Chapter 19
The Age of Napoleon and the Triumph of Romanticism
Born in 1769 to a minor noble family on the island of Corsica, Napoleon Bonaparte studied at French
military schools and in 1785 became an artillery officer in the army of Louis XVI. He was a brilliant and
charismatic leader who in 1793 at the age of twenty four forced the British to abandon the French port of
Toulon. He was wounded but promoted to the rank of general. He was a fervent supporter of the
revolution and enjoyed the favor the Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety. During the
Thermidorian Reaction, he was at first put under house arrest but soon released. He defended the
Directory in Paris and was appointed to take command the French army in Northern Italy where the next
year (1796) he drove the Austrians out of Italy at the Battle of Lodi.
It must be remembered that the chief threat to the Directory came from royalist émigrés who had
returned to France and whose avowed intent was to restore the monarchy. Moreover in early 1797, these
constitutional monarchists (or royalists) had gained a majority in the National Legislature. So in
September 1797, the Directory staged their own coup d’état (a sudden and illegal overthrow of a
government) to preserve the republic and prevent a restoration of the Bourbons. They made their own
supporters legislators, increased censorship and exiled some of their opponents. Then they recalled
Napoleon from Italy where he once again brought order to the streets of Paris for the Directory.
France was still at war with Great Britain, Prussia and Austria. Napoleon, however, made his reputation
secure, when he continued his string of victories over the Austrians and established French rule in Italy
and Switzerland by terms of the Treaty of Campo Formio which ended the so called War of the First
Coalition (which had begun in 1792 when the Girondist-controlled National Assembly declared war). In
November, Napoleon returned to Paris as a national hero.
Napoleon was determined to defeat Britain and so the next year (1798) he decided to invade Egypt, drive
out the British Fleet and disrupt English trade and communications with India. The initial invasion was a
success but the English admiral, Lord Horatio Nelson, destroyed the French fleet at the Battle of
Abukir Bay (sometimes called the Battle of the Nile) on August 1st, which cut off the French army
from France and forcing Napoleon to return home.
It is interesting to note that some of his soldiers accidently uncovered the famous Rosetta Stone which
some thirty years later would help a young French scholar, Jean-François Champollion, become the
first European to translate ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Political ramifications were more serious because the French invasion of part of the Ottoman Empire
alarmed Russia which joined a coalition with Great Britain, Austria and the Ottomans against France in
the War of the Second Coalition. Back in France, the Directory was still unable to solve many of
France’s economic problems and the new Second Coalition made their position even less tenable (more
difficult). The result was that one of the members of the Directory proposed a new constitution.
He was Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès (1748 –1836), commonly known as Abbé Sieyès, who was a French
Roman Catholic clergyman and one of the chief theorists of the French Revolution.[In1789, Sieyès had
written a powerful pamphlet – which had become the manifesto of the Revolution: What is the Third Estate?]
Now he wanted an executive body - independent of elections - and a government based on the principle
of confidence from below, power from above. Abbe Sieyès’ proposal required another coup d’état just
at the time Napoleon was having reverses in Egypt. Napoleon returned to Paris where his soldiers
ensured the success of Sieyès’ coup. Sieyès needed Napoleon but thought that Napoleon could be used
and then pushed aside but the opposite happened.
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The proposed constitution provided for power to be shared by three consuls and it was Napoleon who
quickly pushed aside Sieyès and in December, 1799, issued the Constitution of the Year VIII.
Although it paid lip service to universal male suffrage, this constitution was complicated and placed the
authority to rule not in three consuls but in one consul, the First Consul, a post which Napoleon himself
assumed. Napoleon in many ways looked back to the Roman emperor Augustus who hid his monarchy
under the guise of old Republican Rome. Nevertheless, Napoleon was more dictatorial than Augustus
and he is considered the first of the modern dictators of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. And like
many recent dictators, Napoleon used the rhetoric (arguments) of revolution to justify his seizure and
expansion of power.
The Consulate (1799-1804)
When Napoleon outmaneuvered Sieyès and got himself elected First Consul under the Constitution of
the Year VIII, he ushered in the Consulate which lasted until Napoleon crowned himself emperor on
December 2nd 1804. By the time of the Consulate, the leaders of the Third Estate had gained much.
Heredity privilege had been abolished so that advancement in society was based on talent and
competence. Feudalism had been destroyed and farmland had been taken from the nobility and the
Church. But it is important to note that this new dominant class of the Bourgeoisie had no intention of
sharing their new social privileges with the lower classes. And it was Napoleon who met Bourgeoisie
needs. When he presented his Constitution of the Year VIII which secured Bourgeoisie power, the
voters (i.e., the Bourgeoisie) approved it overwhelmingly.
By 1799, France was exhausted from internal warfare, conscription, food-crop shortages and more than
a decade of war with Austria, Prussia, Russia and Britain. Things looked grim. But then Russia dropped
out of the Coalition and Napoleon was up to the challenge. In 1800, he daringly crossed the Alps and
won a great victory at the Battle of Marengo driving Austria out of the coalition by the Treaty of
Luneville in 1801 – and greatly strengthening his prestige as First Consul. That left Great Britain
fighting France alone until the Treaty of Amiens in 1802 which brought peace to Europe.
At home during the Consulate, Napoleon set about restoring peace and order. He used flattery, bribery
and a general amnesty to win over his enemies and employ men from all political factions. He wisely
allowed many aristocrats to return and reclaim some of their lost land. Napoleon was thus able to secure
the loyalty not only of moderates but also Jacobins and constitutional monarchists. Napoleon also
streamlined and centralized the government and made its administration and bureaucrats more efficient.
On the other hand, Napoleon required absolute loyalty and tolerated no opposition. Although he was a
child of the Enlightenment, Napoleon was, like Catherine the Great of Russia, no champion of
intellectual freedom (intellectual thought, yes; freedom, no) or representative government. He limited free
speech, censored newspapers, developed an efficient secret police and network of spies to protect his
power and – ahead of his time - made effective use of propaganda. He crushed another royalist rebellion
in the Vendee in western France and, after an attempt on his life in 1804, he suppressed the Jacobins. He
even sent his agents to kidnap a Bourbon duke, Louis Antoine Duke of Enghien, living outside of
France, and had him executed simply to cement his power base.
Napoleon also made peace with the Catholic Church. The Jacobins had been determined to erase the
influence of the Church and when Napoleon invaded Italy in the late 1790s, he drove Pope Pius VI into
exile where he died in 1799. Pius VI was followed by Pius VII who was able to work with Napoleon
because of his ability to think ahead of his times (outside the box). As a cardinal, he had written that
Christianity was compatible with the ideals of equality and democracy and when the United States
suppressed the Barbary Pirates (1801-1805), he wrote that United States had done more for the cause of
Christianity than the most powerful nations of Christendom have done for ages. So Napoleon and
Pius VII signed The Concordat of 1801(or agreement) which included the following:
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1. A declaration that "Catholicism was the religion of the great majority of the French" but not the
official state religion, thus maintaining religious freedom, in particular for Huguenots and Jews.
