Furniture and Architecture Of The French Empire

Perhaps one of the most active and vigorous eras in France was when she suddenly sprung to Empire after the disaster that was the French Revolution. France, like the nations before it, bestowed the government on the shoulders of a single man whom they pronounced king. Afterwords, when the particular dynasty fails, the people decide that monarchy must have been the formulation of conspiracy, and promptly establish a new form of government that, with prayer and luck, might be more just than the former tyranny the backs of the people suffered under before. Unfortunately, instead of using a republic as the bastion of justice, men turn it into the thieves den and use the force that government so unavoidably implies to plunder their neighbors and to rob the widow's mite. 

Thus France overthrew the monarchy of King Louis XIV, and replaced him with the lunacy of bureaucrats and bankers and the motley masses, who corrupted the republic and the legislature, trampling the rights of man under foot and brought france to the point of either falling into the abyss or finding a brutal tyrant to regain control. Napoleon, realizing that the men of his country were incapable of handling their own freedom, became the enlightened despot that he though himself to be, which while terrible, is better than most alternatives. In any event, the time period led to many romantic adventures, breakthroughs in culture and several innovations, two of which was the architecture of the times and the furniture the architecture hid within. 

It was in the French Empire era that many of the styles of architecture we are familiar with originated and were influenced. Empire Style, or the architectural style established in france in the early nineteenth century, is a very beautiful design that incorporates many neoclassical elements along with the more modern Directoire style, and perhaps most importantly, Empire style took on the face of the minds of the people, who were highly influenced by antiquity. Wikipedia said: 

"The Empire style, French pronunciation: ​[ɑ̃.piːʁ],the second phase of Romanticism, is an early-19th-century designmovement in architecture, furniture, other decorative arts, and the visual arts that flourished between 1800 and 1815 during the Consulate and the First French Empire periods, although its life span lasted until the late 1820s (or more depending on each country). From France it spread into much of Europe and the United States.

The style originated in and takes its name from the rule of Napoleon I in the First French Empire, when it was intended to idealize Napoleon's leadership and the French state. The style corresponds in that intent to the Biedermeier style in the German-speaking lands, Federal style in the United States, and the Regency style in Britain. The previous style in France was called Louis XVI style."