Age of Napoleon

From the time that Napoleon Bonaparte (1769 - 1821) emerged as the general of the French Republic in 1796 until the ultimate collapse of his dictatorship over France in 1815, Napoleon was by far the most powerful and influential man in Europe and France the most powerful state. The great European powers (Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, and Russia) worked together closely in what became known as the "Concert of Europe" to defeat Napoleon and revolutionary France, so that they could preserve the Conservative "Old Regime" and crush the forces of Liberalism. It is estimated that between three and six million people may have died in these Napoleonic Wars. Europe would not witness a war of such magnitude again until the outbreak of World War I in 1914.

Napoleon's historical legacy is very mixed. Napoleon in one respect was the hero of the French Revolution, whose victorious armies advanced the high ideals of this revolution -"liberty, equality, and fraternity". French revolutionary armies introduced the principles of equal rights under the law and a written constitution in the countries, which they occupied. In France , Napoleon instituted the rational and egalitarian Napoleonic Code as the law of the land. Moreover, Napoleon's military success demonstrated that nationalism could unite a people sharing a common culture and language, such as the French, and lead them to great heights of power and influence. However, Napoleon's critics have pointed out that Napoleon was a brutal dictator and despot, who sought to dominate and control Europe. Generally, the peoples of Europe came to fear and hate the French armies under Napoleon's command that occupied their countries. Historians do agree, whether viewing him as a hero or despot, that Napoleon was a military genius. An avid student of military history, Napoleon employed certain tactics in his military campaigns that he had learned from these studies. Napoleon paid particular attention to the logistics of his campaigns. He never mounted an attack unless his troops were well fed and rested. Napoleon thus also won the affection and extreme loyalty of his troops.Second, when he did attack, he mounted his offensives quickly and with great force so as to shock and awe the enemy. Such tactics enabled Napoleon to win almost all of his battles over his career.

Napoleon Bonaparte was a native of Corsica and grew up speaking the local dialect of Italian that was spoken on this Mediterranean island. France had annexed the island in 1765, just four years before Napoleon's birth. Born to an aristocratic family, Napoleon attended a military academy in France, which trained officers for the French army. Even though Napoleon was an aristocrat, he supported the ideals of the French Revolution and the republic since as a Corsican, he felt like an outsider among French aristocrats. Since most French, aristocratic military officers wanted nothing to do with the army of revolutionary France, Napoleon rapidly rose up the ranks of this army even in his 20's, as he had received formal officer training.

In 1795 the French republic under the Directory was still at war with Great Britain and Austria and in desperate need of competent military leadership. In 1795 French forces had occupied and annexed the Austrian Netherlands. As some of the people of this region spoke Walloon, a French dialect, France added this region to France. Many middle class inhabitants of this region actually welcomed the French armies as liberators. Back in 1789 a revolt broke out in the Austrian Netherlands, which declared itself to be the independent republic of the United States of Belgium in 1790. This rebellion resulted from the unpopular, heavy handed policies of the German officials that the Hapsburg emperor, Joseph II had appointed to govern the region. Joseph's successor, his brother Leopold II, quickly crushed this republic and restored Austrian rule. The first arrival of French armies in 1794 was therefore greeted with enthusiasm by the local inhabitants. In 1795 French armies also overran the Dutch Netherlands and were also welcomed as liberators by the middle class inhabitants of this region too. The Stadtholder of the United Provinces, William V of Orange was quite unpopular, especially in the most populous province of Holland, whose merchants desired more local autonomy. In 1786 Holland had risen up against the government of the Stadtholder, referring to themselves as the Patriots. William was only able to reestablish control over the rebel province in 1787 with the aid of the Prussian army of his brother-in-law, Frederick William II. After the French invasion in 1795, the Dutch Patriots based in Holland renamed their country, the Batavian Republic ("Belgium" and "Batavia" were the ancient, classical names of these regions. Supporters of a republic employed these names to invoke the memory of the ancient Roman republic). This Batavian Republic adopted a constitution modeled after that of the French Republic and remained a firm ally of France until the end of the Napoleonic Wars.

