Did the Napoleonic Code allow for the citizens to have rights?
The Code Napoleon has even influenced the United States, a country steeped in the traditions of common law. In 1808, soon after President Thomas Jefferson purchased Louisiana from Napoleon, American lawmakers in the new territory wrote a code of laws largely taken from Napoleon’s Civil Code. This territorial code remains as the foundation of Louisiana state law today. The code’s influence is not limited to Louisiana. Legislators patterned the New York state civil and criminal codes, first completed in 1850, on the Code Napoleon. These codes served as models for similar codes in other states and in the federal government. The old common law was codified, placed in codes. After defeating Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815, the British imprisoned him on a remote island. Thinking about his career as a general and leader of France, Napoleon remarked: “My real glory is not the 40 battles I won—for my defeat at Waterloo will destroy the memory of those victories. . . . What nothing will destroy, wh
Very limited rights. A lot of the rights that people had been granted during the Revolutionary decade were taken away. Freedom of the press was stifled, and heavy censorship was introduced. Imprisonment without trial was introduced again. Women in particular suffered from the introduction of the code Napoleon. during the revolutionary period, women had been granted property rights, the right to obtain a divorce from an abusive spouse, and there were pensions for widows and for unmarried mothers. under Napoleon’s rule, women were deprived of any rights at all. Napoleon believed that women were only good for having babies and should always be under the rule of a man.
