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...eon provided it with his administrative framework. "Bonaparte came, as he said, 'to close the Romance of the Revolution'," H.A.L. Fisher wrote, "to heal the wounds, to correct the extravagances, to secure the conquests. It was his boast that he did not belong to the race of the 'ideologues', that he saw facts through plain glass, and that he came to substitute an age of work for an age of talk...he would create a methodical government based upon popular consent, and conceived in the interests not of any particular faction but of France as a whole." As Napoleon himself explained to the Council of State in 1802: "I govern not as a general but because the nation believes that I have the civilian qualities necessary to govern. If I did not have this opinion, the government could not stand." Napoleon is generally credited with having consolidated the gains of the Revolution ("With the exception of fathering the Civil Code, Napoleon perhaps gloried more in his reputation as consolidator of the Revolution than in any other one title," Robert B. Holtman observed). In this sense he can be credited with having 'saved' the Revolution by ending it. Had the Bourbons come back to power in 1799 instead of Napoleon, they would at that time had less trouble "turning back the clock" to the ancient regime than they had in 1814. As François Furet has put it, "Revolutionary France was indeed under the spell of the new sovereign, who was its son and had saved it from the danger of a restoration...France had finally found the republican monarchy toward which it had been groping since 1789." The Code Napoleon, one of the Emperor's most enduring achievements, embodied many of the principles of the Revolution and made them permanent. To Prince Eugene, his viceroy in Italy, Napoleon wrote, "I am seeking nothing less than a social revolution." Feaudalism was suppressed and careers were open to all those with ability regardless of birth ("Wherever I found talent and courage I rewarded it." Napoleon, 1816) Napoleon became the personification of the revolutionary aims of the bourgeoisie. He reformed and modernized French institutions (historian Jacues Godechot has said that with Napoleon the medieval era ended and modern history began). He brought much longed for order and stability to France and forged a sense of unity. He attempted to unite under his wing both the revolutionaries and the emigres —nobles, clergy and others who chose or were forced to live in exile under the Revolution ("I became the arch of the alliance between the old and the new, the natural mediator between the old and the new orders...I belonged to them both." Napoleon, 1816). The sales of the lands taken from the nobles who had emigrated or been declared enemies of the state, from the Church, or from the Crown (the "biens nationaux") —an important benefit for the middle classes and the peasants of the Revolution— were recognized not only in Napoleon's coronation oath, but also in the signing of the Concordat with the Pope. Robert B. Holtman observed, "This task of consolidation made Napoleon a conservative in France, desirous of keeping the gains of the Revolution, but a revolutionary in acien regime areas abroad." It has been said that many of Napoleon's reforms were just continuations of reforms begun under the Revolution (just as it has been said that many of the reforms of the Revolution were continuations of those begun during the ancien regime). It is important to keep in mind that Napoleon also brought these reforms to the countries with the Empire, where they were truly revolutionary. Owen Connelly has said that "Napoleon...was a conscious promoter of Revolution all over Europe. In fact, I firmly believe that this was the reason for his demise. He was, to the legitimate powers of Europe a crowned Jacobin...[These powers] were able to mobilize against him in the end the very people who stood to gain the most from the governments which Napoleon installed." The principles which Napoleon inherited from the Revolution and consolidated in France, he exported to the countries which fell under the French imperium. If Napoleon's reforms in France were no longer revolutionary, outside of France these same reforms were profoundly revolutionary (Goethe described Napoleon as "the Revolution crowned."). It had been the goal of many of the Revolution's leaders to "revolutionize" the rest of Europe. Napoleon accomplished this. The principle of equality was recognized in the destruction of feudal rights and privileges in the Empire and in the submission of all members of society to a common scheme of justice, the Napoleonic Code. The Legion of Honor was also intended to foster equality, as well as reward talent. "...The establishment of the Legion of Honor, which was the reward for military, civil, and judicial service, united side by side the soldier, the scholar, the artist, the prelate, and the magistrate; it was the symbol of the reunion of all the estates, of all the parties." (Le Memorial De Sainte-Hélène, 1821) The Emperor, as the supreme executive, was deemed the representative of the general will. This powerful executive was a feature also of the relationship between the Convention and the Committee of Public Safety, as well as the Legislature and the Directory. The Revolution, like Napoleon, bore a strong authoritarian streak. "It was Napoleon's function in history to fuse the old France with the new," H.A.L. Fisher observed. Napoleon declared that he wanted "to cement peace at home by anything that could bring the French together and provide tranquility within families." Like Mirabeau, Napoleon didn't see an incompatibility between the Revolution and monarchy. Napoleon did what the Bourbon King could not —reconcile the elements of the monarchy with elements of the Revolution— which was the failed goal of Mirabeau in 1790. Napoleon was largely successful in attracting men from all parties —from ex-Jacobins to ci-devant nobles— to his government. Signing the Concordat (15 July 1801) allowed Napoleon to reconcile the religious differences which had torn France apart during the Revolution. (At the same time, the Concordat insured religious freedom. It recognized Catholicism as the religion of the majority of the French, but did not make it an "established" religion as the Church of England was in Britain. Protestants and Jews were allowed to practice their religion and retain their civic rights.) A general amnesty signed by Napoleon (26 April 1802) allowed all but about one thousand of the most notorious emigres to return to France. These two actions helped to bring relative tranquility to those areas of France which had long been at war with the Revolution. Albert Sobould has written that "stabilizing society on the fu...