The First Phase of the Empire

Over the past decade, napoleon had taken out a lot of loans for his various projects. To head off a financial crisis and possibly a political crisis, napoleon started to loosen up on his political authoritarianism. In december of 18 60, over the advice of his ministers, the emperor said that he would allow the legislative body and the senate to openly debate and respond to government programmes. These programmes would also now have to be presented by the sters in question to the assemblies. A few months later, the emperor allowed those debates to be printed and distributed. And once these signals started going out from the emperor, the opposition started to rally. The vote for approved candidates was the same