If you want to claim that the observation that Napoleonic policies were not universally good and that in many regions across Europe these ran contrary to what the local governments would have preferred to do is equivalent to saying "Napoleon is BAD," then discussion is pretty pointless. Digby is pretty clearly in the Napoleon Bad camp, don't assume I'm there as well. To turn your question around, are you just braying “British BAD” so whatever Napoleon did was good? I don't think so.

What I termed "economic disunity" is not referring to inconsistencies in economic policy but rather inconsistencies in the economic policies that the various states wished to pursue. A common economic system entered into willingly by all participants produces "economic unity" in this sense. When a foreign power demands that a government comply with a specific economic policy and then dissolves the government and annexes the country because they are unwilling or unable to enforce economic provisions that it didn't want to enforce in the first place, the "members" of the economic system can hardly be said to have much unity - despite consistency of the policy. The policy was not developed from common goals with the aim of providing benefits to all, the policy was developed to achieve specific geopolitical objectives for France.

You raise some points and ask for some evidence, which is fine. The conditions of Flemish pastoralists? No idea, but you seem to be suggesting they were better off under the empire. I recall that the cessation of grain exports from France had driven down prices and created serious hardships in the agrarian economy. Would not the same depressing effect occur with the Flemish? I suspect so, but have no evidence for you. Venality? I'm sure there were many venal civil servants under the empire. More than other empires? I suspect not, but there aren't many examples to compare with where one country placed civil and military officials in virtually every country across europe for the better part of a decade - increased opportunity would tend to produce more instances of abuse, so it may just be a matter of scale. The image of cartloads of treasure making their way back to France from the conquered territories isn't fiction, but dates to the 1790s. Venality among imperial officials had probably been reduced from republican days, but I would imagine that the excesses committed under the republic called more attention to it.

-- We look at legitimacy (as we would measure it today) and one bunch of autocrats looks like another (save a few failed attempts at revolutionary governments that pre-date the Empire - and even these of at least slightly debatable legitimacy).

Agreed, with autocrats your mileage may vary. The legitimacy argument is a rationalization. We could say that a government despised and rejected by the people can't be said to have much legitimacy (if we use enlightenment political theory as a basis) whether of the old or new regime.

-- We try to find excessive taxes, thefts and "milkings dry" - and the actual financial numbers give us really none at all.

This is Digby’s argument. My suggestion is that looking at the financial figures is only one small part of the real or perceived “milking”. Things like billeting foreign troops will produce a serious drain at the local level (“milking”) without actually showing up in financial records. I suspect for the typical farmer or agrarian worker, small tradesman, etc. the only real issue would be their own individual prosperity which would have to take into consideration market prices and inflation. I think Lefebvre addressed this, but would need to do some digging.

-- We look for tax burdens - we find them typically equal or lower and more fairly administered.

Mixed bag. The role of the revolution was to abolish privilege, which is most often seen as the end of the nobility but in fact was the end of the guilds and the exceptions and exemptions produced by centuries of agreements and special circumstances. So those who were favored under the old regime (and this involved more than the nobility) took a hit, others benefited. This plays mainly in Italy, Holland and Westphalia. I suspect there was little change in the other Rhinebund states.

-- We look at the economic policy goals and we see a consistent attempt to develop local agrriculture, infrastructure and military manufacturing - at the expense of banking, insurance, trading and the exploitation of colonial assets (and thus in summary quite contrary to British economic hegemony). Is this so clearly "wrong" that we can trumpet "N. is bad" like happily braying donkeys ?

Well as someone who has never asserted that “N. is bad”, I assume you are not referring to me as a braying donkey. And the economic effects you have just described amount to conversion of the economies of the empire into colonial economies serving French interests. Agriculture would be best served by opening markets for agricultural exports, and are you really saying that banking, insurance and trading are undesirable elements of the economy and that the good simple farmer and construction worker are what is really good? You take a swipe at British hegemony but seem to feel that French hegemony over a quasi-colonial European economy is better. Was British economic hegemony diminished from 1792-1814 (or 1810) or did it in fact become broader and more firmly established as the French took out their competitors in succession? My impression is that Britain’s economic position went from being the most robust to being completely dominant and that French imperial policy encouraged and hastened this process, though admittedly much of the damage was done during the previous decade.

-- We look at social and civil conditions and see an expansion of religious tolerance, an improvement in government administration and efficieny, the creation of a nobility based on merit, and a codification of common laws, weights/measures and standards that (oh my God) are still in use today. And some of this all might be thought to the benefit of the people, right ?

Certainly, Jerome Bonaparte earned his crown the old fashioned way, through hard work. And the King of Rome, another beneficiary of the meritocracy. I would disagree that the creation of a new nobility at all, “meritocracy” or otherwise, was a good thing. But what you are pointing to is the ideological legacy of the revolution. Overall, good (except the reintroduction of hereditary monarchy and a noble class). But again some privileged classes (and no, not just the nobility) did not benefit and some regions that had enjoyed special concessions had new obligations as a part of the regularization.

-- We look at the demand for men to man an army to protect this system and permit implementation of these policy goals. Aside from the basic question of legitimacy, what else exactly does one expect a state to do ? Is there some other definition of "national defense"?

Ah yes, the defense of Poland begins at the Pyrenees, and the kingdom of Naples is best defended east of Smolensk. So what you are saying is that the empire was a net good for the member states and therefore well worth defending at all costs [debatable]. And that the best way to do this was to pursue economic policies that ruined commerce, banking, finance and many local manufacturers and replaced them with farming and military manufacturing [disagree]. Because the food and military supplies will be used to support increased conscription to produce more troops to enforce the system and to extend and export it into new territories as they are occupied – voila! Self-sustaining, as long as the wars continue. Ultimately it is an equation. Is being ruled by a French king who takes orders from Paris preferable to being ruled by some other king who doesn’t – or in some cases, is a French king preferable to the republican government he replaced? Is being absorbed into a greater French state preferable to national autonomy? Is there tangible benefit in opposing “British economic hegemony” to promote French economic hegemony? And finally, is there more benefit in defending the empire at all costs, or in steering their own course as an independent player on the European stage? With the empire as a whole, it’s hard to make sweeping generalizations without discarding balance entirely. The situation in Holland is substantially different from the situation in Italy, and the situation in northern Germany is different from the situation in Saxony. For the states bordering other great powers or who had been directly threatened by them in the past (or part of their empires), the military exactions can be viewed as more necessary than in areas that felt less threatened. For the satellites that had never had much of an independent economy, imperial economic policy was less of an issue than for those areas that had.

Ultimately good or bad is a poor question. The only correct answer to that is Yes. A better question is good for whom and bad for whom?