John Stuart Mill (1806–73), an English civil servant and philosopher, was a firm believer in the liberal, democratic, and anti–absolutist elements of the legacy of the Revolution and hoped to extend these concepts as widely as possible. Most famous…
On the occasion of Napoleon’s death, the leading English paper expressed the view of the English establishment: hatred of his despotic rule, yet a kind of sneaking admiration of his “extraordinary life.”
The French novelist and essayist François–René Chateaubriand (1768–1848) was a royalist who for a time admired Napoleon. Like Burke, he denounced the revolutionary reliance on reason and advocated a return to Christian principles. Although…
To make his new hybrid state work, Napoleon curried the favor of the old regime nobles. He needed their approval to make his empire convincing. Although he set up his own form of nobility, largely granted for exceptional military service, he wanted…
Charles Fourier (1772–1837) was a salesman for a cloth merchant in Lyons who conceived of a different form of social organization, called a "phalanx," that was part garden city and part agricultural commune. All jobs would rotate and a network of…
The memoirs of Claire, Countess of Rémusat provide a bird’s-eye view into the operation of Napoleon’s imperial household. Rémusat was a lady-in-waiting to Napoleon’s first wife Josephine. Napoleon wanted an elaborate court to underline his imperial…
Rainsford paints a glowing portrait of the abilities and accomplishments of L’Ouverture, the most noted leader of the rebellion and one of the key founders of the nation of Haiti.
Rainsford’s sympathy for the revolt in Haiti did not seem to extend to the influence of ideas imported from revolutionary France, which appear to have been at the heart of Ogé’s rebellion.
