As a military officer, he drove the British from Toulon in southern France. Promoted to general, he crushed an attempt to restore the monarchy and led the French army to victories in Italy and Egypt.

A military hero to the French people, he seized control of the French government in 1799 with two allies. He immediately ordered the drafting of a new constitution. This document guaranteed that all adult males could vote, but it did not provide any bill of rights. "What the French people want," said Napoleon, "is equality, not liberty." The Constitution of 1799 also created a complicated form of government called the Consulate. But Napoleon, as "First Consul," held most of the power. Tired of revolutionary chaos and war, the French people overwhelmingly voted to approve the new constitution, which promised stability if not freedom.

Napoleon quickly set to work taking control of the country by appointing cabinet ministers, provincial governors and councils, police commissioners, mayors, and judges all loyal to him. To his credit, Napoleon selected appointees who generally proved to be efficient and honest.

Napoleon also established France's first public education system and financed many public-works projects including the beautification of Paris. To end a violent conflict with the Roman Catholic Church brought on by the revolution, Napoleon negotiated a pact with the pope. The church turned its lands over to the state. In return, the government paid the salaries of Catholic priests (France was mostly a Catholic country).

In 1800, Napoleon led his army over the Alps to defeat the Austrians in Italy. A few months later, he reached agreement with Spain to return Louisiana to France. In 1802, a vote of the people made him "First Consul for Life."

That same year, he signed peace treaties with several countries. The short period of peace that followed allowed Napoleon to complete his plans for unifying the French nation. This included writing a new code of laws to apply equally to all French citizens regardless of class.

The Civil Code

By Napoleon's time, a confusion of customary, feudal, royal, revolutionary, church, and Roman laws existed in France. Different legal systems controlled different parts of the country. The French writer Voltaire once complained that a man traveling across France would have to change laws as often as he changed horses.

Determined to unify France into a strong modern nation, Napoleon pushed for a single set of written laws that applied to everyone. He appointed a commission to prepare a code of laws. Napoleon wanted this code to be clear, logical, and easily understood by all citizens. The commission, composed of Napoleon and legal experts from all parts of France, met over a period of several years.

Enacted on March 21, 1804, the resulting Civil Code of France marked the first major revision and reorganization of laws since the Roman era. The Civil Code (renamed the Code Napoleon in 1807) addressed mainly matters relating to property and families. But these areas of law greatly affected people's lives.

The Civil Code writers tried to achieve a compromise between the past and the revolution. The Civil Code eliminated feudal and royal privileges in favor of all citizens' equality before the law. It included some rights such as freedom of speech and worship along with public trial by jury. It allowed individuals to choose their own occupation. But it banned worker organizations, and the employer's word was to be taken over that of his employee.

Most of the 2,281 articles in the Civil Code dealt with the right of property. This was defined as the right to enjoy and to dispose of one's property in the most absolute fashion.

Being that the Industrial Revolution had not yet taken hold in France, property mainly referred to land. Although the right to landed property was considered "absolute," some limitations applied.

For example, only the legitimate children of a landowner could inherit his land. Furthermore, the landowner's children had to share equally in the inheritance. The Civil Code also adopted the old feudal law that a wife could not inherit her dead husband's land because the "blood family" would then no longer own it.

The Civil Code retained the law that a civil authority must conduct legally-recognized marriages, and did not register church marriages as legal. It based many other family laws on traditional and even ancient Roman law. The father ruled his children. A father could veto his son's marriage until age 26 and that of his daughter until 21. Fathers even had the right to imprison their children at will.

Like other legal systems of the time, the Civil Code made the wife legally inferior to her husband. The husband owed protection to his wife, and the wife owed obedience to her husband. Without her husband's permission, a wife could not conduct any business. Moreover, she could not make contracts.

The Civil Code did provide for the idea of community property. This means that a married couple jointly owns all the wealth they accumulate during their marriage, and in case of divorce, they must divide it equally. But the code limited this progressive (although very old) idea. The husband alone legally controlled all family assets during the marriage, including any property his wife possessed before getting married.

