The Napoleonic invasion of Iberia shattered the Spanish empire in 1808. The French emperor occupied Spain and forced Ferdinand VII to abdicate the throne. Once the war against the French began, most vassals also rejected the Spanish imperial government in Madrid that had recognized the change of dynasty. The implosion of the Crown severely tested the hierarchical, centralized, and interdependent nature of the empire. Historians of the Spanish Bourbon empire have rightly argued that the invasion catalyzed the emergence of the new nations from 1810 onward. Many of them, however, have failed to notice the concurrent and extraordinary efforts to reconstitute the empire--a critical history that contextualizes the decisions Spanish Americans faced in this tumultuous period. / History

Thesis (Honors)--College of William and Mary, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 97-101). Also available via the World Wide Web.

La ville de Provins (Seine-et-Marne) est marquée par une Révolution tranquille, où les manifestations de violence se distinguent par leur rareté. En matière religieuse, la ville connaît les divisions et les inquiétudes suscitées par la politique des assemblées successives. Les habitants s’élèvent contre la nouvelle division paroissiale, tandis que les curés et les vicaires se divisent au sujet du serment constitutionnel (1790-1792). Les biens du clergé sont nationalisés. Plusieurs églises, abbayes et couvents se vident de leurs chanoines et de leurs moines, pour être ensuite vendus, réutilisés à des fins profanes, et même démolis. À mesure que la situation politique se radicalise après la chute de la monarchie et la proclamation de la République, le clergé fait l’objet de mesures de plus en plus coercitives. Une grande partie des ecclésiastiques est alors placée en réclusion en 1793-1794. Des restrictions limitent également la pratique du culte, en l’interdisant notamment dans l’espace public et en fermant momentanément toutes les églises. Comment les Provinois réagissent-ils à ces bouleversements ? La modération des comportements et la recherche de conciliation semblent qualifier les habitants. Au lendemain de la Terreur, les ecclésiastiques, de toutes tendances, unissent leurs forces pour assurer à nouveau la desserte du culte dans les églises, au-delà des querelles théologiques. C’est sur cette situation apaisée que peuvent s’appuyer les évêques concordataires, à partir de 1802, pour réorganiser officiellement l’Église provinoise et redonner à la religion catholique et à l’autorité spirituelle la place dominante qu’elles occupaient auparavant dans les esprits et dans la cité. / Provins (Seine-et-Marne) was marked by a quiet Revolution. The city was almost completely free of any manifestation of violence. In religious matters, the successive policies of the assemblies generated divisions and concerns. People rose against the new parishes, while priests and vicars were divided about the constitutional oath (1790-1792). Canons, monks and nuns left the churches. Abbeys and convents, which were subsequently sold, were reused for secular purpose and even destroyed. As the political situation became radicalized, after the fall of the monarchy in August 1792 and the proclamation of the Republic in september, State and deputies voted coercive measures against the clergy. Much of clergymen were sent to prison in 1793-1794. Restrictions also limited religious practice. Indeed, worship were prohibited in public spaces and all churches were momentarily closed. How the people of Provins reacted to these changes? Moderation and reconciliation seem define behaviours. After Terror, all parts of the Provins’ clergy joined their forces to ensure worship in churches again, beyond the theological and political disputes. Thanks to this soothed situation, the first bishops of XIXth century led a successful policy in order to reorganize local Church and give back to the Catholic religion and spiritual authority the dominant position they previously occupied in minds and in society.

