A second phase of the revolution began from 10 August 1792, when the king was suspended from office, and from 21 September when a new legislative body called the National Convention was assembled for the first time after being chosen on the basis of universal male suffrage, although only a small proportion of the eligible voters took part in the election. Nevertheless, its prestige was greater than loyalty to any individual, with exercising political power through the sans culottes institutions, the National Guard command structures, and revolutionary committees to sustain the revolution against future threats. The Austrian and Prussian armies continued advancing, and within France, royalists and reactionaries hoped and worked for a return to the old regime. However, the energy of Danton in Paris, and the measures that the Legislative Assembly had taken to call all patriots to arms staved off disaster for the revolutionary cause. From 2 to 4 September, Paris crowds attacked the prisons where individuals suspected of sympathizing with the old regime had been imprisoned, and massacred hundreds of nobles who they believed were conspiring with foreign powers. This act of terrorism was matched with strenuous steps to reform and equip the army. As a result, on 20 September, the day before the Convention assembled, the French held their ground for the first time and repulsed a Prussian army at Valmy, and from that time onward, the revolutionary armies were by degrees able to shift to the offensive.
One of the main features of the new National Convention in 1792 was moving the country further away from the monarchy, while the lines of the political spectrum shifted to the left. The Girondins who had been the radicals of the Legislative Assembly were the conservatives of the Convention, who drew their support from the provinces, and aspired to establish a republic in which men like themselves, drawn from the professional and mercantile classes, would govern France. On the radical extreme of the Convention were the Jacobins, who were fewer than the Girondins but led by capable fanatics such as Robespierre, and were dependent on the Paris crowds for support, while having full confidence in the virtues and capacities of the ordinary man and sought to establish a thoroughly democratic republic. Meanwhile, the absolute majority of the Convention belonged to neither of the extremes.
The National Convention met for the first time on 21 September 1792, which acted as a ruling body and its deputies abolished the monarchy completely, and thereby establishing the French republic a few days later. It also determined the fate of Louis XVI. The Girondins feared mob retaliation and wanted to keep the king alive. On the other hand, the Jacobins wanted the king dead. Louis XVI was then placed on trial on 11 December, He was then sentenced to be executed for treasonous correspondence with the enemy to wage war against France to overturn the results of the revolution, and was killed on the guillotine on 21 January 1793 like an ordinary criminal. From this time on, the Revolution could only move forward while facing enormous problems. The value of paper currency, the assignats, used to finance the revolution had fallen by 50% while there was also price inflation and continued food shortages.
French armies under General Dumouriez had meanwhile invaded the Austrian Netherlands, or present-day Belgium, and other armies had conquered Savoy and some of the principalities of the Rhineland. Wherever the French armies were successful, revolutionary regimes were set up, often with the support of a considerable number of the local inhabitants. These successes encouraged the Convention to promulgate a new Edict of Fraternity on 19 November 1792 that represented a new tone to the war, offering “fraternity and aid to all peoples who shall wish to recover their liberties,” and a new decree in December promised to treat as an enemy everyone who wished to “maintain, recall or treat as a prince and the privileged classes.” This constituted a move toward waging war against all of European monarchies and destroy feudalism throughout Europe by extending the benefits of the French revolution, introducing liberal reforms that included freedom of enterprise, equality before the law, security of property and of the individual, and inexpensive and efficient public administration. The execution of Louis XVI added fresh provocation, which was followed by a declaration of extending French national frontiers on 31 January 1793 to the Rhine, the Alps and the Pyrenees. War was declared on Britain and the United Provinces of Holland on 1 February 1793, and then on Spain in March.
A coalition of Austria, Prussia Great Britain, Holland, Spain and Sardinia was consequently formed to fight the French revolution. The allied armies were able to reoccupy Belgium and once again invaded France in March 1793. Simultaneously, a serious revolt broke out in the Vendee part of France where Catholic peasants resisted the efforts of the Republic to draft them for military service, and formed a number of bands who waged a persistent guerilla war for several years that threatened the internal security of the Republic. These reverses exacerbated the bitterness of the division between the Girondins and the Jacobins, but this strife nevertheless did not prevent the Convention from drafting a new constitution for France, as well as taking a number of important steps to meet the crisis that was threatening the Republic, as well as the Jacobins taking measures to establish a wartime dictatorship.
