Peasants and bourgeoisie
In Europe, 80% of the people are still working in agriculture. The Industrial Revolution is starting to make its mark in Britain and France; and there is the beginning of a new coal and iron industry in Prussia, started as a state enterprise by Frederick the Great in the last century. But while western Europe now mainly consists of 'free' peasants, most countries in the east haven't even got around to abolishing serfdom.

Even in France, where the old aristocracy and the Church have had much of their property seized and sold to new owners, it's not the ordinary peasants who have gained. Rather it's the new middle class – the bourgeoisie – who are now enjoying the fruits of revolutionary change. And although war rages across the continent, they are determined to enjoy those fruits – in ways that are often indistinguishable from the aristocracy that they have succeeded.

The courts of Europe under Napoleon are where the rich still come to play – and nowhere more so than at his own court, where his wife Joséphine, the empress of France, is the leading socialite of the day (see Sex and sleaze). Paris and Vienna vie with each other for pre-eminence, while Alexander I of Russia brings his own great power and riches to impress those at the party.

Empire style
The period of the empire is renowned for its luxurious fashions and extravagant styles. It has even given its name to the 'empire style', which can be found in French costume, architecture, furniture and interior decoration. The furniture and decoration use classical motifs with images of imperial grandeur, including Napoleon's own trophies and symbols (primarily the bee, which many see as the royalist fleur de lys turned upside down). Egyptian themes are incorporated, too, due to the interest in ancient Egypt arising from the Egyptian campaign of 1799-1801. Stucco decoration and neo-classical designs denote the empire style in architecture.

In costume, Joséphine introduces the new Greek style of court dress – high waisted, with a train for court. Napoleon, keen to help the French textile industry, encourages extravagance among the women at court – and they eagerly oblige. Indeed, he insists that sumptuous liveries and embroidered costumes should be worn by servants and officials, also as a way of boosting the economy. He is even reported to have ordered fireplaces to be walled up to force women to wear heavy French materials.

Fashion spy
The ban on English imports and the invention of the Jacquard loom has given a great boost to France's textile industry. As well as encouraging the use of extravagant dress costumes at court, Napoleon likes to spur on the industry with regular weaving contests. And on one occasion he is said to have dispatched a spy to England to get hold of a Kashmiri shawl so that it can be copied by French weavers.

National costume
Visitors to France should be aware that there is a national costume. Robespierre first tried to introduce national dress during the Revolution and one is finally standardised in 1799. It consists, for a man, of trousers worn inside turned-down boots; a plain blue or green coat; a cravat (see below) tied in a knot that comes up to the chin; and a tall hat. Side whiskers are also usually grown. For women, dresses are plain, and they fly their country's colours with blue, white and red ribbons or rosettes, often attached to a tall hat.

Pigtails
Fashion tip for men: Don't get caught out wearing a pigtail from about 1808 onwards. They are fine until then, but a definite fashion 'no-no' after that date.

Tea and cake
It's one of the more abiding myths of the French Revolution that the queen Marie Antoinette is supposed to have responded 'Let them eat cake' when told that the people were starving. In fact, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who is the source of the story in Book 6 of his Confessions, attributed the words to 'a great princess'. Confessions was published after Rousseau's death in 1778 and everyone assumed it was Marie Antoinette he was referring to, but Book 6 was actually written several years before she arrived in France in 1770. In any case, the French words used are 'Qu'ils mangent de la brioche', a kind of roll or bun, which doesn't have quite the same ring as 'cake' (gateau).

Ironically, the bread eaten by the poor is probably healthier than that eaten by the rich, who prefer the lighter, more expensive white variety. The rich also consume a lot more meat and wine, rather than vegetables and beer. The diets of both rich and poor have been supplemented by new foods from the Americas: potatoes, tomatoes, squash and maize (corn). The potato, in particular, has led to a dramatic improvement in peasants' diets, especially in Prussia and Ireland, where it is now a staple at almost every meal. Its high yields and easy storage have helped to stave off famine, when the poor are forced to turn to chestnuts, bark and grass in their desperation, and succumb to diseases such as dysentery.

Among the better off, there is a growing craze for another New World product: chocolate. And from the other side of the world, tea has been taking England, in particular, by storm. It is so popular there that it has been estimated that the English are spending as much as a shilling (5p) in every pound on it. The East India Company has a monopoly on tea, shipping it over from China in exchange for cotton from India. Even a government tax of 100% isn't quenching the thirst for the stuff.

Wet nurse or breast?
There's no contest in the minds of the upper-class women of the day. Breast-feeding is for the poor, who cannot afford to do otherwise. Rich women employ wet nurses – women who have recently given birth and so are lactating – whose own children often die as a consequence.

The cult of violets
By Mercedes Seré de Posadas, an Argentinian writer:

'The most astonishing and lasting cult of violets took place during Napoleon's exile, beginning at the isle of Elba, from where Napoleon assured his followers that he would return in the spring, with the violets. From there on, the violet became Bonaparte's symbol and the emblem for all of those who wished his return. Violet bunches were openly worn in his honour. Newly created remembrances and violet accessories went into the market, and toasts for "Caporal Violette" – who would return with the spring – were heard everywhere. When historical facts confirmed such predictions, the women in the south of France welcomed Bonaparte with violet bunches and the triumphant welcome was duplicated in Paris upon his arrival in March 1814.'

