Napoleon Bonapart

Chris Harris

11/26/2017

                                Napoleon Bonaparte

        This Essay discusses the effects of Napoleon’s defeat to the after- war Europe. This paper would explain the French Revolution and his military tactics. Also, this paper is going to show the after-war of Europe and the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte. Including the exile of Napoleon and the 100 days, even after the defeat of Napoleon creating the Congress of Vienna.

        France started off as the old Regime who were Absolutism which means a monarch who has absolute control over the government. There were two type of classes the privileged and the unprivileged, the privileged people did not pay taxes and treated better then most. But the unprivileged on the other hand were taxed and treated very poorly. Economically France was supported by agriculture and the poorest of the poor would pay the most taxes. France went into Bankrupt because of deficit spending, they were spending more money than they really had from taxes.

        France was not a place to live during the old regime because people had fear because of famine and hunger. The peasants were fearing that the nobles at the Estates were getting better privileges so they attacked the nobles throughout the country in 1789. The General called for a meeting and had the third-estate to join and be members in the national assembly, then the third-estate moved to a tennis court and created the tennis court oat and wrote a constitution for France. The National assembly did not want a written constitution and wanted to use military force but news got out so people started rebellion on the Bastille on July 14,1789.

Napoleon became the emperor and military leader for the French. He was often called the founder of the Modern State. Napoleon’s idea was to expand his empire in Europe so he sold Louisiana to the united states for military money so he can have power.

           The good things that happened when Napoleon was in power was, he made tax collection more fair and orderly so France could rely on steady supply of money. He started school for ordinary citizens, so he created laws called the Napoleonic Code. This affected all citizens of France by giving them equal rights. Some individual’s rights were removed, free speech was limited and slavery was restored in the French colonies. The code also established freedom of religion and separation of the church and state.

The Bad thing about Napoleon is that he made a couple of mistakes which were to block the British Paris so they could block their economics.  Another was Napoleon liked to put his family in power and made his own brother the king of Spain but Spain were loyal to their king and the peasants revolted. Last was when Napoleon attack Russia but the Russians retreated and followed a scorched earth policy which means they burned all of the crops so the French wouldn’t survive because of such cold weather and no food.