You're listening to an airwave media podcast.

Welcome to the Age of Napoleon.

Episode 67, resistance is pointless.

Thanks for joining me.

Before we get started, I'll remind you once again that you can listen to this and all future episodes,

ad free, by pledging at least $2 a month on Patreon.com.

Anyway, last episode we began our discussion of Napoleon's legal reforms.

Bonaparte began putting his mark on France almost as soon as he took power in 1799.

But this process kicked into high gear in 1802, after the Treaty of Amiens ended the war with Britain. France was finally at peace, and Napoleon could

devote his full energies and the resources of his government to an ambitious domestic

agenda. This project was fundamentally about good government,

creating stability, improving the administration of the country, and creating durable effective national institutions, but also about

centralizing power in Napoleon's hands. Bonaparte would argue that you couldn't

have the former without the latter, but obviously his detractors disagreed.

Almost as soon as he took power, Napoleon's opponents were already calling him a dictator and a tyrant, not entirely

unfairly given his means of assent. Any semblance of revolutionary democracy had been dead for quite some time.

But in 1802, France took another big step away from republicanism,

by declaring Napoleon Bonaparte first console for life.

By his own admission, Napoleon was now something resembling a monarch.

He had finally surpassed the deeds of his childhood idol, Pasquale Paoloi, the enlightened

dictator of Corsica, who his father, Carlobonaparte, had served under before Napoleon's birth.

Just like Pauly, Napoleon was ruling by decree, founding new institutions, and remaking the country

...