Napoleon the Great?

[pieter]

[Jaga]

Pieter, interesting. I did not see Adam Zamoyski before.

[karl]

Pieter

Interesting and quite profound such as to the view of an iceberg, it is what lays below that is the meat on the bone.

I was not impressed with the debate, for these gentlemen were using humour to play to the audience of the campaigns of Napoleon. My self would not say he was a genius, but rather to say he was very experienced and gifted in the Art of War. For he contained the attributes of leadership: Determination/obstinacy leader ship skills to inspire, encourage and lead those of his responsibility.

Rather he learnt through a war college or on the field of combat with the exeleration of observing the spoils of victory or just as important, to learn from the aspects of failure. What ever, he was a commander with the tactical use of armies and strategic tactical use of terrain to his benefit.

Many of his campaigns were/are used in the Panzer schools in as well to some of the past successful commanders in the last war.

Karl

[pieter]

Napoleon was not just a great military leader, despot and conquerer, he was also an important political leader, and important for legislation and thus law (and the rule of law in Europe). Unlike destructive leaders and fellow conquerors like Hitler, Stalin and Genghis Khan, he not only waged war and created some damage in Europe and North-Africa (Egypt), he also contribute to Europe.

His brother Louis Napoléon Bonaparte was a rather good King of Holland (1806–10). He was a strange but humane king, who was pro-Dutch, to pro-Dutch for his broher Napoléon Bonaparte. Louis Napoléon Bonaparte was called Louis the Good by the Dutch.


Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, king of Holland

Louis Bonaparte's reign over the Netherlands was short-lived, however, which was due to two factors. The first was that Napoleon wanted to reduce the value of French loans from Dutch investors by two-thirds, meaning a serious economic blow to the Netherlands. The second factor was the one that became the pretext for Napoleon's demand of Louis's abdication. As Napoleon was preparing an army for his invasion of Russia, he wanted troops from the entire region under his control, the allied border countries. This included troops from the Netherlands. Louis, confronted by his brother's demand, refused point-blank. Napoleon then accused Louis of putting Dutch interests above those of France, and removed most of the French forces in Holland for the coming war in the east, leaving only about 9,000 garrison soldiers in the country. Unfortunately for Louis, the English landed an army of 40,000 in 1809 in an attempt to capture Antwerp and Flushing (Vlissingen in Dutch). With Louis unable to defend his realm, France sent 80,000 militiamen, commanded by future King of Sweden Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte and successfully repelled the invasion. Napoleon then suggested that Louis should abdicate, citing Louis's inability to protect Holland as a reason. Louis refused and declared the occupation of the Kingdom by a French army as unlawfull. On 1 July 1810 Louis abdicated in favour of his second son, Napoleon Louis Bonaparte.

Louis wrote to Napoleon after the latter's defeat in Russia to request that the Dutch throne be restored to him; however, Napoleon refused. His request to visit the Netherlands was denied several times by King William I of the Netherlands, but King William II of the Netherlands allowed him a visit in 1840. Although traveling in the Netherlands under a false name, some people found out that it was their former king, which led to a cheering crowd gathering under the window of his hotel room. It is said that he was quite moved by this demonstration of affection from his former subjects.



en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Bonaparte

[karl]

Apr 19, 2015 14:08:32 GMT -7 pieter said:

Napoleon was not just a great military leader, despot and conquerer, he was also an important political leader, and important for legislation and thus law (and the rule of law in Europe). Unlike destructive leaders and fellow conquerors like Hitler, Stalin and Genghis Khan, he not only waged war and created some damage in Europe and North-Africa (Egypt), he also contribute to Europe.

His brother Louis Napoléon Bonaparte was a rather good king of the Netherlands in the period (1806–10). He was a strange but humaine king, who was pro-Dutch, to pro-Dutch for his borther Napoléon Bonaparte. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Bonaparte

Yes, how so right you are, my post was lacking in this important aspect of him. Thank you for your correction.

Karl

[pieter]

Napoleon's Reforms


The Emperor Napoleon in His Study at Palais des Tuileries, the royal and imperial palace in Paris which stood on the right bank of the River Seine.