The Civil Code permitted divorce on the grounds of adultery, cruelty, criminal conviction, or the mutual agreement of the spouses and their parents. The revolution had introduced divorce for the first time into France, and the Catholic Church bitterly opposed it. The law of divorce favored the husband. He could get a divorce if his wife committed one act of adultery anywhere. A wife, however, could secure a divorce on grounds of adultery only if her husband committed the act within the family home. Napoleon brought to completion a project dear to the hearts of the revolutionaries, the drafting of new law codes. The civil code was the most important of them because it institutionalized equality under the law (at least for adult men), guaranteed the abolition of feudalism, and, not least, gave the nation one single code of law replacing the hundreds in effect in 1789. As the following excerpts show, however, it also codified the subservience of women in marriage and of workers in their places of employment. Divorce was still allowed (it had been established in 1792), but under conditions that were very unfavorable to wives.

To elaborate:

Husband and wife mutually owe to each other fidelity, succor, and assistance.

The husband owes protection to his wife, the wife obedience to her husband.

The wife is obliged to live with her husband, and to follow him wherever he may think proper to dwell: the husband is bound to receive her, and to furnish her with everything necessary for the purposes of life, according to his means and condition.

The wife can do no act in law without the authority of the husband, even where she shall be a public trader, or not in community, or separate in property.

The husband may demand divorce for cause of adultery on the part of his wife.

The wife may demand divorce for cause of adultery on the part of her husband, where he shall have kept his concubine in their common house.

The provisional administration of the children shall remain with the husband plaintiff or defendant in divorce, unless it shall be otherwise ordered by the tribunal, at the request either of the mother, or of the family, or of the imperial proctor, for the greater benefit of the children.

Between 1806 and 1810, Napoleon added a Code of Civil Procedure, Commercial Code, Code of Criminal Procedure, and Penal Code to the ground-breaking Civil Code of 1804. Although they covered a lot, the laws themselves did not go into great detail. Under Napoleon's system, courts must sometimes use reason and logic to interpret how laws apply to certain cases. But the courts' decisions generally do not apply to future cases. This is quite unlike common-law systems. In common-law countries like Britain and the United States, court decisions can become precedents with the force of law. In France, the codes that lawmaking bodies enact are supreme. When the codes need amending, the legislature periodically updates them. For example, the French Parliament established legal equality between husband and wife in the Code Napoleon following World War II.

From another perspective,

In post Revolution France, the heretical and absurd ideas of female equality received a welcomed setback in a series of laws known as the Napoleonic Code. Through it, the legal right of men to control women was affirmed. Although most of the basic revolutionary gains - equality before the law, freedom of religion and the abolition of feudalism - remained, the Code ensured that married women in particular owed their husband obedience, and were forbidden from selling, giving, mortgaging or buying property.

Sexist backlash against women's feminism had consequences throughout Europe.

In military campaigns, Napoleon carried the Code throughout Europe, where it served as a model to legislators in countries from Italy to Poland. Within France itself, the Code survived basically unaltered for more than 150 years.

In many ways, the Code was the most enduring legacy of the French Revolution.

Excerpt from Code Chapters:

Of the respective Rights and Duties of Married Persons.

The husband owes protection to his wife, the wife obedience to her husband.

The wife is obliged to live with her husband, and to follow him to every place where he may judge it convenient to reside, and receive her, and to furnish her with everything reasonably needed for life, according to his means and station.

The wife cannot plead in her own name without the authority of her husband.

The authority of the husband is taken into consideration when the wife is prosecuted in a criminal matter, or relating to police.

A wife, although non-communicant or separate in property, cannot give, alienate, pledge, or acquire by free or chargeable title, without the concurrence of her husband in the act, or his consent in writing.

Divorce:

The wife may request divorce on the ground of adultery in her husband, when he shall have brought a mistress into their common residence. The married parties may reciprocally demand divorce for outrageous conduct, or grievous injuries, exercised by one of them towards the other. A woman cannot contract a new marriage until ten months have elapsed from the dissolution of the preceding marriage, and is strongly discouraged from re-marrying.

Conditions required in order to be able to contract Marriage.

Of the Guardianship of Father and Mother. The father is administrator of the personal effects of his non-adult children. If at the time of the husband's decease, his wife is with child, a curator for the non-born child can be suggested by family council. At the birth of the child the mother shall become guardian thereof, and the curator can be deputy guardian. If a mother being guardian desires to marry again, she is required before the act of marriage to convoke a family-council, who shall decide whether the guardianship ought to be continued to her. In defect of such convocation she shall lose the guardianship entirely.