In 1796 Napoleon led French armies south into northern Italy where Hapsburg Austria was the dominant power. Middle class Italians in this region also initially welcomed the arrival of the French army. The independent city-state of Genoa now became the Ligurian Republic. The French also drove the Austrian army out of the Duchy of Milan, which now became the Cisalpine Republic. in 1797 French armies occupied the Swiss Confederation, just north of Italy, and the Papal States in central Italy, which were renamed the republics of Helvetia and Rome. In 1797, Napoleon in Italy negotiated a peace treaty with Austria, the Peace of Campo Formio, in which the Austrians withdrew all claims to lands in Italy with the exception of the city-state of Venice, which the Austrian Hapsburg empire formally annexed, thus ending the autonomy of the ancient Venetian Republic. Napoleon had only opened negotiations with Austrians at the request of the French government since Napoleon's army was needed back in France to support the Directory. In elections to the legislature, many royalists had just won seats, and the leaders of the Directory, as moderate republicans, were afraid of losing power to these political opponents. With the arrival of Napoleon's army back in France, the government of the Directory nullified the results of this election in the Fructidor Coup in September, 1797. The backing of Napoleon's loyal army therefore maintained the republican government in power.

After 1797, only Great Britain was at war with France. To prosecute this war, French privateers targeted ships trading with Great Britain. In 1795 the United States and Great Britain had signed the Jay Treaty to open up British ports to American trade. The French government viewed this treaty as an alliance between the United States and Great Britain, so the French attacked American ships on the open sea. By 1797 an undeclared naval war or Quasi-war had broken out at sea between France and the United States. In 1798 France also sent a small expeditionary force to Ireland to support an uprising there by the Roman Catholic inhabitants against Great Britain. The British government crushed this uprising by 1800. The Irish Parliament was abolished and the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, and Ireland was created by the British Parliament with the Act of Union of 1800. In 1798 Napoleon also launched an invasion of Egypt and the Ottoman Empire in a bid to force Great Britain to end the war. The British navy and British merchants stopped at friendly ports in Egypt and the Red Sea on the way to British India. Napoleon hoped that the British would come to peace terms with France in return for France relinquishing control of these strategic Egyptian ports. Unfortunately for Napoleon, this plan failed. At first, Napoleon enjoyed great success and his armies occupied the Ottoman provinces of Egypt and Palestine. However, the powerful British fleet controlled the eastern Mediterranean sea and prevented Napoleon's forces in Egypt from securing sufficient supplies from France to continue the campaign. Due to the British fleet, Napoleon was barely able to withdraw his forces from Egypt back to France.

Napoleon's failed invasion of the Ottoman Empire invigorated the enemies of the French Republic. The Ottoman Sultan, Selim III joined Great Britain and Hapsburg Austria in an alliance against France. The Russian Czar, Paul I , also entered into this alliance. Previously, the Russian Empire had not engaged in the wars against revolutionary France, as Russia was too busy consolidating its control over Poland. Napoleon's invasion of the Ottoman Empire, however, angered Paul since he had plans of his own to conquer territory from the Ottoman Empire. In 1799 Russian and Austrian armies overran Italy and overthrew all the republics that French armies had previously established. Toward the end of the year these allied forces were poised to invade France itself, and French peasants in the countryside were in revolt, demanding a return of the monarchy. In this time of crisis, Napoleon with the backing of the army assumed emergency powers as military dictator and overthrew the Directory in an event known as the Coup d' Etat.

Napoleon quickly legitimized his military dictatorship in 1799 by drafting a new constitution for France that was approved by a popular referendum in 1800. Under this Constitution Napoleon held the position as head of state with the title First Consul. Initially, his term as First Consul was for ten years, but in 1802, Napoleon amended this constitution so that he became Consul for Life. In 1804 Napoleon amended this constitution again and assumed the title of Emperor, transforming the French Republic into a hereditary constitutional monarchy. Under Napoleon's constitution, all adult males could vote in French elections. These voters in each region elected wealthy property owners (the "notables" - i.e. merchants, large landowners), who in turn as Electors, chose the members of the Legislative Body. Under this constitution, the First Consul (Napoleon) chose the members of the Senate. This Legislative Body and Senate could only propose new laws. Any new law that they proposed was then debated by another body known as the Tribunate, which was elected by the Senate. The Legislative Body and Senate could only approve laws as presented by the First Consul (Napoleon). The French legislature normally rubber stamped the laws presented to it by Napoleon since he controlled elections to this body. France was divided up into Prefectures (provinces), whose Prefects (governors) were chosen by Napoleon. Each Prefect controlled the local police force. Under Napoleon's regime, the police often arrested or briefly detained vocal critics of the government, so that they could not run for office. Prefects posted publicly lists of candidates, who supported Napoleon, for the legislature and used the police to pressure the Electors into supporting these candidates. Napoleon's regime therefore foreshadowed the despotic police states of the next century.