2. The government nominated bishops but the popes had the right to depose them.
3. The government paid salaries to the clergy who were required to swear allegiance to the state.
4. The Roman Catholic Church gave up all its claims to Church lands that were confiscated after 1790.
5. Sunday again became a day of worship beginning Easter Day, April 18th, 1802 and the French
Republican Calendar was abolished, restoring the Gregorian Calendar in 1806. (***The truth was
that the French people were sick of the godless Cult of Reason)
In 1804, Napoleon issued a revised Body of Civil Law, called the Code Napoleon, which also brought
stabilization to France. The Code undid some of the reforms of the revolution, but it re-affirmed the
political and legal equality of all adult males, protected private property and established a merit-based
society in which qualification and talent replaced birth and social standing for employment. The code
did not grant much to women: married women needed their husband’s consent to dispose of their own
property and divorce remained more difficult to obtain for women than for men.
The Emperor of the French
After an 1804 attempt on his life, Napoleon used the opportunity to strengthen his control and establish a
dynasty to make his power more secure. His intention was to found a dynasty and so a new constitution
declared him the Emperor of the French. Since he was at the height of his popularity, a plebiscite (a yes
or no vote on one issue) overwhelmingly ratified this constitution. Napoleon invited Pius VII to take part
in the coronation but at the last minute the pope agreed that Napoleon should crown himself although
other more traditional accounts indicate that Napoleon had the intention of upstaging the pope.
Napoleon did not want to be associated with the typical hereditary monarch and is said to have
explained: "To be a king is to inherit old ideas and genealogy. I don't want to descend from anyone...
The title of Emperor is greater...” and henceforth he would be known as Napoleon I.
Napoleon sought to build a French empire. In the decade and a half that he dominated Europe, he
accomplished what Louis XIV had failed to attain. He conquered the Iberian and Italian peninsulas,
occupied the Netherlands and routed the major armies of Europe. In North America he forced Spain to
cede Louisiana back to France, but then almost immediately, when he needed cash, sold it in the famous
Louisiana Purchase to Thomas Jefferson in 1801, thus doubling the size of the new American
Republic. He had only one enemy whom he could not defeat and that was Great Britain. And it was
Britain that would resume the coalition wars.
The War of the Third Coalition lasted from 1803 to 1806 and was precipitated (begun) because France
had intervened in the Haitian Salve Rebellion, forced Spain to return Louisiana and intervened in some
German States and the Dutch Republic. So in May 1803, William Pitt the Younger formed the Third
Coalition and by August 1805 Austria and Russia had declared war. On land things went Napoleon’s
way as he won perhaps his greatest military victory crushing the Russians and Austrians at the Battle of
Austerlitz. But at sea it was a different matter. Just as he was preparing to invade Great Britain, his
French-Spanish Navy was smashed at the Battle of Trafalgar by Admiral Nelson.
The War of the Fourth Coalition was precipitated by Austria dropping out of the coalition after
Austerlitz and Napoleon’s transformation of central Germany into a French-dominated Confederation
of the Rhine in July 1806 which caused the Austrian emperor Francis II to abolish the Holy Roman
Empire. These actions renewed the coalition as Prussia declared War. Napoleon, however, reacted
rapidly and crushed the Prussian army late in 1806 in twin victories at Jena and Auerstädt. Two weeks
after these victories, Napoleon marched in Berlin and issued the Berlin Decrees which forbade his allies
from importing any British goods.
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Finally in June 1807, Napoleon defeated the Russians at the Battle of Friedland and occupied East
Prussia. In July 1807, Napoleon met with the Russian tsar, Alexander I, on a raft (more like a small tentpalace) in the middle of Niemen River on the Russian-Polish border. On July 7, they signed the Treaty
of Tilsit which confirmed France’s territorial gains, stripped Prussia of half of its territory and redrew
the map of Europe to reflect these new realities making his brothers kings of Spain and the Netherlands
and his stepson ruler of Italy. It is important to note that Prussia, which had survived extinction because
of Alexander, became a secret ally of Russia. Both waited for a chance for revenge.
After Tilsit, only Great Britain remained a threat which was primarily economic because Britain
dominated the shipping lanes. But the threat was also military as Britain stood ready to help
resistance movements to Napoleon. So extending the Berlin Decrees, Napoleon decided to break
Great Britain by stranglehold and tried to blockade all of Europe’s ports to English merchants.
During this protracted struggle to strangle Great Britain economically, which was called the
Continental System, both France and Britain seized the neutral ships of many nations, including the
United States. American anger at the British seizures of both her ships and her sailors (which was called
impressment) led to the fruitless War of 1812 in which neither Great Britain or the United States could
claim victory. Nevertheless in the end, Napoleon’s Continental System failed to effectively damage
British trading might and (very important) badly hurt most European economies which only encouraged
smuggling and helped bring on resistance.
Resistance to Napoleon
Wherever Napoleon ruled, he imposed the Code Napoleon which abolished hereditary social distinctions
and Feudal privileges for the nobility. Town guilds and oligarchies were dissolved or deprived of power.
Established churches lost their monopolies and were made subordinate to the state. Toleration replaced
religious monopoly but as needed as most of these reforms were, it was clear that they were intended to
increase Napoleon’s fame and France’s glory.
German Nationalism
Until around 1800, Germany had no sense of nationalism. But that began to change with the advent of
the Romantic Movement. The movement - also called Romanticism - was artistic, literary, and
intellectual - and it took shape in the second half of the 18th century partly as a reaction to the Industrial
Revolution and partly as a revolt against the aristocratic social and political ideas of the Age of
Enlightenment and the scientific rationalization of nature. It was embodied most strongly in the visual
arts, music, and literature but also was a fundamental component in the development of Nationalism or
the ideology that the nation is the basic bond that defines political unity – especially in Germany.
Early German nationalistic writers had focused on the admirable qualities of German culture and
the history of German peoples. This “cultural nationalism” was the norm until the Prussian
humiliation at Jena and Auerstädt. It is important to understand that - at this point - German
intellectuals began to urge resistance to Napoleon and - as a byproduct to that resistance – there
was a growing and fervent (devout, passionate) German Nationalism that would culminate in the
unification of Germany in 1871.
German nationalists also tended to criticize most German princes who ruled selfishly and incapably
(incompetently) and thus seemed to conspire with Napoleon. Their belief became a patriotism which
taught that only a people united in language and culture could defeat France but also unite Germany –
especially after Tilsit when most German princes were subservient to or complicit with Napoleon. Only
one German state was independent enough to develop such patriotic fervor: Prussia.
