As well as the Napoleonic legal code, he set up the prefectorial administrative system, the central bank, the national audit office and elite administrative colleges; half the administrative rules still in force date from his era. The franc was introduced as the national currency in 1803. State schooling was expanded by lycées run from Paris. The départements created in 1790 to replace the old regions became more important administrative instruments under their imperial Prefects. The nation’s top decoration, the Légion d’honneur, was first awarded to 2,000 troops at a grand ceremony in the camp outside Boulogne set up for the planned invasion of Britain. His claims briefly reached as far away as Australia, where an imperial fleet named the south-east coast Napoleon’s Land with a gulf called after him and another dedicated to Josephine.
However, his ambition and the fear he aroused meant he faced formidable coalitions of opponents backed by British cash and naval supremacy. He lusted for battle – as one historian has put it, he could never see a jugular without going for it in his quest to make himself the equal of Caesar and Alexander. However, his brilliant individual victories did not translate into successful long-term campaigns – he rejected opportunities to consolidate gains with a lasting settlement because, in the words of
How Bonaparte Exhausted France
The constant military ventures exhausted France and resulted in the deaths of the vast majority of more than a million French people killed in wars and internal violence between 1789 and 1815. His protectionist measures weakened the economy and were countered by a stronger British blockade. The invasions of Spain and Portugal ended in defeat. Marriage did not stop Austria joining the sixth coalition against France and sending forces to the battle of Leipzig in 1813, the biggest European encounter before the First World War, at which the imperial army suffered 45,000 dead or wounded.
one recent biographer, he ‘simply could not bring himself to accept what he saw as a humiliating peace’.