Up to code

It was right about now, in 1804, that Napoleon changed life not only for the French, but for most of the rest of Europe as well.

1812 portrait by Jacques-Louis David - click for the large version with the word 'Code' visible on the papers on the desk.

That was when the new Civil Code he had ordered was officially adopted and thousands of people who had never known the rule of law woke up to find that feudalism had vanished overnight.

Until the Code Civil des Francais, the closest things to law were really just customs, plus all the charters, exemptions and special privileges granted by kings and local lords.  It was all pretty hit or miss and could vary from region to region.

What Napoleon demanded and got was a legal structure based on Roman law as embodied in the Justinian Code of the 6th century. But it differed dramatically in many respects, most notably when it came to religion – Justinian, the Eastern Roman Emperor, ordered that everyone had to be a Christian.  Heresy was out and while being a pagan wasn’t against the law, certain pagan practices were.

Napoleon’s Code, on the other hand, in the spirit of the revolution, called for freedom of religion, an end to privileges granted simply by birth and a civil service that was based on merit.

On the criminal side, it set up a Court of Assizes to try felonies and for the first time ever, it mandated legal representation for the accused – more than 30 years before the English got around to allowing accused felons to have a lawyer.

The Napoleonic Code, photo by DerHexer.

And because we’re talking Napoleon here, the code went into effect in much of the territory he occupied – thus, it became the basis of law in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Belgium and the Netherlands.  It was translated into Arabic and became part of the law in Egypt after the Khedive, and in 1864 it was adopted by Romania, which uses it still.

There have been numerous changes and additions over the years of course, but it remains the core of current French law. With amendments, it runs to about 3,000 pages and is available on CD from Dalloz or you can read it online here.

It’s clear from the portrait shown that the painter David thought that Bonaparte’s chief claim to fame was not military but civil.

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OMG – nearly forgot Bach’s birthday – he was born in 1685. Listen to this while you do the math:

Just show them the money

Along the Mississippi

History is filled with melancholy tales of the financially distressed forced to part with some precious belonging to tide them over til things get better – estates, jewels, race horses, fine cars and of course, land.

But it’s hard to feel sorry for Napoleon just because he was out of pocket after a failed military effort in Santo Domingo and had to gear up to fight England. In any case, he had extorted the item in question from Spain three years earlier – he made them sign a treaty ‘retroceding’ the property.

The item in question was Louisiana and Thomas Jefferson really wanted it.  Without the port of New Orleans, the settlers flooding the midwest would have no outlet for their agricultural products.  He sent James Monroe and Robert Livingston to France and authorized them to spend $10 million to buy New Orleans and west Florida.  But Napoleon wanted to sell the entire Louisiana territory for $15 million and Monroe and Livingston had to do some serious thinking.  No phone, no telegraph, no email.  Time is of the essence. What is an emissary to do…

They took, as the British say, a decision.  They decided to trust their own judgment and they agreed to Bonaparte’s terms.

The Louisiana Purchase was ratified by congress on this date in 1803.

Louisiana purchase superimposed over today's U.S. map

Napoleon, btw, really misread the Santo Domingo situation.  He thought putting down a slave revolt on an obscure island in the Caribbean would be cake.  He sent a general to the island – now called Haiti – kidnapped Toussaint L’Ouverture and put him in prison and figured c’est ca.  But 25,000 French soldiers weren’t enough to suppress a half a million slaves fighting for their freedom.  Before he gave up on Haiti, Napoleon lost 50,000 soldiers and eight generals, some to malaria and yellow fever.

Eventually the French recognized Haitian independence, but forced Haiti to pay indemnity for freedom – about $12 billion to compensate for profits lost in the slave trade.  It’s very hard to believe that everyone at the time thought this was reasonable. Haiti made payments to France until 1947.

To Moscow and back

Herbert Lom as Napoleon.

Napoleon entered Moscow on September 14, 1812, and what a crashing disappointment that was.  He was totally expecting a delegation of city fathers offering the keys of the city and ready to do his bidding. That was how civilized people did war in those days.

But there was nobody home.

He had crossed the Nieman river in June and pursued the Russian army right to the gates of the city all in the name of the liberation of Poland from Russia – he controlled all of western Europe by treaty or occupation and only Russia refused to cooperate.

So he took his Grande Armee of nearly half a million men and crossed the river.  Of all the things that ultimately defeated Napoleon, weather was at the top of the list.  And it was not the icy Russian winter, but the excessive heat that summer.  Men died of heat stroke and so did the horses.  Then the rains came, turning the dirt roads to ditches of mud and creating conditions for dysentery.

In 1812 by Illarion Prianishnikov, Bridgeman Art Gallery

The Russians retreated, not as a clever strategy, but in desperation.  They were outnumbered and lost badly at Borodino so they just kept backing up.

Meanwhile, the Grande Armee was dying.  From disease, starvation, desertion – half the army was gone by the time it got to Moscow.  Then, without officials to make arrangements, Napoleon’s men had to find their own billets and forage for food.  It got colder, fires were lit, and soon the city’s wooden buildings, which was most of them, burned.

He took his army and left.  General Kutuzov at that point did do something strategic – by harrying the French, he forced them to stay on the Smolensk road, the same road they had entered Russia on.

The grass was gone, so the horses starved.  Some were eaten by the soldiers, who were also starving. 200.000 horses died and so the supply wagons and cannon had to be abandoned. By the time Napoleon recrossed the Nieman, he had about 40,000 of his original half million soldiers remaining.

The loss had an enormous psychological effect on the Europeans who lived in terror of the emperor. He was no longer the invincible military genius of the century;  he could be defeated. By 1814, Napoleon was on the way to Elba.

At top is Herbert Lom (better known for his roles in the Pink Panther movies) as Napoleon; he was one of the stellar cast of the 1956 epic, War and Peace.  Of those stars, Mr. Lom is the sole survivor, happily still with us at the age of 93.