring Genoa, Parma, Tuscany and

Naples and added this Italian territory to his Cisalpine Gaul. Then he laid siege to the Roman state

and initiated the Concordat of 1801 to control the material claims of the pope. When he recognized

his error of raising the authority of the people from that of a figurehead, Napoleon produced the

Articles Organiques (1802) wanting, like Charlemagne, to be the legal protector of the papacy. Toconceal his plans before their actual execution, he aroused French colonial aspirations against

Britain and the memory of the 1763 (Treaty of Paris), exacerbating British jealousy of France,

whose borders now extended to the Rhine and beyond, to Hanover, Hamburg and Cuxhaven.

On 12 May 1802, the French Tribunat voted unanimously, with exception of Carnot, in favor of the

Life Consulship for the leader of France. This action was confirmed by the Corps Législatif. A

general plebiscite followed thereafter resulting in 3,653,600 votes aye and 8,272 votes nay. 9 On 2

August 1802 (14 Thermidor, An X), Napoleon Bonaparte was proclaimed Consul for life.

On 18 May 1804, Napoleon was given the title of emperor by the Senate; finally, on 2 December

1804, he was solemnly crowned, after receiving the Iron Crown of the Lombard kings, and wasconsecrated by Pope Pius VII in Notre-Dame de Paris.10

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 and Charlemagne, to modify the historical evolution of France. Though the

vague plan for an invasion of Britain was never executed, the Battle of Ulm and the Battle of

Austerlitz overshadowed the defeat of Trafalgar, and the camp at Boulogne put at Napoleon's

disposal the best military resources he had commanded, in the form of La Grande Armée.

Napoleon on his Imperial Throne, by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, 1806.



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,

Wüttemberg, 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 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 and the occupation of Ancona, marked a new stage in his progress towards his Roman

Empire.

To create satellite states, Napoleon installed his close relatives as rulers of many European nations.

The clan of the Bonapartes began to mingle with European monarchies, wedding with princesses of

royal blood, and adding kingdom to kingdom. Joseph Bonaparte replaced the dispossessed

Bourbons at Naples; Louis Bonaparte was installed on the throne of the kingdom of Holland formed

from the Batavian Republic; Joachim Murat became grand-duke of Berg, Jérôme Bonaparte son-in-

law to the King of Wüttemberg, and Eugène de Beauharnais to the King of Bavaria while Stéphanie

de Beauharnais married the son of the Grand Duke of Baden.

Meeting with more resistance, Napoleon went further and would tolerate no neutral power. On 6

August 1806 he forced the Habsburgs, left with only the crown of Austria, to abdicate their title of

Holy Roman Emperor, ending a political power which had endured for over a thousand years.

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. The Eylau taken against the

Russians 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 supremacy of the former.

At The Crossroads

The July 1807 Treatise of Tilsit ended war between Imperial Russia and the French Empire and

began an alliance between the two empires which held power of much of the rest of Europe. The

two empires secretly agreed to aid each other in disputes – France pledged to aid Russia against

Ottoman Turkey, while Russia agreed to join the Continental System against the British Empire.

Napoleon also convinced Alexander to enter into the Anglo-Russian War and to instigate the

Finnish War against Sweden in order to force Sweden to join the Continental System.

More specifically, the tsar agreed to evacuate Wallachia and Moldavia, which had been occupied by

Russian forces as part of the Russo-Turkish War, 1806-1812. The Ionian Islands and Cattaro, which

had been captured by Russian admirals Ushakov and Senyavin, were to be handed over to the

French. In recompense, Napoleon guaranteed the sovereignty of the Duchy of Oldenburg and

several other small states ruled by the tsar's German relatives.

The treaty with Prussia removed about half of its territory: Kottbus passed to Saxony, the left bank

of the Elbe was awarded to the newly-created Kingdom of Westphalia, Bialystok was given to

Russia, and the rest of the Polish lands in the Prussian possession was set up as the quasi-

independent Duchy of Warsaw. Prussia was to reduce the army to 40,000 and to pay the indemnityof 100,000,000 francs.



Observers in Prussia and Russia viewed the treaty as unequal and as a national humiliation.

