The Revolutionary Warriors: Washington and Napoleon

[The following is Episode 11 of my 16-part documentary series entitled Larger than Life, about the role that beliefs play in shaping the events of our civilization.]

  

            As the eighteenth century drew to a close, two revolutions, one in the New World, and one in the Old, shook the foundations of Western Civilization to the core.  Great Britain, which had emerged victorious in the struggle among European powers for domination in North America, would see victory give way to disaster as its American colonists renounced their loyalty to the crown.  And in Europe, a king and queen of one of the most powerful and long-standing nations on the continent would lose their lives at the hands of a rebellious mob, to the horror of all of the other reigning monarchs.  Established institutions and venerated traditions were overturned virtually overnight, and in their wake, a chaotic force emerged that appeared to be as contagious as it was unrelenting.  This was anarchy: a violent, merciless attack on what had once been the ruling class, and as it spread, no country felt safe from its influence.  To the nobility, this was a plague, as real and deadly as the Black Plague of centuries earlier, but of a much more deadly type.  This was a plague of ideas, a plague that spread not by air or by vermin, but by powerful, unrestrained passions, which were in turn fueled by the common human desire for freedom, and centuries of accumulated resentment against abuses of the rich and powerful.  But in the midst of these two upheavals, on opposite shores of the Atlantic Ocean, new leaders emerged, who would attempt to redefine what it meant to be a nation, and a people, and provide a new course, a new direction for their followers.  These leaders were lawgivers, overseeing bold experiments in new forms of government such as had not been tried since the semi-legendary days of Solon and Lycurgus in Ancient Greece.  Each of the revolutions, the one in America, and the other in France, would come to be led by a military man with remarkable qualities.  The British colonists of America, under the protection of their revolutionary leader, would witness the birth of a new nation, but the revolutionary leader in France, after a brief run of glory, would lead his own nation into ultimate disaster.  Both would leave lasting legacies that survived their time in power.  And both would be immortalized as living legends – truly larger than life - the American soldier who became a President, George Washington, and the French soldier who became an emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte.

            In the fifteenth century, Spain and Portugal had launched the continent of Europe into a new age of discovery, as explorers such as Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand Magellan, and conquerors such as Francisco Pizarro and Hernan Cortez, opened the new worlds of North and South America to their curious, and greedy, countrymen.  But within a hundred years, the hegemony that these two countries enjoyed in overseas conquest was destroyed by the entry of three rivals, France, Great Britain, and the Netherlands.  Although the French made early inroads into establishing colonies, trading posts, and missionaries in many parts of North America, the British were not far behind, and whatever handicap that a later start might have saddled them with was more than made up for by an aggressive determination to establish a foothold in the New World.  In the sixteenth century, the admirals Francis Drake and John Hawkins, in the service of their monarch, Queen Elizabeth, harassed Spanish shipping at sea.  And in the seventeenth century, on the European continent, a series of general wars resulted in defeat for Spain and France, while they made Britain the undisputed master of the seas, and the dominant commercial power in Europe.  Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, conflicts between the British and the French were waged in the New World by their colonists and native allies.  The final conflict, the French and Indian War, began when a young colonial officer named George Washington led a bold raid on French outposts that were located in disputed territory.  And while this raid, and the subsequent battle that this officer fought in the service of British general Edward Braddock, ended in disaster, the ultimate outcome of the conflict was victory, again, for the British, and a devastating loss for the French.  As a condition of its surrender, France yielded all of its Canadian territories, and all its Louisiana territory east of the Mississippi, to the British.  In a way, the French had been victims of their own colonial success, because while they had held numerous territories throughout the North American continent, British holdings had been concentrated in thirteen well-connected colonies located along the Atlantic coast.  The irony, of course, is that in the success which Britain had enjoyed with the aid of her colonists lay the seeds of her own eventual defeat.  For these well-connected colonies also became well organized ones when their members perceived a common external threat, and at the end of the French and Indian war, that external threat was no longer France, but Britain.  Meanwhile, the conflicts in North America and Europe had taken a very serious toll on both France and Britain.  The expenses incurred in these wars had placed a great drain on their respective economies, and this in turn would start a chain of events that would lead to revolution on two continents, and disaster for both nations.

