Similarities Between Napoleon And Madame De Stael

4. Napoleon seriously did adhere to the ideals of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution both in France and where he attempted to spread it like in Westphalia. It is evident that the adhered to the ideals of the Enlightenment as he claims to promote freedom of religion like the ideas of Voltaire as well as safeguarding the protection of natural rights such as liberty, equality, and prosperity like the ideas of Locke. Additionally, he mentions that the sovereignty is in the people coming from the ideas of Montesquieu and also mentions people’s right to a public trial. He adheres to the French Revolution ideas by abolishing serfdom and equalizing tax. Additionally, undermining the power of the nobility also reflect the ideas of the French

In her critique of Napoleon, Madame de Stael demonstrates an astute awareness of politics and human nature as she informs people how they cannot be blinded by the Napoleon’s reforms because he is obviously arresting absolute power over the people of France. She is able to see through his façade as the “liberator” of France and can see that he is just a dictator. She calls for people to see that he has established a tyranny and he has been fooling everyone. She claims he produced a constitution that does not safeguard the people at all and that he inhibits the freedoms they earned during the revolution like freedom of the press. She discusses how the people that do publish their opinion are hired writers so they do not actually use freedom of the press because what they publish is not the opinion of the people. She cannot believe that after all the people fought for against the old regime, they let Napoleon take advantage of them. She really shows her capabilities of seeing how Napoleon has risen to power and took away more rights than if he did not come into

The Congress of Vienna was a meeting of the Quadruple Alliance after the defeat of Napoleon to make a peace accord that would deal with the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars. They had to construct a long lasting peace settlement that would not cause more war and keep the balance of power. They had to reassign the borders because of the former territories that was taken by the French. The head of the Congress of Vienna was Prince Klemens von Metternich of Austria and the other main powers was Alexander I of Russia, King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia, Robert Castlereagh from Britain, and eventually Charles Talleyrand from France. The concept of the balance of power in 1814 and 1815 was to make sure that there was a balance of military and political power and to make sure that one state or an alliance was able to dominate all of Europe. Therefore, with great discussion and arguing, they had to agree how to split up the former French territory to keep that balance. Belgium and Holland became the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the German speaking lands became the German Confederation, Austria received Venetia and Lombardy, Britain had received the French colonies, Russia took a small part of the Polish territory, and Prussia took the other part of the Polish territory and a part of