Napoleonic Code, French civil code enacted on March 21, 1804, and still extant, with revisions, that was the main influence on the 19th-century civil codes of most countries of continental Europe and Latin America. Learn more about the Napoleonic Code’s development, contents, and influence in this article.
Napoleonic Wars, series of wars between Napoleonic France and other European powers that produced a brief French hegemony over most of Europe. Along with the French Revolutionary wars, the Napoleonic Wars constitute a 23-year period of recurrent conflict that ended with the Battle of Waterloo.