La personnalité de l’empereur, le bilan de son règne ont suscité toujours de nombreuses discussions tant en France qu’à l’étranger et la Russie n’a pas fait exception. Le corpus poétique et historique consacré à Napoléon a retenu mon attention car je me suis demandé quelles ont été les causes de la naissance du mythe napoléonien en Russie et comment sa perception a évolué au fil du temps. En analysant les ouvrages écrits par les historiens russes entre la chute de Napoléon et le début du XXe siècle et les œuvres littéraires des écrivains de cette période, on voit les changements dans l’image de l’empereur. La légende noire était de courte durée et après sa mort Napoléon devint le héros préféré des poètes tandis que les historiens essayèrent d’expliquer les événements ayant eu lieu en Europe au début du siècle. Le transfert des cendres de Napoléon marqua l’apogée de la légende ; en Russie elle commença à s’effacer après la mort de Lermontov et surtout après la parution de Guerre et Paix de Tolstoï. Au début du XXe siècle le mythe napoléonien n’émerveillait plus les poètes russes mais les historiens s’intéressèrent de plus en plus à l’époque impériale, aux relations franco-russes, à la politique intérieure de Napoléon. L’alliance franco-russe et le centenaire de la guerre de 1812 influencèrent positivement les études historiques mais les événements survenus après 1917 ont donné à la légende une autre dimension et d’autres significations. / Napoleon’s personality and the results of his reign have always been a source of discussion both in France and elsewhere, nor is Russia an exception to this rule. The corpus of poems and writings on Napoleon attracted my attention: what were the causes of the birth of the Napoleonic myth in Russia, and how did attitudes towards the French emperor change over time? Analysis not only of works by Russian historians written after Napoleon’s death up to the beginning of the 20th century, but also of literary works from the same period, reveals changes in the image of the Emperor. The black legend lasted for only a brief time, and after his death Napoleon became a hero for poets. And historians looked positively on the emperor as they attempted to explain the events that had taken place in Europe at the beginning of the century. The transfer of Napoleon’s mortal remains back to France in 1840 marks the apogee of the golden legend. In Russia, this legend began to wane after the death of Lermontov and especially after the publication of Tolstoy’s War and Peace. At the beginning of the 20th century, whilst the Napoleonic myth no longer excited Russian poets, historians on the other hand grew more and more interested in imperial period, Franco-Russian relations, and Napoleon’s internal policy. The Franco-Russian alliance and the centenary of the Campaign of 1812 influenced historical studies positively, but the events occurring in Russia after 1917 gave the legend another dimension and other meanings.

"The long shadow of the emperor: fear and British press during the Napoleonic Wars (1795 –1815)” was a master thesis that combined the history of emotions with the use of quantitative computational techniques. The main objectives of the project were to detect and analyse the fear around the figure of Napoleon Bonaparte in the British press, between 1795 and 1815, and to check the feasibility of the proposed quantitative techniques for the history of emotions. The methodology consisted of the bibliographic collection of terms, web scrapping techniques, the creation of a database of mentions, and the emotional analysis of the subsequent information. The results showed how the emotion of fear was experienced in the British press, and the great explanatory potential of the methodology proposed by the study. The findings have revealed valuable information about international politics, public opinion, and erroneous assumptions in our current understandings of the Napoleonic Wars.

The Austrian army played a crucial role in Napoleon's decisive defeat during the War of the Sixth Coalition. Often considered a staid, hidebound institution, the army showed considerable adaptation in a time that witnessed a revolution in the art of war. In particular, changes made after defeat in the War of the Fifth Coalition demonstrate the modernity of the army. It embraced the key features of the new revolutionary way of war, including mass mobilization, a strategy of annihilation, and tactics based on deep echelonment, mobility, and the flexible use of varied formations. While the Austrians did not achieve the compromise peace they desired in 1814, this represented a political failing rather than a military one. Nevertheless, the Austrian army was critical in securing the century of general European peace that lasted until the dawn of the Great War.

Caroline Bonaparte Murat created an identity for herself through the art that she collected during the time of her reign as queen of Naples as directed by her brother, Napoleon, from 1808-1814. Through the art that she both commissioned and purchased, she developed an identity as powerful politically, nurturing, educated, fashionable, and Italianate. Through this patronage, Caroline became influential on stylish, female patronage in both Italy and France. Caroline purchased and commissioned works from artists such as Jean-August-Domonique Ingres, François Gérard, Elizabeth Vigée LeBrun, Antonio Canova and other lesser-known artists of the nineteenth century. Many of these works varied in style and content, but all helped in creating an ideal identity for Caroline. In all of the works she is portrayed as a powerful woman. She is either powerful by her settings (in the drawing room, or with Vesuvius in the background), her vast knowledge in the arts and fashion, her motherhood, her sensuality, or the way in which she is positioned and how she is staring back at the viewer within the works. The creation of this identity was uniquely Caroline's, mimicking Marie de Medici, Marie Antoinette and Josephine and Napoleon Bonaparte, while adding her own tastes and agendas to the creation. Through this identity she proved herself to be as equally French as Italianate through dress and surroundings. She even created a hybrid of fashion, wedding the styles together, by adding black velvet and lace to a simple empire-waisted silhouette. Caroline proved herself as politician, mother, educated and refined woman, pioneer in fashion, and Queen through the art that she purchased and commissioned.

