Napoleon Bonaparte's reign and legacy only partly the ideals of the French Revolution and the Enlightenment. In the early years of Napoleon's regime as a Consul, he earned the admiration of many prominent intellectuals and arts masters, particularly in the German principalities where the ideals and potential of the Revolution raised an enthusiastic response. Among the intellectuals who admired Napoleon at the beginning of his career were Goethe and Beethoven who even dedicated his 3rd Symphony, "Eroica," to Napoleon ( he would regret it and mutilate its musical score as Napoleon became a dictator in his eyes).
The way that Napoleon succeeded in making a number of ideals from the Enlightenment and the Revolution come true are listed below:
- ordered the creation of laws aiming at treating all citizens equally regardless of social or economic condition
- requested the best pedagogues in France to reform the education by having students use their reasoning in order to learn instead of the traditional learning by heart
- ordered elementary and secondary education to be compulsory for all children in France; the effects of this policy would be seen in 1848 when young students would depose the last king in France
- established a system known as meritocracy in which the most intelligent and competent people could serve even in the high levels of the government regardless of their social condition; e.g., one of Napoleon's best generals, Marshal Michel Ney came from one of the lowest social classes in France
Now the way that Napoleon fail was as follows:
- he appointed his brothers and sisters as princes of some of the European countries he conquered despite of their incompetence and in contradiction with his system of meritocracy
- his gesture of crowning himself as "Emperor of the French" only tarnished his reputation needlessly since Napoleon always led a very modest way of life away from luxury, extravagance and money dilapidation
- his campaigns in Spain and Russia where his armies followed a burnt earth policy have been remembered ever since as the actions of a brutal tyrant and not as those of an enlightened ruler
Even though Napoleon was defeated in 1815 in Waterloo, the pass of his armies, particularly of French soldiers who believed in the Revolution, spread the ideals of the Revolution and the Enlightenment to vast backward areas in Prussia, the Austrian Empire and Italy. As the powers of the last coalition against Napoleon met in the Congress of Vienna and became more authoritarian and repressive, the opposition to absolutism was slowly and secretly brewing in the minds of many Europeans. Napoleon did know this, for as he was being taken to his ultimate prison in the remote island of Saint Helen, he stated, "I have already created the generation that shall avenge me!" He was referring to the generation of Europeans that would rebel across the main European capitals in 1848 under he guidelines of the French Revolution.
The conclusion is that Napoleon's legacy is a mixed one. Though an extraordinary military, political and government genius he may have been, he was only human, and the heavy weight of the Enlightenment and the Revolution proved to be too hard to carry for him.
