"When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates [government officials], there can be no liberty; because apprehensions [fears] may arise, lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws to execute them in a tyrannical manner. . . ."

— Baron de Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws

"We must ask ourselves three questions. 1. What is the Third Estate? Everything. 2. What has it been until now in the political order? Nothing. 3. What does it want to be? Something."

— Abbé Sieyès, 1789 (adapted)

Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen—1789
Approved by the National Assembly of France, August 26, 1789

Articles:

1. Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good.

2. The aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible [inalienable] rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.

4. Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights. These limits can only be determined by law.

Passage: Even in places such as Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and Illyria, where the Code [Napoléon] did not outlive the Empire, it made a strong imprint on the civil laws of the region. Abolition of the Code brought such confusion and chaos in certain countries that they returned to it. In the Italian peninsula, for example, the Two Sicilies in 1812 and Parma, Modena, and Sardinia later adopted codes derived from the Code Napoléon. The code of the Kingdom of Italy, adopted in 1864, likewise had its source in the Napoleonic Code. The Belgians, who were incorporated in the Kingdom of the Netherlands from 1815 to 1830, fought so strongly for the Napoleonic Code that, even after they had broken away, Holland in 1838 adopted a code based on Napoleon’s. The Code Napoléon so impressed governments, even those which did not adopt it, that the 19th century became the great century of legal codification. In addition to the countries mentioned above, Austria, Portugal, Spain, Germany, and Turkey all adopted civil codes. But that of Napoleon easily predominates in the civil-law, as opposed to common-law, world. The Code contributed greatly to Napoleon’s achievement of helping France turn away from the past. It cemented the ideas of freedom of person and of contract (including the right to enter any occupation), equality of all Frenchmen, and freedom of civil society from ecclesiastical [religious] control. As the first truly modern code of laws, the Code Napoléon for the first time in modern history gave a nation a unified system of law applicable to all citizens without distinction. By providing uniformity of laws it further promoted the national unity fostered by the Revolution. Its entire outlook gave a further impulse to the rise of the bourgeoisie. A threatened disintegration of the family under the Convention and Directory was sharply halted, and the family once again became the most important social institution. Source: Robert B. Holtman, The Napoleonic Revolution, J.B. Lippincott from the NYS Global History and Geography Regents Exam, January 2005.

The plans and ambitions of Napoleon Bonaparte, however, did inspire the Latin Americans, although hardly in a way Napoleon expected. The French dictator invaded Spain in 1808, forced the king to abdicate (give up the throne), and presented the Spanish crown to his brother Joseph. At a stroke, Spanish America became part of the Bonaparte family empire. (A few months earlier, Napoleon had invaded Portugal, and the Portuguese royal family had fled to its colony of Brazil.)

Spanish Americans reacted sharply against this French usurper. They refused to accept Joseph Bonaparte as their king, affirmed (declared) their loyalty to the Spanish House of Bourbon, and seized control of their local governments. But almost from the beginning, the rebellion against Napoleon turned into a revolution for complete independence. There could be no turning back to the old system.

"Not by democracy or liberal standards will our goal be achieved but by blood and iron. Then we will be successful, no nation is born without the traumatic experience of war."

—Otto von Bismarck

"Therefore, if we so ardently desire the emancipation [unification] of Italy — if we declare that in the face of this great question all the petty questions that divide us must be silenced — it is not only that we may see our country glorious and powerful but that above all we may elevate her in intelligence and moral development up to the plane of the most civilized nations."

—Camillo di Cavour, 1846