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Prussian Reforms
It was to Prussia that many German nationalists fled where they clamored for reforms and German
unification under the Prussian king, Frederick William III (successor to Frederick William II and the
grand-nephew of Frederick the Great). Ironically, Frederick William III and his Junker nobility feared and
hated reform but the humiliation at Jena and Auerstädt created the atmosphere where reforms came
about despite their opposition. The two geniuses behind needed reform were Baron Henrich vom Stein
(1757-1831) and the Prussian Prime Minister, Prince Karl von Hardenberg, whose reform goals never
intended to take power or domination away from the king or the Junker landowning aristocrats who
formed the bulk of the army officer corps and state bureaucracy. Their reforms fell into two categories:
land and the military.
Land reforms centered on Serfdom which was abolished but it is important to note that in contrast to
Prussian holdings in western Germany where serfdom simply ceased to exist, serfdom in eastern
Germany survived in a vestigial form. Serfs were freed and free to leave the land but those who stayed
had to continue the old manorial obligations. They could even gain ownership of the land if they
surrendered a third of it to the Junker lord. The result was that Junker landholdings actually grew and
many former serfs emigrated to the cities and just in time to feed the growing industrial revolution.
Other freed serfs became laborers and these landless laborers created new social problems.
Military reforms had the goal of increasing the number and quality of soldiers. At Jena and Auerstädt,
Napoleon brutally taught the Prussians that an army of free patriots commanded by officers chosen by
merit and not social standing could defeat an army of serfs or mercenaries commanded by incompetent
princes. To remedy this situation Stein and Hardenberg abolished inhumane punishments, fostered
patriotism, opened the officer corps to commoners, gave promotions on the basis of merit and organized
war colleges to develop new theories of strategy and tactics. Finally, since Napoleon limited the size of
the Prussian army to 42,000 men to prevent Prussia from using universal conscription, the Prussians
trained 42,000 men per year and then placed them in reserve so that by showdown time with Napoleon
after 1812, the size of the Prussian army was around 270,000 well trained soldiers
The Wars of Liberation - The Peninsular Campaign
In 1796, Spain and France were allies but that changed when Napoleon sent his armies into Spain to
force Portugal to abandon its traditional alliance with Great Britain. The army stayed in Spain to protect
its lines of supply and communication. When a revolt broke out in Madrid in 1808 over a dynastic
dispute between the Bourbon king Charles IV (1748-1819) and his son Ferdinand VII (1784-1833), in
which Charles abdicated in favor of his son, Napoleon used it as an opportunity to depose Ferdinand and
make his brother Joseph Bonaparte (1768-1844) king of Spain.
The Spanish (especially the peasants) were deeply devoted to the Bourbons and were devoutly Roman
Catholic. When the French army became an army of occupation; when Joseph Bonaparte became king
and when attacks began against the privileges of the Catholic Church (Churches and convents were used as
stables and barracks, and artworks were sent to France), there was public outrage. The upper classes were
willing to collaborate with the French, but the lower clergy, monks and peasants rebelled.
In Spain more than anywhere else in Europe, Napoleon faced a civil resistance rooted in deep
resentment and a new kind of warfare: Guerrilla Warfare. Guerrillas cut lines of communication, killed
stragglers, destroyed isolated outposts and units and then disappeared into the mountains. Some
historians call this Guerrilla Warfare as the first of the Wars of Nationalism that would characterize the
nineteenth century. The British landed an army under the command of Sir Arthur Wellesley (17621852), later the Duke of Wellington, to protect the Portuguese and aid Spanish guerrillas.
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So began the Peninsular Campaign that would be bitter and hard fought and finally ending after
Napoleon’s defeat. Although Spain ultimately threw off the French yoke and her efforts helped drain
French resources, the damage to her infrastructure and economy led to political instability for decades.
War of the Fifth Coalition
When Spain became a thorn in Napoleon’s side, Austria, having reformed its army after Austerlitz,
decided to rejoin the struggle creating a Fifth Coalition. In spite of his problems in Spain, Napoleon
moved quickly and won a decisive victory at the Battle of Wagram near Vienna in July 1809.The one
year War of the Fifth Coalition was over and by the terms of the Treaty of Schönbrunn (or the Treaty
of Vienna), Austria ceded much of her empire to Bavaria, the Duchy of Warsaw, Russia and France
losing about three and a half million people. Austria also had to pay a large indemnity (reparation or $$),
recognize Napoleon’s conquests and Joseph Bonaparte as king of Spain. Finally, Austria was forced to
agree to allow Napoleon to marry the archduchess, Marie Louise (1791-1847), daughter of the emperor
Francis II. Thus in 1810, Napoleon (age 41) divorced his childless- wife Josephine (age 46) to marry
the Austrian archduchess (age 18) in hopes of producing an heir, Napoleon II (who never ruled and died
in 1832) the next year.
The Invasion of Russia and Downfall
Meanwhile relations with Russia were deteriorating. The young Tsar Alexander I had been charmed by
Napoleon during their meeting on the raft on the Niemen River in 1807, but a number of factors caused
their alliance to collapse:
1. Russian nobles were angry that the Continental System prevented them from selling lumber to Great
Britain.
2. The French were not willing to help Russia conquer Constantinople.
3. The enlargement of the Duchy of Warsaw made Russia nervous.
4. Finally Napoleon’s annexation of Holland (violating the Treaty of Tilsit); his attempt to set up one of
his generals, Marshal Bernadotte (1763-1844), as king of Sweden (who in 1818 he did become king),
and his marriage to Marie Louise of Austria personally angered the Tsar.
So at the end of 1810, Alexander withdrew from the Continental System and prepared for War. As a
result, Napoleon was determined to end the Russian military threat and amassed his million-man
Grande Armée (although historians say the number was closer to 600,000) with a core of elite French
troops totaling about a third of the army. Napoleon expected a quick victory when he invaded in late
June of 1812. He defeated (or better said, pushed back) the Russian army and thrust deep into Russia. But
the Russians adopted a unique strategy (which they would use again in World War II) which was to burn all
the land in front of Napoleon’s forces (scorched earth policy). Thus by September when Napoleon had
occupied Moscow, it was obvious that the Russians were not about to surrender and, with growing
shortages of food and supplies, the morale of the Grande Armée was deteriorating. His advisors urged
him to retreat.
In September, Russian public opinion forced a fight. The Russians were led by the brilliant General
Mikhail Kutuzov (1745-1813), who preferred to let “General Winter” wear down the Grande Armée.