The Legacy

Napoleon made his Civil Code the law in territories he conquered, such as parts of Italy and Holland. After his death, the Code Napoleon inspired many other nations to adopt similar law codes.

The Code Napoleon has even influenced the United States, a country steeped in the traditions of common law. In 1808, soon after President Thomas Jefferson purchased Louisiana from Napoleon, American lawmakers in the new territory wrote a code of laws largely taken from Napoleon's Civil Code. This territorial code remains as the foundation of Louisiana state law today.

The code's influence is not limited to Louisiana. Legislators patterned the New York state civil and criminal codes, first completed in 1850, on the Code Napoleon. These codes served as models for similar codes in other states and in the federal government. The old common law was codified, placed in codes.

After defeating Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815, the British imprisoned him on a remote island. Thinking about his career as a general and leader of France, Napoleon remarked: "My real glory is not the 40 battles I won, for my defeat at Waterloo will destroy the memory of those victories. What nothing will destroy, what will live forever, is my Civil Code."

Now approaching its 200th anniversary, the Code Napoleon continues to influence the lives of ordinary people in nearly all parts of the world. Napoleon was right. His most lasting legacy did not turn out to be his military conquests, but rather his foresight in realizing the unifying effect of a code of laws applying to all.

As way of review....

The longest lasting effect of Napoleon Bonaparte's rule over France was his overseeing the implementation of a series of national laws collectively known as the Civil Code, or Code Napoleon.

They included the Codes of Civil Procedure, Commercial Law (1807), Penal Code (1810) and Criminal Procedure (1808).

Napoleon wanted to replace a series of existing laws - that varied in each French province - and replace them with a standard code for all French people.

He had already reformed the French taxation system bringing to his imperial coffers almost 700 million francs annually. The sources for the money came from taxes on income and a series of levies on goods - such as wine, tobacco and salt.

In 1800 he added to his overhaul of the financial system by creating the Bank of France.

Napoleon did not play a part in its formation, which was handled by an official commission from 1801, nor did he look many of the 2281 suggested laws before they had been debated by the Council of State.

But once that had happened Napoleon focused his attentions on it and used his exceptional administrative talents to influence its overall impact.

The principal tenet of the Civil Code was that every French person was equal before the law.

This was a boon for many, however, while he took the religious aspect out of divorce, many of his views did limit Revolution-founded freedoms for women.

For example women were not allowed to independently trade in chattels or property, but had to ask their husbands before they did so.

He tightened divorce laws and fathers were empowered as rulers of their homes. They could ban children from inheritance and also imprison children for a month.

He showed great foresight in beginning a program of public works that included building canals, harbors and made roads better and safer by improving their condition and cracking down on brigands.

Education was improved for many, although the majority of children did not gain benefit from his new specialized and high schools. He encouraged the creation of private schools and sowed the seeds of community-wide literacy.

Never one to accept criticism well, Napoleon cracked down on the press, censoring newspapers and eventually closing down all but a few.

The Civil Code was officially enacted in 1804 and in 1807 was renamed Code Napoleon. It applied to all French domains and territories as well as being adopted by countries within the sphere of French influence.

Today the Civil Code forms the basis of many European legal systems.

In summary, after four years of debate and planning, French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte enacts a new legal framework for France, known as the "Napoleonic Code." The civil code gave post-revolutionary France its first coherent set of laws concerning property, colonial affairs, the family, and individual rights.

In 1800, General Napoleon Bonaparte, as the new dictator of France, began the arduous task of revising France’s outdated and muddled legal system. He established a special commission, led by J.J. Cambaceres, which met more than 80 times to discuss the revolutionary legal revisions, and Napoleon presided over nearly half of these sessions. In March 1804, the Napoleonic Code was finally approved.

It codified several branches of law, including commercial and criminal law, and divided civil law into categories of property and family. The Napoleonic Code made the authority of men over their families stronger, deprived women of any individual rights, and reduced the rights of illegitimate children. All male citizens were also granted equal rights under the law and the right to religious dissent, but colonial slavery was reintroduced. The laws were applied to all territories under Napoleon’s control and were influential in several other European countries and in South America.