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France Tourism: The Rise of Napoléon

Home > Travel Guides > Europe > France > In Depth > History > The Rise of Napoléon

The Rise of Napoléon

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Meanwhile, the Enlightenment was training a new generation of thinkers for the struggle against absolutism, religious fanaticism, and superstition. Europe was never the same after the Revolution of 1789, though the ideas that engendered it had been brewing for more than 50 years. On August 10, 1792, troops from Marseille, aided by a Parisian mob, threw the dim-witted Louis XVI and his Austrian-born queen, Marie Antoinette, into prison. After months of bloodshed and bickering among competing factions, the two monarchs were executed.

France's problems got worse before they got better. In the ensuing bloodbaths, moderates and radicals were guillotined in view of bloodthirsty crowds that included voyeurs such as Dickens's Mme Defarge, who brought her knitting every day to place de la Révolution (later renamed place de la Concorde) to watch the beheadings. The drama surrounding the collapse of the ancien régime and the executions of Robespierre's Reign of Terror provide the most heroic and horrible anecdotes in French history. From this era emerged the Declaration of the Rights of Man, an enlightened document published in 1789; its influence has since been cited as a model of democratic ideals. The implications of the collapse of the French aristocracy shook the foundations of every monarchy in Europe.

Only the militaristic fervor of Napoléon Bonaparte could reunite France and bring an end to the chaos. A political and military genius who appeared on the landscape when the French were sickened by the anarchy following their Revolution, he restored their tarnished national pride. He also established a bureaucracy and a code of law that has been emulated around the world. In 1799, at the age of 30, he entered Paris and was crowned First Consul and Master of France. Soon after, a victory in his Italian campaign solidified his power at home. A brilliant politician, he made peace through a compromise with the Vatican, quelling the atheistic spirit of the earliest days of the Revolution.

Napoléon's victories made him the envy of Europe. Beethoven dedicated his Eroica symphony to Napoléon -- but retracted the dedication when Napoléon committed what Beethoven considered atrocities. On the verge of conquering all Europe, Napoléon beat an infamous retreat from Moscow during the winter of 1812. It reduced his army to tatters, as 400,000 Frenchmen died in the Russian snows. The combined armies of the English, Dutch, and Prussians then defeated Napoléon at Waterloo. Exiled to the British-held island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic, he died in 1821, probably the victim of an unknown poisoner.

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The Rise of Napoléon

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