area were Hedouville in Frankfurt, Bourgoing in Dresden and Bignon in
Warsaw. Saxony displayed particular independence, with Frederick
Augustus taking a 'pick and mix' approach to the Napoleonic system: he
fa voured centralization to increase the power of the State, but was
impatient with the bogus assemblies and the representative principle in
general. Saxony also retained the institutions of the ancien regime, though
elsewhere in Germany elements of the prefect/ department system were
introduced. The real snag with Germany was that reform could not make
much headway in the teeth of opposition from local elites whose support
Napoleon needed.
The impression is sometimes given in Anglocentric histories that
Napoleon held down his Empire by main force, and that he had no
collaborators in the subject or satellite states. Nothing could be farther
from the truth. A wide spectrum of pro-Bonapartists is evident in the
extended Empire. In the first place, there were the old elites themselves,
who looked to Napoleon to sustain their power. Had they attempted
anything so quixotic as a 'people's war' against France, they would very
soon have seen their own privileges swept away in the whirlwind. This
explains why, even in Spain, there was support for the Bonapartes and
why the grandees backed Joseph; many hidalgos and afrancesado bourgeois
saw the rising as an assault on the Enlightenment as much as on
Napoleon. There was even a kind of ideological harmony between
Napoleon and the old elites, for the Empire represented a return to
monarchical absolutism and its centralism, even in its attack on the
Church. Politicians and bureaucrats associated with absolutism worked
happily on administration in the satellites. Napoleon particularly
welcomed such collaboration as it furthered his Alexander the Great
project of fusion between old and new elites.
But it was not just in Spain that the intellectual middle class supported
Bonaparte. In Bavaria there were influential bureaucrats and bourgeois,
notably Maximilian von Montgelas, who took the view that the rising tide
of German nationalism was simply an aristocratic ploy to restore their
privileges. Moreover, it would be simpleminded to think that nationalism
always worked against Napoleon. In Poland nationalists yearning for an
independent state backed him, as did those who wanted a united Italy.
There were close bonds linking Napoleon and those agitating for
Hungarian independence from Austria, while in Greece and Romania he
was something of a hero figure for the support he gave those striving for
independence from the Turks. One Italian officer summed up well this
process of liberation through collaboration: 'What does it matter whether
marcin
(Marcin)
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