After assuming powers as military dictator, Napoleon swiftly worked to resolve the crisis in France though diplomatic and military means. In 1800 Napoleon reached an agreement with the US President John Adams to end the Quasi-War between the two nations. France agreed to stop attacking US ships on the high seas, as long as the US didn't seek compensation for the ships and cargoes that the French navy had earlier seized. In 1800 Napoleon also convinced the Russian Czar, Paul I, to withdraw from the alliance against France. Napoleon pointed out to Paul that the ongoing war between France and Great Britain offered Paul the opportunity to advance Russian interests in Central Asia and India at the expense of Great Britain, who would be too occupied by the war in Europe to protect its empire in India. In 1800 Napoleon took the offensive against the Hapsburg Austrian Empire and invaded northern Italy. French armies enjoyed success in this campaign and reoccupied the region. In 1801 France and Austria reached a peace agreement, the Treaty of Luneville, which reinstated the terms of the earlier 1797 Peace of Campo Formio. Napoleon afterwards organized much of northern Italy into the Italian Republic in 1802 with himself as president and head of state. Later in 1805, after becoming emperor of France, Napoleon declared himself king of Italy. After France secured peace with Austria in 1801, Great Britain (now the United Kingdom) was waging war alone against France. In 1802 the United Kingdom and France reached a peace agreement, the Treaty of Amiens, which brought temporary peace to Europe after a decade of constant war.

Napoleon took advantage of this lull in fighting in Europe to press for his dream of rebuilding France's empire in North America. In 1800 Napoleon had pressured the weak and ineffective king of Spain, Charles IV, to sign the Treaty of Ildefonso. Under this treaty, France exchanged lands in Tuscany in Italy with Spain for Spain's Louisiana Territory, a vast expanse of territory in North America that included the lands watered by the Mississippi River and its western tributaries, along with the port of New Orleans. Napoleon's plan for creating a French Empire in North America also included the recovery of the French Caribbean colony of Saint-Domingue (modern Haiti). In 1791 the African slaves on the sugar plantations of the island had risen up in revolt with the support of the small population of free blacks, who were inspired by the ideas of the French Revolution. In 1794 the National Convention in France abolished slavery in all French colonies. Consequently the now freed slaves fought for France under the military leadership of Toussaint Louverture in the ongoing war against Great Britain. In 1801 a constitutional convention on Saint-Domingue drafted a constitution, which established the French colony as autonomous and self-governing with Toussaint Louverture as president. However, wealthy French sugar planters had lost their vast fortunes due to the abolition of slavery on the French colony. Saint-Domingue had previously exported huge amounts of sugar to France from its plantations. These planters urged Napoleon to impose direct French control over this colony and to reestablish slavery in the colony. In 1802, Napoleon sent 20,000 French troops to the island to accomplish these objectives. The army of Saint-Domingue under the command of Louverture retreated into the mountainous interior of the island and waged a guerrilla war against French forces with deadly hit-and-run attacks. Yellow fever and malaria decimated the French army in Haiti, which lost two-thirds of its forces in this conflict. In 1802 French forces did capture Louverture, who died in a French prison in 1803. However, the new military commander, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, who had betrayed his former commander, Louverture to the French, led his army to victory over the depleted French army by the end of 1803, when Napoleon ordered the remnants of his army to withdraw from the island. In 1804, Saint-Domingue formally declared its independence from France as the nation of Haiti, which was the indigenous name of the region prior to European colonization.Haiti became the second independent nation in the Western Hemisphere after the United States. Dessalines in 1804 as military dictator assumed the title of emperor and ordered the massacre of the remaining white population in Haiti. Due to the failure of the French military operation in Haiti and its heavy cost, Napoleon abandoned his plans for a French empire in North America. In 1803, Napoleon contacted the US government and offered to sell the US the Louisiana Territory. President Thomas Jefferson agreed to purchase this territory from France for $15 million. This Louisiana Purchase in 1803 nearly doubled the size of the United States and helped establish its future economic dominance.