The subsequent Battle of Borodino was the bloodiest single battle of all Napoleon’s victories. The
French lost 30,000 men and the Russians over 60,000. But it was a Pyrrhic victory; the Russians were
defeated but their army was still intact. Then the Russians set fire to Moscow and destroyed much of the
city. Napoleon sent repeated peace offers to Alexander who ignored them. In October, Napoleon, caught
without supplies as the Russian winter was setting in, began his retreat westward. In that terrible retreat
that followed, it is estimated that he lost most (at least half a million) of his Grande Armée.
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After his defeat in Russia, Napoleon was far from beaten. He quickly raced to Paris where was able to
subdue his political opponents and raised another army of 350,000 men. Moreover, neither the Russians
nor the Austrians wanted to fight him again. In fact, the Austrian Foreign Minister, Prince Klemens von
Metternich (1773-1859), would have gladly negotiated a peace that would leave Napoleon on his
throne but with his empire reduced in size and influence. Napoleon outright (and foolishly) rejected such
a solution. But patriotic pressure and national ambition among Napoleon’s enemies would bring about
another coalition.
The Sixth Coalition: the next year the Russians, Austrians and Prussians with British (contributing
both financial support and military support in Spain) formed the Sixth Coalition. Napoleon’s generals were
tired; they had lost confidence in Napoleon; and the new army was inexperienced and poorly equipped.
Napoleon himself was worn out and sick. In October 1813, Napoleon was defeated at the Battle of
Leipzig (sometimes called the Battle of the Nations) which engaged more soldiers than any other battle
fought during the Age of Napoleon and cost the lives of more than 90,000 soldiers. In March 1814, the
allied armies marched into Paris and, by the Treaty of Fontainebleau, Napoleon was forced to abdicate
and exiled to Elba, an island in the Mediterranean where he had sovereignty over the island and even
retained the title of emperor.
The Congress of Vienna
The fear of Napoleon had held the coalitions against him together but once he was ousted (tossed out),
the victors began to pursue their own selfish interests. The first agreement between the victors was
engineered by Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh (1769-1822), the British foreign secretary. In
March 1814, even before the victors marched into Paris, he brought about the Treaty of Chaumont,
which provided for the restoration of the Bourbons, a contraction of France’s borders and a twenty year
Quadruple Alliance (Britain, Austria, Russia, Prussia) to preserve whatever settlement they agreed upon.
Final details would be worked out at a congress to be held in Vienna in September. The Congress of
Vienna lasted until November 1815 and most of the work was done by the big four powers and the rest
met only to ratify their decisions.
The first issue was an affirmation of the Balance of Power principle in which the victors agreed
that no single state should be allowed to dominate Europe; and that France especially be
prevented from doing so again.
Next the map of Europe was redrawn and the states around France were strengthened. They established
the Kingdom of the Netherlands which joined Belgium and Luxembourg to Holland. Prussia was
given important new territories along the Rhine River and Austria was given full control of Northern
Italy. The Holy Roman Empire which had been dissolved in 1806 was not reconstituted and in all areas
the congress established the rule of legitimate monarchs and rejected any democratic principle or
philosophy.
Then there followed a quarrel concerning Eastern Europe. Alexander I wanted all of Poland under
Russian rule. Prussia was agreeable if she received all of Saxony (which had supported Napoleon) in
return. Austria balked because she did not wish to give up her part of Poland, allow Prussian power to
grow or Russia penetrate into central Europe. War almost broke out until Charles Maurice de
Talleyrand (French foreign minister under Louis XVI, the various governments of the Revolution and Napoleon), who
now represented France at the Congress, suggested that if the strength of France be added to Britain and
Austria, Alexander might come around. When this leaked out, Alexander agreed to become ruler of a
smaller Poland, Prussia settled for only a part of Saxony – and France now became a player in the
deliberations of the Congress.
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The Hundred Days
Napoleon spent nine months in uneasy retirement on Elba carefully watching events in France and the
Congress of Vienna. He realized that the shrinkage of France’s borders, the accession a Bourbon king
Louis XVIII (the younger brother of Louis XVI) and the arrogance of many of the reinstated aristocrats
made the French people resentful and longing for the good old days – of Napoleon. So in February 1815,
Napoleon escaped back to France and proceeded north to Paris. On the way he met troops sent to
capture him. Napoleon approached them alone, dismounted his horse and, when he was within gunshot
range, shouted, "Here I am. Kill your emperor, if you wish." The soldiers responded with, "Vive
L'Empereur!" and marched with Napoleon to Paris; Louis XVIII fled to Holland. Napoleon promised a
liberal constitution and a peaceful foreign policy. The allies would have none of it. They declared
Napoleon an outlaw and sent armies to crush him once and for all.
The Battle of Waterloo was the culmination of the Hundred Days when Napoleon gathered a loyal
army and took the offensive hoping to drive a wedge between the allies before they could gather. He
marched into Belgium and attacked the British and Prussian forces near the little town of Waterloo.
Napoleon’s daring almost won the day but the Duke of Wellington's army withstood Napoleon’s
repeated attacks while the Prussians under Gebhard von Blücher arrived in time to break the French
right flank. Napoleon’s luck had finally run out and the expression "to meet one's Waterloo" has come
to mean a great test or battle with a decisive outcome - generally in failure. This time the victors
banished him to a tiny island in the South Atlantic, St. Helena, where he had personal freedom and died
of cancer in 1821 (although there have been many poisoning theories, one as recently as 2005).
The Fruits of the Congress of Vienna
Napoleon’s Hundred Days had frightened the allied powers and so the Congress of Vienna – which now
began its sessions again - made the terms of the peace harsher for France. France lost a little more
territory but also had to pay an indemnity and be humiliated by an occupation army. The Russian Tsar
Alexander proposed a Holy Alliance whereby the monarchs would promise to act together in
accordance with Christian principles. Prussia and Austria were agreeable but Lord Castlereagh kept
England aloof and it came to nothing. However, England, Russia, Prussia and Austria did renew the
Quadruple Alliance more to maintain the peace that to be military allies.
The conservative political leaders at the congress feared both revolution and nationalism - and were
determined to prevent both. Their aim was no less than to restore the pre-revolutionary world order, the
ancien regime. The guiding spirit of the Congress was Clemens von Metternich, the Austrian foreign
minister, who led the congress in dismantling Napoleon’s empire, redrawing Europe’s national
boundaries, returning sovereignty to Europe’s royal families, and creating a diplomatic order based on
the Balance of Power first developed after the Thirty Years War that would hopefully prevent any one
state from dominating the others. In other words, they tried to return Europe to the status quo before
1789. The bottom line was peace and stability by returning to what they thought was a political system
that would work. The great powers sought to ensure that each of them would respect the decisions of the
congress and not use force to change them. France wisely and willingly agreed.
