Napoleon

During class we did many things to broaden our knowledge of Napoleon Bonaparte's over all impact during and after his rule. We annotated a documents that had to do with two peoples feelings towards Napoleon and his rule. We talked about him and took notes. We also looked at a map of the Americas. All these activities helped us to understand and begin to answer the essential question. What was Napoleon's impact on the social, economic, and political systems of Europe? This question is simply asking what did Napoleon do to the social, economic, and political systems during his rule that lasted even after his time of rule was over. What were the impacts he left? Were they negative or positive? Did they last well after his rule or did they die off when his power did?


The document we read and annotated was titled Two Views of Napoleon solely because it was two separate points of view on Napoleon. The views were from Madame Germaine Necker de Staël, a bitter writer exiled from France, and Marshal Michel Ney, one of Napoleon's officers returning from Paris in 1815. The first view of Napoleon was written by Madame de Staël. She had a negative outlook on Napoleon and his way of ruling. Madame de Staël did not like how Napoleon thought of people's virtue, dignity, religion, and enthusiasm as "the eternal enemies of the continent." Staël wrote that Napoleon was very cunning and persuaded men by force. She tells us that Napoleon thought of this as the only effective way of ruling and that all other ways were “stupid and folly.” Staël believed that Napoleon did not come into rule looking for universal monarchy. But over time Napoleon did seem to achieve this. That was how he left his political impact. The other view of Napoleon in this document was from Marshal Michel Ney. Ney wrote that Napoleon was their sovereign, meaning he had complete and absolute power of the country of France. Ney says that Napoleon has every right to rule over their country and that he is their best option. This is the social and economic impact that most of everybody was well off and that people loved him. In the article "The Lost Voices of Napoleonic Histories" it was common knowledge that most people like napoleon in the early times of his rule. Over time is when he started to go down hill and down in the eyes of the people. this shows that his impact could have been good but ended up being bad in most aspects.