Between 1803 and 1805 the great European powers formed a fresh coalition to overturn revolutionary France and to defeat Napoleon, but Napoleon successively smashed this coalition by 1807 and established France and himself as the dominant power in Europe, remaking the map of Europe in the process. In 1801, Alexander I succeeded his father, Paul I, as Czar following his father's assassination by his own generals. Alexander I viewed Napoleon as an evil despot, who was sowing chaos and disorder in the world. Consequently, Alexander played a key role in organizing a grand alliance to crush Napoleon's regime. In 1803, the United Kingdom under the leadership of the prime minister, William Pitt the Younger, broke the Treaty of Amiens and declared war on France. In 1805, Alexander I entered into an alliance with the United Kingdom along with Frederick William III of Prussia and Francis II of Austria.

Napoleon decided to launch an offensive against this hostile coalition instead of waiting for these powers to invade France. In 1805 French armies advanced across southern Germany in the direction of Vienna, the capital of the Austrian Empire. Napoleon's army crushed Austrian forces at the Battle of Ulm and afterwards occupied Vienna. Shortly thereafter the French army defeated a combined Russian and Austrian force at the Battle of Austerlitz, which was fought in the Austrian Empire in what is today the Czech Republic. The French victories at Ulm and Austerlitz compelled Francis II and Austria to withdraw from the coalition and seek a separate peace with France with the Treaty of Pressburg in December, 1805. In 1806 Napoleon directed his armies against Prussia. At the Battle of Jena in northern Germany French forces won a decisive victory over the Prussian army, and French forces afterwards occupied Berlin, the capital of Prussia. In 1807 Napoleon invaded Poland and advanced against Russian forces. At the Battle of Friedland Napoleon's army nearly wiped out half of the Russian force opposing it. In 1807 after this battle, Napoleon forced both Russia and Prussia to sign the Treaty of Tilsit and become reluctant allies of France against the United Kingdom, which was the last remaining European power of the once grand coalition.

Due to this string of victories between 1805 and 1807, Napoleon restructured the states of Europe to establish French domination of this continent. In 1806, Napoleon formally abolished the Holy Roman Empire. He consolidated over 300 principalities of this former empire into 36 states and organized these states into the Confederation of the Rhine, which was allied to France. In Germany, Napoleon in 1807 also deprived Prussia of much of its territory. From these lands in western Germany, Napoleon created the Kingdom of Westphalia and installed his brother Jerome Bonaparte as king. Napoleon also decided to transform the Batavian Republic into a monarchy, and he appointed another one of his brothers, Louis Bonaparte as the king of Holland. After the Bourbon king of Naples, Ferdinand IV, joined the grand coalition against France in 1805, Napoleon in 1806 sent French troops to southern Italy, which forced Ferdinand to withdraw to Sicily. Napoleon appointed yet another brother, Joseph Bonaparte as the new king of Naples. In 1807 Napoleon deprived Russia of its territory in Poland. From these lands, Napoleon created the Duchy of Warsaw, and he appointed an ally, the German king of Saxony, Frederick Augustus, as its duke.

After the Treaty of Tilsit in 1807, the United Kingdom was the only European power at war with France. Napoleon knew that a French invasion of Great Britain was impossible due to the superiority of the British fleet. In 1805, the British navy crushed the French fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar fought off the Atlantic coast of Spain. Consequently, Napoleon hoped that a commercial blockade against the United Kingdom would ruin the British economy and force the United Kingdom to make peace with France. After the occupation of Berlin in 1806, Napoleon with his Berlin Decree announced the creation of a Continental System, which authorized France and allied states to close their ports to trade with the United Kingdom. The Treaty of Tilsit required both Prussia and Russia to join the Continental System. In the years that followed the creation of the Continental System, Napoleon overextended French military and financial resources to enforce this blockade, resulting in the ultimate collapse of Napoleon's empire in 1814.

