Part I

One of the common traps of Napoleonic history is to assume that this particular epoch began and ended with the great man himself. Such a Napoleon-centric picture, which was promoted by both Napoleon and Bonapartists, obscures both the ambiguous legacies of French rule as well as the legacies of period before the Consul and Empire. The latter was especially important for the subsequent trajectory of Napoleon’s empire. Although the tide of French arms ebbed and flowed, the Revolution led to the reality of large French armies both east of the Rhine, the Low Countries, and south of the Alps. French military presence in Italy, where a young general Bonaparte made his name, as well as in Central Europe necessitated some form of French rule, whether through the annexation, the erection of satellite states, or alliances with various smaller powers. The Republican period helped set this paradigm that Napoleon would later expand upon and tailor to suit the needs of his empire. The results of this empire-building were decidedly mixed and while the Empire functioned in the short-term, its stability was incredibly fragile.

One of the Napoleon’s central inheritances from the Revolution was the Enlightenment’s faith in rational reform and systematic rule. The Revolution’s armies brought a number of reforms such as the emancipation of Jews, civil marriage, and constitutional orders. Older Marxist historiography (e.g. George Rudé, Georges Lefebvre, etc.) emphasized the missionary character of the Republic’s modernizing tendencies, but recent scholarship has painted a more nuanced picture. Despite its emancipatory rhetoric, Republican French reforms tended to be much more pragmatic and limited in practice. Even the fabled emancipation of the Jews was incredibly limited in character and did not extend Jews full civic equality in zones under French influence. The vague promises of ending the old order and creating a new society based on reason and law found a good deal of resonance among not a few local elites and French administrators relied upon these elites as servitors to carry out French requisitions and maintain order. But once connected to French power, these elites found their freedom for maneuver somewhat constricted. The case of the Netherlands illustrates this point. The decline of the Dutch Republic had been apparent for quite some time prior to 1789 and the news of Paris awakened hopes for a revolution and political renewal. Although the Batavian revolutionaries overthrew the Orange Stadtholder and invited the French armies in, the Batavian Revolution soon splintered into two factions, the moderate Patriots and more radical Batavians, and French armies became a vital bellwether between the factions. By the Consulate, Napoleon had decided to cut the Gordian knot of the Batavian Revolution by imposing a more limited constitutional order and a restructuring of Dutch government to suit French needs. The 1801 coup created the Batavian Commonwealth, which although done at the points of French bayonets (real and figurative), and this new entity found a degree of collaborators from elites sick of internecine factionalism, as well as surviving Orangeists, whom the Commonwealth invited back into the government. But the political stabilization that came from French rule came with a significant price. The overarching power of France led to a gradual, but constant, curtailment of Dutch sovereignty, including pressure to put a member of the Bonaparte family as head of state, and a restructuring of the Dutch economy to suit the needs of both the French economy and the Continental System. Napoleon’s elevation of his brother to a Dutch monarch in 1806, as well as the French annexation in 1810, cemented this process and Dutch elites found they had to implement French laws as well as maintain the Napoleonic taxation and conscription system. While more than a few Dutch elites participated in this process, most famously the Batavian revolutionary Rutger Jan Schimmelpenninck, they were no longer masters of their own house.

One of the patterns of French occupation Napoleon would refine were the twin policies of ralliement (getting the cooperation of local elites) and amalgame (fusing together elements of the old order with the new through active participation within Napoleonic state systems). In many cases of French rule, ralliement was a far easier policy to accomplish than integration of the ancien regime. Napoleonic rule not only encountered reluctance in wider participation due to French cultural imperialism, but also Napoleon uncharacteristically encountered resistance from within France over the elevation of non-French into the hierarchy of the Empire. ne telling example is one of the squabbles inside the French government about the nature of French citizenship. Napoleon's Civil Code favored the concept of jus soli (citizenship based upon land of birth) over jus sanguinis (citizenship based upon parent's nationality). This was something that Napoleon had to fight against some elements within the French imperial government when he pushed for jus soli. Napoleon believed that by creating French-led cultural and state institutions, he could assimilate large sections of Europe into French culture, much as he had "became French" through service in the French military academies and army. His own government fought against this, and although this resistance was unsuccessful, it shows the real informal limits for non-French to participate within the Empire’s hierarchy.