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            The importance of the American and French Revolutions to modern history cannot be underestimated.  In the eighteenth century, monarchy was not just the standard of government for Western civilization – when George Washington became President in 1789, he was the only head of a major country who did not wear a crown or have a monarch’s title.  And although the French Revolution was technically a failure, the event signaled the end of feudalism in Europe and an irrecoverable break with its medieval past.  Both revolutions would leave, in their wake, the rise of ideas and institutions that have become a commonplace to us today: equality before the law, the right to a fair trial, and freedom of religious worship.  And both would create an enduring quest for liberty and equality, a quest to find fuller expression of these ideals in society and to strike a fair and workable balance between the two.  But why did the revolution in America lead to a successful outcome – a military victory followed by the establishment of an innovative, effective, and stable form of government, while the revolution in France led to domestic terror, chaos, and the rise of a conqueror whose ambitions would rival those of a Caesar or an Alexander the Great?  Was it the character of the men who led these revolutions that shaped their outcome?  Or were there special circumstances, unique to each society and event, that made the final respective results inevitable?   To try to find an answer to this puzzle, let us first look at the lives and backgrounds of each of the revolution’s military leaders, George Washington and Napoleon Bonaparte, and then look at the societies in which they lived.

The Mount Vernon Estate Today

            George Washington was born in Westmoreland County, Virginia on February 11, 1732 - February 22 to us, because there was a change in the calendar during his lifetime – the first son of his father’s second marriage.  His father died when he was very young, and as his relationship with his mother could occasionally be a turbulent one, he eventually settled into the home of his older half-brother Lawrence in Mount Vernon.  Lawrence was a tutor and role model for the young George, teaching him trigonometry and surveying, and fostering an interest in the finer arts.  As a youth, George had found it difficult to contend with an angry temperament, but had found inspiration and practical guides to character in the writings of classical Rome.  One enduring hero from that era that left an indelible mark on Washington’s character was the Roman military leader Cincinnatus.  A farmer who had been renowned for his military skill, the Senate of Rome had appealed to him in 458 B.C. for help when its army was under siege by foreign invaders.  After the Senate proclaimed him dictator of Rome, Cincinnatus led the besieged Roman army to victory, and when the victory was complete, he returned to the Senate, gave up his power as dictator, and settled back into his former life as a farmer.  For Washington, there was no finer example of heroism, and of self-control.

Cincinnatus Summoned from His Farm to Lead Rome (Painting by Juan Antonio Ribera)

            George’s brother Lawrence had served in the military under Admiral Edward Vernon, and George had found in this further inspiration for a career of his own in military service.  After a stint as a surveyor, he began his military career in 1753, when the Governor of Virginia sent him on a mission to a French fort west of Virginia to deliver a message to the French commandant, warning him that he was encroaching upon British territory.  Although the young man was received graciously by the commandant, he was informed that the French had no intention of leaving the region. 

            In 1754, Washington led a military expedition back to the French outposts to drive the French off of the disputed territory.  His exact orders were unclear concerning the conditions under which a conflict should begin, but this did not deter Washington from initiating hostilities - the shots that he fired upon French troops inaugurated the French and Indian War in America.  As one writer put it, "The volley fired by a young Virginian in the backwoods of America set the world on fire."  His particular campaign, though, was unsuccessful.  His troops had constructed a stronghold which they named Fort Necessity, but were unable to hold it against the French and Indian forces that attacked it.  Many British and colonial notables censured Washington for agreeing to the terms of surrender offered by the French, although these had enabled him to conduct an orderly evacuation of the fort, but in spite of these criticisms he was allowed to accompany the British General Braddock on a subsequent attack on the French-held territory.  This encounter also ended in failure - Braddock was killed and Washington once again found himself leading his troops on an orderly retreat from battle.  On this occasion he was commended for saving the soldiers from imminent disaster. Nevertheless, he abandoned his tenure in the military to embark on a career as a Virginia planter, and accumulated considerable wealth in the undertaking.  Like Cincinnatus, he resigned himself to life as a farmer, until he was called to return to military service and fight a desperate battle against a powerful enemy by the Continental Congress more than twenty years later.

