If we turn now from the story of Napoleon's life to an attempt to appraise the significance of the whole era which fittingly bears his name, we are struck by its manifold achievements in politics and society, in commerce, and in war. In general it was a continuation of the French the Revolution. The principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity, which, from 1789 to 1799, had been laid down as the foundation exclusively of French political and social institutions, became, from 1799 to 1815, the building-blocks for all European nations. The least understood and used was undoubtedly liberty. To be sure, both the Consulate and the empire were concrete and substantial examples of the replacement of the old theory of divine-right monarchy by the new idea of popular sovereignty, of governments resting, in last analysis, upon the consent of the governed. But Napoleon did hardly more to vitalize individual liberties than did the benevolent despots of the eighteenth century, or those of his own day. To secure the interested support of the bourgeoisie and the peasantry, the sacred right of private property was eloquently reaffirmed, and, as a trusty weapon against possible clerical pretensions, the noble rights of liberty of conscience and liberty of worship were grandiloquently preached; but the less serviceable liberties of speech and of publication were confined within the narrowest limits of military and imperial toleration.
[Sidenote: "Equality" under Napoleon]
With equality it was quite different. In all the lands annexed to France or included within the radius of Napoleon's direct influence, the forms and rights of feudalism and serfdom were abolished, and the social equalities embodied Code Napoléon were guaranteed. Throughout southern Germany, the Netherlands, the Iberian peninsula, and a great part of Italy, as well as in France, the social aspects of the old régime underwent a thorough transformation; interior customs lines, private roadways, toll-bridges, and internal trade restrictions were swept away; in the place of large landed estates, with their old- time noble owners and their wretched peasants attached to the soil and suffering from burdensome tithes and dues and personal services, appeared a numerous class of peasant proprietors, owning and tilling their own fields, free to buy, sell, or exchange them, or to move away to the growing towns. Outside of Napoleon's direct influence, the land reforms of Baron vom Stein in Prussia reflected the same spirit of the age. These social gains in the direction of equality were, in fact, the most permanent achievements of the Napoleonic Era: in spite of later reaction, it was beyond the reach of possibility to restore the inequalities of the outworn feudal system.
[Sidenote: "Fraternity" under Napoleon]
[Sidenote: The Emphasis on Nationalism]
Fraternity, or national patriotism, received a marked impetus during the era. Communicated from France by the ardor of the revolutionary and Napoleonic soldiers, it evoked ready response not only in Poland, Holland, Portugal, Spain, England, and Russia, in which countries it was already existent, but also in the Germanies and in the Italian states, where centuries of petty strife and jealousy seemed to have blotted it out forever. The significance of the Napoleonic period in the history of Germany is incalculable. The diminution of the number of states, the abolition of the effete Holy Roman Empire, the regeneration of Prussia, the War of Liberation, the Battle of the Nations, the consciousness of common interests, and the wave of patriotism which swept over the whole German folk, presaged before the lapse of many decades the political unification of the Germanies and the erection of a powerful national state. Nor were the Italians devoid of a similar national feeling. The fame of Napoleon, a man of Italian blood, the temporary establishment of a "kingdom of Italy," the title of "king of Rome" conferred upon the infant heir to Napoleon's fortunes, the social reforms and the patriotic awakening throughout the peninsula,—all betokened a national destiny for the whole Italian people.
[Sidenote: Minor Political Happenings]
In minor political ways the Napoleonic Era was not without significance. The Tsar was enabled finally to acquire Finland, Poland, and Turkish land as far as the River Pruth, Minor thus completing the work of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, and rounding out the European frontier of Russia to its present extent. Sweden secured Norway and a new dynasty, which, descended from Marshal Bernadotte, the interesting son of an obscure French lawyer, has reigned ever since. In the case of Portugal, the flight of the royal family to Brazil in 1807 had the curious effect of causing them for several years to hold their court in their principal colony and to govern the mother-country through regents.
[Sidenote: Remarkable Significance of the Era to Great Britain]
[Sidenote: Colonies]
[Sidenote: Commerce]
Beyond continental Europe the period was of utmost importance. The maritime and commercial supremacy of Great Britain, which had been seriously shaken by the War of American Independence, was regained in the course of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Of course the United States continued independent. But the great victories of Lord Nelson over the French fleets rendered Great Britain the true mistress of the seas; and she proceeded to utilize her naval superiority to appropriate what remaining French colonies most suited her purpose. In this way she possessed herself of Malta (1800), St. Lucia, Tobago (1803), and Mauritius (1810). Then, too, the dependence of Holland upon France, involuntary though it was most of the time, afforded her an opportunity to seize such valuable Dutch colonies as Ceylon (1795), Guiana (1803), and South Africa (1806). The sorry subservience of the Spanish Bourbons to Napoleon gave Great Britain a similar chance to prey upon Spanish commerce, to occupy some Spanish colonies, and to open others to her own trade: at this time the British took possession of Trinidad (1797) and Honduras (1798) and sent raiding expeditions against Buenos Aires and Montevideo (1806-1807). The subsequent Peninsular War, in which, as we have seen, the British coöperated with the Spaniards in maintaining the latter's freedom against Napoleon, put an end to the hostile British incursions into the Spanish colonies, but it worked in another way to Great Britain's advantage. The Spanish colonies—Mexico, Central America, and the greater part of South America—were thrown into grave administrative perplexities by the conflict of authority between the two Bourbon kings, Charles IV and Ferdinand VII, and between King Joseph Bonaparte and the revolutionary juntas; the colonists gradually got into the habit of managing their own affairs and of opening their ports to British trade; and the result was that by 1814, when Ferdinand was at length firmly established upon the Spanish throne, he was confronted by colonists, the greater number of whom had all along professed allegiance to him, but who now, accustomed to the advantages of free trade and practical independence, were resolved to maintain them. The disruption of the Spanish colonial empire was a direct outcome of Napoleon's career, and next to the colonists themselves the British were the chief beneficiaries. In general, the new colonies which Great Britain acquired were intended either, as in the case of Malta, Mauritius, Ceylon, and South Africa, to strengthen her hold upon India, or, as in the case of the others, to develop her trade with Spanish America.
[Sidenote: Industry]