Napoleon and the End of the Revolution (1795–1815)

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The Directory (1795–1799) was a five-man executive created by the Constitution of Year III. It governed France after the Thermidorean reaction until Napoleon's coup of 18 Brumaire ended it.

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Its constitution made decisive action impossible. When elections produced royalist or Jacobin majorities the directors disliked, they used troops to annul results — making the army the real power behind the government.

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Napoleon used soldiers to disperse the legislature at Saint-Cloud and overthrow the Directory. He became First Consul — the effective ruler of France — within days.

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A single civil law code for all of France: equality before the law, freedom of religion, protection of property rights. It also curtailed women's legal rights. It still influences law in Belgium, Louisiana, and Quebec.

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It restored Catholic worship and gave the Church papal recognition of Napoleon's regime, without returning church lands sold during the Revolution. It ended a decade of religious civil conflict in France.

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Completer: Napoleonic Code preserved legal equality, abolished feudalism, spread revolutionary law across Europe. Betrayer: crowned himself Emperor (1804), censored press, used secret police, gave thrones to family — all counter to popular sovereignty.

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Napoleon's 1806 trade blockade forbidding Europe from trading with Britain. It hurt France and allies by cutting off goods, pushed Spain and Portugal to resist, triggering the Peninsular War — Napoleon's 'Spanish ulcer' — which tied down 300,000 French troops.

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Russia refused to fight pitched battles, drew Napoleon 600 miles into the country, burned Moscow before he arrived, and cut off supplies. Of ~600,000 men who entered Russia, ~400,000 were lost — shattered the myth of Napoleonic invincibility.

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The 'Battle of Nations' — the largest battle in history before 1914 (~500,000 soldiers). Austria, Prussia, Russia, and Sweden defeated Napoleon, ending French control of Germany and leading directly to Napoleon's first abdication in April 1814.

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March–June 1815. Napoleon escaped from Elba, landed in France and marched to Paris. Louis XVIII fled. Napoleon ruled for 100 days before his final defeat at Waterloo (June 18, 1815) led to his exile to St Helena.

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1799 — 18 Brumaire coup; 1802 — Life Consul; 1804 — Emperor crowned; 1805 — Austerlitz (peak); 1812 — Russian disaster; 1813 — Leipzig; 1814 — first abdication, Elba; 1815 — Hundred Days, Waterloo, St Helena.

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The Revolution's ideas spread nationalism — pride in one's own people and state — across Europe. Napoleon's conquests then provoked that nationalism against France: Spain's guerrilla war, German nationalism after Jena, Russian patriotism in 1812 all drew on feelings Napoleon's own revolution had helped create.