Conqueror of Countries

    Recently, my class started reviewing the life of Napoleon Bonaparte. The essential question for this lesson is, "What was Napoleon's impact on the social, economic, and political systems of Europe?" To get started on the life of Napoleon, we watched the video below,


While we watched this video, we took notes on all the places Napoleon had conquered. My class came up with a long list that included places like Italy, Belgium, Holland, Spain and many more. This helped us realizes that Napoleon was a strong leader if he was able to conquer all of these places during his lifetime. We then looked at two views from different people on Napoleon. The first view was from a women named Madame de Stael. She was a member of the mobility and the daughter of King Louis XVI's former financial adviser. Madame de Stael goes on to talk about how Napoleon would persuade men to go into battle with him and when he became head of government, he had no formal plan for a universal monarchy. The main reason Madame de Stael disliked Napoleon is because he made the classes more even which was a negative to those like de Stael in the higher class. The other view is from Marshal Michel Ney. Ney was an officer that served closely to Napoleon for many years. Ney supported Napoleon by calling him things like sovereign, and says the Napoleon has the right to rule over the country of France. Lastly, we viewed the image below and highlighted Napoleon did that made an impact on the whole world and on France. The text highlighted in pink represents pink and the text highlighted in orange represents the rest of the world. 





    From these sources, we can see how Napoleon impacted the areas in the Essential Question. He impacted the political system in a positive way by his ideas of meritocracy which rewarded people based on their talents and hard work, not because of their social rank. Napoleon impacted the social system by giving more people the rights to property and access to education. Lastly, he impacted the economic system in a positive way by removing trade barriers and stimulating industry. He also was able to steal money from Italy, and created the Bank of France which involved having a budget system and massive public work systems. At first look at Napoleon Bonaparte, you might think more along the line of Madame de Stael, and think that he is a greedy tyrant that will trick and force people into war with him. But, when you see how a lot of his actions have greatly impacted France in a positive way. In the words of the former Duke of Wellington, (Napoleon's greatest nemesis), "Napoleon was the greatest general that ever lived".