A levy of 300,000 soldiers was decreed in early March, and a special Revolutionary Tribunal was also set up on 10 March to exercise summary justice in cases involving state security in cases that were suspected of undermining the war effort. A Committee of Public Safety was created as a branch of the National Convention in April 1793 to supervise the day-to-day administration of government, all foreign policy, the organisation of the nation’s defences, and ordered the arrests and trials of counter-revolutionaries and imposed government authority across the nation. Their first act of authority was apprehending all suspected persons, and adjudicate them by revolutionary committees that had wide powers that could extend to an estimated four-fifths of the national population. A maximum price law was passed in May in an effort to halt the continually rising cost of living.
The conclusive result of these measures was to establish the machinery for a strongly centralised government, but the Girondins remained predominant in the Convention, which aroused increased hostility between them and the Jacobins who considered them to be too moderate. While both were liberal, the Jacobins wanted to establish a centralised government with Paris as the national capital, and temporary government control of the economy, in contrast to the Girondins intention to decentralize government among the provinces, or departments, of France who would determine their own affairs and opposed government interference in the economy. The Jacobins platform managed to win the support of the sans-culottes, and as a result, the Jacobins fell back upon their power over the Paris mob, and used it to intimidate the Convention by packing its galleries with supporters who could shout down speakers they disliked and cheer their champions. On 22 June 1793, 80,000 armed unprivileged sans-culottes on state pay besieged the Convention until its members agreed to grant their demands for the exclusion of a number of Girondins leaders from the Convention on the ground that they were obstructing patriotic measures for centralised control when French armies were in retreat, and discontent with local conditions was growing. Accordingly, the 29 Girondin leaders were arrested as “disloyal deputies,” and the far more radical Jacobins thereupon took over the leadership of the Convention. The course of the revolution would hereby shift from pursuing idealistic progressive goals, and degenerated into a regime of terror and an imperialistic dictatorship.
For a few weeks after the Girondin leaders had been expelled from the Convention, the Jacobin power over that body was not entirely secure, which accelerated the transition towards dictatorship. Some Girondins deputies had fled to their native districts and tried to stir up “federalist” revolts against the Convention, in addition to the royalist and clerical led peasant uprisings in Brittany and the Vendee. At the peak, there were revolts in 60 out of 83 departments. The economic crisis continued and by August 1793, the assignat value had fallen to 22 percent, and shortages of food worsened by hoarding of food led to riots. Earlier legislation to make redemption payments for the landed aristocracy whose estates had been expropriated increasingly lost value that corresponded to the falling value of the assignat became altogether meaningless by the time legislation was enacted on 15 July 1793 that abolished feudalism without compensation. Partly to meet the danger of losing power, the Jacobins hastily completed a constitution and promulgated it in 1793. However, after it had been accepted by plebiscite, it was suspended until the conclusion of peace, while the Committee of Public Safety assumed leadership as a temporary dictatorship to save the revolution.
Meanwhile, their first task was to fight off the foreign forces, which resulted in endeavour to devote all resources to the war effort and nationalize the economy. The National Convention mobilized the entire French nation under the precedent of imposing universal military conscription, a levée en masse, on 23 August 1793 as a new way to wage war, rather than only enlisting experienced professionals, which produced an army of over a million motivated troops. It also constituted a controlled economy in September 1793, by which the committee imposed more comprehensive maximum fixed prices and wages, regulated production, and enforced a system of rationing. The committee determined what craftsmen and artisans produced, and when and where the products were shipped. A capital levy bolstered government finance. Initially, the national economy was focused solely on supplying the military with its needs to supply the newly mobilized soldiers.
