Napoleon: Savior or Destroyer of the Revolution

The French Revolution not only transformed France by sweeping away the legal and political privileges of the ruling elites, but also triggered independent revolutions in other states, such as the French colony of Haiti, where ex-slaves created an independent state. As the revolution progressed, its next conservative phases, after a left-wing Reign of Terror, was the fiveman Directory, which still had to fight the wars unleashed by the revolution (Carlyle, 10).

One of its most promising generals to fight these wars was Napoleon Bonaparte, who had been born in Corsica. On October 5, 1795, with ...