Although it appeared that Napoleon capitalized on the progress made by the people responsible for the French Revolution and took advantage of the internal sociopolitical struggles, it cannot be denied that when he gained power and authority, he effectively ended the upheaval by guaranteeing a more unwavering brand of governance.Bonaparte was optimistic about bringing French revolutionary politics to Corsica. We see him there handing out cockades, and he helped found a political club. As mentioned in the first article in this series, The Bonapartes worked as a family, so he supported his older brother Joseph for political office. His family bought nationalized church lands. By 1792, he got himself elected as the lieutenant colonel of the National Guard.Learn more about And a second key point stands out: Napoleon came of age politically in Corsican politics. The truth is, he didn’t maneuver well in Corsica. He was naïve and unrealistic. After all, he was only 20 in 1789. He was headlong in his approach and he underestimated resistance to radical, revolutionary reforms. But then he grew more savvy and more cynical and more pragmatic. In 1793, he wrote about politics, “It is better to eat than be eaten.” Simply put, Bonaparte couldn’t have become such a brilli What appealed to him about the French Revolution? Its energy and its forcefulness. Its ideology of possibility. The toughness and hardcore style of the Jacobins. And the Revolution glorified war and honored successful soldiers. The Revolution also made it possible, as never before, for a bold soldier to rise up through the ranks on the basis of merit. Lots of elite officers had emigrated; that left openings in the officer corps. The army had a new structure—more open and egalitarian.In the fa...The gilded youth led thousands of royalists to surround the Convention to protest certain parts of the plan for the Directory. The future director, Paul Barras, decided to do something that revolutionary leaders had never done: call in the army against Parisian demonstrators; the demonstrators were royalists this time. Barras chose General Bonaparte to bring in the artillery. Napoleon turned his cannons onto the crowd. He fired what he famously called a “whiff of grapeshot.” But the fighting...By 1795, things were looking pretty good for the French Republic. Spain had been defeated and had agreed to switch sides and ally with France. The Prussians has also made peace with France. Way to the east, Russia had put down a revolt in Poland that was inspired in part by the French Revolution. Now Prussia wanted to concentrate its full attention on dividing up Poland with Russia, again. French armies had also kicked the Austrians out of the Austrian Netherlands, modern-day Belgium. Now the...Let’s step back and think about what happened here with the creation of the first sister republic, because certain patterns will reemerge again, and Napoleon would play a role in creating those patterns. By the mid-1790s, revolutionary warfare and ideology had combined to destabilize old power structures in Europe. Local patriots in the Netherlands and in other places jumped into the opening. They seized the opportunity for making independent Republics within the cauldron of revolutionary con...
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