The movement toward national unification in Italy was similarly precipitated by Napoleonic rule These changes contributed to the development of nationalism and the nation state. The Code guaranteed the supremacy of the man over his wife and children the husband was the ruler of the household. Women acquired the nationality of their husbands upon marriage and they had to reside where their husbands desired. Napoleon reorganised what had been the Holy Roman Empire, made up of more than a thousand entities, into a more streamlined forty-state Confederation of the Rhine this provided the basis for the German Confederation and the unification of Germany in 1871. The Code made women legally and economically dependent on men. Dieter Langewiesche described the code as a 'revolutionary project' which spurred the development of bourgeois society in Germany by the extension of the right to own property and an acceleration towards the end of feudalism. The Code still has importance today in a quarter of the world's jurisdictions including in Europe, the Americas and Africa. Waterloo will erase the memory of so many will live forever, is my Civil Code.' An examination of the Enlightenment influences on. Napoleon said: 'My true glory is not to have won 40 battles. The Code clearly reflected the political philosophy of the Enlightenment, especially Montesquieu and Rousseau. The Napoleonic code was adopted throughout much of Europe, though only in the lands he conquered, and remained in force after Napoleon's defeat. The Napoleonic code, or in French the Code civil des Français, is today remembered as one of Napoleon's greatest achievements.
