Napoleon Bonaparte And The French Revolution

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Napoleon Bonaparte did establish a dictatorship within France during his reign as Emperor. He introduced reforms that seemed to contradict the ideals and goals of the Revolution. However, the changes that he did make were usually improvements of those ideals or laws put in place to achieve those ideals through means that appeared anti-revolutionary and they transformed France into a superpower. The French Revolution effectively began on 20 June 1789, when the people of the Third Estate decided that they would not stop fighting until a new, fair and just constitution had been put in place in France. By the August of that same year, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen had been authored to serve as a basis for that constitution. This was a document that established the natural rights of all men. It describes to us the complete ideology of the French revolutionaries as well as their aims for the future France. According to the Declaration, the Revolutionaries believed that France should have freedom of speech, no social distinctions, no one person with totalitarian power, a system of law that is written by the people and a government that protects the liberty, property and security of the people [C]. These goals were summarised into the phrase “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité” (Liberty, Equality, Fraternity). The revolution was partly founded by the ideas that were born from the philosophers of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was a philosophical movement during the 18th century that encouraged the rejection of the social and religious values of the time in favour of the search for truth and knowledge . The Declaration echoes the Enlightenment’s theories that state that the people should have control over the governm... ... middle of paper ... ...d not rise up to its former power [A]. His superior military ability lead to the defeat of the Prussian and Austrian armies, as well as the defeat of many other countries such as Germany, England, Spain and Italy. He earned France a fearsome reputation and created a superpower out of a country that had just emerged from civil war [A]. International powers were threatened by Napoleon’s success and began using propaganda to try and diminish his power [H]. Napoleon said that “It is essential to impose the government that the people desire”. This summarises Napoleon’s strategy of establishing a better France. He planned to defy the Revolution in his method of implementing the Revolution’s ideals. His means contradicted his ends. Therefore, Napoleon did reject the ideals of the revolution, and he did establish a democracy, but only to achieve the aims of the Revolution

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