Napoleon carried out of the revolution its slogans of freedom — and subordinated them to a single idol: his own glory and will. From a general he became First Consul, and from Consul an emperor who crowned himself. In this logic the peoples of Europe ceased to be masters of their own fate and became the raw material of imperial expansion: their lands were redrawn, their sons taken into the Grande Armée, their crowns handed out to his relatives and marshals. A genius who had set himself above all others measured history by the scale of a single personality.
The catastrophe spilled across the whole continent. The wars ran on almost without respite for a decade and a half and cost millions of lives. The campaign against Russia in 1812 was the culmination: an army of half a million reached a burned Moscow — and melted away on the road back. The Russian winter, hunger, and unceasing blows reduced the Grande Armée to pitiful remnants; only tens of thousands straggled back to their own borders. The idol of invincibility crashed down in the snows, and this was the beginning of the end.
The captivity came twice. First came the Europe that Napoleon had occupied and carved to his own design. Then, after his fall, the Restoration: the Congress of Vienna of 1814 to 1815 returned the old monarchies to their thrones, and the "Holy Alliance" set itself to guard the old order and to snuff out every stirring of free thought. The peoples who had tasted change were once more subjected to the very power from which they had seemed to be freed; freedom was postponed and pressed down by reaction.
But a remelting did take place after all — not on the fields of battle but in law. The Napoleonic Civil Code of 1804 established equality before the law, abolished the vestiges of feudalism, and affirmed that a person rises by merit rather than by birth. This code outlived its creator and spread across dozens of countries, remaining his most enduring conquest. And the wars also awakened something Napoleon had not foreseen: the national feeling of the conquered peoples. This awakened nationalism would sprout in the revolutions of 1848 and in the unification of Italy and Germany — a two-faced force, bearing both liberation and the seeds of future wars.