This dissertation explores the influence of late eighteenth-century British imperial and global paradigms of thought on the formation of British policy and strategy during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. It argues that British imperial interests exerted a consistent influence on British strategic decision making through the personal advocacy of political leaders, institutional memory within the British government, and in the form of a traditional strain of a widely-embraced British imperial-maritime ideology that became more vehement as the conflict progressed. The work can be broken into two basic sections. The first section focuses on the formation of strategy within the British government of William Pitt the Younger during the French Revolutionary Wars from the declaration of war in February 1793 until early 1801. During this phase of the Anglo-French conflict, British ministers struggled to come to terms with the nature of the threat posed by revolutionary ideology in France, and lacked strategic consistency due to acute cabinet-level debates over continental versus imperial strategies. The latter half of the work assesses Britain’s response to the challenges presented by Napoleonic France. Beginning with the debates surrounding Anglo-French peace negotiations in late 1801, the British increasingly came to define Napoleonic France as a regime harboring imperial aspirations that represented an explicit threat to British imperial interests. By defining the Napoleonic regime as an aspirational imperial power, British opponents of the Peace of Amiens provided the intellectual framework for the hegemonic struggle between land and sea powers that would define the Anglo-French struggle until its conclusion in June 1815. While Britain ultimately proved successful in defeating France in Europe, the expanse of the conflict also exposed the strengths and weaknesses of British force projection outside of Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century. / History

This study seeks to illuminate the Swedish propaganda effort during the first years of Swedish participation in the Napoleonic wars, known as the Pomeranian War (1805-1807) in Swedish historiography. This is accomplished by analysing the reporting off the Swedish war effort in the official newspapers Stockholm Post-tidningar and Inrikes tidningar with a model of wartime propaganda previously put forward by Anna Maria Forssberg. The sources used, classified as “official Swedish war reporting”, are the published materials written either explicitly by official Swedish sources or other texts from an entirely Swedish perspective. A classification motivated by the heavy press regulations and state censorship of the late Gustavian era. The study covers the entirety of the period of Franco-Swedish warfare in northern Germany up to and including the evacuation of Swedish forces from Rügen in September 1807 but ends before the formal conclusion of peace in 1810. During this period several other important themes besides the fighting are covered in the official propaganda. These include a conflict with Prussia in 1806 and the Swedish alliances with Russia, Britain and, later, Prussia. The role of the image of the king in the authoritarian Gustavian political system and the way that the propaganda tries to paint a positive picture of Swedish military endeavours, mostly setbacks, with great emphasis on the preservation of military honour is also discussed.

Entre o período de 1801-1820, Portugal sofreu diversas agitações políticas causadas pelas Invasões Napoleônicas (1807-1813). Tais agitações influenciaram os rumos de Portugal enquanto um Estado pois além de repartir seu território com tropas napoleônicas, inglesas e espanholas que compunham as duas forças ocupantes e conflitantes, e causar uma divisão entre seus ideais e por conseguinte uma ruptura entre parte de seus cidadãos ora favoráveis aos franceses ora aos ingleses, mudou ainda a configuração administrativa interna e externa do Império Português, pois a Família Real e parte da Corte foram transferidos ao Rio de Janeiro. Como conseqüência em Portugal houve a Revolução Liberal de 1820, e em 1822 o Brasil deixa de ser colônia portuguesa para ter sua Independência proclamada. Foi nessa situação conturbada que Vicente José Ferreira Cardoso da Costa, um contemporâneo desses fatos, escreveu sua obra Considerações Políticas sobre a Revolução Portuguesa de 1808, que retrata essa época, e a Oclocracia que se estabeleceu em Portugal. / Between the years 1801-1820, Portugal suffered several political disturbances caused by the Napoleonic Wars (1807-1813). Such disturbances moved the directions of Portugal such as a State because the troops divided the territory full of french, british and spanish troops that served both conflicting sides, as well divided its citizens between two ideals (british and french), and at last changed the internal and external administrative setup, because the Royal Family and the Court left for Rio de Janeiro. As consequence to theses acts, there was a Liberal Revolution in Portugal 1820, and in 1822 Brazil declared independence. It was in this troubled situation that Vicente José Ferreira Cardoso da Costa a contemporary man of these facts wrote Considerações Políticas sobre a Revolução Portuguesa de 1808, that describes these time, and the Ochlocracy thats established in Portugal.