#napoleonic code

[lovegodsmashtyrants]

Napoleon to Jérôme, November 15, 1807: “What the people of Germany impatiently desire is that men without nobility but of genuine ability will have an equal claim upon your favor and advancement, and that every trace of serfdom and feudal privilege…be completely done away with.”

[illustratus]

[empirearchives]

Torture during the Napoleonic era

Torture was abolished in France in 1808 in the Code d'Instruction criminelle (Clémence Zacharie). Napoleon had earlier said on the issue of torture:

“The barbarous custom of having men beaten who are suspected of having important secrets to reveal must be abolished. It has always been recognized that this way of interrogating men, by putting them to torture, produces nothing worthwhile. The poor wretches say anything that comes into their mind and what they think the interrogator wishes to hear.”

Napoleon to Berthier, 11 November 1798, Corres., V, no. 3606, p. 128

[pilferingapples]

napoleon

Just what it says-- the Napoleonic Code, translated into English, divided into subject matter. If you ever wonder “hey, what would the basic law about X have been in France for this era” , here it is! 

(Note that the Code,like most legal systems, did get tweaks and changes along the way! but this is a good place to start)

[siristvantoth]

Hi! This is citizenship anon here, just wanted to thank you + pilferingapples so much for your time/answer! the reason I was asking was because one of my characters in a fic is an indigenous person from a french colony but wants to gain the rights of a french citizen & become a lawyer (right now he’s under indigénat law which treats him unequally). do you know if there would be any way for him to do this without Valjeaning an ID, and/or do you know which codes to look at for this question? (1/2)

(2/2) thanks again so much, and I can't express how much I appreciate your help/your time for the first question. You're so knowledgeable about this subject area, it's amazing!!

---

It’s no problem at all and really there are a lot of gaps in my knowledge haha... Ummm. Assuming your fic is set in Les Mis time period ... I’m going to be honest and say I’m not sure how his being an indigenous person, or a person from the colonies in general, would affect this! I do know that the indigénat I’m familiar with was not instituted until Napoleon III & generally had more to do with Algeria, which is just a little out of my ballpark as far as in-depth research goes.

Within the Napoleonic Code, the stuff about gaining & losing citizenship is really right at the front in the first chapter. And there may be other laws applicable here! But I’ll just quote the Code here:

Of the Enjoyment of Civil Rights.

7. The exercise of civil rights is independent of the quality of citizen, which is only acquired and preserved conformably to the constitutional law.

8. Every Frenchman shall enjoy civil rights.

9. Every individual born in France of a foreigner, may, during the year which shall succeed the period of his majority, claim the quality of Frenchman; provided, that if he shall reside in France he declares his intention to fix his domicil in that country, and that in case he shall reside in a foreign country, he give security to become domiciled in France and establish himself there within a year, to be computed from the date of that undertaking.

10. Every child born of a Frenchman in a foreign country is French. Every child born in a foreign country of a Frenchman who shall have lost the quality of a Frenchman, may at any time recover this quality by complying with the formalities prescribed in the ninth article.

11. A foreigner shall enjoy in France the same civil rights as are or shall be accorded to Frenchmen by the treaties of that nation to which such foreigner shall belong.

12. The foreigner who shall have married a Frenchman, shall follow the condition of her husband.

13. The foreigner who shall have been permitted by the government to establish his domicil in France, shall enjoy in that country all civil rights so long as he shall continue to reside there.

I am assuming your character was not born to a Frenchman, since that would make him French already according to this. I think the questions here are whether the French colony in question counts as being born in France, or born in a foreign country. I am genuinely not sure what the answer to that is! There is a real case to be made that it counts as being France, since it’s French territory. In that case, reading the Code as it’s written, he should be able to naturalize into a French citizen in the year after he turns 21 (age 21 is majority for everything except marriage).

Otherwise I think he’s out of luck for citizenship itself, but it seems like he could certainly still get civil rights & become a lawyer just by “establishing his domicil” in France!

Once again not sure if there are other applicable laws here, other people feel free to chime in

[everyonewasabird]

Canon era marriage laws were WAY more complicated than I realized.

