‘Napoleon established a police state in France in the years 1800-1814’ - LAW

Question 1

Updates to judiciary

Answer 1

• Creation of State prisons from 1810, more prisons = more convictions
• Judges supervised and a system to purge them
• Strict punishments (such as removal of the hand), and use of imprisonment without trial

Question 2

Response to Royalist threat

Answer 2

• Military tribunals to deal with rebel leaders e.g. arbitrary execution of Duc d’Enghien, without proper trial
• Plot hatched to kidnap him and accused of bearing arms against Republic, receiving funds from England and plotting; admitted to first two and found guilty; shot in ditch of Chateau de Vincennes; royalists gave Napoleon little trouble thereafter

Question 3

How was it not really a police state?

Answer 3

• Execution of Duc D’Enghien seen to be very unusual within Napoleonic France
• Transparent legal system, which supported the power of the police, and which the police were limited by
• 1808 criminal jury = more liberal and transparent for the time
• Imprisonment without trial only fairly rarely used. (e.g. the Council checked whether or not prisoners should be detained in the State prisons – in 1811, for example, they set free 145 prisoners)