The years from 1789 to 1815, the years of the Revolution and of Napoleon, effected one of the greatest and most difficult transitions of which history bears record, and to gain any proper sense of its significance one must have some glimpse of the background, some conception of what Europe was like in 1789... One thing, at least, it was not: it was not a unity. There were states of every size and shape and with every form of government. The States of the Church were theocratic; capricious and cruel despotism prevailed in Turkey; absolute monarchy in Russia, Austria, France, Prussia; constitutional monarchy in England; while there were various kinds of so-called republics – federal republics in Holland and Switzerland, a republic whose head was an elective king in Poland, aristocratic republics in Venice and Genoa and in the free cities of the Holy Roman Empire...
Chapter 1. THE OLD REGIME IN FRANCE
Chapter 2. BEGINNINGS OF THE REVOLUTION
Chapter 3. THE MAKING OF THE CONSTITUTION
Chapter 4. THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY
Chapter 8. THE EARLY YEARS OF THE EMPIRE
Chapter 9. THE EMPIRE AT ITS HEIGHT
Chapter 10. THE DECLINE AND FALL OF NAPOLEON
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