Napoleon was a child of the Enlightenment Essay

Assess the validity of this statement by using specific policies and attitudes of Napoleon. During the time period of the French Revolution, many governments came and went as a result of the unorganized and often times, radical political regimes that were recklessly installed by desperate people longing for equality and liberty. The French were inspired by the new liberal notions and ideas of political and economic rights for all proposed by Enlightenment thinkers. As different forms of governments and their leaders among them passed, one man named Napoleon Bonaparte rose to power by manipulating the Directory and the French people to enable him to assume authoritative powers over his subjects and, as a side effect, majority of continental Europe. Bonaparte used his autocratic powers to maintain the rights achieved during the revolution and inject new Enlightenment he had been educated from the small island of Corsica as long as they did not interfere with his thirst for power. Napol eon Bonaparte rose to power via the arrogance of a political leader who failed to comprehend the influence of Bonaparte and his army. Napoleon Bonaparte issued a constitution, the Constitution of Year VIII, to clarify his new political intentions he would impose. With this constitution, he created an illusion to the French people that people from all fractions of the political spectrum would be content with. His constitution appealed to the common man and democratic supporters with â€Å"universal male suffrage.† An elaborate system of checks and balances between each sector of his government appealed to republican supporters. Also, the Council of State would satisfy any monarchists that remained in France. However, as an intellectually-inclined individual from his education in philosophy and military strategy, Bonaparte provided the French with a sound and stable state and what appeared to be a constitutional government in which he knew that the public would eat up his legal proposition. Bonaparte also simplified and cleaned up the French government and its legal system with reforms such as the Civil Code o f 1804, or more commonly known as the Napoleonic Code. Napoleon Bonaparte created reforms that were based off of the education he received as a boy from the Age of Enlightenment that would thus act as a tool for nation-building and continental domination. Napoleon Bonaparte demonstrated from his enlightened point of view that religion could be separate from government–but does not have to be totally eradicated from society itself to achieve such an intention–with the concordat with Pope Pius VII. He also treated all faiths equally by emphasizing that the state was supreme over whatever religion or denomination it may be like how he enacted laws on both Protestant and Jewish communities in the Roman Catholic dominated France. Bonaparte maintained the abolishment of the practice of primogeniture. Napoleon also went on a rampage all of Europe to expand his empire. As he marched throughout Europe, he liberated peasants by eliminating the economic and social practice of serfdom. Napoleon Bonaparte developed in an environment that was saturated with philosophical ideas pertaining to social and religious ideas that Enlightenment thinkers studied and discovered new ways of the ways people could interact such as religious toleration and social equality. Napoleon Bonaparte grew up in a home that was greatly influenced by Enlightenment ideas and principles. This statement can be reached with Bonaparte’s actions that were obviously liberal and new to the decades prior to the French Revolution. He did assume total control over France and the continent of Europe, but he did permit some liberty and freedom to his loyal subjects. Bonaparte used Enlightenment ideals to gain power and used them to maintain power by convincing he was still providing what the liberal bourgeois and nobility had been fighting for and along with some new ideas that did not go against his drive for authoritative powers. In all Napoleon Bonaparte utilized his Enlightenment education to manipulate the French and free many serfs and to control France and later Europe.