World history; World history -- Juvenile literature
To give you a mere outline of his life would demand couple of volumes.
To tell you of his great political reform of the French state, of his
new codes of laws which were adopted in most European countries, of his
activities in every field of public activity, would take thousands of
pages. But I can explain in a few words why he was so successful during
the first part of his career and why he failed during the last ten
years. From the year 1789 until the year 1804, Napoleon was the great
leader of the French revolution. He was not merely fighting for the
glory of his own name. He defeated Austria and Italy and England and
Russia because he, himself, and his soldiers were the apostles of the
new creed of "Liberty, Fraternity and Equality" and were the enemies of
the courts while they were the friends of the people.
But in the year 1804, Napoleon made himself Hereditary Emperor of the
French and sent for Pope Pius VII to come and crown him, even as Leo
III, in the year 800 had crowned that other great King of the Franks,
Charlemagne, whose example was constantly before Napoleon's eyes.
Once upon the throne, the old revolutionary chieftain became an
unsuccessful imitation of a Habsburg monarch. He forgot his spiritual
Mother, the Political Club of the Jacobins. He ceased to be the defender
of the oppressed. He became the chief of all the oppressors and kept his
shooting squads ready to execute those who dared to oppose his imperial
will. No one had shed a tear when in the year 1806 the sad remains of
the Holy Roman Empire were carted to the historical dustbin and when the
last relic of ancient Roman glory was destroyed by the grandson of an
Italian peasant. But when the Napoleonic armies had invaded Spain,
had forced the Spaniards to recognise a king whom they detested, had
massacred the poor Madrilenes who remained faithful to their old rulers,
then public opinion turned against the former hero of Marengo and
Austerlitz and a hundred other revolutionary battles. Then and only
then, when Napoleon was no longer the hero of the revolution but the
personification of all the bad traits of the Old Regime, was it possible
for England to give direction to the fast-spreading sentiment of hatred
which was turning all honest men into enemies of the French Emperor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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