The French Revolution and Napoleon

The years from 1789 to 1815, the years of the Revolution and of Napoleon, effected one of the greatest and most difficult transitions of which history bears record, and to gain any proper sense of its significance one must have some glimpse of the background, some conception of what Europe was like in 1789... One thing, at least, it was not: it was not a unity. There were states of every size and shape and with every form of government. The States of the Church were theocratic; capricious and cruel despotism prevailed in Turkey; absolute monarchy in Russia, Austria, France, Prussia; constitutional monarchy in England; while there were various kinds of so-called republics €“ federal republics in Holland and Switzerland, a republic whose head was an elective king in Poland, aristocratic republics in Venice and Genoa and in the free cities of the Holy Roman Empire...

Contents: The Old R©gime In Europe - The Old R©gime in France - Beginnings of the Revolution - The Making of the Constitution - The Legislative Assembly - The Convention - The Directory - The Consulate - The Early Years of the Empire - The Empire at Its Height - The Decline and Fall of Napoleon