Napoleon instituted lasting reforms, including higher education, a tax code, road and sewer systems, and established the Banque de France (central bank). He negotiated the Concordat of 1801 with the Catholic Church, which sought to reconcile the mostly Catholic population to his regime. It was presented alongside the Organic Articles, which regulated public worship in France.

In May 1802, he instituted the Legion of Honour, a substitute for the old royalist decorations and orders of chivalry, to encourage civilian and military achievements; the order is still the highest decoration in France.

Napoleonic Code


First page of the 1804 original edition of the Code Civil

Napoleon's set of civil laws, the Code Civil—now often known as the Napoleonic Code—was prepared by committees of legal experts under the supervision of Jean Jacques Régis de Cambacérès, the Second Consul. Napoleon participated actively in the sessions of the Council of State that revised the drafts. The development of the code was a fundamental change in the nature of the civil law legal system with its stress on clearly written and accessible law. Other codes ("Les cinq codes") were commissioned by Napoleon to codify criminal and commerce law; a Code of Criminal Instruction was published, which enacted rules of due process.

The Napoleonic code was adopted throughout much of Europe, though only in the lands he conquered, and remained in force after Napoleon's defeat. Napoleon said: "My true glory is not to have won forty battles...Waterloo will erase the memory of so many victories. ... But...what will live forever, is my Civil Code." The Code still has importance today in a quarter of the world's jurisdictions including in Europe, the Americas and Africa.

Dieter Langewiesche described the code as a "revolutionary project" which spurred the development of bourgeois society in Germany by the extension of the right to own property and an acceleration towards the end of feudalism. Napoleon reorganised what had been the Holy Roman Empire, made up of more than a thousand entities, into a more streamlined forty-state Confederation of the Rhine; this provided the basis for the German Confederation and the unification of Germany in 1871.

The movement toward national unification in Italy was similarly precipitated by Napoleonic rule. These changes contributed to the development of nationalism and the nation state.

Napoleon implemented a wide array of liberal reforms in France and across Europe, especially in Italy and Germany, as summarized by British historian Andrew Roberts:

The ideas that underpin our modern world–meritocracy, equality before the law, property rights, religious toleration, modern secular education, sound finances, and so on–were championed, consolidated, codified and geographically extended by Napoleon. To them he added a rational and efficient local administration, an end to rural banditry, the encouragement of science and the arts, the abolition of feudalism and the greatest codification of laws since the fall of the Roman Empire.
Napoleon directly overthrew feudal remains in much of western Europe. He liberalised property laws, ended seigneurial dues, abolished the guild of merchants and craftsmen to facilitate entrepreneurship, legalised divorce, closed the Jewish ghettos and made Jews equal to everyone else. The Inquisition ended as did the Holy Roman Empire. The power of church courts and religious authority was sharply reduced and equality under the law was proclaimed for all men.

Source: Wikipedia

[pieter]

Metric system


40 francs coin depicting Bonaparte from year XII (1803) during the First Consulate. The franc is subdivided in 100 centimes.

The official introduction of the metric system in September 1799 was unpopular in large sections of French society. Napoleon's rule greatly aided adoption of the new standard not only across France but also across the French sphere of influence. Napoleon ultimately took a retrograde step in 1812 when he passed legislation to introduce the mesures usuelles (traditional units of measurement) for retail trade—a system of measure that resembled the pre-revolutionary units but were based on the kilogram and the metre; for example the livre metrique (metric pound) was 500 g instead of 489.5 g—the value of the livre du roi (the king's pound). Other units of measure were rounded in a similar manner. This however laid the foundations for the definitive introduction of the metric system across Europe in the middle of the 19th century.

Education

Napoleon's educational reforms laid the foundation of a modern system of education in France and throughout much of Europe. Napoleon synthesized the best academic elements from the Ancien Régime, The Enlightenment, and the Revolution, with the aim of establishing a stable, well-educated and prosperous society. He made French the only official language. He left some primary education in the hands of religious orders, but he offered public support to secondary education. Napoleon founded a number of state secondary schools (lycées) designed to produce a standardized education that was uniform across France. All students were taught the sciences along with modern and classical languages. Unlike the system during the Ancien Régime, religious topics did not dominate the curriculum, although they were present in addition to teachers from the clergy. Napoleon simply hoped to use religion to produce social stability. He gave special attention to the advanced centers, notably the Ecole Polytechnique, that provided both military expertise and state-of-the-art research in science. Napoleon made some of the first major efforts at establishing a system of secular and public education. The system featured scholarships and strict discipline, with the result being a French educational system that outperformed its European counterparts, many of which borrowed from the French system.

