Did Napoleon preserve the French Revolution or did he destroy it?

This is one
of the great questions on the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Era, and a subject of
considerable debate (and you can probably make a case for either side of it). Of course, it
should also be noted that the French Revolution was itself extremely tumultuous. When speaking
of the principles of the Revolution, it might be worth asking: which Revolution? After all, the
Revolution was a continuously evolving drama: the Revolution of 1789 was radically different
than the Revolution of the Terror, which itself was followed by the Thermidoreans... The French
Revolution itself tends to be very, very complicated. It defies easy classification.

I'd suggest the same can be said of Napoleon. On the one hand, he represented the
restoration of autocracy and class distinction (and this included the return of noble titles),
and yet, this Napoleonic nobility was different in certain key respects than the nobility of the
Old Regime. As historian John Merriman points out:

Between 1808 and...