Nevertheless it was impossible for them to see into the future. In their fear of revolution, one of their
chief aims was to suppress rising national consciousness in minority groups in the Austrian-Hungarian
Empire. This Balance of Power lasted until the dreadful slaughter of World War I, and was a key
component of the 19th century governmental thinking, as conservative rulers used secret police,
censorship and propaganda to prevent minority populations from rebellion. Nevertheless, the bottom
line is that the work of the Congress of Vienna – as unable as it was to see the swiftness of
nationalism and the changes it caused in Europe – made decisions that kept Europe without
general war until 1914.
8
The Romantic Movement?
Isaac Newton’s Third Law of Motion states: To every action there is always an equal and opposite
reaction: or the forces of two bodies on each other are always equal and are directed in opposite
directions. This law generally applies to human beings as well. In a general way, humans can be
described as machines (as the universe can) because they do react when acted upon. The rebirth of critical
thinking during the Renaissance, the growth of science, the emergence of the Philosophes and Age of
Enlightenment and the violence of the French Revolution culminating the Age of Napoleon brought a
reaction called Romanticism, which - simply stated - was a rebellion against the rational and
scientific. Romantic thinkers, writers and artists came to believe that imagination and intuition were also
necessary to understand the world. Many romantics urged a revival of Christianity and they liked the art,
literature and architecture of medieval Europe. They were also fascinated with folklore, folk songs and
fairy tales – and they believed that dreams, hallucinations, sleepwalking and other paranormal
experiences (i.e., those things which were outside "the range of normal experience or scientific
explanation) suggested a world beyond empirical observation.
The Romantic Movement traced its origins to the individualism of the Renaissance, Protestant
devotion, personal piety and the sentimental novels of the eighteenth century. Typical was German
poetry of the Sturm und Drang (storm and stress) which rejected French rationalism and gave extremes
of human emotion free expression in both literature and music. Much of Haydn and Mozart reflect
Sturm and Drang. Sturm und Drang look to Rousseau who was convinced that material prosperity had
corrupted human nature; and that conviction very much affected Romantic writers. In his novel Émile,
Rousseau urged that children be raised with the maximum freedom and that parents should provide them
with physical necessities and keep them from harm but stand back and let the children grow naturally.
He used the simile of a gardener who weeds and waters a garden but otherwise let’s nature take its
course. Romantics used Émile to propose open education that would lead to a natural society.
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was a German philosopher from Königsberg in Prussia who wrote the
two greatest philosophical works of the late eighteenth century: The Critique of Pure reason (1781) and
The Critique of Practical Reason (1788). His goal was to accept the rationalism of the
Enlightenment and still preserve a belief in human freedom, immortality and the existence of God.
Whereas Locke had understood knowledge to be rooted in sensory experience alone, Kant argued for the
subjective character of human knowledge. Kant believed that the human mind did not simply reflect the
world around it; rather the mind imposed on the world of sensory experience “forms of sensibility” and
“categories of understanding.” In other words, the human mind perceived the world as it does because of
its own internal mental categories and that human perceptions are as much of the mind’s own activity as
of sensory experience.
Kant believed that pure reason was limited and could only measure what he called the Phenomenal
World of sensory experience; but there also existed a Noumenal World of moral and aesthetic reality
which can be known by practical reason and conscience. [One way to explain these concepts is to think of
the Phenomenal World as anything that appears to, or is an object of, the senses whereas the Noumenal World
is everything known without use of the senses.] Kant believed that all human beings possessed an innate
[inborn] sense of moral duty or awareness of what he called the Categorical Imperative; that is, an
inner command to act in every situation as one would have all other people act in the same
situation. To Kant the Categorical Imperative or human conscience was proof of mankind’s natural
freedom and the existence of God. Kant believed these were transcendental truths which could not be
proved by reason alone.
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For many Romantic writers, Kant’s philosophy refuted [negated, repudiated] what they saw as the
narrow rationalism of the Enlightenment. Whether they called it “practical reason” or “fancy” or
“imagination” or “intuition” or simply “feeling,” the Romantics believed that the human mind
had the power to penetrate beyond the cold rationalism of Hobbes, Locke and Hume. Most
Romantics also believed that poets, artists and writers possessed these powers more abundantly than
scientists. Kant himself said, “Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.”
Romantic Literature: The term Romantic appeared in English and French literature as early as the
seventeenth century. Neoclassical writers then used the word to describe literature as sentimental or
excessively fanciful. In the eighteenth century, the English writer Thomas Warton (1728-1790)
associated Romantic writing with medieval romances. In Germany, Johann Gottfried Herder (17441803), a member of the Sturm und Drang movement, used the terms Romantic and Gothic
interchangeably. Herder sang the praises of the German people (or Volk) and his Cultural Nationalism
turned away from the Enlightenment idea of a universal understanding of the world. He focused on the
German language and German cultural traditions documenting traditional folklore, dance, music
and art. His work gave Germans new pride in their origins and inspired Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm to
travel and collect folk tales first published as Children's and Household Tales (Kinder-undHausmärchen), was published in 1812.
In both England and Germany, the term Romantic came to be associated with all literature that did not
observe classical forms and gave free play to the imagination. August Wilhelm von Schlegel (17671845) praised the Romantic literature of Dante, Petrarch, Shakespeare, the Arthurian legends and
Cervantes. In his Lectures on Dramatic art and Literature (1809-1811), Schlegel stated that what
Romantic literature was to Classical Literature was the same as what the organic and living were to the
mechanical. The Romantic Movement came later to France under the aegis of Madame de Staël (17661817), the daughter of Jacques Necker, and later Victor Hugo (1802-1885), immortalized in his 1862
novel Les Misérables. Henri Beyel (1783-1842), better known by his pen name Stendhal, was the first
Frenchman to call himself a Romantic. He wrote in a realistic-romantic style, criticized classical forms
and praised Shakespeare.
English and German Romantic Writers
The English Romantics believed that poetry was enhanced by freely following the creative impulses of
the mind which was in direct opposition to Locke which regarded the mind as a passive receptor and
poetry as a mechanical exercise of “wit” following prescribes rules. For Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(1772-1834), the artist’s imagination was God at work in the mind and said that “the imagination
was a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM.” Thus poetry was
not a plaything but the highest of human acts – mankind’s self-fulfillment in a transcendental (or
supernatural) world. Coleridge was master of Gothic poems of the supernatural such as The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner which tells the story of a sailor cursed for killing an albatross. The poem deals with the
sailor’s crime against nature and God and raises issues of guilt, punishment, penance and redemption. At
the end, the sailor discovers the unity and beauty of all things. He repents and the curse – symbolized by
a dead albatross hung around his neck – is taken away.
