To what extent did the domestic reforms of Napoleon complete the work of the Revolution?

Napoleon had a plan for the revolution. The idea of it was that France would become an equal state. The main things that the revolution came forth with was the ability to give freedom of a religion, a more enforced law which would help try and deal with the crimes that were being committed throughout France, with the criminals getting away with their crimes. Napoleon’s main reform was to get France out of the huge debt they were in. Napoleon also heavily concentrated on the education reform, throughout all of France.

One of Napoleons biggest accomplishments throughout France was that he gave people the right to practise their own religion wherever they wanted to without them having any consequences, such as being punished for not being a Christian. Napoleon even helped pass a new act, called the Citizen’s Act. This was a huge accomplishment for Napoleon as it meant it guaranteed freedom of religion, meaning you could practise any religion you wanted in France. Napoleon even granted a homeland for the Jews, he helped create a group to represent them which was elected by the Jews, to ensure they had what they desired in the elected group.

One of his greatest accomplishments in religion was ensuring that Jews were no longer restricted to living only in the “Ghettos”. On top of this in 1807 he made sure that Judaism was made one of the already several official religions in France. Overall Napoleon was very successful with his freedom of religion as he was able to pass a citizens act and allowed Judaism to be added to the official religions of France, because of this Napoleon became increasingly popular with the Jews. Napoleon needed to improve the law and its enforcement during his domestic reform.

He established and created something called the Prefecture. This was built up of several departments, each having its own leader of the department with the crime what was being committed in its area. Once this had been created France saw a fall in crime levels, so was reasonably successful in reducing the crime rate within France. Napoleon was very keen on improving the education throughout France. Napoleon had many ideas that he out into action. One of his most important idea was to introduce 4 different types of schools, these included; Primary school.

Secondary school, lycees schools which were military schools run on the lines for the soldiers and technical schools. Depending on what the individual wanted to do as their chosen career, depended on what they were taught. For example, if a student wanted to be in a military background the school would teach the student things such as maths, physics and military tactics. Other jobs would teach students languages and philosophy. This procedure was proven to be extremely successful as more than 18,000,000 were attending the 36 schools on the military lines out of Frances 30 million people.

Napoleon made sure that once a student has finished their selected teachings for their carer, they were guaranteed and job in the career they had chosen. Napoleon even tried to promote equality within his education reform by allowing females to study things such as religious studies. Napoleon was extremely successful with his education policies as he was able to get millions of people educated within France and got them all jobs after they had finished school, and even educated women. Napoleon continued to use the two types of money which were being used, the assignat and the franc.

He also created of the Ministry of Finance and the Treasury as he also believed this would help France better their wealth overall. Napoleon used the National lottery, he did this so people would buy tickets so he could generate an income, and this generated around 9 million francs. Napoleon then also took about a further 3 million francs from bank loans. At the time, many of the tax collectors were corrupt and would take a lot of the money, to overcome this Napoleon employed 840, new and professional tax collectors.

This was done to get rid of the corrupt tax collectors stealing the money, which was intended to go the government. Once these tax collectors were employed, the French government gained about 660 million francs. The bank of France was also set up, where people could take out a loan with 6% interest. This increased the amount of money that the bank earned by quite a lot. Napoleon also decided to increase the tax on some of the items being sold in France. These included things such as tobacco and carriages.

These items were on of the highest sellers in France, especially tobacco, which meant the government generated a huge amount of income from the tax on these items. The French government also bought and gave bread to the poor; this meant Napoleon never had to devalue the currency and was able to control inflation. Napoleon was also able to reduce poverty, while reducing the cost of living. Napoleon generated a huge income from these policies, generating 660 million francs from tax collection alone. In conclusion, I think that Napoleon did complete the work of the revolution.

He was able to give equal rights to people practising different religions such as Judaism. He was able to give a successful education to individuals to become a professional in their career and was even able to give women an education. He was successful in restoring law and order by giving each area a department in which they could control the law. He was incredibly successful in increasing income for France by increasing tax and replacing tax collectors. Overall I believe that Napoleon was very successful in restoring successful domestic reforms and was able to successfully complete the work of the revolution.