15.1: After the Revolution
- Page ID
- 172972
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The French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars profoundly shook Europe. The European great powers saw the French Revolution as both threatening and, increasingly as it progressed, morally repulsive, but at least it had largely stayed confined to France. From the perspective of elites, Napoleon's conquests were even worse because everywhere the French armies went, the traditional order of society was overturned. France was the greatest economic beneficiary. But, Napoleon's Italian, German, and Polish subjects also had their first taste of a society in which one's status was not defined by birth. The kings and nobles of Europe witnessed a social order that had lasted for roughly 1,000 years disintegrate in the course of a generation.
After Napoleon's defeat, there had to be a reckoning. Only the most stubborn monarch or noble thought it possible to completely undo the Revolution and its effects. Yet, there was a shared desire among the traditional elites to re-establish stability and order based on the political system that had worked in the past. Some concessions to a generation of people who had lived with equality under the law would need to be made. At the same time, the elite wanted to reinforce traditional political structures while only granting limited compromises.