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Welcome to the Age of Napoleon.

Episode 109, The Rise of the Saucex

The Rise of the Sausage Maker.

Thanks for joining me.

As always, before we get started, I would like to thank our Patreon supporters.

Only a small minority of people who listen to the show contribute financially, but without

your help, I wouldn't be able to keep this thing going.

As you know, Patreon supporters also get access to special bonus material. Lately, we've been talking a lot about the recent Napoleon movie.

If you've been curious to hear my thoughts on the subject,

now would be a perfect time to sign up. Anyway, we left off last time with a discussion of Napoleon's new empire.

Hopefully you now have a better idea of what kinds of people around Europe were receptive to

the new order, ambitious educated commoners, city and town dwellers, those who were skeptical of organized religion, or born into minority religious communities, and those who leaned to the left politically. And of course, you may also have a better idea of the types of people who tended to

oppose the empire, rural people, religious conservatives, in particular the Catholic clergy, and those with ties to the old regime.

By this point in our story, the radical period of the French Revolution was more than a decade in the past, but its legacy was still dividing people along the same fault lines we discussed in our very early episodes.

This was particularly true outside France, and in places where the old order was deeply entrenched.

Despite the discontent stirred up by French military occupation and French style political and social reform, after the Treaty of Tilcet, the whole continent seems to be coming into alignment.

France and Russia were now allies, and Emperor Alexander had agreed to join the continental system.

Prasha was so badly weakened that it no longer really qualified as one of the great powers.

The small states of Germany were all either under French occupation, ruled by pro-French

puppet governments, or locked into unequal treaties that put them under French influence.

In Italy, Sicily stood alone as the only remnant of the old

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