Just as the Committee of Public Safety devoted much attention to foreign enemies, it turned its attention to domestic “enemies,” as a manifestation of a temporary suspension of liberty and extreme executive action. Led by the increasingly paranoid Robespierre, this committee along with the Revolutionary Tribunal, a court that was established by the National Convention for the trial of political offenders, which had been taken over by Jacobin leaders, launched what become known as the Reign of Terror against enemies of the Republic. There was not any agreement about pursuing a single direction on how the Republic was to be saved, which led to the applying instruments of repression against alleged enemies of the regime becoming uncontrollable.
Robespierre used the committee as a tool to eliminate those who opposed either the republic or the committee, rounding up political enemies of the republic and prosecuting them in special courts not bound by the usual laws of France. A law of suspects entrusted summary powers to revolutionary courts, while deputies on mission to see that the law was implemented were required to report regularly to the Committee of Public Safety, and were given almost unlimited powers to deal with local obstacles to revolutionary action. The committee’s courts tried and convicted thousands of French for treason and related crimes. From 1793 to 1794, over 18,000 lost their lives under the Reign of Terror, while more than a quarter-million more found themselves in prison, supposedly in defence of the revolution and France. In fact, most were people who had openly questioned the Convention or were accused on the basis of flimsy evidence, such as having soft hands or fine clothes supposedly being proof of aristocratic leanings, while the Jacobins argued that summary trials and severe punishments were necessary to safeguard the revolution from its enemies at home and abroad.
During this time, one of Robespierre’s goals was also to use his influence to create a Republic of Virtue in France. Books and pamphlets and even everyday items were branded with revolutionary messages. The government also encouraged the creation of revolutionary art and the staging of patriotic festivals. The main thrust of this movement was the de-Christianization of public life as the Church was identifiable with counter-revolution. All references to saints were removed from the public. It closed churches of all denominations and replaced Catholicism first with the Cult of Reason established by Jacques Hébert and his followers, which was then later replaced with the Cult of the Supreme Being. This new religion had no foundations in other religions, as it was created entirely by Robespierre and those around him. The bottom line was that all men had souls, and there existed one God as the Supreme Being. The government even changed the calendar to show the government’s determination to eliminate anything that would remind the French of the old order and the old way of doing things. It incorporated terms of the Revolution with the first year of the Republic as the first year. Church holidays and Sundays were eliminated. However, Robespierre felt that before Virtue could reign supreme, it was necessary to detect insincere patriots who mouthed the words, but did not share the reality of republican virtue. Such a program frightened many members of the Convention who were not sure that they would measure up to the standards of Virtue that Robespierre prescribed.
The brutality and repression of the republic met with much resistance among the common people in France, especially women, who resented the changes in religion and everyday life when it became impossible to determine who the enemies of the state were, at a time when treason was allegedly everywhere and moderation was supposedly counterrevolutionary, and unremitting suspicion and vigilance were perceived to be patriotic duties. Perhaps the best example of such resistance was the actions of Charlotte Corday, a supporter of the Girondists, in July 1793. She became repulsed by Jean-Paul Marat, one of the more ruthless members of the Committee of Public Safety who called for more violence and was responsible for the arrests of numerous Girondists. Corday told Marat that she could provide him with a list of names of more Girondists, and Marat therefore agreed to speak to her. Since he had a terrible skin disease, he spent most of his time taking a medicinal bath. She entered the bathroom and dictated several names to him, and as he wrote, she pulled a knife and stabbed Marat in the chest. She was later guillotined, and ironically, the assassination helped make the Jacobin position secure, since such a deed seemed to justify the strong measures that had been taken against their Girondins enemies.
The effect of the Jacobins measures was to create a strong centralised administration, while the threads of power centered in the hands of the Committee of Public Safety, with Robespierre preeminent among its members. Something close to total mobilization for war and for the revolution was accomplished. Despite the manifold confusion of the time, the French armies was able to push the invading informal alliance of the Austrian, Prussian, Spanish and British invaders out of France by July 1794, and also conquer the Austrian Netherlands and the left bank of the Rhine owing to young and brilliant generals, systemized supply, numerical superiority on the battlefields, and an enthusiastic revolutionary spirit. The People’s Army had prevailed, and the revolution was preserved.
