Chapter 21 Chapter 1 Development Chapter 4 War 3

3 During the decades of the war, Europe's political frontiers were redrawn several times.It is only necessary to consider here those variations which, for one reason or another, lasted longer than Napoleon's defeat. The most important of these changes was the general rationalization of the political map of Europe, especially Germany and Italy.In terms of political geography, the French Revolution marked the end of the European Middle Ages.After several centuries of evolution, a typical modern country is governed by a single supreme authority according to a single basic administrative and legal system, and the territory is a complete area that is connected and has clear boundaries. (Since the French Revolution, it has also been assumed that the state should represent a single "nation" or language group, but at this stage, sovereign territorial states do not yet include this meaning.) Although the typical European feudal state sometimes looks like In this way, as in medieval England, but these necessary conditions were not set at that time.They mostly imitate the "manor".For example, "Duke of Bedford's estate" does not mean that it must be in a single section, nor does it mean that all of them must be directly managed by their owners, or hold land under the same tenancy relationship, or lease under the same conditions. Tenants did not necessarily exclude subletting, that is to say, the feudal states of Western Europe did not exclude complex situations that today seem utterly intolerable.By 1789, however, most nations felt these complications to be a liability.Some foreign territories lie deep in the heart of another country, as in the papal city of Avignon in France.Territories within a state find themselves also for some reason historically dependent on another lord who now happens to be part of another state, and thus, in modern terms, they are under dual sovereignty. (The only European survivor of such a state is the Republic of Andorra, which is under the dual sovereignty of the Bishop of Urgel in Spain and the President of the French Republic.) "Borders" in the form of tariff barriers exist between provinces of the same country.The Holy Roman Emperor had his own duchies accumulated over the centuries, but they were never fully coherent or unified. (The head of the House of Habsburg, until 1804, did not even have a single title that covered his entire dominion [he was just Duke of Austria, King of Hungary, King of Bohemia, Count of Tyrol, etc.] etc.).) Moreover, he could exercise imperial power over a wide variety of territories, from independent great states such as Prussia, through duchies large and small, to independent city republics, and the "Knights of the Liberal Empire," the latter's Territories were often no more than a few acres, and just happened to have no lord on them.Each of these duchies themselves, if large enough, generally exhibited the same lack of territorial unity and uniform administration, based on the appropriation, division, and reunification of family estates piece by piece.The modern concept of government, which combines economic, administrative, ideological, and strength considerations, had not been widely adopted at that time, so no matter how small the territorial population was, it could form a government unit, as long as its strength allowed.Therefore, especially in Germany and Italy, small states and mini-states still exist in large numbers.

The revolution, and the wars that followed, largely removed these remnants, partly because of revolutionary zeal for In the face of the greed of big neighbors.Early states such as the Holy Roman Empire, most city-states and city empires disappeared.The Holy Roman Empire fell in 1806, the ancient republics of Genoa and Venice in 1799, and by the end of the war the Free Cities of Germany had been reduced to four.Other distinctive medieval survivors—independent ecclesiastical states—traveled the same path: the principalities of Cologne, Mainz, Trier, Salzburg, ruled by the Episcopal Conference etc., all perished; only the Papal States in central Italy survived until 1870.The French attempted, through annexations, peace treaties and several conferences, to systematically reorganize the political map of Germany (1797-1798, 1803) and make 234 territories of the Holy Roman Empire (not counting the territories) to 40 blocks; in Italy, the change is less drastic, where generations of jungle warfare have simplified its political structure, and mini-states exist only in northern and central Italy.Since such changes mostly benefited a few well-established monarchies, Napoleon's defeat only made them last longer.Austria no longer considered restoring the Republic of Venice, as it had originally acquired its territory through the French Revolution, and it wanted to give up Salzburg (acquired in 1803) only because it respected the Catholic Church.

Outside of Europe, wartime territorial changes were of course mainly due to Britain's annexation of a large number of other countries' colonies and the results of the colonial liberation movement.Such liberation movements were either inspired by the French Revolution (as in Santo Domingo) or made possible by a temporary separation from the mother country (as in Spain and Portuguese America).British command of the seas ensured the irreversibility of such changes, regardless of whether they were detrimental to French or (more often) anti-French interests, the result would be the same.