Talleyrand had advised Napoleon to pursue milder terms; the treaties marked an important stage in

his estrangement from the emperor. After the Treaties of Tilsit, instead of trying to reconcile Europe

to his grandeur as Talleyrand advised, Napoleon wanted 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 rival, but which contributed to his own

fall by its immoderate extension of the Empire. To the coalition of the northern powers he added theleague 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.

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 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.

Napoleon thought he might succeed in the Iberian Peninsula as he had done in Italy, in Egypt and in

Hesse. The Spanish began effective guerilla resistance, however; and the trap of Bayonne, together with the enthroning of Joseph Bonaparte, made Prince of Asturias the elect of popular sentiment,

the representative of religion and country.

Napoleon thought he had Spain within his control, and now the Iberian Peninsula started slipping

from him. The Peninsula became the grave of whole armies and saw a war against Spain, Britain,

and Portugal. Dupont capitulated at Bailen into the hands of General Castaños, and Junot at Sintra,

Portugal to General Wellesley; while Europe noted at this first check to the hitherto successful

imperial armies. To reduce Spanish resistance Napoleon had 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 return in force to Madrid.

Thus Spain used up the soldiers wanted for Napoleon's other fields of battle, and they had to be

replaced by forced levies. Spanish resistance affected Austria, and indicated the potential of national

resistance. The provocations of Talleyrand and Britain strengthened the idea that Austrians could

emulate the Spaniards. The campaign of 1809, however, was weaker than 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 Battle of Essling-Aspern, the victory 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, extended the Empire.

Napoleon profited, in fact, by the campaign which had been planned for his overthrow.

The pope was deported to Savona and his domains were incorporated in the Empire; the senate'sdecision 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 as far as Napoleon was concerned, to send away those to

whom Italy had been more or less promised. Eugène de Beauharnais, Napoleon's stepson, was

transferred to Frankfurt, and Murat 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 light upon his future policy. He renounced a federation in which his brothers were not

sufficiently docile; he gradually withdrew power from them and concentrated his affection and

ambition on the son who was the guarantee of the continuance of his dynasty. This was the apogee

of the empire.



Intrigues and Unrest

But undermining forces already impinged the faults inherent in his unwieldy achievement. Britain,

protected by the English Channel and her navy, was persistently active; and rebellion both of the

governing and of the governed broke out everywhere. Napoleon felt his failure 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; Jérôme Bonaparte, idling in his harem, lost that of the

North Sea shores; and Joseph, who was attempting the moral conquest of Spain, was continuallyinsulted 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; Joseph Fouché corresponded

with Austria in 1809 and 1810, entered into an understanding with Louis, and also with Britain;

while Bourrienne was convincted 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.

Even as he lost his military principles, he maintained his gift for brilliance. His Six Days Campaign,

which took place at the very end of the Sixth Coalition, is regarded as his greatest display of

leadership. But by then it was the end, and it was during the years before when, instead of the

armies and governments of the old system, which had hitherto reigned supreme, the nations of

Europe conspired against France. And while the Emperor and his holdings idled and worsened the

rest of Europe agreed to avenge the events of 1792. The three campaigns of two years (1812-14)

would bring total catastrophe.

The Fall

Napoleon had hardly succeeded in putting down the revolt in Germany when the Czar of Russia



himself headed a European insurrection against Napoleon. To put a stop to this, to ensure his own

access to the Mediterranean and exclude his chief rival, Napoleon made an effort in 1812 against

Russia. Despite his victorious advance, the taking of Smolensk, the victory on the Moskva, and the

entry into Moscow, he was defeated by the country and the climate, and by Alexander's refusal to

make terms. After this came the lamentable retreat in the harsh Russian winter, 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 – havingrefused the peace offered him by Austria at the Congress of Prague (4 June – 10 August 1813), 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, General Moreau also

joined the Allies, and longstanding allied nations, such as Saxony and Bavaria, forsook him as well.

Following his retreat from Russia, Napoleon continued to retreat, this time from Germany. After the

loss of Spain, reconquered by an allied army led by Wellington, the rising in the Netherlands

preliminary to the invasion and the manifesto of Frankfort (1 December 1813)11 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 campaign of 1814 against the invaders. Paris capitulated on 30 March1814, and the Delenda Carthago, pronounced against Britain, was spoken of Napoleon. The Empire

fell with Napoleon's abdication at Fontainebleau on 11 April 1814.