Long-term impact outside France


Bas-relief of Napoleon I in the chamber of the United States House of Representatives

Napoleon was responsible for spreading the values of the French Revolution to other countries, especially in legal reform and the abolition of serfdom.

After the fall of Napoleon, not only was Napoleonic Code retained by conquered countries including the Netherlands, Belgium, parts of Italy and Germany, but has been used as the basis of certain parts of law outside Europe including the Dominican Republic, the US state of Louisiana and the Canadian province of Quebec. The memory of Napoleon in Poland is favorable, for his support for independence and opposition to Russia, his legal code, the abolition of serfdom, and the introduction of modern middle class bureaucracies.

Source: Wikipedia

[Jaga]

Napoleon did some good and many Poles just loved his ideas, but I believe now that his actions were rather bad, especially sending poor French soldiers to Russia and causing so much chaos in Europe!

[karl]

Pieter

Yes, Napoleon was a man of many aspects for not just France, but to out side the borders of France with a strong enfluence in both civil law and the preservation of food for his armies whilst on the march. Remember Louis Pasture? The development of canning as a measure for food preservation.

With this, his development of a fair and just civil code of law for their legal system. This then played an important aspect to our German civil code, although not the first, but still and emportant aspect of foundation of present day codification of the civil law.

As follows:

German Civil Code

German Civil Code, German Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch,
the body of codified private law that went into effect in the German empire in 1900. Though it has been modified, it remains in effect. The code grew out of a desire for a truly national law that would override the often conflicting customs and codes of the various German territories.

The code is divided into five parts. The first is general, covering concepts of personal rights and legal personality. The subjects of the other four parts are: obligations, including concepts of sale and contract; things, including immovable and movable property; domestic relations; and succession.The concept of law embodied in the code was the gemeines Recht, the common law based on the 6th-century codification of Roman law put in force by the emperor Justinian.

In family law and to some extent in the law of property, some elements of Germanic tribal law also influenced the code. Although altered to some extent by feudal law, customary law again came under Roman influence in the 15th century, when Roman law was received into Germany in an effort to systematize customs and legal institutions. In some areas it superseded custom, particularly when there was no conflict between the two; in others, Roman and customary law existed side by side, with custom prevailing when there were insurmountable differences.The movement for codification began in the 18th century with the Bavarian Code of 1756 and the Prussian Civil Code of 1794 and received its major impetus from the Napoleonic Code, which remained in operation in the 19th century throughout much of the western area of Germany, including Alsace and Westphalia.

As had been the case at the time of the French codification (1804), there was a desire in Germany to reconcile the vast incongruities in the law among different towns and territories. Even within cities there were sometimes two distinct bodies of private law in operation. Some areas of Germany were under the Napoleonic Code, others under the Prussian Civil Code, others under local codes and customs, and still others under various combinations of all of these.

Throughout the 19th century, German legal scholars argued about the type of national code that should be written and, indeed, whether one should be written at all. The arguments were intense enough to have the effect of delaying codification. Only with the formation of the Reich (“empire”) in 1871 was it possible to undertake a program of national codification. Commissions were established, and, when the first draft of the code was presented for critical appraisal in 1888, it was rejected as being too Roman. A second draft was promulgated in 1896 and went into effect in 1900.

The German Civil Code has had an important influence on the private law of other countries, particularly Japan, Switzerland, and Greece. It has influenced the law of Austria and, in conjunction with the Swiss Civil Code, that of Russia and the Scandinavian countries, among others. Compare Napoleonic Code; Prussian Civil Code.





"German Civil Code". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2015. Web. 25 Apr. 2015<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/230659/German-Civil-Code>.

Karl