Equally important as territorial changes were the institutional changes resulting directly or indirectly from French conquest.At the height of its power (1810), France directly ruled as part of its territories Germany on the left bank of the Rhine, Belgium, the Netherlands, North Germany as far east as Lubeck, Savoy, Pied Riedmont, Liguria, Italy west of the Apennines to the border of Naples, and the Illyrian provinces from Carinthia to including Dalmatia.Land belonging to the House of France or satellite kingdoms and duchies, including Spain, the rest of Italy, the rest of Rhine-Westphalia, and most of Poland.The above-mentioned regions (except perhaps the Grand Duchy of Warsaw) automatically implemented the institutions of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Empire, or became star models of local administration.Feudalism was officially abolished, the Napoleonic Code was adopted, and so on.History has shown that these changes are far less reversible than boundary shifts.Napoleon's Code of Civil Law thus remained, or again became, the basis of local law in Belgium, the Rhineland (even after the return to Prussia), and Italy.Feudalism, once formally abolished, was never re-established anywhere.

Now that it had become apparent to France's sensible opponents that they had been defeated by the advantages of the new political system, or at least by their failure to introduce equivalent reforms, the changes wrought by the war were not merely through French conquest , but also in response to conquest; in some cases, as in Spain, due to a double action.On the one hand, the Spanish pro-French faction, the collaborator of Napoleon, and on the other, the liberal leader of the anti-French group in Cadiz. In this process, if one party fails, the other party will try to achieve it.A more striking example of reform through reaction is Prussia, since the Spanish liberals were originally reformers, and their rebellion against France was only a historical accident.But in Prussia, the creation of a form of peasant emancipation, the creation of an army by conscription, the conduct of legislative, economic and educational reforms, it was all the army and state of Frederick the Great, in Jena and Auerstad It was realized under the influence of the special collapse, and its absolute purpose is to reverse the defeat.

In fact, it may be said without exaggeration that there was not a single continental country west of Russia, Turkey, and south of Scandinavia whose domestic institutions were completely immune to the effects of the French Revolution during the twenty years of war. Impact.Even the extremely reactionary Kingdom of Naples never actually recovered after legal feudalism had been abolished by France. But changes in borders, legal and administrative systems were nothing compared with the third impact of the Revolutionary War years, the profound changes in the political environment.When the French Revolution broke out, European governments remained relatively undisturbed.There were only sudden changes in institutions, uprisings broke out, dynasties were overthrown, or kings were assassinated and executed.These facts in themselves did not shock eighteenth-century rulers, who had become accustomed to them, and who viewed these changes in other countries in terms of their impact on their own balances of power and relative positions.Vergennes, the famous French foreign minister of the ancien régime, wrote: "The insurgents I expelled from Genoa were agents of Great Britain, while the American insurgents maintained a long friendship with us. Not on their political system, but on their attitude towards France. That is my fundamental consideration.” But by 1815, a completely different attitude to the Revolution overwhelmed and dominated the policies of the Powers.

It is now recognized that revolutions in individual countries can be a European phenomenon, whose creeds spread across national borders, or, worse, whose expeditionary armies can engulf a continental political system.Now they know that social revolution is possible, how many nations exist in the real world independent of the state, how many people are independent of their rulers, and even how many common people exist independent of the ruling class.DeBonald commented in 1796: "The French Revolution is a unique event in history." This statement is wrong, the French Revolution is a general event, no country is immune to its influence.The French marched from Andalusia as far as Moscow; from the Baltic to Syria, they conquered a larger area than any group of conquerors since the Mongols, and certainly larger than any previous group of conquerors except the ancient Scandinavians (Norsemen). ) than any other European military force, they highlighted the universality of their revolutionary homeland more effectively than anything possible.And the creeds and institutions which they brought with them, or even under Napoleon, from Spain to Syria, were, as the governments knew, and as the peoples themselves soon knew, universal creed.A Greek patriotic bandit articulated their feelings:

"In my judgment," said Kolokotrones, "the French Revolution and what Napoleon did, opened the eyes of the world. Before that, these countries knew nothing, and their people thought that The king is the god of the world, and they must say that whatever the king does is right. After this change, it will be more difficult to rule the people."