Organizational CaseClaim Cited
The French Revolution’s Napoleonic settlement
By 1804, France had reached a contingent Napoleonic settlement: feudal privilege remained dismantled and law and administration became more uniform, but the capacity to initiate and execute policy gathered under a hereditary ruler, appointed prefects, police, and war. That settlement emerged through conflict among revolutionary factions, popular movements, armies, colonial insurgents, women organizers, property holders, and officials—and it reversed as well as preserved revolutionary possibilities.
Why did repeated attempts to defend popular sovereignty leave, by 1804, a hereditary executive with more usable administrative authority than any revolutionary assembly?