General Braddock (with George Washington) Defeated in the Battle of the Wilderness

            On August 15, 1769, long after Washington had resigned himself to life as a country squire, a child was born to a family of noble blood but modest means in Corsica, an island in the Mediterranean Sea about sixty miles west of Italy.  This was Napoleon Bonaparte, and as a youth he would also know firsthand the experience of submission to the French, who had conquered Corsica three months before he had been born.  The young Napoleon grew to resent his father, Carlo, for abandoning his loyalty to the Corsican homeland in favor of the French overlords, later declaring that his father had been “too fond of pleasure”.  It seems that he found more to admire in his mother, who had a tougher, and more severe, temperament.  Nevertheless, although his father may have been seduced by the splendor of French courtly life, Carlo’s new loyalties enabled him to get Napoleon enrolled in a private academy in France.  But it was a mixed blessing for the boy.  As the only Corsican, he was bullied and ostracized by his fellow students, and became a loner, although a proud and diffident one.  At the age of fifteen, he entered the Royal Military Academy in Paris, and while embarking on a career in the French military he still retained a personal, abiding dream of someday liberating his homeland, a dream that sustained him through the many periods of melancholy that overcame him and obsessed him with thoughts of death.  At the age of twenty-three, when revolution was breaking out in France, he took a leave of absence from the military, returned to Corsica, and entered local politics.  But to the island’s governor, Napoleon appeared as more of a threat than an ally: he was too ambitious, too independent, and seemed to share his father’s sin of harboring sympathies with France.  The governor’s suspicions were probably well founded, on all counts, even this last one of pro-French leanings, because in the wake of the revolutionary outbreak, Napoleon envisioned Corsica as a part of the new France.  For the governor, his allies, and the Corsican Assembly, this was an unforgivable sin.  The Assembly branded the entire Bonaparte family as “traitors and enemies of the Fatherland, condemned to perpetual execration and infamy”.  At the age of twenty-four, Napoleon was forced to flee the island with his widowed mother, and six brothers and sisters.  Like Washington, it seemed that what had first appeared to be a promising military and political career was cut short in the youthful prime of his early twenties.  But while Washington would have to wait for over two decades before a revolution called him back to his destiny, Napoleon would find, on his return to France, that destiny was calling him already, in the revolution that was then in progress.

Young Napoleon (at 23)

            Having compared the early backgrounds of these two extraordinary men, let’s look now at the revolutions that called each of them into service.  We have all heard the story of the American Revolution, and the causes that led up to it: how Great Britain, reeling from a huge national debt brought on by years of conflict with its powerful rival, France, pressed its colonists in the New World to take on a greater share of paying for the debt.  After all, the British argued, much of the expense in the most recent war had gone toward defending the colonists from hostile French forces and their Indian allies who had harassed them and encroached upon their settlements.  In the eyes of the British, the colonists had provided lackluster support to the troops that had gone overseas to defend them, offering little in the way of men, supplies, or quarters.  When Britain attempted to extract greater monetary support from its colonists by imposing new and heavier taxes, the new rallying cry in America became “taxation without representation”.  The Americans’ side of the argument was that if they were going to pay a larger share to support the British government, then they should have a larger say in that government as well.  The irony, of course, is that Americans had grown to feel that they were entitled to this representation, because of their roots in Great Britain, a land where a tradition of representative government had been evolving for several centuries.  But as acts of resistance became more violent, and British attempts to quell the resistance became more repressive and militant, the outcome was a permanent and irreconcilable rift between the colonies and their mother country.

The Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia

            The revolutionary origins of the United States might have had somewhat ordinary causes, but the creation of its government was anything but ordinary.  The birth of the constitution has been called a miracle, and the story of the Philadelphia Convention, where it was drafted, has the stuff of legend in it, with its images of enlightened men, referring to classical and modern texts on government, working together to create an ideal constitution.  Of course, there were some practical, and even selfish, interests that came into play, during the crafting of the constitution, and in the end it was a workable form of government, rather than an ideal one, that became the goal.  But traces of the ideal can still be seen in the final product, and in particular the legacy of the Roman Republic, which had been regarded by some ancient observers as the most ideal form of government that had ever come into existence up to that time.  Even America's higher legislative body, the Senate, takes its name from the Roman institution.  Rome’s Senate had been comprised of aristocrats who held their office for life.  America’s Senators, as originally conceived by the Constitution, while only serving six years in office, would only be selected by a body of men who themselves already held political office.  And although the United States government is not headed by two Consuls, as in ancient Rome, it does have a President and Vice-President, and in its original form the Constitution called for the Vice-President to be the runner up in the Presidential election – a sort of rival in office, rather than apprentice, to the leader of the government.  It was not then democracy, or rule by the people, that the Founding Fathers sought to institute: like the patricians who founded the Roman Republic, they even wished to limit the right to vote to holders of property.  When Alexander Hamilton advised his fellows to “check the imprudence of democracy”, he echoed the sentiments of the Greek philosopher Plato, who warned that democracy easily gives way to tyranny, and those of the ancient Roman elite, who distrusted rule by the masses.  We saw in an earlier episode how the Roman word “Res publica”, from which our own word “republic” comes from, can be translated to mean the “public thing”, but another equally appropriate translation is the “common wealth”.  A republic was understood to be ruled by those best able to lead, and for the creators of Rome’s government, as for the architects of our constitution, only those who held property had proved themselves capable of participating in government.  And as with Rome, it would take the passage of time, and popular agitation, to make the American “republic” more truly “democratic”.

