Ordre et désordre dans la France napoléonienne (in French)

 
From the publishers:
When Napoleon Bonaparte took power in November 1799, he hammered home his intention to restore order in France and to re-establish a country scarred by a crisis that had lasted for ten years. He did not however wish to return to the founding principles of the Revolution but instead put an end to it, and consolidate what had been gained. The new order that he imposed on France was thus political and was accompanied by the introduction of new institutions, but it also touched every aspect of social life. The Code Civil would be the bedrock of this new order, and would become the pedestal on which Imperial France stood. However, this nouvel ordre was not always popular with certain members of the French people.
 
And yet negative reaction was not just restricted to those who challenged the political regime, be they Jacobin or Royalist, nor was it restricted to the various assassination and bombing attempts, such as the Rue Saint-Nicaise bombing and the Malet affair. This negative reaction was evident in every French citizen who rejected the new order of things, including dissenting conscripts, deserters, vagrants, beggars, those resistant to the droit rural or the Code Civil, and Chouans who had fallen into robbery and theft. It is these groups that the regime described as troublemakers and it is these groups that the regime would look to reintegrate into the society that had been determined. The very particular measures used to achieve this goal would leave their distinct mark on the Empire. With the publication of the Code pénal in 1810 and reinforced policing of the empire, the empire reached its apogee. And yet it would collapse only four years later. Admittedly, the allied powers played their part in this; however, the society that Napoleon had so diligently reconstructed was unable to offer any sort of defence to save the empire.
 
(Tr. and ed. H.D.W.)