Bonaparte’s France and the End of the Revolution

Abstract

This chapter explores Paine’s ambivalent view of Bonaparte and his rather ambivalent behaviour in the last years of his stay in France, a duality which went on after his return to the United States. Even if he rejected Bonaparte’s authoritarianism and clearly saw that the French Revolution was over, which thus crushed his quite high hopes of the Directoire’s ability to save the Revolution and to set right the economy of the country, he went on answering requests from officials, including Bonaparte himself, to write memos on England.