Nevertheless, the reign of terror continued throughout the Jacobin regime, and the removal of pressing foreign danger led to new factional quarrels among the revolutionaries. In October 1793, leading Girondins were executed, while the remnants of the Gironde party sought safety by hiding from the Jacobin police. By the end of 1793, the Jacobins who controlled the Convention faced those who considered them to not be radical enough. A new radical wing formed among the populace of Paris – the Enragés, led by Jacques Roux, which criticized the Jacobins for not being truly revolutionary towards greater social equality. Their leaders demanded more sacrifices from the rich, such as more stringent laws against profiteering and hoarding, but unlike the Girondins, the Jacobin leaders were now in command of a powerful machine for suppressing dissent, and were willing to use it. As a result, the leaders of the Enragés were arrested and executed. However, this did not end criticism from the left, and new group centered around the figure of Jacques Hébert continued to agitate against the rich, while at the same time, opposition gathered on the right. Danton and others began to agitate for a relaxation of the Terror and the war, which instead of decreasing actually increased as the foreign danger receded, and the danger of internal revolts had subsided by the end of 1793.
With the continuing fading of foreign danger, the major justification for the Terror was removed, but the Jacobins were not willing to give up the power that the Revolutionary Tribunal concentrated in their hands, as Danton seemed to wish, and nor were they willing to allow Hébert and his followers to criticize them for not being revolutionary enough. Consequently, Hébert was arrested, condemned and executed in March 1794 followed by Danton in April, while the Committee of Public Safety with Robespierre as its spokesman and most prominent figure appeared to be supreme. Robespierre also considered ideas of further economic reform, as he was troubled by what he regarded as the lack of patriotism and virtue among the rich, and considered the possibility of extending equality from the political to the economic sphere. Meanwhile, although not any definitive plans were made, most members of the Convention feared any such extension of revolutionary principles.
Robespierre thus became increasingly isolated. The execution of Hebert alienated the sans culottes, fears of a Hebertist social revolution haunted the middle classes who looked for a restoration of order and stability, and Robespierre’s strange ideas about religion alienated both Catholics and atheists. Hence, when Robespierre was at the height of his power, he alienated many of the deputies. Robespierre even had some of the men within his circle executed. Those around him and many others in the National Convention began to fear they might be the next victims of the terror while there was less need for dictatorship and terrorism. Meanwhile, in June 1794, a military victory at Fleurus opened the way to Belgium and Holland, while Prussia and Austria were preoccupied with the partition of Poland. The economic crisis was also easing after December 1793, the assignat was back up to 48 percent of its value, and food supplies were eased.
When Robespierre stood to address the National Convention on the ninth day of the month of Themidor, or 27 July 1794, his opponents impeached and imprisoned him, pending trial. His supporters among the leaders of the Paris Commune released him from prison during the night, but before they had time to summon the population of Paris to the rescue, a small force acting in the name of the Convention broke into the City Hall where Robespierre and his followers had gathered, and arrested him a second time. He was guillotined the next day along with some of his followers. This ended the Reign of Terror instituted by leadership that claimed to constitute itself as a popular government.