            Democracy, on the other hand, was one of the guiding principles of the French Revolution, as embodied in its slogan, “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.”  This was not only a revolution more democratic in spirit than the earlier one in America, but a more idealistic one as well.  Latter-day critics have charged that the Philadelphia Convention had been heavily stocked with lawyers, businessmen, and rich planters, and that the final product of the labors of these men had been designed with their interests at the forefront.  The charge is not without merit: many of the framers of the Constitution were motivated by pragmatic considerations.  But in the midst of that sea of self-interest, there were a handful of genuinely gifted men who could inject a little wisdom into the handiwork of their more self-serving compatriots, and endow the document with just enough touches of highbrow ingenuity and simple common sense to give it an enduring value, and provide it with the means to rise above its baser roots.  There was little pragmatism in the work of the French revolutionaries, particularly in the radicals who came to dominate the movement.  Like Great Britain, France had been reeling under a huge national debt as an aftermath of war, and also because France had made loans to the American colonies during their war of revolt against Britain.  The French King Louis XVI’s call for an assembly of representatives in 1788 to address the growing economic crisis started a chain of events that would lead to his own downfall, because within two years a radical faction of this assembly would usurp even more powers than those granted to it by the king, eventually demand a restriction of the king’s own power, and ultimately settle for nothing less than his execution.  A friend of Washington's who happened to be in Paris during the French Revolution described the revolutionaries for him this way: "They have all that romantic spirit, and all those romantic ideas of government from which, happily for America, we were saved before it was too late."  Idealism gave way to fanaticism, and fanaticism to the Terror, that dark period in French history when its revolutionary leaders turned their wrath upon real or imagined enemies, and caused the death of some 40,000 persons.

The Reign of Terror (French Revolution)

            We can make some sense of this violence if we remember that the revolution in France, much more so than in the United States, was a social revolution - a civil war.  While Americans concentrated their energies resisting an enemy from abroad, French citizens were attempting to uproot the aristocracy, with all of its blatant privileges and abuses - and the members of that aristocracy lived in their midst.  And French rebels had more to contend with than the royalty and aristocracy within France.  Aristocracy was a trans-national phenomenon - royal families had ties throughout Europe, and the institution was militantly supported by virtually every European nation.  Years after the French Revolution, Napoleon would bristle at comparisons between the upheaval in his country and the one that had occurred in America.  "The example of the United States is absurd," he said.  "If the United States were in the middle of Europe, it would not stand up two years to the monarchies' pressure."

            Two unique men, and two very different revolutions – was it the leadership or the circumstances that led to the different outcomes?  When Washington volunteered his services in the cause of the American Revolution, in 1775, and the Continental Congress appointed him commander in chief of the army, he faced almost insurmountable obstacles from the beginning of the war.  He had to contend with continual shortages of supplies, food, and manpower.  In spite of these obstacles, the general had an early success in the winter of 1775-1776, as he forced the British General Howe to abandon his occupation of Boston and retreat to New York.  But his fortunes changed as he took up the pursuit of the British army into New York.  He suffered a succession of reversals, and, by the end of 1776, things looked bleak for the American cause.  At this desperate moment, Washington took a desperate gamble.  He led his army, which had taken a position in New Jersey, on a bold crossing of the Delaware River to surprise the Hessian mercenaries camped on the other side.  The gamble paid off, and news of his subsequent victories at Trenton and Princeton convinced the world that he was a military leader of merit.  The French, who had been watching the conflict with great interest, now believed that lending support to the American rebels was a practical venture.

