Napoleon, and the Answer to Him
Reform behind a façade
- As first consul and emperor, Napoleon undertook a number of enduring domestic reforms while often curtailing some rights and manipulating popular impulses behind a façade of representative institutions.
- The CED's sentence holds three things at once: enduring reforms, curtailed rights, and a façade of representation.
- So an answer that gives only the reforms, or only the repression, has taken half the sentence.
Select all three things the CED's sentence holds at once.
An answer giving only the reforms has taken half the sentence.
Why 'enduring' is the operative word
- A reform is enduring when it survives the regime that made it — a legal code, an administrative structure, a currency.
- That is a different claim from popular or just: the CED is measuring durability, not approval.
- So the reforms and the curtailed rights are not in tension; they are two accurate measurements of one regime.
'Enduring' measures...
A different claim from popular or just.
New tactics, continental control
- Napoleon's new military tactics allowed him to exert direct or indirect control over much of the European continent, spreading the ideals of the French Revolution across Europe.
- Note direct or indirect: annexation, satellite kingdoms and forced alliances are all forms of control.
- And note the object of the spreading: the ideals of the French Revolution, carried by an emperor's armies.
Reform, control, or the response?
Sort each element of Napoleonic Europe.
The CED says Napoleon exerted direct or ____ control over much of the continent.
Annexation, satellite kingdoms and forced alliances are all forms of control.
Enduring reforms and curtailed rights are not in tension. The CED measures durability, not approval — a legal code can outlive its author while the regime that issued it manipulates popular impulses behind a façade of representative institutions. Both halves of the sentence are true at once.
The CED's verb for nationalist responses is...
The response is a product of the empire, not something pre-existing.
The nationalist response
- Napoleon's expanding empire created nationalist responses throughout Europe.
- The CED's verb is created: the response is a product of the empire, not something that pre-existed it.
- Being governed by a foreigner in the name of universal principles teaches a people to notice that it is a people.
The armies that spread the revolution's ideals produced the nationalism that would defeat the empire.
One mechanism, stated in two CED sentences, linking 5.6's two objectives.
The irony worth writing down
- The armies that spread the revolution's ideals produced the nationalism that would defeat the empire carrying them.
- That is one mechanism, stated in two CED sentences, and it links 5.6's two objectives.
- 5.7's Congress of Vienna then tries to contain exactly what these armies created.
An empire justifies its rule by universal principles and administers it in a foreign language, by foreign officials, for foreign benefit. The principles are heard; so is the accent. The second is what produces a nationalist response, and the first is what gives it a vocabulary.
Napoleon undertook enduring domestic reforms while curtailing some rights and manipulating popular impulses behind a façade of representative institutions, and his new military tactics gave him direct or indirect control over much of the continent, spreading the ideals of the French Revolution. Those same armies created nationalist responses throughout Europe — the mechanism that would defeat the empire carrying the ideals.