CCALS: Napoleon and the Revolution

It was a real privilege to welcome back Professor Doyle, who gave another fascinating lecture to our Sixth Form historians and visiting students from Godalming College.

He focused on areas Napoleon adopted as revolutionary, such as national sovereignty, careers open to talents, equality before the law, using the tricolour flag. He also hi-lighted where Napoleon refused to comply with the ideals of the French Revolution, such as the separation of powers and the idea of an elective government. His overarching argument was that life under Napoleon was far better that what had gone before, in that he repudiated the terror and de-Christianisation, using his power base in France to bring revolutionary changes to much of the rest of the European world. He ended with the fact that the so-called period of restoration restored practically nothing of the world before 1789 and this was Napoleon’s revolutionary achievement.