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Question: Explain why the regime under Bonaparte was authoritarian!?
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Napoleon maintained the administrative reforms of the Revolutionary decade, but with an authoritarian twist in 1800 each department was enodwed with a Napoleonic nominee, the prefect!. Within their constituencies they acted as petty emperors to make sure the imperial will was carried out!. This reinforcement of the principle of authority was mirrored in the field of liberal freedoms: imprisonment without trial was introduced, overrriding habeus corpus provisions!. Napoleon reimposed strict censorship, which also recalled the ancien regime!. Once the herald of Revolutionary politics, the newspaper no longer had a place in the hierarchical and repressive world of the First empire; over a thousand new titles had appeared in the decade after 1789, by 1811 only four had full government authorization!.

There were elected representative bodies, but they were toothless!. Most legislative work was done by imperial decree - and done in volume!. Over fifteen years Napoleon was personally responsible for 80,000 letters and decrees!. Poitical oponents were either denied a platform or sent into exile!. Propoganda was developed as a fine art!. Marshal Berthier's terse assesment of Napoleon on the field of battle - "Nobody knows his thoughts and our duty is to obey" - applied as much in civilian life!. As his interior minister Chaptal was later to remark "He wanted valets, not advisers!."

The "valets" were well rewarded for their pains!. The streeamlined spirit of Napoleon's administration did not obscure the links of patronage and sheer corruption which ran through the regime!. The legion d'honneur was created as a means of ensuring political loyalty, but this was only the tip of an iceberg of favours, gifts and concessions!. titles were bestowed, a court aristocracy was formed, a strict social hierarchy re-established!.

This blend of Revolutionary rationalism and authoritarian principle was epitomized in the famous Code Napoleon or Civil code, issued in 1804!. Equality before the law and the "career open to talents" were preserved, but one could detect the hierarchical hand of Napoleon in the way in which the family was made the base unit of social organization!. Under the influence of roman lwa, the paterfamilias's authority put the rights of women in the shade!.

The Code Napoleon reduced women's status to that of minors!. Other measures worked in the same way!. Imprisonment without trial was used like lettres de cachet under the ancien regime to incarcerate errant wives, daughters, and other family members!. Family law in the Revolutionary decade had been made egalitarian and gender-blind; under Napoleon daughters' rights were systematically diminished!. Rather generous welfare provisions for war-widows, the aged and even unmarried mothers were brought to an end!. The liberal divorce laws of the 1790s, which had provided battered and abandoned wives with a means of improving their legal position, were altered in ways which disadvanted women!. The Napoleonic regime was bad news for women, and it would take generations for them even to begin to recover or improve on their lot!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

Jeff Horn - Building the New Regime: Founding the Bonapartist State in the Department of the Aube - French Historical Studies 25:2 French Historical Studies 25!.2 (2002) 225-263 Building the New Regime: Founding the Bonapartist State in the Department of the Aube Jeff Horn [Tables] Was the coup d'?tat staged on 18-19 Brumaire, Year VIII (9-10 November 1799), which ushered in the regime known as the Consulate (1799-1804), a major turning point in French history!? At the international colloquium held in Rouen, France, in March 2000 dedicated to evaluating this question, two major lines of interpretation unfolded!. Between them, these two outlooks have dominated for decades what attention has been paid to this field!. Those who focus on the rupture created by the Brumaire coup emphasize the authoritarian principles introduced by Napol?on Bonaparte and his collaborators into French administration while simultaneously stressing the long-lasting negative effects of such principles on the French polity!. A second major historiographical interpretation understands the coup as an element of political continuity with the last years of the revolutionary decade!. In this version, 18-19 Brumaire is just another example of the frenetic politique de bascule (seesaw politics) that had plagued France since the Year III (1795)!. None of the commemorative books on the coup published in France takes the field in any new directions!. Given how rapidly the regime inaugurated in!.!.!.


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