The United Kingdom responded to the Berlin Decree in 1807 by imposing a counter- blockade against the ports of France and France's allies. Consequently, the British fleet began to board and seize American ships that continued to trade with the French. Due to these British attacks on United States' ships on the open sea, the United States in 1812 declared war against the United Kingdom, even though the French fleet had also seized American ships trading with the United Kingdom. These French attacks, however, were far less frequent than attacks on American ships by the British. Moreover, leaders in the US desired to invade and annex British Canada since they rightfully suspected that British colonial officials in Canada were providing arms and supplies to hostile Native American peoples such as the Shawnee, who were attacking American settlers along the country's western frontier. This War of 1812 ended in 1814 in a draw. The United States government lacked the military and financial resources to occupy successfully British Canada, whereas the United Kingdom relied heavily on Native American forces and inexperienced local Canadian militia to conduct military operations, as its own military was focused on the war in Europe against Napoleon. In 1814, after the war against Napoleon reached a successful conclusion, the United Kingdom did send substantial forces to North America to prosecute the war. However, other than the burning of Washington DC, British forces were unable to win a decisive victory over the Americans in 1814. Both sides, exhausted by war, agreed to end the war with the Treaty of Ghent, in which the British agreed to withdraw from all American territory that they had occupied during the war, while the Americans pledged not to seek compensation for the ships and cargoes that the British navy had seized over the years. Ironically, US forces won their greatest victory over the British in 1815 at the Battle of New Orleans, after the signing of this peace treaty, since neither side knew that the war was already over. As a result of this war, British officials in Canada did stop providing Native American peoples in United States territory with arms and supplies, which enabled the United States to pacify its western regions and to settle and develop these areas.

The War of 1812 proved to be a relatively minor distraction for the British government in the war against Napoleon, whereas Napoleon found himself fighting wars on multiple fronts in his efforts to enforce the Continental System against the United Kingdom. Since the kingdoms of Denmark and and Sweden continued to trade with the United Kingdom, French forces occupied these kingdoms in 1807-1808 to prevent this trade. In 1810 Napoleon appointed his friend and brother-in-law, Jean Bernadotte, the middle class son of a French attorney, as king of Sweden (the last Vasa king of Sweden, Charles XIII, formally adopted Bernadotte as his son and heir). Bernadotte, however, ingratiated himself with the Swedish Estates General, the Riksdag, and agreed to rule as a constitutional monarch. In 1813 Bernadotte betrayed Napoleon and allied Sweden with Napoleon's enemies. Later, in 1818 Bernadotte was officially crowned as king Charles XIV of Sweden and reigned as the constitutional monarch until his death in 1844.

In addition to Denmark and Sweden, French forces also occupied Spain and Portugal in 1807-1808 to prevent these areas from conducting trade with Great Britain. Maria I of Portugal and her son John VI in 1808 escaped Portugal and settled in Brazil, which became an independent state. John VI's son, Pedro in 1822 became the emperor of Brazil. Napoleon in 1808 appointed his brother Joseph as the new king of Spain to replace the Bourbon king, Ferdinand VII, whom Napoleon deposed. In response to this French occupation, the United Kingdom sent British forces to Portugal and Spain under the command of Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington. British forces worked closely with Portuguese and Spanish militias against the French occupying army. These militias engaged in a brutal guerrilla war against the French troops. This Peninsular War (1807 - 1814) took a heavy toll on the French army. Napoleon's troubles in Spain persuaded the Austrian emperor, Francis II in 1809 to attempt to break free from his alliance with Napoleon. However, Napoleon swiftly lead his troops against Austria, and Vienna fell. Napoleon punished Francis II by depriving the Austrian empire of territory and creating the Illyrian Provinces (modern Slovenia and Croatia) under French occupation under the terms of the Treaty of Schonbrunn. In 1810 Napoleon sealed this new alliance with Austria through his marriage to Francis II' daughter, Marie Louise, who gave birth to Napoleon's only child, Napoleon II in 1811.

Although Alexander I was also technically an ally of Napoleon after 1807, he continued to defy the Continental System, as Russia continued to conduct commercial relations with the United Kingdom. In 1809, Russian armies occupied and annexed Finland, even though this territory had belonged to Sweden, another "ally" of France. In 1812 Napoleon sought to punish Russia for its defiance by invading the country with a massive force of 600,000 troops. Instead of engaging the French army directly, the Russian army withdrew into the interior and destroyed crops and other supplies as they retreated. Consequently, as French armies moved deeper into Russia, they were unable to live off the land and needed constantly to extend their supply lines to secure food and supplies as they advanced. When French forces reached Moscow, Russian forces burned down the city to deny the French the use of its resources. Consequently, in desperate need of supplies, Napoleon ordered his troops to withdraw. When French forces retreated in the winter of 1812, freezing cold and starvation due to the lack of supplies decimated the French army.

