[BLANK_AUDIO]. Hi, welcome back. Make yourself comfortable. Let's now swing back to Europe. The cockpit of the Napoleonic Wars. First, I'd like to focus on what's happening in France as Napoleon is transforming the French Republic into something more glorious, more exalted: a revolutionary Empire. Contrast this painting by the painter Jacques-Louis David, who regarded Napoleon Bonaparte as his hero and great subject. This is Napoleon as First Consul, leading the armies of France to victory against the Austrians as he marches the French army through the Alps to victory. This is General Bonaparte, First Consul, clearly an extraordinarily heroic figure. One of the things to notice, of course, in the bottom left hand corner of the painting, Bonaparte and that word there is Hannibal. He's emulating the achievement of the great Carthaginian General Hannibal and his wars against the ancient Roman Republic. in leading his army through the alpine passes to victory. By the way, ultimately, Hannibal lost his wars, so did Napoleon. In 1804, Napoleon decides to scrap the French Republic and create a new French Empire, in which he will be no longer General Bonaparte, or First Consul Bonaparte, but will be Emperor Napoleon I. Now David is painting a great royal ceremony of the foundation of the new dynasty. This painting, which Napoleon was thrilled by, hangs today in the Louvre in Paris. Note how the Spartan simplicity of the sans-culottes of the French Revolution has now been replaced by something very different. He's trying to recover the grandeur of the old regime but with a very different set of values at its heart. Let's zoom in a little bit on this painting and just notice a couple of interesting details. Note, over here at the right: that's the pope, who appears to be conferring his blessing on the proceedings, surrounded by bishops. Reconciliation with the Catholic Church. Remember that was the great issue that had torn France apart in the early days of the Revolution. Napoleon, having crowned himself, now holds the crown that he will also bestow upon his empress, Josephine. The self-made emperor reconciled with the Church. Think of this still as a revolutionary empire. Napoleon is symbolizing the emperor as a lawgiver, famous for creating the Napoleonic Code. Think too of the emperor and the new empire as a liberating force, freeing oppressed peoples: for example, the oppressed peoples of Poland, which had been divided up between the Prussian and Russian monarchs. And, Napoleon is creating a new aristocracy, but it's a different kind of aristocracy. It's not one based purely on birth. Instead, the people of France are told that any of you can be elevated to the nobility because the elevation to nobility in this aristocracy is based on merit. It's based on merit, especially as defined by service. Service to the Empire and to the Emperor. And also, wealth doesn't hurt. People of property are respected. The revolutionary empire tries to establish domination of the entire European continent. This leads, then, to a prolonged series of wars. The course of these wars can be pretty swiftly charted. Last time, I talked about the War of the Second Coalition. Napoleon had marched through the Alps. He had defeated the Austrian armies, here Marengo. Then he tries to build his empire in the New World. That fails; wars resume in Europe. These become known as the Wars of the Third Coalition. Those Wars of the Third Coalition are effectively decided at the end of 1805: here at the Battle of Austerlitz, which decisively defeated the armies of Austria and Russia, while meanwhile, Napoleon has lost a critical victory at sea in which the British navy defeats his navy and the Spanish navy at the famous Battle of Trafalgar. So he's lost at sea, but he's won on land, by the end of 1805. The wars continue. He conquers the kingdom of Prussia in 1806. The famous battle in that war is fought here. In 1807, he continues his battles against the Russians, fighting on alone. The decisive engagement that ends that war is here. Then he signs a peace treaty with the Russian Emperor; he seems to now have the continent of Europe pretty firmly in his grip. He's recreated a Polish state at the expense of both Prussia and Russia. He tries to concentrate the continent in resisting the British, closing it off to British trade. As part of that effort, he leads an invasion of Spain, here. And there are prolonged battles in Spain that go on from 1808, onward to his fall in 1814. While still embroiled in Spain, he gathers a huge army to finally settle accounts with the Russian Empire. This leads to the Great Invasion of Russia in 1812, and in 1812 that's decisively defeated. The army is destroyed, Napoleon retreats, and basically he's battled backwards, losing a huge battle here in 1813 at Leipzig and is finally forced to abdicate in Paris in 1814. Napoleon is exiled to the little island of Elba, he escapes, he comes back, he musters his army again, and now is defeated finally, hugely, and at last, at the famous Battle of Waterloo right there. So that's the Napoleonic Wars in five minutes, final defeat of the French Empire. What I want to focus on is less the