Western Civilization of the French Revolution Essay

Western Civilization of the French Revolution - Essay Example It essentially detailed his life, including capture, slavery, brutality, and eventual literacy. It was created in the United Kingdom. It is useful to historians because it provides a first-hand account of slavery, something that is relatively hard to come by, as so few were literate. The French Revolution was one of the most turbulent times in western history – it involved mass uprisings, huge reversals in power and wealth, and had one of the strangest endings: the rise of Napoleon. The development of one of the world’s most famous late emperors is a strange ending to a democratic revolution. Some argue that Napoleon largely upheld revolutionary values during his reign – and indeed there are some ways this was true, such as installing a civil code of laws to replace the whims of rulers, aristocrats and so forth and would eventually be a major influence in many countries around the world. However, this and similar achievements cannot overshadow the fact that the fundamentals of the revolution were populist, and an emperorship is anything but. If the spirit of the revolution was enshrined in the phrase â€Å"Libertà ©, Égalità ©, Fraternità ©,† then it is clear Napoleon did not live up to those standards. As mentioned previously, it is tempting to argue that Napoleon upheld many aspects of the revolution. Certainly his reign was nothing like as terrible to the French populace as that of the monarchs that proceeded the revolution: the economy was largely stabilized, wealth was less concentrated in the hands of the wealthy than previously and so forth. His Civil Code embodied many of the features present in the declaration of the rights of man,1 especially in imagining the rule of law as the prime mechanism of power, replacing the absolute control held by previous monarchs. While these achievements should be