France

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Jacobin Rule

In the crisis created by foreign invasion, domestic rebellion, food shortages, and uncertain loyalties among high officials, the convention permitted executive power to be concentrated in its Committee of Public Safety. The committee, dominated by the radical Jacobin faction, instituted the Reign of Terror to eliminate enemies and suspects and to coerce the undecided. The king was tried and executed in January 1793 and the queen in October, and thousands of nobles, priests, and commoners suffered the same fate. The committee instituted price controls, requisitioning, rationing, and conscription, and it also organized and equipped the new citizen armies.

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The Directory

In 1794, when the victorious French forces were moving into enemy territory and domestic rebellion had been brought under control, the coercive regime was relaxed. The following year the National Convention adopted a constitution providing for a republic with the executive power vested in a five-man Directory and legislative power divided between two houses, indirectly elected in a way that ensured control by citizens of substantial property.

The Directory governed France through four difficult years of adjustment to the upheaval of revolution and continuing war. At home it was threatened from the Right by Royalists eager to restore the monarchy and on the Left by Jacobins determined to establish a democratic republic. A number of men in key positions saw the need for a more effective government, and they selected the young general Napoleon Bonaparte to stage a coup d’état. In November 1799 he and his supporters overthrew the Directory and a month later established the Consulate.

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The Consulate and the Empire

After his overthrow of the Directory, Napoleon quickly made himself master of the state and country. The new constitution, which he shaped, placed all essential powers in the office he assumed, that of First Consul. He presented himself to the French as a man of peace who would end the long years of war, but once in power he insisted that the way to peace was through victory over the enemies of France still allied in the Second Coalition. He led an army into Italy and sent another into southern Germany, and their victories forced Austria to make peace in 1801. The coalition disintegrated, and Britain, without allies and losing trade with an increasingly French-dominated Europe, agreed to the Treaty of Amiens (1802), which ended hostilities between the two countries.

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Napoleon’s Internal Policies

First Consul Bonaparte sought to heal the wounds of the Revolution, to reconcile old enemies, and to create and consolidate the institutions of a stable government. He welcomed into his service all who would swear allegiance to him. He negotiated with Pope Pius VIII the Concordat of 1801, which re-established the Roman Catholic Church as a State Church and provided for its support by the State, but subjected it to strict governmental control. Napoleon’s great codification of the laws confirmed the principal advances achieved by the Revolution, such as abolition of feudal privileges, equality before the law, freedom of conscience, the individual’s free choice of occupation, and guarantees against arbitrary arrest and detention.

To ensure the administration’s control of the 83 departments, the administrative units into which the country had been divided by the National Assembly, Napoleon placed each of them under a prefect appointed by the Ministry of the Interior. He established a central bank, the Bank of France; created a new unit of currency, the franc; and organized the Imperial University, an administrative organization to direct and control the nation’s teaching corps.

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Napoleon as Master of Europe

Although Napoleon posed as the defender of the Republic, in 1804 he established the French Empire and crowned himself emperor. This action confirmed that his ambitions extended beyond the limits of Bourbon France, and in 1805 he again took up arms. In the next two years he defeated Austria, Prussia, and Russia and made himself master of most of Europe. Britain remained in arms against him, secure in its control of the seas after destruction of the French fleet in 1805 off Cape Trafalgar. Napoleon undertook to bring the British to terms by closing Europe to their trade. His efforts to enforce the continental blockade led him to actions that eventually proved fatal to the empire—the invasions of Spain and Russia.