Napoleon: From the Shadow of the Caesars to the Creation of Modern Caesarism?

Abstract

This article takes as its organizing principle Napoleon’s relationship, first, to the legacy of Julius Caesar in the French Revolution, and then to the legacy of Octavian, which guided his rise to power. It concludes with an analysis of Napoleon’s legacy in the concept of Caesarism as it developed in the nineteenth century, and the extent to which his own relationship to the classical heritage of the first Caesars actually failed to influence this legacy. The French revolutionaries lived in dread of Julius Caesar: he was the powerful general who turned his army on Rome, seized dictatorial powers, and sparked the events that led to the fall of the Republic. Napoleon had to share these fears if he was to avoid Caesar’s own fate. Throughout the years of his rise to power, Napoleon was dogged by the legacy of Julius Caesar, rather than inspired by it. Conversely, once in power, he drew direct inspiration from the example of Octavian, who “appropriated the Republic, rather than overthrew it”: Napoleon took absolute power gradually, declared that “the Republic was entrusted to a hereditary dynasty” and, above all, kept the army and his commanders firmly away from political power during his rule. He sought his power base not in the masses, but in the propertied classes—his “masses of granite.” It was the antithesis of Peronism. The Consulate and Empire were resolutely civilian regimes, even if their ethos was militaristic. Only at the very outset of his rule, through the plebiscites, and during the desperate period of the 100 Days, did Napoleon deploy a style of government that directly foreshadowed future Caesarism. Rather, it was in hindsight that late generations were able to fashion Napoleon as a Caesar, from the example of a general who took power.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Modern Intellectual History, 2026 · DOI ↗