Napoleon and the Revolutionary Legacy

1800–1830

The end of the Terror in 1794 opened a new chapter in European history—one marked by the extraordinary rise of Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821). Between 1795 and 1799, Napoleon transformed himself from a humble artillery officer in the revolutionary army into the ruler of France. The first document describes a key stage in this transformation, Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798. Although the campaign ultimately failed, it foreshadowed Napoleon’s subsequent attempts to colonize large parts of Europe along similar lines. Napoleon’s defeat in the Battle of the Nations in 1813 set the stage for a new era in European politics. Napoleon’s enemies met at the Congress of Vienna to negotiate the terms of peace united by their singular desire to restore the old order. The second document reveals the allied powers in action as they worked to maintain traditional authority through the force of arms and conservative ideology. Yet, as the third document indicates, the revolutionary legacy was still a powerful force threatening the status quo. The fourth and fifth documents reflect the cultural response to the shifting European landscape—romanticism—which strove to strip away artifice and expose truth as revealed in nature and the imagination. In doing so, romantic artists exposed the profound tensions characteristic of the postrevolutionary age between the desire for stability and the desire to stretch the limits of human creativity.