ABSTRACT
The quarter-century of the French Revolution and Napoleonic rule, with its Europe-wide political and social upheaval, insurrections, wars, civil wars and fundamental reforms, carried out in both drastic and gradual fashion but also thwarted or revoked, marked a fundamental break with the social, political and cultural world of the old regime. If the French Revolution of 1789 marked the beginning of the modern patterns of political life, in particular the emergence of a left–right spectrum on which political views could be placed, the years 1815–50 saw the elaboration and completion of this development. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the terms 'conservatism', 'liberalism' and 'radicalism' came into common use as the way to describe the three main divisions of the political spectrum. Romanticism is best understood as a cultural style, primarily expressed in the arts but also very apparent in other forms of intellectual activity and in public life.
