American Minute with Bill Federer
Napoleon Bonaparte's Impact on the World
|
|
Napoleon
was born August 15, 1769.
After his education, he was commissioned in the
French military
in 1785, and quickly advanced.
|
|
Napoleon's
expertise in the use of mobile artillery and the military tactics of "envelopment" and "divide and conquer" resulted in him becoming one of the greatest military commanders of all time.
|
|
Beginning in 1792,
France
experienced a
Reign of Terror.
King Louis XVI
and
Queen Marie Antoinette
were were beheaded in 1793.
|
|
When the
French Revolution
began,
Napoleon
was an artillery officer.
In April of 1795,
Napoleon
was ordered to help smash a
counter-revolution of Catholic royalists
in
War in the Vendée.
Napoleon
claimed to be in poor health and so did not participate in the butchery of an estimated 300,000.
|
|
France
had an alliance with the
Muslim Turkish Ottoman Empire,
begun in 1536 between
King Francis I
and
Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent.
The treaty was considered a blasphemous scandal by the rest of Christian Europe, nevertheless, it continued for most of two and a half centuries.
|
|
In early fall of 1795,
Napoleon
was ordered to go to the
Ottoman capital in Constantinople,
to upgrade the military with his artillery expertise.
Napoleon refused.
One wonders how different history would have been had
Napoleon's artillery expertise
been in the service of the
Turkish
Sultan.
|
|
In
Paris,
a crowd of
royalist counter-revolutionaries
gathered in the streets. On October 5, 1795,
Napoleon
ordered cannons to be fired at them.
1,400 royalists died and the rest fled.
Napoleon reportedly commented that he had cleared the streets with "a whiff of grapeshot."
|
|
The new
French government,
called the
Directory,
quickly promoted
Napoleon.
|
|
Meanwhile, at the same time as the
French Revolution,
a slave revolt erupted on the
French island
of
Haiti (Saint-Domingue).
|
|
Haiti
was considered
the richest colony in the world,
being one of the main suppliers of sugar globally.
|
|
The loss of the colony
Haiti
created a need for
France
to replace it with another
tropical colony
to compete with
Britain's India.
|
|
This led to General
Napoleon Bonaparte
invading
Egypt
on July 1, 1798.
|
|
Napoleon
quickly defeated the
Egyptian Mamluk slave cavalry
in just a few weeks.
A legend circulated that
Napoleon's
soldiers used the
Great Sphinx
for artillery practice, blowing off its nose, but sketches from 1737 showed that the nose had already been missing.
One account is that a fundamentalist Muslim named Muhammad Sa'im al-Dahr considered the Sphinx a pagan idol and defaced it in 1378 AD.
|
|
Napoleon
attempted to introduce
French
concepts of
liberté, égalité, fraternité
(liberty, equality, democracy) but was unsuccessful as there were no words in the Arabic language to convey such concepts.
The people there had been accustomed to rule by the sword for centuries.
|
|
On August 1-3, 1798,
Britain's Admiral Horatio Nelson
defeated
Napoleon's navy
at the
Battle of the Nile,
leaving
Napoleon
trapped in
Egypt.
This put him in the position of having to appease the Muslim population.
|
|
While in
Egypt,
Napoleon
uncovered Pyramid treasures.
In 1799,
Napoleon's French archeologists
discovered the
Rosetta Stone,
a decree from 196 BC by Egyptian King Ptolemy V, carved in stone in
Egyptian hieroglyphic script, Demotic script,
and
Ancient Greek.
|
|
The
Rosetta Stone
proved to be
the key
to
deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs,
and thereby
unlocking
for scholars the
thousands of years of ancient history of Egypt's Pharaohs.
|
|
Napoleon,
without the aid of his navy, marched his army into Palestine, where he almost captured Acre in the Holy Land.
