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Novelist Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) was a giant of nineteenth–century European literature. In his multivolume The Human Comedy, he investigated the general desire for social advancement in the post–revolutionary world. Although generally supportive…

Louis XVI’s old regime image graced china as well as coinage.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) was a famous philosophy professor in Berlin whose lectures attracted many students, even though the lectures were extraordinarily abstract. The Philosophy of History was a compilation of his lectures given in…

In his poem “To the Column,” the great French poet Victor Hugo celebrates the memory of Napoleon.

This engraving of the battle of Jemappes, preromantic in its composition and style, depicts a group of French citizen–soldiers bravely risking themselves under the banner of liberty and overcoming all foes in marching to victory—a motif that would…

The general peace agreement lasted a scant two years after the treaty of 1801. Although unable to seriously threaten an occupation of the British Isles, Napoleon was very successful on the continent, launching major wars into Austria, Prussia, Spain,…

Troops sent by Louis XVIII to stop Napoleon’s advance toward Paris either deserted or joined Napoleon.

Napoleon spent ten months on this island in the Mediterranean. He was able to follow events in France without much difficulty. This initial exile was part of a relatively lenient settlement granted by the allies in 1814 after Napoleon’s initial…