The Napoleonic Wars 1803-1815 by David Gates

Author:David Gates [David Gates]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2003-02-05T16:00:00+00:00

A developed, unitary state, second only in population to Russia and with considerable natural resources, France was already one of the leading European powers on the eve of the nineteenth century. However, in his attempts to unlock more of her latent strength, Napoleon was to be thwarted by intractable structural problems. Above all a pragmatic rationalist, a child of the Enlightenment, who subordinated rights to efficiency where necessary, he strove to create an environment in which enterprise might flourish: French law in its entirety was codified; logical, versatile weights and measures, the metric system, were imposed; the Bank of France was established to support business credits and regulate government finance; international industrial exhibitions were staged; and, while the national bank was permitted to issue some notes in Paris, a metal-based currency – with the franc fixed at five grains of silver – replaced the Revolutionary assignats. Napoleon also centralized the control of education, concentrating, in contrast to the Revolutionary legislators who had favoured mass education instruments in general and primary schools in particular, on elitist secondary schools, the lycées, which drew their pupils principally from middle-class families and prepared them for a life of public service as doctors, functionaries and officers. Again, uniformity was stressed, both to ensure the maintenance of standards – the baccalauréat was introduced in 1809 – and to help foster a sense of national identity.6 By 1813, the lycées were arguably the finest secondary schools in Europe, producing, among other state servants, that generation of bureaucrats who, amid the political instability which bedevilled France for so much of the nineteenth century, consistently served their country well.

As the empire expanded and the demand for qualified officials grew, however, Napoleon had to look to his vassals to provide some of them. Since the bourgeoisie was insufficiently developed in many countries to be used in this regard, local notables had to be employed, few of whom were of the same quality as the lycée graduates. Moreover, Napoleon had to curb his reforming zeal so as not to antagonize them; they were often allowed to retain their traditional, feudal privileges.7 In other regards, too, in the light of local circumstances, pragmatism overrode principle, with the result that the Code Napoléon, though conceived as a set of universal principles founded on reason, was applied unevenly beyond France’s frontiers. Moreover, although Napoleon’s reforms created an environment conducive to economic opportunities, he could not guarantee that it would be exploited. Indeed, more use was made of the apparatus he forged in parts of Germany, notably in the Rhineland, where his imported system of government ‘was in close harmony with the needs of a buoyantly industrialising economy’,8 than in France itself.

While still consul, Napoleon realized that France’s military power needed adequate economic roots for its nourishment; although he could and did exact indemnities from her vanquished foes, war could never entirely pay for war. Accordingly, he sought to put France’s public finances on a sturdy footing,9 a task in which his reform of her

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