Book contents
- The Cambridge History of the Napoleonic Wars
- The Cambridge History of the Napoleonic Wars
- The Cambridge History of the Napoleonic Wars
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Contributors to Volume III
- Introduction to Volume III
- Part I The Experience of War
- Part II The Experience of Imperial Rule
- Part III War, Culture and Memory
- Part IV The Aftermath and Legacy of the Wars
- 21 Demobilisation, Veterans and Civil Society after the Empire in France
- 22 Women, the Nation and the Collective Memory of the Napoleonic Wars
- 23 Jomini, Clausewitz and the Theory of War
- 24 The Legacy of Counter-revolution: Conservative Ideology and Legitimism in France
- 25 Bonapartism
- 26 The Legacy of the Wars for the International System
- 27 The Dislocation of the Global Hispanic World
- 28 Global Empire: Britain’s Century, 1815–1914
- 29 The Napoleonic Wars and Realms of Memory in Europe
- Bibliographic Essays
- Index
24 - The Legacy of Counter-revolution: Conservative Ideology and Legitimism in France
from Part IV - The Aftermath and Legacy of the Wars
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2022
- The Cambridge History of the Napoleonic Wars
- The Cambridge History of the Napoleonic Wars
- The Cambridge History of the Napoleonic Wars
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Contributors to Volume III
- Introduction to Volume III
- Part I The Experience of War
- Part II The Experience of Imperial Rule
- Part III War, Culture and Memory
- Part IV The Aftermath and Legacy of the Wars
- 21 Demobilisation, Veterans and Civil Society after the Empire in France
- 22 Women, the Nation and the Collective Memory of the Napoleonic Wars
- 23 Jomini, Clausewitz and the Theory of War
- 24 The Legacy of Counter-revolution: Conservative Ideology and Legitimism in France
- 25 Bonapartism
- 26 The Legacy of the Wars for the International System
- 27 The Dislocation of the Global Hispanic World
- 28 Global Empire: Britain’s Century, 1815–1914
- 29 The Napoleonic Wars and Realms of Memory in Europe
- Bibliographic Essays
- Index
Summary
The French Revolution was the greatest challenge to political authority and social order that the European world had experienced since the Reformation. So confident were the revolutionaries of their vision of the future that they not only wished to refashion politics but sought the regeneration of mankind. They coined the, far from innocent, label of ancien régime to consign the past to oblivion. The history of the medieval and early modern world was dismissed as a catalogue of errors, crimes and bigotry.1 The world was now liberated from the tyrannical forces of tradition and superstition. It did not take long for opposition against this totalising vision of political and social order to coalesce. As Darrin McMahon has stated: ‘the revolution did not need to invent its enemies. They were there from the outset, and their presence exerted a powerful influence on the dynamics of the revolutionary process.’2 The counter-revolutionaries of the 1790s were the direct heirs of the counter-enlightenment of the eighteenth century.
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- Information
- The Cambridge History of the Napoleonic Wars , pp. 494 - 511Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022