Cultural Heritage II

French Revolution and Napoleon

 

Some Reasons for the Revolution (Another “Perfect Storm,” An open question for Discussion):

 

            Religious/Philosophical:

 

            Economic/Sociological:

 

            Political:

 

Geographic:

 

            Arts and Literature: 

 

            Anything else?

 

 

 

Old Regime

 

            King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, Court of Versailles (Rococo Style vs. Classical Simplicity as moral weathervanes)

 

 

            Estates General (First, Second, Third—the Bourgeoisie); Class War and Culture.

 

           

            The Aristocrats vs. the Sans Culottes:

 

 

New Regime (after Revolution in 1789)

 

            National Assembly (June)

                       

            Storming of the Bastille (July 14, 1789)

 

            The Great Fear (August)

 

            Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (August)

 

 

Radicalization of Revolution (“Temples of Reason,” Must the king die?  Why?)

 

 

Jacobins and Maximilien Robespierre (1758-94)

 

 

Reign of Terror (inevitable after revolutions?), at least 25,000 executed, humanely (?!),

 

 

The Guillotine: 

 

 

Comparisons between France, Stalinist Russia, Cambodia, China, Germany, who else?

 

 

            Dehumanization

 

 

            Ideological Murder

 

 

            Technologization of Death

 

 

           

Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1791), and the Conservative view of Revolution

 

            Summary of “Burkean Conservatism”:

 

 

 

 

Discussion: The outcome of the French Revolution makes Burkean conservatism look right.  But what objections are there to the Burkean view?  If you consider yourself a “conservative,” do you agree with Burke?  If you consider yourself a “liberal,” do you disagree? Where did the French Revolution go wrong?  What could have been done?

 

 

 

Role of Military Technology/Tactics/Generals in History.  Whatever happened to military history? 

 

 

 

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821): Revolutionary or Reactionary?

 

 

 

 

Napoleon as Romantic Hero

 

 

Painter, Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825)

 

 

 

Cultural Importance of Egyptian Campaign, the Rosetta Stone

 

 

 

 

The Directory (Overthrown by Napoleon, age 30, 1799, democracy ends)

 

 

 

 

Enlightened Despot, Napoleon’s Reforms

 

           

The Napoleonic Code:

 

 

Rebuilding of Paris:

 

 

Educational System:

 

 

On Religion:

 

 

 

 

Tyrant:

 

 

 

Relationship between Military Power/Glory and Political Power:

 

 

 

Napoleon’s Russian Campaign

 

 

Elba, 100-Days Rule, Waterloo (Duke of Wellington), St. Helena

 

 

 

 

Discussion: Are there any “lessons” from the French Revolution and the Napoleon’s rule that are useful in the present?   (e.g., the Iraq war, the trail of Saddam Hussein, the preservation of American civil liberties in wartime.