William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was Coleridge’s closest friend. Together they published Lyrical
Ballads in 1798 as a manifesto [a public statement of their beliefs] that proclaimed their belief in
Romantic poetry and rejected the rules of eighteenth century criticism. Perhaps Wordsworth’s most
important poem, his Ode on Intimations of Immortality was written in part to console his friend
Coleridge who suffered his entire life from bouts of depression and anxiety (we would say he had a bipolar
disorder). The poem describes the loss of poetic vision – something Wordsworth also felt – and that
nature which he worshipped might no longer speak to him.
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He felt that he had lost what all humans lose in the process of becoming adults: their childlike vision and
closeness to spiritual reality. For both men, childhood was the bright period of creative imagination.
Wordsworth believed that the soul existed before its creation and so a child was closest to that
preexistent soul. Ageing and the problems of life – especially in the cities – took away and deadened
the imagination making a person’s inner feelings and the beauty of nature more difficult to see and
appreciate.
Lord Byron (1788-1824) He rejected the old traditions but had little sympathy for the views of
imagination pursued by the Romantics. He was distrusted in England; and outside England he was seen
as a creature of the French Revolution. He was a true rebel; he rejected the old traditions, was divorced
and had many affairs. He championed the cause of personal liberty. In Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
(1812), he created a brooding, melancholy Romantic hero. In Don Juan (1819), he wrote with ribald
(crude and offensive) humor, acknowledged nature’s cruelty and beauty and even expressed an
admiration for city (urban) life.
On the continent, almost all major German Romantics wrote at least one novel. These Romantic novels
were often highly sentimental and borrowed much material from medieval romances. The characters
were treated as symbols of larger truth and purely realistic descriptions were avoided. In 1795, the first
German romantic novel, William Lovell written by Ludwig Tieck whose principal character builds his
life on love but is destroyed by materialism and skepticism. In 1799, Frederich Schlegel (1767-1845)
wrote a progressive Romantic novel, Lucinde, which attacks misogynistic prejudices that regard women
as little more than lovers or domestic servants. Schlegel depicted Lucinde as the perfect friend and
companion as well as an unsurpassed lover. Like other early Romantic novels, Lucinde shocked
contemporary morals by frankly discussing social issues and sexual mores – and creating a female equal
to the male hero.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) is perhaps the greatest German writer of modern times.
Goethe defies classification. Much of his work is clearly part of Romantic genre; and part was his
condemnation of Romantic excesses. The book that made his early reputation was The Sorrows of
Young Werther published in 1774. The novel is a series of letters in which the hero falls in love with
Lotte, who is married to another man. The letters explore the relationship between Werther and Lotte
with a sentimentalism characteristic of the age. Eventually the lovers part but in his grief Werther takes
his own life. The novel became popular throughout Europe because Romantics admired its emphasis on
living outside the bounds of polite society.
Goethe’s masterpiece was a long, dramatic poem Faust, Part I was published in 1808 and tells how
Faust makes a pact with Mephistopheles, the devil: he gives his soul to the devil in exchange for greater
knowledge than any other human possesses. As the story continues, Faust seduces a young woman,
Gretchen, who in spite of her sins (she drowns her child), repents before her execution and is received
into heaven while the grief stricken Faust realized he must continue to live. In Part II completed in 1832,
Faust is taken on a series of adventures involving witches and mythological figures. At the end, Faust
determines to dedicate his life for the betterment of mankind. This annuls the devil’s pact because Faust
no longer desires ultimate power and Faust is received into heaven by the angels.
Art of the Romantic Period
Like poetry and philosophy, art in the Romantic period was a reaction to Enlightenment
Rationalism. The Baroque and Rococo had built upon the Renaissance and the Neo-Classical on the
ancient-classical world but Romantic art looked to the Middle Ages and an older world of imagination,
folklore, fairy tales, dreams and other phenomena in opposition to that of empirical reasoning and
sensory data of the Scientific Revolution.
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The first artist we shall consider is the English painter John Constable (1767-1837) who looked to both
the beauty of nature and the monuments of medieval achievements for his inspiration. Like many of his
contemporary Romantic painters, Constable was politically conservative. In his most well-known
painting, Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows (1831), he pictured a stable world, in which neither
political-turmoil (restlessness) nor the changing skyline of industrial development (factories) challenged
the traditional dominance of the church and landed classes. Although the clouds and sky portray a
passing storm, the beauty of both nature (the rainbow) and mankind (the Gothic cathedral) present the
powerful message of enduring (lasting, timeless) order as both the landscape and the building stand
indestructible.
Like many English conservatives of the day, Constable believed that the church and the British
constitution were intimate and inseparable and that religious institutions were deterrents (barriers,
impediments) to political radicalism. In his private letters, Constable associated liberal reformers with
the devil leading some art historians to suggest that the lightening appearing to strike the back roof of
the cathedral symbolizes such evil forces and that the rainbow, arching over the entire scene, gives it a
sacramental purity and shows God bestowing his blessing on the traditional order of nature and society.
Constable and other Romantics tended to idealize (glamorize, glorify) rural (country) life because it was
connected to the medieval past; and was opposed to the increasingly urban, industrialized and
commercial society springing up across the land. And it should be noted that the rural landscape and
country life - idealized by the Romantics - had pretty much begun to disappear by Constable’s lifetime.
Medieval buildings not only appeared in Romantic painting but created a Neo-Gothic revival in
architecture that began to dot (sprinkle) the European cities and country-sides with modern imitations of
medieval castles, monuments and even public buildings. Many medieval cathedrals were restored (or
even completed) as the movement progressed; and new churches were designed to resemble their
medieval forerunners. The British Houses of Parliament, built between 1836 and1837, were the most
famous public buildings in the Neo-Gothic style but town halls, schools, and even railroad stations were
designed to look like medieval buildings and even aristocratic country houses were rebuilt to resemble
medieval castles.
The most remarkable nineteenth-century Neo-Gothic structure was the castle of Neuschwanstein built
between 1869 and 1886 on a mountain in Southern Germany by King Ludwig II of Bavaria (r. 18641886). Ludwig was a true romantic and has been called the Swan King in English and the Fairy Tale
King in German (der Märchenkönig), although he was called insane and deposed during the last years of
his reign. The cost of Neuschwanstein, the interior of which was never completed, almost bankrupted
the Bavarian state treasury but “Mad Ludwig’s” legacy of architecture and art and the tourist income
they generate in our century has helped to make Bavaria the richest state in Germany.
Nature and the Sublime
The word sublime comes from the Latin sublimen (uplifted or elevated) and has come to mean lofty,
exalted and awe-inspiring. Romantic artists in addition to their love of history sought to portray nature in
all of its majestic power as no previous generation of artists had ever done. They were also drawn to the
mysterious and the unruly (difficult to control) side of nature rather than to the rational and Newtonian
view of nature that had prevailed during the Enlightenment. So they saw nature as sublime in itself –
arousing strong emotions such as fear, majesty and awe – and raised questions about how much we can
actually control nature or our own lives. Painters often traveled to rugged and remote areas such as the
Scottish Highlands or the Swiss Alps to find this sublimity of nature.
