Mrs. TuckerVictor Valley High School

AP European History

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Discuss Napoleon's rise to power and explain how he was able to become Emperor.

Identify Napoleon's administrative reforms and understand how they differed from Old Regime policies.

Trace France's military conquests, the establishment of the French Empire, and European resistance to France.

Explain Napoleon's reasons for invading Russia and understand how the failed invasion marked the beginning of his downfall.

Discuss the Congress of Vienna and its significance.

Differentiate between Romanticism and the Enlightenment and explain why Romanticism thrived during the Napoleonic Age.

Napoleon Bonaparte was born in Ajaccio, Corsica in 769 to a wealthy family, Carlo and Marie Buonaparte.

His merit as well as his family’s influence got him into military school, where he graduated in 1785 from the Parisian École Royale Militaire as a second lieutenant.

Lack of trained military leaders led Napoleon to prominence ;

Early victories in Italy led to an assignment in Egypt, which failed, and he abandoned his regiment to return to Paris.

He participated in the Brumaire Coup and made himself First Consul in the triumvirate.

In France in 1799, under yet another new constitution,

Napoleon Bonaparte made himself First Consul.

He had taken advantage of the Directory's weaknesses, his own past military successes (and the ability of the public to overlook his failures!), and the naivete of politicians who thought Napoleon could be used as a figurehead, to grant himself powers comparable to those of Roman emperors and Greek tyrants.

The way he used this power foreshadowed the dictators of the 20th century: he used military force, camouflaged by talk of revolution and nationalism, to instigate imperialist aggression that served to strengthen his hold on power.

The French Revolution ended with Napoleon's Consulate; the bourgeoisie and the peasants were satisfied.

Napoleon seemed to offer stability, and the voters approved his constitution in a plebiscite.

Napoleon signed treaties that brought peace to Europe, and maneuvered to build coalitions and crush dissent at home.

He concluded a concordat with the pope in 1801, which basically ratified the status quo but allowed Napoleon to replace clergy throughout France.

Napoleon continued to strengthen his hold on power, and initiated codification of French law (the Napoleonic Code).

Like the concordat with the church, the Napoleonic Code mostly endorsed changes that had been effected by the revolution, while incrementally enhancing the state's power.

By 1804, Napoleon was ready to crown himself emperor, making himself Napoleon I.

Between 1804 and 1815, Napoleon conquered most of Europe, dismantling remnants of the Old Regime along the way.

The revolution had mobilized all France, and Napoleon took advantage of the fact that he could field more troops at once than any other military leader.

Napoleon's greatest victory was probably his 1805 defeat of combined Austrian and Russian forces at Austerlitz.

He occupied Vienna, reorganized Germany, caused the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, and cut Prussia in half.

He treated conquered Europe like the domain of a Corsican family, appointing relatives to rule other states under his supervision.

The only power that could compete with France was Britain.

Napoleon's greatest defeat yet had already come in 1805 at the hands of the British navy under Lord Nelson, who defeated the combined French and Spanish fleets at the Battle of Trafalgar.

Napoleon attempted to weaken Britain through trade embargoes, but this policy turned out to hurt the Continental System more than it hurt Britain.

Napoleonic rule brought the French revolution's reforms to conquered Europe, but it also bred resentment of a political structure that was clearly designed for the benefit of France and Napoleon, not the local population.

Nationalism, in various guises, emerged in opposition to Napoleon.

In German areas, romanticism and nationalism were linked.

After Napoleon defeated the Prussians at Jena in 1806, German cultural nationalism was eclipsed by a form of nationalism that aimed for political unification.

Prussia became the magnet for these unifiers, despite opposition from Frederick William III.

Baron von Stein and Count von Hardenberg initiated administrative and social reforms in Prussia; their goal was to allow a mobilization similar to France's, while preserving Junker power.

In Spain, meanwhile, when Napoleon deposed the Spanish Bourbons and put his brother Joseph on the throne, he unleashed a rebellion led by the loyal, Catholic peasantry.