            In spite of these promising developments, Washington's own fortunes did not change.  The year 1777 brought more strategic retreats.  The terrible winter of 1777-1778 was the low point of the war for him and his troops camped at Valley Forge.  As he struggled to hold his forces together during 1778 and 1779, Washington had to contend with a series of domestic crises.  Rivals in the military were lobbying to replace him as commander-in-chief of the revolutionary forces.  Added to these intrigues was the outright betrayal of Benedict Arnold, who switched allegiances and nearly succeeded in transferring control of West Point to the British in October, 1780.

            The entry of the French on the side of the colonists finally turned the tide of battle.  French forces gained control of Chesapeake Bay in 1781.  Washington moved his troops to join them, and their combined forces compelled General Cornwallis to surrender at Yorktown on October 18, 1781.  The Revolutionary War was over.  Following the example of his hero, Cincinnatus, Washington resigned his commission and returned to his Mount Vernon estate.

Surrender of Lord Cornwallis (Painting by John Trumbull)

            But his career was far from over.  He watched with great consternation as victory brought nothing but dissension among the thirteen colonies.  Leading American statesmen and intellectuals realized that the survival of the new nation depended upon a strong, national union.  When the Philadelphia Convention was organized, George Washington was selected as one of the delegates from Virginia, and when he arrived, he was elected by a unanimous vote to preside over its members.  The new constitution that came out of this Convention would save the infant republic.  It had been the product of many bold men and great minds, but it was Washington's prominent participation in the project that gave it the necessary legitimacy to make it palatable to a general public wary of a strong central government.  And it was Washington again who proved that the new government could work, by serving as its first chief executive when he was elected president of the United States.

            Washington served two tumultuous terms as America's first president, but when he left office the institutions of government were firmly established.  He died in 1799, and his passing was not only mourned in the United States, but in England, where British ships fired a twenty-gun salute in his honor upon news of his death, and in France, where Napoleon ordered ten days of national mourning.

Napoleonic Empire At Its Height

            Napoleon’s own career as a revolutionary general had begun only six years earlier, in 1793.  After fleeing to France with his family, he put himself in the service of the revolutionary government, or such government as there was, because in 1793 factional strife, external assault at the hands of a coalition of other European nations, and social unrest had encouraged those in control of the revolution to institute a reign of terror.  Napoleon distinguished himself in a battle against British forces at Toulon, and he was promoted to brigadier general and given command of the army of Italy.  Other successes soon followed against the Austrians and Sardinians, and when he returned to France he was given a hero’s welcome.  But in this dark time of French history, heroes were threats rather than consolations, and the Directory, who held the reigns of government, sent him to Egypt to threaten Britain’s holdings in India.  While Napoleon’s successes in this so-called “Battle of the Pyramids” were undermined by a devastating British naval victory under the leadership of Admiral Horatio Nelson, he convinced his fellow countrymen, upon his return in 1798, that the battle had gone well for him.  He now set his eyes on a political career, using his prestige and military power to get himself appointed as First Consul of the government.  During the next few years he consolidated his power, culminating in his being crowned emperor of France by the Pope in 1804.  In some ways it appeared that here was an actual demonstration of Plato’s warning - two thousand years earlier - that democracy gives way to tyranny, which in turn gives way to monarchy.  But in other ways, and certainly in the eyes of Napoleon himself, it was not tyranny, but a republic that he had established, if “republic” be understood as rule by those most capable of ruling, and if Napoleon be seen as he who is most capable.  He did, after all, complete the revolution’s work of destroying feudalism, and of making opportunities available to all based upon merit, rather than birthright.  And like Washington, he presided over a body of men who crafted a new set of laws and procedures that would be based upon enlightened principles of justice: the Napoleonic Code.  He restored prosperity to France, established a national system of banking, encouraged the growth of industry, nationalized higher education, and supported cultural pursuits.  It is unfair to blame Napoleon for the failure of the French Revolution- that failure preceded him.  In fact, upon the ruins of that disaster, he built a renewed, reinvigorated, and formidable French nation that appeared to be leading the way to modernity.  But in his success lay the seeds of his own downfall, as he set about bringing the entire continent of Europe under his control.  In 1807, after defeating the Russians, he was at the summit of his powers, with the Netherlands, Italy, and Spain subject to his rule, and the Austrians and Prussians - former enemies - joined to France as allies.  Only Britain remained as a tangible and formidable threat, and Napoleon tried to bring that country into submission by imposing a continental trade blockade against it.  But a revolt in Spain in 1808 signaled a breakdown in France’s empire, and a disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812 would mark the beginning of the end for Napoleon.  In the next two years, as former allies and subjects joined Britain in defiance of France, a steady succession of losses by the French army culminated in an invasion of Paris in 1814, and Napoleon’s abdication.  In 1815, he made one last desperate attempt to regain power in France, but was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo by a coalition of British and Prussian armies, and was forced to live out the rest of his days in exile on the island of St. Helena.

