revolution. Most important, he codified the Roman law and the ideas of equality before the law into a legal system that became known as the Code Napoleon. Napoleon saw this code as his greatest legacy and wished to impose it in every territory he controlled.
Of course, the reforms imposed by the French Revolution and Napoleon were not irreversible. In some places, such as in Hanover, Germany, the old elites were reinstated shortly after Napoleon’ s fall and much of what the French achieved was lost for good. But in many other places, feudalism, the guilds, and the nobility were permanently destroyed or weakened. For instance, even after the French left, in many cases the Code Napoleon remained in effect.
All in all, French armies wrought much suffering in Europe, but they also radically changed the lay of the land. In much of Europe, gone were feudal relations; the power of the guilds; the absolutist control of monarchs and princes; the grip of the clergy on economic, social, and political power; and the foundation of ancien régime, which treated different people unequally based on their birth status. These changes created the type of inclusive economic institutions that would then allow industrialization to take root in these places. By the middle of the nineteenth century, industrialization was rapidly under way in almost all the places that the French controlled, whereas places such as Austria-Hungary and Russia, which the French did not conquer, or Poland and Spain, where French hold was temporary and limited, were still largely stagnant.
In the autumn of 1867, Ōkubo Toshimichi, a leading courtier of the feudal Japanese Satsuma domain, traveled from the capital of Edo, now Tokyo, to the regional city of Yamaguchi. On October 14 he met with leaders of the Chōshū domain. He had a simple proposal: they would join forces, march their armies to Edo, and overthrow the shogun, the ruler of Japan. By this time Ōkubo Toshimichi already had the leaders of the Tosa and Aki domains on board. Once the leaders of the powerful Chōshū agreed, a secret Satcho Alliance was formed.
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