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114 114 HARVARD LAW REVIEW NAPOLEON AND HIS CODE^ " / will go down to history with the code in my hand." — Bonapahte. AS we pass the centennial of the great tragedy of Waterloo it -^^ may seem surprising to find the fame of its principal victim more secure than ever. Napoleon Bonaparte has unquestionably become the most striking figure in modern history. Others may have been more conspicuous in a single country, as Washington in America, or in some particular fine of human activity, as Shakespeare in literature, or Darwin in science; but no modern character has so completely riveted the attention of the entire world for so long a time, and become so distinguished in so many di£ferent lines as Napoleon. We know him best as a strategist. But he was also distinguished as a diplomatist; not less so as a statesman and an administrator, and finally, and most successfully of all, as a lawgiver. It is with the last-named role that we are concerned here. Na- poleon's military achievements have largely vanished; they were spectacular and highly successful from a temporary standpoint, but as he himself predicted, they have become "lost in the vortex of revolutions" and yielded no permanent results except to mili- 1 Bibliographical Note. — The literature of the Code Napol6on is voluminous and constantly increasing. The Cambridge Modern History alone (Vol. IX, 808, 809) contains a bibliography of about fifty titles, mostly French. The discussions accompanying the Code at its pubhcation filled no less than eight voliunes, while the memorial papers published in connection with the observance of its centennial (at which the American government was officially represented) number forty and are contained in two portly tomes. In EngUsh the most complete discussion of the origin and history of the Code appears to be that from the pen of Prof. H. A. L. Fisher, of Oxford University. The translation in the Continental Legal History Series of Brissaud's Manual has opened a wealth of material to EngUsh readers and, with the suggestive, though all too scant, articles of Esmein (Professor of Law in the University of Paris) in the new Encyclopaedia Britannica (Vols. VI, X), clarify the subject from the French viewpoint. The centenary of the Code is the subject of an article by Sir Courtenay Ilbert in the Journal for the Society of Comparative Legislation (n. s.), Vol. VI, 218. In 1906, Mr. U. M. Rose delivered an address on the Code before the bar associations of Arkansas and Texas, which was afterward published in 40 Am. L. Rev. 833-54, and there are other magazine articles in English on the subject. See, e. g., "The Code Napol6on," by W. W. Smithers, 40 Am. L. Rev. (n. s.) 127.