Robespierre’s overthrow had been engineered by a coalition between members of the Committee of Public Safety, who intended to continue the Terror and maintain their power, and members of the Convention, who feared that Robespierre’s plans might endanger their own existence, or property that they had seized from the émigrés who had fled the revolution in France, and the church. They were opposed to the restoration of the monarchy and also the social republicanism of the Terror, when an estimated twenty-thousand were executed in an attempted purge of individuals who were accused of being hostile to the state and its attempted social transformation from above. There was no immediate or clear intention of altering the organisation of the government, but in fact, the fall of the individual who had become a symbol of the Terror and of the whole Jacobin policy brought on a reaction against the radicalisation of revolutionary conditions. France was also prepared for peace as a result of having repulsed invasions, and the complete success of the French military ceased any requirement for imposing order forcefully through a government that was as violent and repressive as the Committee of Public Safety had been. There was therefore a reaction against the excesses of the Terror, and the “Thermidor Revolution” was superseded by individuals with more moderate views who did not intend to remain waging war against all of Europe. Jacobins’ power over the Convention disintegrated within a few months, and the surviving Girondins members were readmitted, which ended the extraordinary concentration of power in the hands of the Committee of Public Safety. Thus, Robespierre’s execution marked a decisive turning point. Instead of passing to more radical phases, the revolutionary tide began to recede. Revolutionary idealism waned, and political leaders were more concerned with keeping the advantages that they had secured during a period of reaction and consolidation from 1794 to 1815.
The individuals who overthrew Robespierre in 1794 did not have any intention of abandoning the revolution, and most French agreed with them. However, they believed the revolution had gone far enough and were prepared to abandon the plans and proposals for further innovation that Robespierre and other Jacobins had intended to implement. A new constitution that was completed in 1795 created the first elected bicameral legislature in French history, creating a National Legislative Assembly composed of the lower house called the Council of Five Hundred that initiated legislation, and the upper house, the Council of Elders, which accepted or rejected the laws, and therefore balanced each other. Executive power was in the hands of an elected new five-member executive known as the Directory. This Directory tried to preserve the revolution of 1789, while they opposed the restoration of the ancient regime as well as popular democracy, as the members of the Convention declared that two-thirds of the new legislators were to be chosen from among them. The Parisian section of the population violently opposed this measure, leading to a conflict on 5 October 1795 between the citizens and regular troops, when the majority of the Convention refused to be coerced by the Paris mob in favour of monarchy in the interest of establishing a stable national government.
They were faced by a young artillery officer, Napoleon Bonaparte, was called upon to protect the legislators. He did so most effectively by firing a “whiff of grapeshot” into the advancing crowd of demonstrators, and then became the second in command of the army of the interior as recompense for his services on this occasion. The National Convention resigned its authority to the new legislature, and the directors assumed control of the executive government, whereas The Paris population hereafter ceased to play a leading role in political affairs. The middle-class majority of the Convention formulated a constitution, which, like that of 1791, guaranteed political preponderance to men of property by means of a restricted franchise as universal male suffrage was too radical for the moderates and reflected their interests. The political leadership refused to allow for the excessive radicalism of the Jacobins or the spontaneity of the worker population, while the electorate was again reduced by means of a property qualification. At the same time, there developed a dangerous combination of the growing reputation of the military and the instability of the political system.
The French armies under Napoleon’s leadership with superior deployment and utilisation of resources continued winning victories by applying the elements of speed, flexibility and surprise tactics to impose knock out blows, leading to establishing French control. Holland became a republic under French protection after being reoccupied in January 1795, prior to further advances aimed at isolating England from trade with continental Europe. England, Austria and Russia formed a coalition against France, while Frederick William III of Prussia declined the invitation to join them with prejudice to maintaining neutrality, with the underlying expectation of acquiring peace and inviolability of the northern German states, and France began peace negotiations in Basel in January 1795 following the fall of the Jabobins regime. Spain and Prussia withdrew from the war in the Treaty of Basel on 5 April 1795. This treaty confirmed French possession of the left bank of the Rhine as the natural barrier between France and the German states, including the Prussian districts of Cleves, Geldern and Mors, while Prussia would be tacitly acknowledged as the leader of the lesser German states upon Austria concluding peace with France, and thereby forced out of the Holy Roman Empire. The Prussian territories in western Germany were ceded altogether in a second treaty on 5 August 1796, whereas Prussia was to be reimbursed with small ecclesiastical states that France would later eliminate altogether.
