Rare books, manuscripts and ephemera from five centuries

Napoleon’s legislative legacy 

 

RONDONNEAU, Louis. NAPOLÉON LE GRAND, CONSIDÉRÉ COMME LÉGISLATEUR, ou exposé méthodique de l’état de la Législation et de l’Administration de la France sous le gouvernement consulaire et impériale de Napoléon Bonaparte. Paris: Au Dépôt des Lois, Janvier 1808. £350

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FIRST EDITION. 8vo, pp. x, 62; very light dampstain throughout but nonetheless still crisp; in contemporary pink marbled boards; somewhat worn and spine chipped at head, but sound.

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Uncommon first edition of this study of Napoleon’s administrative and legislative achievements, by the prolific French legal writer and publisher Louis Rondonneau (1759-1834).

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Rondonneau, who was, in addition to his work as a publisher, also the director of the national legal depository, opens with the statement that the knowledge of laws is the first duty of any citizen who wants to serve his country usefully, whether as magistrate, soldier, administrator, merchant, or even writer. With this in mind, he offers a methodical account of the legislative activities of Napoleon, divided into the following categories: constitutional reforms; administrative organisation; judicial organisation; civil legislation; criminal law; land law; commercial law; tax law; military law; maritime law; public instruction; the arts (including the legislation surrounding public museums and libraries); public works (including roads, canals, ports, the draining of marshland, and prisons); religion; and foreign relations, detailing the various treaties signed by Napoleon. The work will be, Rondonneau suggests at the end, especially interesting to those foreigners whose governments had adopted, or proposed to adopt, the French legal system.

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To accompany the present work, Rondonneau also advertises the sale of a ‘Tableau des campagnes, de la législation et des négotiations de Napoléon le Grand’, representing a triumphal arch decorated with four corinthian columns and a portrait of Napoleon, of over 1.4m in height, available from the Dépôt des Lois for 25 francs; by way of comparison, the price of the book alone, as stated on the verso of the title-page, was 1 franc, 50 centimes. 

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Outside Continental Europe, OCLC records copies at Yale, Harvard, and the University of California. 

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