The French newspaper,
Le Moniteur Universel,
published in "year seven" of the French Republic, May 22, 1799:
"Bonaparte
has published a proclamation in which he invites all the
Jews
of
Asia
and
Africa
to gather under his flag in order to re-establish the ancient
Jerusalem.
He has already given arms to a great number, and their battalions threaten
Aleppo."
|
|
Napoleon
abandoned
Egypt
and
Palestine
and
returned to France,
where he arranged a coup to become
First Consul of the Republic,
then
Emperor.
|
|
He proceeded to conquer across Europe, subduing the countries of:
- Italy,
- Austria,
- Poland,
- German States,
- Holland,
- Denmark and
- Norway.
The map of European borders was redrawn.
From 1807 to 1812,
Napoleon
ruled over
the largest European empire since Roman times.
|
|
Napoleon
spread the French
"metric system"
where all measurements were divisible by ten, as the number ten was considered
the number of man,
with ten fingers and ten toes.
He instituted a civil-legal system called the
Napoleonic Code,
which emancipated
Catholics in Protestant countries
and
Protestants in Catholic countries.
|
|
Napoleon
also emancipated
Jews.
|
|
Prior to this, throughout the centuries of Medieval Europe,
Jews
were restricted to live only in their neighborhoods, called
ghettos.
Under Napoleon,
Jews
had the opportunity to live where they liked.
Though this was a great new freedom, it also was the beginning of a trend which, for some, diminished the strong, rabbi led, synagogue-centered, Jewish community.
|
|
In 1816,
Napoleon
commented to physician Barry O'Meara regarding
emancipating the Jews:
"I wanted to make them ... like other men ... by putting them upon an equality, with Catholics, Protestants, and others ... I had restored them to all their privileges ... They were not permitted to practice usury ... but to treat us as if we were of the tribe of Judah.
Besides, I should have drawn great wealth to France as the Jews are very numerous, and would have flocked to a country where they enjoyed such superior privities.
Moreover, I wanted to establish an universal liberty of conscience."
|
|
The
Napoleonic Code
replaced Europe's collection of
feudal
and
royal laws,
as these often had contradicting
customs, privileges
and
exemptions.
The
Napoleonic Code
largely drew from Byzantine Roman Emperor Justinian's 6th century Roman law -
Corpus Juris Civilis & Institutes.
|
|
It had a profound influence on the post-monarchy nations of Europe and various colonies around the world, such as
Louisiana,
as well as emerging countries, including the
Middle East.
|
|
The
Napoleonic Code i
s "statutory law," which is a
top-down
system of government decisions, decrees and statues.
These are administratively enforced in a
rigid and inflexible way,
with the underlying intent being to
maintain order
in society, with citizens obeying the will of those in power.
|
|
This is contrasted with
English Common Law traditions,
where law is more
bottom-up,
an expression of the will of the people, developed over time, with judges taking into consideration precedents and conditions as they seek to maintain the
underlying principle of protecting an individual's property and God-given rights.
|
|
The
Napoleonic Code
is completely secular. There is no concept of an individual being endowed by their
Creator
with
inalienable rights.
|
|
In the
Napoleonic Code,
when a person was accused of a crime, he was
de facto presumed to be guilty
until proven innocent, whereas in
English Common Law,
courts
assume
the accused person is
innocent until proven guilty.
Sir William Blackstone
wrote in his
Commentaries on the Laws of England:
"It is better that ten guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer."
|
|
In 1803,
Napoleon
was badly needing money for his army. He also feared Haiti's costly slave rebellion would spread to the
French Louisiana Territory.
Napoleon
decided to sell nearly a million square miles to the United States, during the administration of President Jefferson, for around $15 million dollars. This is known as the
Louisiana Purchase.
|
|
Napoleon
combined the
French
and
Spanish
navies and, in 1805, attempted to invade England.
He was defeated at the
Battle of Trafalgar
by
British Admiral Horatio Nelson.
|
|
In 1807,
Napoleon
hired
Muslim Mamluk cavalry
to invade and subdue
Spain.