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Romantics saw nature as a set of infinite forces that overwhelmed the smallness of mankind. For
example in 1824, the German Romantic landscape painter Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) painted
The Sea of Ice (which the book calls The Polar Sea) depicts a shipwreck in the middle of a vast sea of ice
whose form suggests an ancient dolmen or tomb. The lost ship – crushed in the ice - is the HMS Griper
whose stern is visible on the right and which was one of two ships that took part in William Edward
Parry's1820 and 1824 expeditions to the North Pole. A few years before his death, Friedrich painted an
allegorical (symbolic) painting, The Stages of Life, which shows an old man on a seashore walking
towards two adults and two children on a hilltop overlooking a harbor in which there are five ships. The
allegory represents the various stages of life with the old man and the fifth ship sailing toward the
horizon representing a person’s death and adventure into the unknown. The painting is typically
Romantic in that it is shrouded in the mysterious semi-darkness of twilight.
The English Romantic painter J M W Turner (1775-1851) also – like Friedrich - painted the often
contradictory forces of the power, awe and majesty of nature. Turner was controversial in his day
because he pioneered the impressionistic and abstract styles of painting (which we shall mention in a later
chapter). In his Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway in 1844, he depicted a railroad
engine barreling (moving quickly) through an enveloping storm. The locomotive is both part of the natural
world and strong enough to dominate it. More Romantically traditional paintings of his include
Chichester Canal (1828) with its sense of enduring order and Dutch Boats in a Gale (1801) with its
sense of the immense and destructive power of nature.
Religion in the Romantic Period
During the Middle-Ages, religion rested securely on the authority of the Catholic Church. The
Reformation appealed to the authority of the Bible. Finally, many Enlightenment thinkers attempted to
ground religion in Newtonian rationalism. Other Enlightenment thinkers attacked Christianity. And the
Romantics sought authority in religion in people’s emotions and saw faith, religious institutions and
experience as central to Christianity that had survived the French Revolution and Enlightenment.
Methodism: traces its roots to John Wesley's evangelistic revival movement within Anglicanism.
Wesley (1703-1791), who remained a priest in the Church of England (Anglican) until he died, became
frustrated by the deism and rationalism that he felt needed revival. While he was at Oxford University,
he organized with his brother Charles a religious group called the Holy Club to bring students closer to
God. Fellow students mocked them and called them Methodists because they systematically (or
methodically) served God every hour of the day. They set aside time for the Holy Communion, praying,
studying the Bible, meeting together, taking food to the poor, visiting prisoners, and teaching orphans
how to read. After his ordination, he left England in 1735 to do missionary work in the new colony of
Georgia.
While crossing the Atlantic, he was deeply moved by a group of German Moravians who showed
unshakable faith during a storm (that the ship would not sink). After he returned to London three years
later, he began to worship with the Moravians and in 1739 he underwent a conversion experience,
described by him as “My heart felt strangely warmed.” Afterward, he felt assured of his own salvation.
Wesley met opposition when he tried to preach his viewpoints in Anglican churches so late in 1739 he
began to preach in open fields near major cities and towns of western England. Thousands of people
responded to his message of repentance and good works. Soon, he and his brother Charles, who became
famous for his hymns, had organized Methodist societies all across England.
As the societies multiplied, they adopted the elements of an ecclesiastical system and the divide between
Wesley and the Church of England widened. Wesley, however, refused to leave the Church of England
and claimed that his teachings were in the tradition of Anglicanism.
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Nevertheless after the American Revolutionary War, Methodists in the new United States had no
ministers. There is an argument among church historians whether or not Wesley might have been
secretly consecrated a bishop. But at any rate in 1784, Wesley ordained Thomas Coke superintendent
for the new Methodist Church in the United States where Methodism would find it most fertile growth
and greatest influence. In England, Methodism always remained small.
Methodism stressed inward, heartfelt religious devotion and the possibility of Christian perfection in this
life. John Wesley believed that Christianity was an inward principle…the image of God impressed on
a created spirit, a fountain of peace and love springing up into everlasting life.” For Wesley, true
Christians were those “who were saved in the world from all sin, from all unrighteousness...and freed
from all evil thoughts.” Many people were weary of deism and its image of God as a watchmaker who
did not need to interfere constantly in his creation and so they found in Wesley’s emotion and
conversion experience a way to embrace Jesus Christ personally.
France and Germany: After the Thermidorian Reaction, a strong Catholic revival took place in
France. The revival leaders resented both the religious policies of the Revolution and the anti-religious
thought of many Enlightenment thinkers. The Genius of Christianity, written by Francois Rene de
Chateaubriand in 1802, was the most important book to express these sentiments. His work which
became known as the Bible of Romanticism argued that the essence of religion is a passion and that
the foundation of faith was the emotion that the Church’s teachings and sacraments inspired in
the hearts of Christians. In rejecting the Newtonian view of the world, no one stated the Romantic
religious point of view more eloquently or with greater impact than the Silesian Friedrich
Schleiermacher (1768-1834). In 1799, this theologian and bible scholar published Speeches on Religion
to Its Cultured Despisers which was a response to both Lutheran orthodoxy and Enlightenment
rationalism.
According to Schleiermacher, religion was neither dogma [teachings] nor a system of ethics; rather
religion was an intuition or feeling of absolute dependence on an infinite reality (i.e., God).
Churches, other religious institutions, doctrines and moral rules were really the secondary expressions of
primal religious feelings. Although Schleiermacher considered Christianity the Religion of Religions,
he also believed that every world religion was unique in the way it transmitted mankind’s primal
intuition of the infinite (eternal) into the finite (temporal). And so he turned against the universal natural
religion of the Enlightenment.
Romanticism, Culture and Nationalism
A distinctive feature of Romanticism – especially in Germany – was its glorification of both the
individual person and the individual culture. The root of these views lay in German Idealism or the
idea that the world is the creation of Subjective Egos. The German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte
(1762-1814) was one of the founding figures of German idealism, much of which developed from the
work of Immanuel Kant. Fichte connected the individual human ego with the Absolute [that is, an
unconditional reality which transcends limited, conditional, everyday existence; and is sometimes used as an
alternate term for God]. Thus the world is the creation of mankind [i.e., subjective egos] and the world is as
it is because stronger persons impose their wills on weaker persons. Napoleon was a contemporary,
perfect example of such a person.
