9 D. Napoleon and his reforms

Rise: the artillery officer of the Revolution — Italy (1796–97), Egypt, the consulate (1799 — First Consul), Emperor (1804 — crowning himself, taking the crown from the Pope's hands). Fall: Trafalgar (1805) at sea; Austerlitz (1805) on land; the Continental System strangling Britain (and Europe); the Russian winter (1812 — the 600,000 destroyed); Leipzig (1813); Elba; the Hundred Days; Waterloo (1815); St Helena — and the reforms outliving the empire. Thereforms (the syllabus's demand — five to know):1. The Code Napoléon (Code Civil, 1804) — the compact legacy of Roman law, custom, and revolutionary equality: all citizens equal before the civil law; property and contract secured (the bourgeoisie's charter); the family firmly patriarchal (the wife's legal minority — the Revolution's gender limits); five codes in all (civil, procedure, commerce, penal, criminal procedure); the most influential legal export in history — copied across Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Asia — the codification wave that reached the Himalaya: Janga Bahadur's Europe tour (1850–51) and the Muluki Ain (1854 — your Nepali History Unit 5: the codification idea, if not the text, Napoleonic).2. The Concordat (1801) — church-state peace: the state pays and appoints (in practice), religion depoliticised.3. Administration: the prefects (the departments' uniform administration — centralisation perfected), the Council of State (administrative justice's birth — the droit administratif's mother court).4.…