Napoleon's domestic aims and achievements, 1799-1814

History · AS: France, 1774-1814. The idea in plain words, the rules to remember, the mistake to avoid and a worked example, written and checked by Mega Lecture.

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The idea

After Brumaire, Napoleon ruled first as First Consul and from 1804 as Emperor. His aims at home were order, stability and a firm hold on power. He ended the quarrels of the 1790s by keeping some gains of the Revolution and dropping others.

He kept equality before the law, the end of feudalism and the sale of Church lands. He gave up political liberty: elections meant little, the press was censored and the police watched opponents.

His reforms built a strong central state. Prefects carried out orders in each department, the Bank of France steadied finances, the Civil Code gave one law for all of France, and lycées trained future officials and officers.

Rules to remember

1800: Bank of France founded. 1800: prefects appointed by Napoleon to run each department.
Concordat (1801): peace with the Pope. Catholicism recognised as the religion of the majority of the French; the state chose and paid bishops; Church lands stayed with their buyers.
1802: Consul for Life after a plebiscite. 1802: Legion of Honour to reward loyal service. 1802: lycées (state secondary schools for boys).
Civil Code (1804): equality before the law, property rights, no feudal privileges; it also gave fathers and husbands strong authority.
1804: a royalist plot was used to justify hereditary rule. Napoleon was crowned Emperor at Notre-Dame on 2 December 1804.
Control: censorship of newspapers, Fouché's Ministry of Police, the Imperial Catechism (1806) teaching obedience to the Emperor.
Plebiscites in 1800, 1802 and 1804 gave his rule the appearance of popular consent.

Common mistake

Do not write that the Concordat made Catholicism the state religion or returned Church land. It called Catholicism the religion of the majority of the French, and buyers of Church land kept it.

Worked example

Was the Civil Code of 1804 a continuation of the Revolution or a break from it?

It kept revolutionary principles: equality before the law, no noble privilege and secure property.
It protected those who had bought Church and noble land, so it defended the revolutionary land settlement.
It reduced the rights of women and gave authority to the father and husband, which moved away from the more equal family laws of the 1790s.

Answer: Mostly a continuation in civil equality and property, but a step back in the rights of women and in family law.

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