Napoleon's failed invasion of Russia in 1812 resulted in 1813 in the formation of a new grand coalition to oppose Napoleon which became known as the Quadruple Alliance and included Russia, the United Kingdom, Austria, and Prussia. In 1813 Napoleon's army suffered its first major defeat at the Battle of Leipzig in Germany at the hands of the allied armies. By the spring of 1814, allied armies were poised to invade France itself. Facing a mutiny from his own army in France, Napoleon abdicated the throne and went into exile on the island of Elba off the coast of Italy. The allies promptly established Louis XVIII, a younger brother of Louis XVI, as the king of France, thereby restoring the Bourbon Dynasty. In the spring of 1815, Napoleon escaped from Elba and returned to France. Thousands of Napoleon's veterans rallied around their old commander, and with the support of this army, Napoleon for "100 Days" reigned once again as emperor of France. The armies of the Quadruple Alliance under the command of Arthur Wellesley quickly mounted an invasion of France through the Netherlands. At the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 Napoleon's army confronted this allied force, and there Napoleon suffered another devastating defeat. Afterwards, Napoleon abdicated as emperor for a second time and went into exile on the island of Saint Helena off the coast of West Africa, where he died in 1821.

In 1814-1815 delegates from the victorious European powers convened in Vienna in the Congress of Vienna. Among the leading delegates at this congress was the German aristocrat and Austrian foreign minister, Klemens Von Metternich, who emerged as the most influential statesman in Europe in the first half of the 19th century, the so-called Age of Metternich. Metternich viewed the ideas of Liberalism as dangerous, evil, and ungodly. He envisioned the great Conservative European powers working in concert to crush the forces of Liberalism. Metternich and the other delegates at Vienna set out to reconstruct Europe out of the turmoil and conflict of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. To achieve this goal, the delegates agreed to institute measures to keep France in check and to restore as much as possible the status quo before 1789 and the French Revolution.

To hold the line on potential French aggression, the Congress decided to strengthen neighboring states. Just north of France, the United Provinces were united with the former Austrian Netherlands. William VI of Orange, the son of the Stadtholder, William V, now became William I, King of the United Netherlands. South of France, the kingdom of Sardinia under king Victor Emmanuel I of the House of Savoy received lands in northwest Italy, including the port of Genoa.

The Congress of Vienna also made every effort to return Europe to conditions prior to the outbreak of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. In Italy, the Congress restored Bourbon rule in Southern Italy and Sicily. Ferdinand IV now became Ferdinand I of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, which united the medieval kingdoms of Naples and Sicily. Papal rule was restored in central Italy in the Papal States. Much of northern Italy was either divided up into duchies such as Tuscany and Parma ruled by members of the Hapsburg family or incorporated directly into the Hapsburg Austrian Empire, which also regained the Illyrian Provinces in the Balkans that Napoleon had annexed in 1809. Russia regained control of that territory of the former Duchy of Warsaw, which were not returned to Prussia. The Congress of Vienna created a kingdom of Poland out of these lands with the Russian Czar, Alexander I as its king. In Germany, the Congress of Vienna opted not to restore the Holy Roman Empire. Napoleon's reorganization of the German states into kingdoms and duchies was largely kept intact, except that Prussia annexed the lands of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Westphalia in northwest Germany. The former Holy Roman Empire became the German Confederation, which was comprised of 39 independent German states with the Hapsburg Austrian emperor, Francis II, as hereditary president.

Metternich and the other delegates to the Congress of Vienna hoped that ideals and principles, which inspired the French Revolution would fade away, but across Europe these ideas continued to inspire a revolutionary spirit, especially among young people. In Germany, young men from middle class families often attended universities in hopes of a achieving a successful career in law and government. At these universities, many of these young men desired Germany, like Revolutionary France, to become a united nation under a Liberal form of government. Some of these students even envisioned a united states of Germany under a republican form of government, similar to the United States of America. These students at the universities often assembled together to discuss these ideas in "fraternities" (Burschenschaften), In 1817, thousands of German students from these fraternities converged on Wartburg Castle in Saxony, where Martin Luther had translated the Bible into German. These students wished to commemorate the 300 anniversary of the start of the Protestant Reformation. These students as German nationalists and revolutionaries viewed Martin Luther as a hero for translating the Bible into the German vernacular and standing up so defiantly to the powers that be of his day. Metternich was horrified by this demonstration. In 1819 at the meeting of delegates of the German Confederation at Karlsbad, Metternich urged the assembled ministers to issue the Karlsbad Decrees, which authorized the states of the German Confederation to ban the Burschenschaften and to censor revolutionary publications that promoted Liberal ideas. Across Europe in the decades that followed, Conservative regimes used the police to arrest leading Liberal activists and to censor newspapers and other publications advocating Liberalism.