19th century.
             Clearly, Napoleon's regime utilized key principals of the French Revolution and the Enlightenment, but still embraced the precepts of absolutist rule. Even before Napoleon ruled, the power of the Bourbons in France was criticized by the thinkers of the French Enlightenment. The Bourbons were overthrown by the French Revolution itself and it may be suggested then that the people wanted to completely rid themselves of the rulers and not merely replace them with another despot. Voltaire and other French thinkers of the Enlightenment had, in fact, expressed a desire to get rid of the old authoritarianism, which was based on feudal and religious traditions, but their idealistic agenda was to replace the old regime with an enlightened despot. What the philosophers of the Enlightenment had envisioned, however, and the ultimate outcome were two very different things.
             What the French Revolution essentially did was to dissolve the old social order completely. Everyone was a citizen and the "Rights of Man" were proclaimed based upon the principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity. This indiscriminate sweeping away of past occurrences, however idealistic, also had the effect of removing important sources of
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