Napoleonic Code Promulgated

March 21, 1804

After four years of legal drafting supervised by Napoleon himself, France received a single civil code: clear, secular, patriarchal, and brutally efficient. It abolished feudal privilege and guaranteed property; it also wrote wives into near-invisibility. Armies would carry it across Europe. The Code remains the foundation of civil law in France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and much of Latin America, and influenced legal systems from Japan to Egypt.