After a brief exile at the island of Elba, Napoleon recaptured the throne temporarily in 1815,

reviving the Empire in what is known as the Hundred Days. However, he was defeated by the

Seventh Coalition at the Battle of Waterloo. He was captured by the British and exiled to Saint

Helena, a remote island in the South Atlantic, where he remained until his death in 1821. After the

Hundred Days, the Bourbon monarchy was restored, with Louis XVIII ascending the throne of

France, while the rest of Napoleon's conquests were disposed of in the Congress of Vienna.

The Nature of Bonaparte's Rule

Napoleon gained support by appealing to some common concerns of the French people. These

included the dislike of the emigrant nobility who had escaped persecution, fear by some of a

restoration of the ancien régime, a dislike and suspicion of foreign countries had tried to reverse the

Revolution – and a wish by the Jacobins to extend France's revolutionary ideals.

Napoleon attracted power and imperial status and gathered support for his changes of French

institutions, such as the Concordat of 1801 which confirmed the Catholic Church as the majoritychurch of France and restored some of its civil status. Napoleon by this time however was not a

democrat, nor a republican. He was, he liked to think, an enlightened despot, the sort of man

Voltaire might have found appealing. He preserved numerous social gains of the Revolution while

suppressing political liberty. He admired efficency and strength and hated feudalism, religious

intolerance, and civil inequality. Enlightened despotism meant political stability. He knew his

Roman history well, as after 500 years of republicanism, Rome became an empire under Augustus

Caesar.

Although a supporter of the radical Jacobins during the early days of the Revolution (more out of

pragmatism than any real ideology), Napoleon became increasingly autocratic as his political career

progressed and once in power embraced certain aspects of both liberalism and authoritarianism – 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.



References

1. But still domestically styled as French Republic until 1808: compare the French franc minted in 1808 and in

1809, as well as Article 1 of the Constitution of the Year XII, which reads in English ” The Government of the

Republic is vested in an Emperor, who takes the title of Emperor of the French. ”

2. The official bulletin of laws of the French Empire

3. http://www.napoleon.org/fr/magazine/plaisirs_napoleoniens/musique/files/471097.asp?onglet=0

4. According to his father's will only. Between 23 June and 7 July France was held by a Commission of fivemembers, which never summoned Napoleon II as emperor in any official act, and no regent was ever

appointed while waiting the return of the king.

5. Taagepera 1997

6. Martyn Lyons, Napoleon Bonaparte and the Legacy of the French Revolution. p. 232.

7. Martyn Lyons p. 234-236

8. 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.

9. Bulletin des Lois

10. Claims he seized the crown out of the hands of Pope Pius VII during the ceremony – to avoid subjecting

himself to the authority of the pontiff – are apocryphal; the coronation procedure had been agreed in advance.

11. The Frankfort Declaration, 1 December 1813:

http://www.napoleon-series.org/research/government/diplomatic/c_frankfort.html

• Chandler, David G. The Campaigns of Napoleon. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995. ISBN 0-02-523660-1

• Colton, Joel and Palmer, R.R. A History of the Modern World. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1992. ISBN 0-

07-04826-2

• Elting, John R. Swords Around a Throne: Napoleon's Grande Armée. New York: Da Capo Press Inc., 1988.

ISBN 0-306-80757-2

• Fisher, Todd & Fremont-Barnes, Gregory. The Napoleonic Wars: The Rise and Fall of an Empire. Oxford:

Osprey Publishing Ltd., 2004. ISBN 1-84176-831-6

• Lyons, Martyn. Napoleon Bonaparte and the Legacy of the French Revolution. New York: St. Martin's Press,

Inc., 1994. ISBN 0-312-12123-7

• McLynn, Frank. Napoleon: A Biography. New York: Arcade Publishing Inc., 1997. ISBN 1-55970-631-7

• Roberts, J.M. History of the World. New York: Penguin Group, 1992. ISBN 0-19-521043-3

• Schom, Alan. Napoleon Bonaparte. New York: HarperCollins, 1997. ISBN 0-06-092958-8

• Tolstoy, Leo. War and Peace. London: Penguin Group, 1982. ISBN 0-14-044417-3

• Uffindell, Andrew. Great Generals of the Napoleonic Wars. Kent: Spellmount, 2003. ISBN 1-86227-177-1

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