Napoleon won victories with a successful campaign into Italy and Austria in 1796 and 1797, and dictated the peace treaty of Campo Formio to the Austrians, which he determined himself rather than leaving the peace treaty and diplomacy to politicians. France got to keep Belgium and set up a string of puppet states in Italy in return for the Austrians keeping Venice. These victories made him a hero and resulted in a cult following. As a result, Napoleon was given command of an army in November 1797 to invade Britain. He suggested invading Egypt as a strike against British commerce there while reinforcing the closing of ports to British commerce, and also in order to cut Britain off from India at the same time, and possibly also cooperate with Britain’s enemies there. He even had dreams of leading a French army of liberation all the way to India.
The invasion of Egypt was initially successful, and soon came to stand out in high relief against a series of failures that beset the Directory at home. Napoleon’s conquest of Egypt appeared complete, until British Admiral Horatio Nelson destroyed the French fleet anchored off Aboukir on 1-2 August 1798, which established British control over the Mediterranean, which was later reinforced with seizing control of Malta in September 1801. French forces nevertheless attempted to secure possession of Egypt by invading Syria on 8 February 1799, until they were compelled to retreat by British and French forces, and compelled Napoleon to escape to France where he initiated establishing a new government, which was supported by continental allies. Russia and Sweden entered into a convention for armed neutrality directed against Britain, to which Prussia and Denmark later acceded. The British imposed an embargo on all Russian, Danish and Swedish ships in late January 1801 in the ports of Great Britain. Nelson inflicted another defeat against France through the destruction of the Danish fleet in Copenhagen on 2 April 1801, in reaction to northern powers having combined to challenge the naval superiority of England. The probability of a potential French invasion of England was stymied as a result.
The Directory relied on the military to maintain power and suppress the remaining Jacobins and Royalists. The Directory also used the military to sustain the economy, and kept it abroad adding lands to the French republic. However, while it ruled from 1795 to 1799, corruption spread throughout the National Legislative Assembly, which discredited the government of the Directory that was unsuccessful at maintaining public order, efforts abroad were failing, deserters from the French army protested conscription, and the Netherlands were revolting against French rule.
France finally achieved victories against the Second Coalition of Britain, Russia and Austria in 1798-1799, but the republic faced financial ruin after the assignat collapsed in February 1796, and the Directory’s popularity was at an all time low while it lacked any positive domestic policy. France’s economic problems again started to escalate while an end to the Directory was plotted by a tide of royalists who supported the return of the monarchy and radicals on the extreme left formed under François Babeuf who advocated public ownership of all land in order to establish economic as well as political equality, leading to a planned revolt in May 1796, and later in September 1797, a group of generals and politicians were rounded up and exiled for seeking a restoration of the monarchy. By 1799, the Directory had also managed only to maintain control in France, as the wars abroad were flailing amid the prevailing domestic turmoil. A Second Coalition was formed against France by Britain, Austria and Russia in 1798, and in the following year the armies of this coalition were able to defeat the French in Italy and Switzerland, and once more threatened the borders of France.
By this time, the revolution weakened the political influence and leadership of the aristocracy. The aristocrats lost their feudal privileges based on birth, while social status would henceforth be based on property and wealth. As the sans-culottes realised, one evil replaced another, leading to a revolt in May 1795 that was suppressed by the army. Moreover, since careers were open to talent, the bourgeoisie had access to the highest positions in the state, and the dynastic state of the ancient regime was transformed into a modern state that belonged to the people rather than the king. The former subjects of a kingdom became the citizens of a state with specific rights and duties. The Revolution also managed to give practical application to the ideas of the philosophes – equality before the law, trial by jury, freedom of religion, speech and the press. However, the Revolution appeared to be in danger of survival, which compelled Napoleon Bonaparte to return to France to restore order.