details of those particular campaigns. [It] is the imagery and legacy of this prolonged period of warfare. On the one hand, there's a romantic legacy, a romantic image, nothing captures it better than this painting by Ernest Meissonier: this painting of the Battle of Friedland. This is the charge of the cuirassiers, the French cavalry going forward to defeat the Russians. This is a wonderful image I'm showing courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Notice some of the details here, the gallantry of the cavalry before their emperor. No bloodshed visible in this painting. The painting is done in the late 1860s, when a new French Empire is trying to remember and recall the glory of the First Empire. A very different set of images from these wars was captured by the Spanish painter, Francisco de Goya. This is an image of Spanish patriots revolting against French rule in Madrid, who are being paraded up for execution by French soldiers. Off to the right side are the faceless French soldiers, leveling their rifles at the men whom they are about to kill. That's another side of the Napoleonic Wars. Goya, in fact, did a whole series of sketches, this is an example of one of those. He's trying to capture the sense of a people in arms against their oppressors. Well, this is now a version of total war. There was a settlement to the total war. A quick glance at the map tells you who some of the winners are in this. France restored more to historic borders. Above all, the creation of a greatly enlarged Prussian state. See all those areas in green? Also notice the enlarged domain of an Austrian Empire that is superseding the more disorderly Habsburg domains. The nascent Polish state is destroyed again, most of it going to the Russian Empire, some of it going back to the Kingdom of Prussia. The victorious states, led perhaps above all by the Russian tsar, Tsar Alexander I, are gripped by a sense that they are a Holy Alliance: restoring Christian virtue, ending revolutionary disorder, bringing peace and stability back to Europe. What does this Holy Alliance stand for? Well, for one thing, they're very much against republics, republics of all kinds. Indeed, this is a Holy Alliance against revolutionary sentiment of all kinds. Perhaps nothing better captures the climate of this period than is seen in the novel written by Stendhal, The Charterhouse of Parma. In this novel, Stendhal's hero, a man named Fabrizio, wants to attain a position of great influence, but he finds that he is suspected of being a liberal. Stendhal points out what Fabrizio has to do in order to demonstrate to everyone that he's no liberal. In fact, to clear himself, he had to be sure: to go to Mass every day, to choose as his confessor some man devoted to the monarchy. Secondly, he was not to consort with any man who had the reputation of being clever. And, when occasion offered, he was to speak of rebellion with horror. He was never to be seen in a cafe. He was to express dislike of reading in general. And he was never to peruse any works printed later than 1720, the only possible exception being Sir Walter Scott's novels. And lastly, he must not fail to pay open court to some pretty woman in the district, which would prove that he had none of the gloomy and discontented spirit of the conspirator. For the rest, he must be simple. No wit, no brilliancy, no swift repartee. That's the atmosphere of the Holy Alliance, but the ideals themselves had captured the imagination of people all over Europe, many of whom like Russian soldiers who had encountered French ideals while serving in Germany or in the occupation army in France. They would come back to Russia and lead an effort to overthrow the tsar at the end of 1825. The tsar himself really was a symbol of the Holy Alliance, including its fervent devotion to Christian principles. This map helps to capture a little bit the spread of unrest around Europe during the 1820s. The attempted coup to overthrow the tsar in the end of 1825. Especially earlier in the 1820s, the Spanish monarchy had given way to liberal principles in an effort to try to hold the allegiance of its people as it reclaimed rule over the country; there was a series of revolts in the early 1820s. The Holy Alliance led by France, now under a Bourbon monarchy again, overran Spain in the most notable foreign intervention of this period in order to restore proper monarchy and monarchic principles. But there were rebellions in favor of revolutionary sentiment all over the Italian peninsula from the restless Poles and a breakaway of the southern half of the new United Netherlands to create what will become a state called Belgium. Even England itself was not immune, with significant riots occurring in 1818 and in Manchester, here, in 1819. The revolution had been defeated, but it had not been defeated. So a great characteristic of European life in the 1830s and 1840s is going to be this growing tension between the traditional forms of rule and the rising appeal of these liberal beliefs. But for now, I want to swing back to the larger canvas of world history and look at what these revolutionary wars meant for Latin America. See you then.
