Napoleon, The Revolution, and The Empire

In the face of the long line of political failures that was the Revolution, the foundation of the Empire in 1804 was an attempt to create a new polity, a third way between radical republicanism and royalism. The regime created by Napoleon was a curious mixture of the modern and the traditional, a new social and political fusion between the old and the new France. The Empire, and the reforms that emanated from it, had its roots in the Revolution. Despite the opposition that they sometimes encountered, they were all conceived as instruments of social and political cohesion. The imperial regime represented a new polity that both broke with the past and relied on ancien régime institutions and people to help implant the new order.