Failure in war, ongoing financial chaos, and the threat of disturbances at home seemed to indicate that the Republic was in need of a stronger and more resolute rule, and Napoleon saw this opportunity when news of French reverses in Italy reached him. Although he defeated numerous armies in Egypt, the British admiral Horatio Nelson sank Napoleon’s fleet in Aboukir Bay, resulting in Napoleon abandoning his troops in October 1799 and heading back to Paris. His soldiers died of plague, and the British landed and took Egypt for themselves. Nevertheless, Napoleon’s status remained intact while there was a growing tendency to rely on the army to maintain order, especially after the elections of May 1799 indicated the possibility of a Jacobin revolt. Upon his return, Napoleon organised a coup d’etat on 9 November 1799 by leading troops that dispersed the Council of Five Hundred and the Council of the Elders under the pretext of re-establishing order, while the Directory had alienated most of the constituencies in the nation, including the army.
Napoleon then established himself as supreme military commander and First Consul of the Republic along with two other consuls, and had a constitution drawn up in 1800 for a Consulate. The theory of popular sovereignty was retained in the first phrases of the new constitution, but the reality of power rested in Napoleon’s hands. He not only commanded the armies, conducted administration at home and diplomacy abroad with the two consuls for foreign and internal affairs, but also proposed all laws that were then accepted or rejected by a set of legislative chambers. He also used his powers to restructure the police, departmental and local governments, and criminal courts so that he could control them in his own interests, including discarding the principle of the election of officials.
As the political leader of France, Napoleon also recognized that several changes were needed to gain stability. Although he claimed to truly support the revolution, he was more interested in order rather than liberty. Napoleon therefore provided France with a strong centralised government in which political barriers such as the remnants of feudalism, the power of the nobility and legal problems were eliminated by the Revolution. Napoleon then established a new bureaucracy, in which promotion was based on merit and ability. Local government was strictly centralised, with regional departments placed under prefects who Napoleon appointed, with all towns of over 5000 inhabitants headed by mayors appointed in the same way. The result was that he concentrated power and this provided him with soldiers and taxes. In some respects, he also broke with the revolutionary tradition, such as by limiting free speech. A central police force was created to keep order in all the large towns and watch real and suspected political enemies of the regime. A rigorous censorship of newspapers prevented opposition from achieving any public expression. Napoleon then quickly justified the faith that the French people had shown him when they ratified the new system of government in a plebiscite. Once again, he invaded Italy and defeated the Austrian armies, while Russia had already withdrawn from the war. Emperor Francis II as ruler of the hereditary domains of the House of Austria and on behalf of the Holy Roman Empire signed the Treaty of Lunéville on 9 February 1801 with Napoleon, whereby the independence and sovereignty of the Cisalpine, Ligurian, Batavian and Helvetic republics was recognised, the entire left bank of the Rhine, including the Austrian Netherlands, was ceded to France, and Imperial Italy was also ceded by the Empire, becoming parts of France and the new Italian Republic. Great Britain followed on 25 March 1802 in the Treaty of Amiens, which temporarily ended hostilities between France, the Spanish Empire, and Great Britain. France was to evacuate Naples and Egypt, while Britain retained Ceylon and Trinidad. France was at peace for the first time since 1792, and consolidated earlier military victories. With his personal standing enhanced by military victories, he conducted purges of the legislature, the army officer corps and the surviving Jacobins.
Napoleon’s brilliant successes were partly due to his personal connections and qualities. His friendship with Robespierre’s brother during the Terror, and skillful use of artillery at Toulon in September 1793 helped him gain the rank of brigadier, and his marriage to Josephine de Beauharnais in October 1796 placed him into the centre of fashionable circles and the command of the Army of Italy. He also had a flair for publicity, publishing battle reports and orders of the day that attracted popular attention, in addition to being an excellent actor who could appeal to the loyalties of his soldiers. He was also a great general who knew how to choose efficient officers, built on the tradition of the French revolutionary armies, and further developed the tactics that had been evolved before him. The chief technical innovation was his greater use of field artillery, using lighter field guns that could keep pace with marching infantry, and could usually be brought into play before the infantry engaged. Until his opponents imitated French guns and began to employ them in similar numbers, Napoleon’s armies had a decisive advantage, which was quite apart from the additional edge in numbers and enthusiasm that general conscription and revolutionary feeling secured for the French, in addition to being highly ambitious. He had little concern for casualty rates that ranged from 30 to 40 percent, which resulted from his tactics of always being on the attack, while combining conscript armies and very rapid movement of living off the land with superior logistical planning.