The resulting guerilla warfare, supported by Britain, drained French strength.

In 1809, Austria thought Napoleon was sufficiently distracted that it would be safe to declare war on France, but this was a miscalculation; France won yet more territory and subjects from Austria.

When Russia withdrew from the Continental System in 1810, Napoleon launched his Grand Army towards Moscow.

When Russia withdrew from the Continental System in 1810, Napoleon launched his Grand Army towards Moscow.

In September 1812, near Moscow at Borodino, the French won the battle but lost the fight.

The Grand Army had to retreat through the Russian winter, and close to half a million French soldiers died.

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Even in 1813, however, with a powerful coalition arrayed against him, Napoleon refused to negotiate.

He was defeated at Leipzig in the October 1813 "Battle of the Nations."

In the spring of 1814, Napoleon went into exile on the island of Elba

The Congress of Vienna met for over a year, from September 1814 to November 1815, and reached a settlement that prevented general war for a century.

The Congress broke new ground in international law and diplomacy by establishing that treaties were made between states, not between individual monarchs, and that the purpose of the settlement was to secure peace, not to punish the defeated.

Even before the Congress convened, under the guidance of British foreign secretary Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, Britain, Austria, Russia, and Prussia formed the Quadruple Alliance to preserve European peace.

Bourbons were restored to the throne of a France that was reduced to its size in 1792.

At the Congress, new state boundaries were created to provide security around France's borders.

Territorial adjustments in eastern Europe were also necessary, but more contentious.

In the midst of the Congress, Napoleon attempted a comeback.

His Hundred Days back in power ended when he was defeated by the British and Prussians at Waterloo in June, 1815; he was sent to exile on the island of Saint Helena.

Romanticism was an intellectual movement that emerged throughout Europe during the period of the French Revolution and Napoleonic rule.

In a reaction against the Enlightenment, romanticism emphasized the value of intuition, spirituality, folklore, dreams, and other forms of human experience that lie beyond the realm of reason.

Romanticism's intellectual foundations were laid largely by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant.

Rousseau's belief that human nature was corrupted by society and by material prosperity, and his interest in childhood, was reflected in the romantic movement's efforts to reform education and family life.

• Kant argued for the subjectivity of human knowledge.

• He theorized that, since humans share an innate understanding of the categorical imperative, morality must be something independent of sensory experience; this, to him, proved the existence of god.

"Romantic literature" meant slightly different things in different countries and periods.

In general, it meant literature that stressed the imaginative elements, and was not bound by formal rules.

Romantic literature peaked in England and Germany before France. English romantics such as Coleridge and Wordsworth excelled in poetry that dealt with themes including morality, mortality, and creativity.

German romantics wrote a great deal of poetry, but almost all of the significant German romantic authors also wrote at least one novel.

Goethe was the greatest German writer of the era, though he was a more complicated figure than the label "romantic" suggests. Faust was his seminal work.

Romanticism in religion stressed the individual's heartfelt response to the divine.

Methodism developed in England in the middle of the 18th century as a reaction against deism and rationalism in the Church of England.

John Wesley led the movement, preaching in open fields in western England.

Methodists believe in Christian perfectibility in this life; the enthusiastic emotional experience is part of Christian conversion.

In France, Chateaubriand argued that passion is at the heart of religion.

Schleiermacher, too, wrote about religion as dependent on emotions; he interpreted the various religions of the world as evidence of the universal dependence on an infinite being.

Romanticism glorified both individuals and individual cultures.

The German philosophy of idealism helped explain the relationship between the acts of strong individuals and the shaping of history.

German romantics were also active in encouraging the study and revival of folk culture.

The German philosopher explained world history in terms of the evolution of the prevailing ideas of a time and place.

Europe's interest in the Arab world was revived through literature, theory, and current events – Napoleon's invasion of Egypt sparked new European scholarship on the region's history, though not surprisingly pre-existing western stereotypes influenced the new work.