I’ve been reading the Napoleonic Code with regard to How Necessary parental permission was in marriage.

tl;dr: VERY.

Details follow.

(PLEASE note, I’m not a legal expert, or a historical expert, and I’m scanning this pretty quickly. I really may be wrong in all interpretations! I’m also not reading the whole thing.)

As far as I can tell: no marriage before 16 (or 15? It says “15 complete”) for women and 18 for men, barring special government dispensation.

Before 21 for women and 25 for men you needed parental permission.

After that, parents Still legally had to be asked--and proof of this was expected. (If there are no parents capable of giving consent, this all rolls over to the grandparents.)

Parents still could veto, up to age 30 for men and 25 for women, sort of:

152. From the majority fixed by article 148 to the age of 30 years completed for sons, and until the age of 25 years completed for daughters, the respectful act required by the preceding article and on which consent to marriage shall not have been obtained, shall be renewed two several times, from month to month; and one month after the third act it shall be lawful to pass on to the celebration of the marriage.

I THINK this means that if you’re between 25 and 30 you have to ask your parents once a month for three months, and if they still say no after the third request you can go through with it over their heads?

Over the age of 30, you STILL have to ask your parents, but even if they say no, you can wait a month and go through with it anyway.

(If you don’t notify your parents, the person who performed the marriage ceremony is fined and imprisoned. They were NOT messing around about the parent thing.)

I had a lot of questions about whether people just, like, ran off to some country with fewer laws about this, but they seem to cover that too:

170. A marriage contracted in a foreign county between natives of France, and between a native of France and a foreigner, shall be valid, if celebrated according to the forms used in that country, provided that it has been preceded by the publications prescribed in article 63, under the title "Of acts of the civil power," and that the Frenchman has not infringed the regulations contained in the preceding chapter

And:

171. Within three months after the return of a Frenchman into the territory of the republic, the act of the celebration of marriage contracted in a foreign country, shall be transcribed into the public register of marriages, at the place of his domicil.

So I think that means your parents were STILL definitely going to have to be in the loop about it.

Maybe (MAYBE) there’s finally a loophole that once you’re married for a full year, the people who might have been able to object to it stop being able to object:

183. A suit for nullity is no longer maintainable either by the married persons, or by the relations whose consent was required, in those cases where the marriage has been approved, either expressly or tacitly, by those whose consent was necessary; or when a year has elapsed without complaint on their part, subsequently to their knowledge of the marriage. Such suit is no longer maintainable by a spouse, after the lapse of a year without complaint on his part, subsequently to his having attained the competent age for consenting to the marriage in his own person.

But Wow is this not easy.

(If anyone knows of ways people got around all this, please message me! I’m pondering fic plotting here, and I’d like to know what does and doesn’t work. I also may just not write anything about marriage! But it was a thought I had and I’m curious what the laws around it were.)

[napoleondidthat]

Why do the French not like Napoleon much today? :(

I don’t know if they particularly don’t like him, I think they’re probably a bit indifferent to him at times. There have been articles written by Napoleonic historians asking this question. For example, some 200 anniversaries passed that the French government had nothing to do with, sent no representation or the French President didn’t attend (mainly Waterloo and the signing of the abdication at Fountainebleau, re-enactments were held at both places). There is only a small street in Paris, Napoleon’s capital, named after him. Napoleon is tricky because do they honor someone who indeed did usurp power? Do they honor someone who had a hand in many wars that ravaged Europe and led to deaths of people?

On the other hand, what I just laid out above, is not completely fair to the French. No, there isn’t a grand boulevard named after Napoleon. But Napoleon IS honored. His tomb is in the heart of Paris and the Army Museum has a huge Napoleonica wing. Every year at the anniversary of his death, a mass is sung and held. The Arc de Triomphe, Napoleon’s project, along with his other projects like the Arc du Carrousel and the Vendome Column, still stand. Malmaison and his other residences are taken care of and are museums dedicated to his life.  It’s not as if they’re actively denying or hiding the fact that he played a huge role in their history and still does. One could also ask where are all the monuments to Marie Antoinette? In fact, the Napoleonic Code still exists as the basis of French law. 

I think Napoleon would be okay with the way he’s remembered. He may not have a huge statue and street named after him, but his law is still used. I think he’d like that better anyway.

