To discount the influence of Napoleonic imperial rule on the future of Europe on these grounds is mistaken, however.
This is a very short tenure of power, particularly when set beside Rome, the political model both the French revolutionaries and Napoleon made recourse to most often for analogy, inspiration and, at times, outright imitation. Even when the prelude of the French revolutionary wars – and the expansion of French territory they produced – is included, the era of ‘the Great Nation’ (as the French increasingly called themselves in these years) stretches back only to 1792. Napoleonic domination of the European continent was very brief, from the coup which brought Napoleon to power in France in 1799, to his final demise at Waterloo in June 1815.