We have already met Johann Gottfried Herder and noted the importance of his language and culture
studies that led to his concept of Cultural Nationalism. Herder resented French cultural dominance in
Germany and in 1778 he published and influential essay On the Knowing and Feelings of the Human
Soul. In it he rejected the explanation of the universe in mechanical terms – so popular among
Enlightenment writers – and viewed human beings and societies as organisms that – like plants – that
grew and developed over time.
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Herder believed that human beings were different at different times and places and that each
language and culture were the unique expression of a particular people. He bitterly resented
Napoleon’s effort to make French the common language of Europe which he believed was no less than
cultural tyranny.
The most important philosopher of history in the Romantic period was Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Hegel (1770-1831). Born in Berlin, he was one of the most complicated and significant philosophers in
the history of Western Civilization. Drawing upon the ideas of Plato and Kant, Hegel postulated that
ideas develop in an evolutionary fashion that involves conflict. At any given time a set of ideas, which
are called the thesis, hold sway; thesis can be called a proposition or theory. Conflicting ideas, which are
called antithesis or a counter proposition, challenge the thesis. As these propositions clash, a synthesis
emerges that eventually becomes the new thesis. Then the process begins all over again.
From this line of reasoning, Hegel believed that all periods of history had approximately the same
value because by definition each civilization was necessary for the achievement of those that came
later. Furthermore, all cultures are necessary because each contributes to the necessary clash of thesis
and antithesis that causes civilizations to progress. Hegel also believed that all history – from age to age
- was found in the mind and purpose of a World Spirit (sort of like God) and later called Zeitgeist (which
literally means world spirit). Hegel discussed these concepts in many works, the two most important being
The Phenomenology of the Mind (or his theory of the evolution of human consciousness from senseperception to absolute knowledge) and Lectures on the Philosophy of History, compiled from the lecture
notes he gave to his students and which were published posthumously.
Romanticism and Islam
Romanticism also modified European thought in respect to both Islam and the Arab world towards a
more positive view but still far from true understanding which was made more difficult by energized
forms of Protestantism like Methodism and Chateaubriand’s emotional Roman Catholicism. For
example, Chateaubriand produced a travelogue of his journey from Paris to Jerusalem in 1811 and in the
1820s, as a member of the French Parliament, he called for a crusade against the Muslim world in a
speech focusing on the danger of the Barbary Pirates in North Africa.
In an interesting twist of viewpoint, the remembrance of the medieval Crusades stirred up Romantic
imagination about the long ago struggles. Stories from the actual crusades and memories of men such a
Richard the Lionhearted and Saladin filled historical novels such as the Tales of the Crusaders
published in 1825 by Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832). Although they presented heroic images of Muslim
and Christian warriors (and that truly is Romantic in genre), Scott’s writing and other similar Romantic
writings and paintings made no mention of the havoc that the crusaders wreaked upon the Middle East –
or, for that matter, the havoc the Muslim Arabs and Turks wreaked on Byzantium and other Christian
and Jewish communities.
Romanticism also supported the nationalistic aspiration of the subject peoples of the Ottoman Empire
and we will see in the next chapter how Romantic poets and intellectuals championed the cause of the
Greek and Serbian Revolutions in the early nineteenth century. Lord Byron, whom we have already
met, traveled to Greece to fight against the Ottoman Turks in the Greek War for Independence for
which the Greeks consider him a national hero, dying at the age of thirty-six from a fever contracted
while in Missolonghi in Greece.
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On the other hand, Romanticism often caused Europeans to see the Muslim world in a more positive
light. The Romantic emphasis on the value of literature drawn from different cultures and ages allowed
many European readers to enjoy the stories from The Thousand and One Nights (sometimes called The
Arabian Nights), a Persian collection of folk tales from the Golden Age of Islam which lasted from the
eighth to the thirteenth centuries. In 1859, Edward Fitzgerald published the Rubaiyat of Omar
Khayyam, a Persian poet (1048-1131), who produced a book filled with sensitive love poetry and courtly
manners (still widely popular in the West today).
Herder’s and Hegel’s view of history gave the world of Islam a distinct place in history. For Herder,
Arab culture was one of the numerous communities that composed the human race and manifested
(illustrated) the human spirit. The prophet Muhammad not only gave voice to the ancient spirit of the
Arab peoples but also transformed their religious beliefs from polytheism to uncompromising
monotheism. Hegel, on the other hand, believed that Islam had fulfilled its role in history and no longer
had any significant part to play on the world stage. These two extremes of European outlook permeated
most nineteenth century European thought and made it easy for Europeans to believe that Islam could –
for all practical purposes – be ignored or relegated to the past.
The greatest advocate of Islam’s cultural identity was the Scottish satirical writer; historian and social
commentator Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) who believed that Muhammad was a positive figure in
history; not a negative one. Carlyle particularly disliked the Enlightenment’s disparagement (negative
attitude) toward religion and spiritual values. He was also drawn to German theories of history. In his
book On Heroes and Hero-Worship (1841), he expressed his belief in heroic leadership and placed
Muhammad among many of the great Western heroes such as Oliver Cromwell, William Shakespeare,
Dante and Martin Luther. Moreover Carlyle repudiated (rejected) the traditional Christian and
Enlightenment view that Muhammad was an imposter but rather that Muhammad was straightforward
and sincere. Although friendly to Muhammad, Carlyle nonetheless did not see Muhammad as the
Muslims did - as the last of the great prophets but one of the great religious figures in history.
Most interestingly in the long run, it was Napoleon Bonaparte himself who helped reshape European
ideas about both Islam and the Middle East. His expedition to Egypt was a military failure but it brought
about a study of the Arab world in French intellectual life. Napoleon had no intention of destroying
Islam but rather he sought to liberate Egypt from the domination of the Ottoman Empire (and possible
English domination as well because the British wanted secure trade routes to India). And so he took with him
scholars of Arabic and Islamic culture whom he urged to dialogue with the most educated people they
could meet. Napoleon personally met with local leaders and all his speeches were translated into Arabic.
We have already noted at the beginning of this chapter that some of Napoleon’s soldiers accidently
uncovered the famous Rosetta Stone which some thirty years later would help a young French scholar,
Jean-François Champollion, become the first European to translate ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Napoleon’s scholars also published a twenty-three volume Description of Egypt (1809-1828) which
concentrated largely on ancient (pre-Islamic) Egypt. Their approach, however, suggested that the
Ottoman Empire (and all of Islam for that matter) needed to be related to the Egypt of the Pharaohs and
that Islam and ancient Egypt could be understood through the lens of European scholarship and thought.
Two cultural effects of Napoleon’s invasion were (1) and increase in the number of European visitors to
the Middle East and (2) a demand for architecture based on ancient Egyptian models. Perhaps the most
famous is The Washington Monument in Washington D.C. which was modeled after ancient Egyptian
obelisks.
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