The Napoleonic Code and the Reshaping of French Institutions

The French Civil Code was promulgated on 21 March 1804, the product of years of work by a commission led by Jean-Jacques Régis de Cambacérès, and in 1807 it was officially renamed the 'Code Napoléon.' It enshrined core revolutionary principles, including equality before the law, religious freedom, the end of feudal privilege, and civil marriage, while at the same time reinforcing patriarchal authority within the family by requiring marital authorization for a wife's legal acts and imposing unequal terms of divorce. It also guaranteed the inviolability of private property and freedom of contract as pillars of the new bourgeois order.