Changes were also made in religious policy. Successive revolutionary bodies had caused a deep division of France between Catholics and revolutionaries. Napoleon therefore he sought to heal this fissure in French society by entering into negotiations with the pope to close the gap between church and state, while recognising the value of organised religion as a means toward social peace and order. In the Concordat of 1801, he established peace with the pope and the Roman Catholic church by recognizing Catholicism as the religion of most of the French, coming just short of saying that Catholicism was the official religion of France, stating it was the favoured religion of France, but was not accorded any legal monopoly, thus allowing Napoleon freedom from Church rule, while other religions could be practiced freely. The Concordat also made French clergy take an oath of loyalty to the state, provided that France would pay the salaries of the clergy. The papacy also gained the right to select bishops in France while admitting Napoleon’s right to nominate them to subject the Church to the secular power. Purchasers of former Church lands were guaranteed possession, and the rights of Protestant churches were respected. The people therefore gained religion again, the church found its way back into France, and Napoleon thereby made peace with both the people and the clergy.
In most other respects, Napoleon retained and systemized the work of the revolution. A code of law that the Convention had begun to draw up was brought to completion. France’s 360 legal codes, based on that of the emperor Justinian, obstructed national unity and administrative efficiency. These were combined into the unified laws of France into a single usable code that was organized in the Napoleonic Code. This new code that went into effect in 1804, made the laws clearer, more straightforward and accessible to all. This included the laws of equality, religious toleration, the abolition of serfdom and feudalism and property rights, and thus codifying the changes that were brought about in the revolution, and was brought into operation in all parts of France. However, it revealed less than liberal aspects, such as outlawing unions, denying workers collective bargaining, and women were declared to be inferior to men by law, while children had no rights at all.
In terms of other notable achievements during the Consulate period, a national public school system was established, and all educational institutions were brought under the supervision of a central administrative state body called the University of France. Numerous public works were constructed, and a vigorous administration checked graft and speculation among public officials and maintained the solvency of the government. Control of currency and financial policy was vested in the Bank of France that was organised in 1800, giving a monopoly of note issue to the new central bank with firm backing with gold and silver. Industry was aided through tariffs and loans, and bread prices were kept low.
Napoleon thus succeeded in winning the support of the great majority of the French population by having brought peace and order, and if revolutionary liberty had been curtailed, the equality of all classes before the law and the fraternity of patriotism had been consolidated. He modified the constitution in 1801, which was again approved by plebiscite of 3.5 million votes to 8000, which made him First Consul for life in May 1802, and staged another purge of royalists and Jacobins. All pretenses of democratic rule were finally dismissed altogether when Napoleon crowned himself Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte I on 2 December 1804 in reaction to any royalist conspiracies, along with heightened worries about the war with the English that had broken out during the previous year.
Scarcely after a year after the peace was signed, Great Britain declared war again in 1803. While the British refused to give up Malta as they were bound to do by the Treaty of Amiens, the underlying and more important causes for the renewal of hostilities were British suspicion of Napoleon’s effort to restore a French empire in Louisiana and Haiti, and the activities of the French government in Holland, Italy and Switzerland where Napoleon was setting up puppet states. In the interest of creating a manageable number of allied and dependent states in Germany, Napoleon Bonaparte reorganised the administrations and borders of the roughly four hundred German states on 25 February 1803. The Congress of Regensburg in 1803 reorganised the German states on the west bank of the Rhine, where all but three out of eighty-one ecclesiastical principalities were secularised. Six out of fifty-one imperial cities maintained this earlier status, and the territories of the imperial knights were mediatised by being placed under the jurisdictions of larger neighbours, which removed the existence of 112 states. These changes also dismissed Prussian hopes for establishing a leading position in southern Germany, and shifted Prussia’s boundaries eastward from the Rhineland, and removed its hegemony in northern Germany.
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