Napoleon Comes to Power

This latest addition to the Past in Perspective Series traces the rise to power of Napoleon and also examines the events before and after the coup d'etat of 1799. Recent research has suggested that the Bonapartist dictatorship was by no means a foregone conclusion, the inevitable outcome of a corrupt and discredited revolutionary regime. There is now greater awareness of the difficulties faced by the Directory (as the constitutional system was called after 1795) in steering a middle course between Royalism and Jacobinism and also a greater recognition of its achievements. By the time that Napoleon crowned himself Emperor in 1804, the Revolution was effectively over. An ingenious balance had been struck between democracy and authority, between hierarchy and equality, in short between the old order and the new, a synthesis which disarmed radicals and attracted conservatives. This hybrid of revolution and tradition only lasted for a further decade in France, but it exerted a profound influence over nineteenth-century political culture. The Napoleonic episode thus requires careful attention at a deeper level than the personal and military heroics that usually predominate, as this study will demonstrate.