Empire of conditions

The new story of the First Empire. Volume 3. Napoleonic France and Europe 1804-1814 . Thierry Lenz. - Fayard, 2007. - 600 p.

Nouvelle Histoire du Premier Empire. Tome 3. La France et l'Europe de napoleon 1804-1814 de Thierry Lentz. - Fayard, 2007. - 600 pp.

When it came to Napoleon and his empire, often the question arose how many contradictory assessments it caused. Thierry Lenz, who published after two chronological volumes the third volume of the main “new history of the first empire”, asks another question: why did this empire need this empire? Volumetric work dedicated to Napoleonic France and Europe of 1804-1814 (and even extending beyond these time frames) is based on the little-known historiography of European countries and the impeccable erudition of the author. He is distinguished by an impeccable style, the originality of the approach and conclusions, so very soon it can become an important source for studying this period. Of course, the historian cannot lock himself in an ivory tower - the effect of time appears in the interpretations of Lenz, and the present leaves its imprint on his vision of history. However, this does not make his work so convincing. In other recently published books on this issue, this influence is also noticeable, but the likelihood that they will often refer to them are small.

Thierry Lenz took the work of painstakingly reconsider the opposite myths, distributed simultaneously by admirers and critics of the empire. Most likely, this is the key to his success.

Excessive individualization

The pages that the author devotes to the problem of the legality of the coup 18 Brumer, the role of the law in the process of building an empire, the dominance of civil society to the detriment of the army, removed from the core of power, the stability of the "politics" (especially thanks to the strengthening of the royalist opposition due to the gap with the dad in 1810), the period, which has long been in the shadow of Napoleon’s personality. Excessive individualization of this period, focused on the figure of Napoleon, led some historians to a dangerous mixture of the concepts of authoritarianism and dictatorship, which Tierry Lenz managed to successfully avoid.

Of course, in the described time, lawless arrests and political executions (approximately 3,000) took place, of which the execution of the Duke of Engiensky is most famous. Nevertheless, Napoleon managed to stop and confront the temptations of the judicial and military vehicles, a desktop hierarchical, codified and ordered that it could bring him to the path of absolutism. Than to blame him, it is better to try to determine that there is Napoleonic "public order" based on civil equality. In a sense, Thierry Lenz leads this period “to normal”, helps us to bring him closer and understand. Reducing pathos, he saves him from the stigma of atypical. Of course, Napoleon is not absent. The magnificent pages of the Prince and Time are devoted to him (in the name of the introduction - an invariable link to Machiavelli and the idea of ​​dialectical relations that can exist between the concepts of loss of reality and loss of power). But the construction of the Napoleonic “system”, the transformation into the weapon of his will “fraternal kingdoms”, the consequences of all this for the country's economic and financial organization, in short, the flight from the empire, doomed to decline, already due to its giantism, is not the most important here.

Lenz is enough wisdom to place the empire in a long flow of modern history. For example, in his opinion, there are no deep differences in the Napoleonic wars from the wars of the previous ones. Being a faithful follower of the wonderful, but thoroughly forgotten historian of the early 20th century, Albert Sorel, he sees in all these wars not an ideology (the natural limits established into the revolution are very quickly overcome, human rights are replaced), but the continuation of the former expansive policy of large European countries, when one partner creates more inconvenience than another. It is "interests" above all, in the focus-a long-standing Anglo-French economic rivalry, which has been lasting from the end of the 17th century. It will be resolved in favor of England not because of the fall of the Empire, but because of the imperial itself.

This defeated empire is also an empire that defeated the administrative reality of modern Europe, robbed by the will of the man of education, which turned the state into the main user of his reforms, which expelled feudalism, proclaimed civil equality, introduced rational administrative and financial principles. Naturally, all this should be understood outside the legend born on St. Elena, who forgot the "father of the new state" for the sake of the romantic image of the "father of European peoples."

Finally, the advantage of the reader of the new history of the Empire proposed to the reader is that the conclusions are holistic here, and this is rarely found in such panoramic canvases. Lenz shows the relationship that existed in Europe between two pillars - domestic politics, on the one hand, and foreign policy on the other. It is thanks to the strengthening of the principle of rationality, the success of the centralization of state structures, thanks to the "granite" social masses that Napoleon favored, and the merger and business elite with the authorities became possible. And yet. Since it became "too possible", this merger ultimately changed Napoleon and plunged it. Perhaps the empire suffered from the fact that it was paradoxically at the same time in constant movement (supported by the continuous renewal of wars outside its borders), and on the other hand, it longed for immobility after revolutionary upheavals. This period, in the words of Francois Fuhre, “completes” the revolution ... and it resumes it. Since Napoleon himself froze, convinced of his superiority and chosenness, his empire as a result fell into chaos and uncertainty.

Source: " Le monde "

Translation by Natalia Ovchininskaya