Edgar Quinet on Napoleon
← Back to Napoleon ProfileFollowing Napoleon's reign and the dismantling of Italian republics, this passage laments the loss of even the possibility of liberty under his militaristic, anti-republican rule.
“As long as there had been a civilian government, and a constitution, and a republic, there were at least the roots from which liberty might still spring, to blossom once more; now there came, with the sword, a regime on principle opposed to liberty.”
Napoleon's vision for Italy, rooted in Ghibelline ideals and a yearning for a subservient papacy, prioritized imperial control over individual liberty, echoing the empires of Constantine and Theodosius.
“The ideal of Napoleon was the Empire of Constantine, and of Theodosius. He inherited this tradition as did all the Italian Ghibellines, from his ancestors... Instead of assisting the liberation of the individual conscience, he always postulated a Pope, of whom he would be the Emperor and master. It is a conception which takes its origins from the idea of the Ghibellines and the medieval commentators. When he dreams of the future it is always of the submissive world of a Justinian or a Theodosius, as imagined by the medieval imperialist thinkers. In the midst of such concepts modern freedom seemed an anachronism; worse, to him it could appear only as the people's whim, as a snare for his power.”