[empirearchives]

Changes to the Tax Collection System in Revolutionary and Napoleonic France

My translation from Le prix de la gloire: Napoléon et l’argent by Pierre Branda.

This part is specifically about the reforms made to the tax collection system. Problems with taxation had been the source of many woes, so it went through major changes.

“The [tax] work of the Consulate mainly concerned the reorganization of tax collection. Until now, this essential element was not administered directly by the Ministry of Finance. The Constituent Assembly had wanted the tax rolls for direct contributions, that is to say the ‘tax slips’, to be established by municipal administrations. Their work was complex, because each year it was necessary to draw up a list of taxpayers, determine each person’s share of tax and send them the amount of the contribution to pay. Poorly motivated (or even corrupt), the municipalities had put little care in the execution of their mission since a large part of the taxpayers had not yet received anything for their taxes of year VIII, or even of year VII or year VI. Also, with two or three years of delay in preparing the rolls, it was not surprising that tax revenues were low (nearly 400 million francs were thus left outstanding). If the sending of tax matrices left something to be desired, the collection of direct contributions was hardly better. The tax collector was also not an agent of the administration: this function was assigned to any person who agreed to collect taxes with the lowest possible commission (otherwise called ‘collecte à la moins-dite’). With such a system, there were numerous inadequacies, often due to incompetence, but also due to the prevailing spirit of fraud. However, in their defense, the profits of the collectors were most of the time too low to provide such a service; also, to compensate for their losses, they were ‘forced’ to multiply small and big cheats. In any case, in such a troubled period, letting simple individuals carry out such a delicate mission could only be dangerous for the regularity of public accounts. In short, the mode of operation of taxation that Bonaparte and Gaudin inherited was failing on all sides and threatened to sink the State.”

“One month after Gaudin’s appointment, on December 13, 1799, the Directorate of Direct Contributions was created with the mission of establishing and sending tax matrices. This administration, dependent on the Ministry of Finance, was made up of a general director, 99 departmental directors and 840 inspectors and controllers. The organization of direct contributions became both centralized and pyramidal, the opposite of the previous system, decentralized and with a confused hierarchy. The work of preparing the rolls, for so long entrusted to local authorities, passed entirely ‘in the hands of the Minister of Finance’ and in this way the taxpayer found himself in direct contact with the administration. The tax system no longer having any obstacles, the beneficial effects of such a measure did not take long to be felt. With ardor, the agents of this new administration carried out considerable work: three series of rolls, that is to say more than one hundred thousand tax slips, were established in a single year. It must be said that the ministry had not skimped on their pay (6,000 francs per year for a director, 4,000 for an inspector and 1,800 for a controller), which was undoubtedly not unrelated to such success.”

“Tax reform was slower. It was not until 1804 that all tax collectors were civil servants. The consular system gradually replaced the collectors of the departments, then of the main cities and finally of all the municipalities whose tax rolls exceeded 15,000 francs. At the end of the Consulate, the entire tax administration was thus entirely dependent on the central government. Subsequently, the one in charge of indirect contributions (taxes on tobacco, alcohol or salt) created on February 25, 1804 and called the Régie des droits réunis was built on the same pyramidal and centralized model. It was the same later for customs.”

“According to Michel Bruguière, historian of public finances, ‘Napoleon and Gaudin can be considered the builders of the French tax administration. [...] They had also developed and codified the essential principles of our tax law, so profoundly derogatory from the rules of French law, since the taxpayer has nothing to do with it, while the administration has all the powers’. Basically, after having clearly understood the true cause of the ‘financial wound’, Bonaparte wanted an effective, almost ‘despotic’ instrument to avoid experiencing the unfortunate fate of his predecessors. As a good soldier, he created a fiscal ‘army’ responsible for providing the regime with the sinews of war. It was also necessary to definitively break the link between private interests and state service in everything that concerned public revenue. The time of the farmer generals of the Ancien Régime or the ‘second-hand’ collectors of the Directory was well and truly over. Napoleon Bonaparte, with his fierce desire to centralize power in this area as in many others, undoubtedly gave his regime the means to last.”

French:

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