HIS241H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Habsburg Monarchy, Meritocracy
Napoleonic France
• enseignment regime was gone
• revolution based on human rights in France (french rev)
• continuation of revolution was napoleon (I am the revolution) - Napoleon
• no change between revolutionary period and his reign
• from 83 depart he made 130 depart,
• he opened up the first national bank in France,
• France always struggled with finances, richer than Britain etc but never have enough
money
• British were better because they had a national bank now napoleon copied that
• borrowing from bank rather than from individuals, the bank had to have set rates etc not
like individuals
• brought financial stability
• napoleon took specific care to french society, rights of peasants and continuing of getting
rid of feudalism and looking into the interests of middle class (bourgeois)
◦ they got many privileges, they got the right to vote,
◦ universal manhood suffrage - everyone could vote
◦ instead of universal it was only limited to people who could pay more, brought
down universal suffrage
◦ Napoleon kept it bc it let only the richest of the middle class to cast a vote
• Three objectives of the the revolution
◦ liberte (freedom to all french men)
◦ egalite (how equal did french men become under the revolution)
◦ fraternite
◦ Making french men brothers of one another, he introduced a civil code (for the
entire of enseignment regime, france didn't have one single rule of law, it was a
patchwork of number of legal precedents, practice of old roman laws, provincial
laws and customary laws and under this system it was hard for anyone to succeed
anywhere else)
◦ nap unified the code and brought in one single rule of law
◦ it made it easier for french men etc
◦ this allowed them to settle do business anywhere,
◦ positive development (making one single rule of law)
• tried to settle differences with the church
◦ he signed concordat (1801), a understanding with pop pious the seventh
◦ he didn't really care about religion in the beginning
◦ the revolution lashed out against the church
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◦ he made deal with church, the rome vatican not bc he cared but because by
establishing understanding he eliminated civil war in France
◦ tens of thousand of peasants opposed the revolution bc of its treatment of the
church
◦ peasants was a conservative social group and they really likes religion
◦ the agreement was advantageous to the state
◦ the church could never demand back what they lost (ensuring what the middle
class gained through the revolution)
◦ the priests would have to spare loyalty to the state
◦ civil rights were given back to the church
◦ religious tolerance
◦ allowed free practice of religion
◦ (protestants and jewish minority)
• introduced the code napoleonic
◦ legal transformation of the state
◦ they not only had one legal system
◦ but it also applied to civil life and commerce, family and in european white
context, any land that was taken under french control would use the same legal
system
◦ reason /root of how he did this,
◦ he found family as critical, if family life is stable then social life would
◦ what would bring stability to the family, not withstanding equality (gender
equality wasn't a thing),
◦ he had the most support from middle class
◦ criminal code - two kinds of crimes
▪ real crime - murder, thievery, muggings, fraud, abuse of system punished
according to the law
▪ phony crime - anything related to religion, didnt want to challenge Rome
or undermine the church, (superstition, witchcraft, sacrilege, blasphemy) -
useless didn't matter to the state and this was something prevalent during
the enseignment regime
◦ declared that every accused has a right for legal representation (napoleon
introduced this),
◦ and for poor the state would have to pay for legal representation
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find more resources at oneclass.com