ABSTRACT
The "Napoleonic settlement", under which properties and positions attained during the Revolution were guaranteed in exchange for acceptance of his one-man rule, satisfied much of the population. Louis XVI's long-exiled brother would be put on the throne, but he would have to accept a written constitution limiting his power and maintaining principal features of the "Napoleonic settlement". The Protestant and Jewish religious minorities retained the legal protection they had been granted after 1789. In 1807, Napoleon took the extraordinary step of convoking an international congress of Jewish religious leaders, the Sanhedrin, to discuss the relationship between French and Jewish law. The leading members of the rationalist Idologue group that had formed during Directory period became the hard core of the opposition to him during the Consulate. Although military defeat was now certain, it was not clear that the Napoleonic regime would also fall. The Napoleonic regime's fate was sealed by Napoleon's own top officials, led by his foreign minister, Talleyrand.