The Coronation of Napoleon and Josephine (Painting by Jacques-Louis David)

            Was it destiny that guided the actions of these two extraordinary men, that pressed them into service at a critical juncture of history to fulfill some pre-ordained plan, or did they, and others like them, determine destiny’s course?  It’s a tantalizing question, particularly here, where the outcomes of the revolutions of which they took part were so entirely different.  Did the man make the difference?  Napoleon bristled at comparisons between himself and George Washington.  As he put it, “When I came to power, it was hoped that I would be a Washington.  Words are cheap, and those who so facilely voiced this hope did so without understanding of time, places, men, and events.  If I had been in America, I should willingly have been a Washington, and with no great merit, since there was nothing else I could have been.  But if he had been in France, with domestic disorder and the threat of foreign invasion, I defy him to have been himself.  If he had, he would have been a fool and prolonged the unhappiness of the country.  As for me, I could only have been a Washington with a crown, amid a congress of conquered kings.  Only under such circumstances could I have shown his moderation, wisdom, and disinterestedness.  These I could attain only by a universal dictatorship, such as, indeed, I strove for.”  And yet, Napoleon was keenly aware that he was merely the agent of a destiny over which he did not have complete control.  He once said, “I am the instrument of Providence, she will use me as long as I accomplish her designs, then she will break me like a glass.”

            Three hundred years before Napoleon, Machiavelli argued that his divided, beloved Italy could only be saved if a great man arose who put himself above the law in order to preserve the law.  Only then could higher pursuits, such as justice and fairness, be attained.  Security would bring economic prosperity, which would in turn be followed by a measure of freedom and toleration, bestowed by the wise ruler on his people.  Napoleon, the Corsican, the Italian, was the living embodiment of Machiavelli's amoral conqueror hero.  If Machiavelli had been the prophet of modern statesmanship, Napoleon, more than any other person, was his messiah.  But while the Corsican lived out the glory of Machiavelli’s vision, he also proved its ultimate untenability.  For by putting himself above the law, and renouncing any limits to his authority and his designs, Napoleon ultimately set himself on a tragic course which could only end in his empire collapsing on the weak foundations of his own human limitations.  Washington, on the other hand, by recognizing his limitations, and imposing upon himself a sense of duty that limited his powers, or his opportunities to exploit power, left his achievements on a firm foundation that would survive him for centuries.

But regardless of the outcome of their activities, or the weight of their legacies, both Washington and Napoleon have become living legends.  Bonaparte was aware of his own legend, and, as in all things, tried to exert personal control over it.  “I always felt,” he said, “that Alexander the Great’s idea of pretending to be descended from a God was inspired by a sure instinct for real politics.”  Washington’s legend would be crafted by others after his death, like Parson Weems, who gave us the story of the cherry tree, and how young George’s honesty after chopping it down saved him from his father’s punishment.  The legends that these men have become seem well-suited, for history gives us no better example of individuals who rose to the extraordinary circumstances of their age, and made themselves equal to momentous and ultimately world-shaping events.

            The American and French Revolutions marked a turning point in the social and political history of western Civilization.  But even before these political revolutions had begun to play out, another, more subtle - but ultimately more radical - revolution had begun.  This was the upheaval brought about by new scientific ideas.  And in the nineteenth century, as both America and Europe were settling into their new respective political realities, a British scientist would make popular a new idea about life’s origins that would shake the foundations of religious belief, and ultimately the foundations of society itself.  The man was Charles Darwin, and the idea, evolution.