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This important and revealing document evokes both the contemporary situation in the colonies and the political developments taking place in Paris. It comes from Marcus Rainsford’s supportive account of the Haitian Revolution.

In this engraving, Roman and contemporary themes are combined to glorify the new emperor. The absence of any clear representation of revolutionary liberty shows Napoleon moving away from the events of the preceding decade.

Napoleon brought to completion a project dear to the hearts of the revolutionaries, the drafting of new law codes. The civil code was the most important of them because it institutionalized equality under the law (at least for adult men), guaranteed…

When he made himself emperor, Napoleon clearly rejected the republican form of government. Here he tries to claim that hereditary government is necessary in a large state. The presence of the pope at his coronation seemed to confer legitimacy on the…

The second image, a color drawing by the popular English caricaturist James Gillray in 1805 during the Empire, takes a different view of the Directory, suggesting that it is a time of moral decadence and self–aggrandizement. It depicts Paul Barras,…