Counter-intuitively, this imperial glass ceiling aided French rule on a local level. French administrators in annexed areas or within the satellite states often found themselves bereft of enough subordinates to adequately carry out imperial instructions. Therefore, French authorities had to rely upon local elites to ensure that taxes and customs were paid and conscription quotas met. This gave these old elites enough leverage to shore up their own privileges and ensure that French reforms benefited their own class interests. In the Kingdom of Westphalia, intended by Napoleon to be a model for the other German states, the state had a monarch, Napoleon’s brother Jerome, nominally subject to a constitution, the Code Napoleon which guaranteed civil equality, and system which made all of Jerome’s subjects equal before the law. But on the ground, Jerome often had to rely upon elements of the old order to implement these reforms. The result was that although feudalism ended legally, in practice, much of the patterns of land ownership remained quite similar to the pre-1806 order, but now had been sanctified by the new Code. In the annexed Rhineland, elite participation in the system was a matter of course. French power had been an ever present reality since the early 1790s and was a means to preserve local elite power and institutions. As an elite strategy, Ralliement could be a highly lucrative one allowing knowledgeable elites both experience with the French legal system and an opportunity for graft and other forms of corruption. But such a strategy carried risks and alienation from the wider population. In the Kingdom of Italy, Giuseppe Prina played the role of strengthening local fiscal institutions and conducting cadastral surveys on behalf of the Kingdom to render the taxation system more efficient. As the Empire collapsed in 1814, an angry mob lynched Prina in Milan.

Napoleon set up puppet governments which followed the revolutionary France ideal of liberty for the common man and abolishing feudalism and serfdom. if you were a peasant in Europe around the 19 century then you may still not have a lot of freedoms. along comes Napoleon who implements his Napoleonic code across Europe. this was a ground breaking law system which is what modern law is based on. France only recently changed the code of lawns having kept the napoleon code well into the 21st century. the masses were more free then in Europe after napoleon so there was sympathy from the common man and women, another aspect was that fact Napoleon indirectly ruled letting the states run themselves only intervening on matters of war and law. Many areas he conquered were freed from occupation and given independence as french protectorates. For example the grand duchy of Warsaw was the first independent polish state in 20 years set up by napoleon in what is today modern day Poland and Belarus in area taken by Russia and Prussia in the many partitions of poland. the polish fought valiantly for napoleon too the bitter end. even at Waterloo napoleon had polish lancers as the core of his cavalry of the guard.

Another factor was the French military power at the time

after austalitz the only power in Europe capable of fighting a fair fight with Napoleon was Russia who allied with napoleon after seeing that with the defeat of Austria they were alone and isolated against napoleon. at his zenith Poland to Italy was under indirect french rule with roughly 300k french and french sub state troops on the continent a unprecedented number for that time it dwarfed even the russian army witch prior to the french invasion only had 200k soldiers it could call on. in till the invasion of Russia Europe thought this was the new status-quo as nothing could could challenge him, he had hegemony in Europe and the only power on the continent strong enough to fight him (Russia) was allied with him.

TL;DR Most people were glad for the french reforms brought by napoleon as he set up these new revolutionary governments, those who were not were dissuaded by the sheer power of France at its Zenith

Soruces: Napoleon the great by Andrew Roberts

spelling is bad its 3am im too tired to fix it maybe tommoro

Follow-up:

In those areas that did see resistance against Napoleonic rule, what were the common arguments against said rule?

Also, while the Spanish resistance to Napoleon is quite famous, were there any peaceful anti-french movements during Napoleonic times?