Note 1: He is best remembered as one of the authors of the Napoleonic Code, which still forms the basis of French civil law and French-inspired civil law in many countries.
Note 2: His sexual orientation was well-known, and he does not seem to have made any effort to conceal it. He remained unmarried, and kept to the company of other bachelors. Napoleon is recorded as making a number of jokes on the subject.
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.”
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
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)
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!!
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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
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.)
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.
