Modern (1800 CE - 1950 CE)
In Search of Glory: Bonaparte’s Bulletins
In this passage, Bonaparte’s secretary describes the importance and effect of Bonaparte’s propaganda in the form of the military bulletin from an army in the field. Glory and military virtue were emphasized; generals vied to be included.
The Battle of Waterloo as Seen by an Ordinary British Cavalryman
At the Battle of Waterloo, Dickson (1789–1880) was a corporal in a Scottish cavalry troop. He had enlisted in 1807. His reminiscences of the battle were written down by relatives years later.
Germaine de Staël, A French Writer Exiled by Napoleon
De Staël was the daughter of Jacques Necker, Louis XVI’s Swiss Protestant finance minister. She published novels, literary tracts, and memoirs and became one of the best-known writers of the early nineteenth century. Napoleon exiled her in 1803.
A Popular English Broadside (1821)
Some in the popular classes saw in Napoleon an opponent of monarchs.
This source is a part of the The Napoleonic Experience teaching module.
A Poem by Victor Hugo (1830)
In his poem “To the Column,” the great French poet Victor Hugo celebrates the memory of Napoleon.
This source is a part of the The Napoleonic Experience teaching module.
Historical, Political, and Moral Essay on Revolutions, Ancient and Modern
The French novelist and essayist François–René Chateaubriand (1768–1848) was a royalist who for a time admired Napoleon. Like Burke, he denounced the revolutionary reliance on reason and advocated a return to Christian principles.
The Philosophy of History
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) was a famous philosophy professor in Berlin whose lectures attracted many students, even though the lectures were extraordinarily abstract.
Mazzini on Revolutionary Nationalism
The journalist and politician Guiseppi Mazzini (1805–72) was the apostle of nationalism during the first half of the nineteenth century.
Charles Fourier on the Revolution
Charles Fourier (1772–1837) was a salesman for a cloth merchant in Lyons who conceived of a different form of social organization, called a "phalanx," that was part garden city and part agricultural commune.
John Stuart Mill on the French Revolution
John Stuart Mill (1806–73), an English civil servant and philosopher, was a firm believer in the liberal, democratic, and anti–absolutist elements of the legacy of the Revolution and hoped to extend these concepts as widely as possible.