This led to a long, expensive, and draining
Pennisular War.
|
|
Napoleon,
who had been excommunicated by the Pope, put his brother
Joseph Bonaparte
on the throne of
Spain
in 1808.
|
|
This resulted in the Catholic leaders in
New Spain,
most notably
Simon Bolivar,
to declare independence.
|
|
Mexico
independence from Spain began in 1810, as did
Gran Columbia,
which then divided up into the Central and South American countries of:
- Venezuela,
- Colombia (which included Panama),
- Ecuador,
- Peru,
- Bolivia,
- western Guyana,
- northwest Brazil.
|
|
Napoleon
invaded
Russia
in June of 1812 with 400,000 men.
Six months later, after the
Battle of Berezina,
he retreated back to Europe with only 40,000.
|
|
The loss of French troops and his
defeat at Leipzig
led to
Napoleon's abdication
and exile on the
Island of Elba
in 1813.
|
|
After a year, he escaped and again took control of
France
for another 100 days, but lost the
Battle of Waterloo,
June 18, 1815.
|
|
Nathan Rothschild
helped fund the
Duke of Wellington's
British armies against
Napoleon
in Spain and France.
A legend persists that
Nathan Rothschild
obtained early information of the
British victory
over
Napoleon
at the
Battle of Waterloo,
June 18, 1815.
|
|
He began to sell his shares on the
London Stock Exchange,
leading investors to suspect he had inside information that the
British
lost
the battle, resulting in
panic-selling off of stocks.
|
|
The legend continued that
Rothschild
bought up devalued shares at low prices, and when news arrived the next day that the
British had actually won
the
Battle of Waterloo,
the stock market enthusiastically exploded, resulting in
Rothschild
making a million pounds sterling in one day.
|
|
During the 17 years of
Napoleonic Wars,
an estimated
6 million Europeans died.
|
|
In October 1815,
Napoleon
was banished to the
South Atlantic Island of Saint Helena.
|
|
Before his death in 1821, at the age of 51, he spent time reflecting on his life.
Napoleon
dictated his "Mémoires" to General de Montholon, Baron Gourgaud and General Bertrand.
|
|
His conversations were recorded by Emmanuel de Las Cases in
Memorial de Sainte Hélène
(published 1823).
|
|
Napoleon
had complained to Montholon of not having a chaplain, resulting in Pope Pius VII petitioning England to allow Abbé Vignali to be sent.
|
|
Napoleon
read out loud the Old Testament, the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles.
|
|
Affirming his belief in God,
Napoleon
told Montholon:
"I know men; and I tell you that Jesus Christ is not a man ...
Superficial minds see a resemblance between Christ and the founders of empires, and the gods of other religions. That resemblance does not exist.
There is between Christianity and whatever other religions the distance of infinity ...
His religion is a revelation from an intelligence which certainly is not that of man ..."
|
|
Napoleon
continued telling Montholon:
"The religion of Christ is a mystery which subsists by its own force, and proceeds from a mind which is not a human mind.
We find in it a marked individuality, which originated a train of words and actions unknown before ..."
|
|
He added:
"Jesus is not a philosopher, for His proofs are miracles, and from the first His disciples adored Him.
Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and myself founded empires; but upon what foundation did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force!
But Jesus Christ founded His upon love; and at this hour millions of men would die for Him."
|
|
Napoleon
once told a Milan parish priest in 1797:
"Society without religion is like a ship without a compass."
|
|
Napoleon
had stated:
"The Bible is no mere book, but a Living Creature, with a power that conquers all that oppose it."
|
|
Schedule Bill Federer for informative interviews & captivating PowerPoint presentations: 314-502-8924
wjfederer@gmail.com
American Minute is a registered trademark of William J. Federer. Permission is granted to forward, reprint, or duplicate, with acknowledgment.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|