The royal wedding dress
From 'Dresses of Her Royal Highness, the Princess Charlotte', from La Belle Assemblée (May 1816). Charlotte is the daughter of the future George IV and Caroline of Brunswick. She marries Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg in 1816, but dies in childbirth a year later.

'As we have been gratified with a sight of the wedding dresses of this amiable and illustrious female, a particular yet concise account of them cannot but be acceptable to our fair readers.

'The Royal Bride, happy in obtaining him whom her heart had selected, and whom consenting friends approved, wore on her countenance that tranquil and chastened joy which a female so situated could not fail to experience. Her fine fair hair, elegantly yet simply arranged, owed more to its natural beautiful wave than to the art of the friseur; it was crowned with a most superb wreath of brilliants, forming rosebuds with their leaves.

'Her dress was silver lamé on net, over a silver tissue slip, embroidered at the bottom with silver lamé in shells and flowers. Body and sleeves to correspond, elegantly trimmed with point Brussels lace. The manteau was of silver tissue lined with white satin, with a border of embroidery to answer that on the dress, and fastened in front with a splendid diamond ornament. Such was the bridal dress ...

'The jewellery of the royal bride is most superb; beside the wreath, are a diamond cestus, ear-rings, and an armlet of great value, with a superb set of pearls. The court dresses worn by the royal family and nobility on this occasion were particularly splendid; we are sorry our limits will not allow us to enter into particulars, but we cannot forbear noticing the singular taste and elegance, displayed in the superb lamé dress, so beautifully wrought with silver lilies, of the Marchioness of Cholmondeley; we have never before witnessed so charming a combination of classical taste, splendour, and touching simplicity.'

The dandy and the cravat
George Bryan Brummell, better known as 'Beau Brummell' (he never admits to the Bryan), is the pre-eminent 'dandy' of his day – a man for whom nothing matters so much as fashion. Since leaving the army in 1798, he has established himself in London society and is a close friend and confidant of the prince regent.

It is said that he changes his clothes three times a day, taking up to three hours on each occasion. Sir Max Beerbohm will later describe Brummell's home as 'a studio in which he daily composed that elaborate portrait of himself which was to be exhibited for a few hours in the clubrooms of the town'.

Much of the time Brummell spends dressing goes on tying his cravat. Cravats are the height of fashion in early 19th-century Europe, and no well-dressed man about town will be seen without one. Brummell has perfected scores of different knots (up to 100 are recognised); and in fashionable circles, the search for the perfect knot has come to resemble the surfer's search for the perfect wave in a later century. The cravats of the day are starched and so have to be tied perfectly on the first attempt or be discarded, so Brummell's floor is often littered with piles of discarded neckcloths.

Brummell will eventually gamble away his fortune and end his days in an insane asylum. It is an ignominious death for a man who is said to have left the army because it obliged him to wear hair powder, which was going out of fashion. (The reason he gives himself is that he was about to be posted to Manchester, and nothing could conceivably induce him to go there.)

Brummell's reform of the neckcloth
From Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, June 1844

'[In 1798, Brummell] commenced what is called the bachelor life of England; he took a house in Chesterfield Street, May Fair; gave small but exquisite dinners; invited men of rank and even the Prince, to his table; and avoiding extravagance – for he seldom played, and kept only a pair of horses – established himself as a refined voluptuary.

'Brummell's first reform was the neckcloth. Even his reform passed away; such is the transitory nature of all human achievements. But the art of neckcloths was once more than a dubious title to renown in the world of Bond Street. The politics of the time were disorderly; and the dress of politicians had become as disorderly as their principles. The fortunes of Whiggism, too, had run low; and the velvet coat and embroidered waistcoat, the costly buckles and gold buttons of better days, were heavier drains on the decreasing revenues of the party than could be long sustained with impunity. Fox had already assumed the sloven – the whole faction followed; and the ghosts of the old oppositionists, in their wigs and silver-laced coats, would have been horrified by the sight of the shock-headed, leather-breeched, and booted generation who howled and harangued on the left side of the Speaker's chair from 1789 to 1806. All was canaille. Fox could scarcely have been more shabby, had he been a representative of a population of bankrupts. The remainder of the party might have been supposed, without any remarkable stretch of the imagination, to have emerged from the workhouse. All was sincere squalidness, patriotic pauperism – the unwashing principle.

'Into this irregular state of things Brummell made his first stride in the spirit of a renovator. The prevailing cravat of the time was certainly deplorable. Let us give it in the words of history: "It was without stiffening of any kind, and bagged out in front, rucking up to the front in a roll." (We do not precisely comprehend this expression, whose precision, however, we by no means venture to doubt.) Brummell boldly met this calamity, by slightly starching the too flexible material – a change in which, as his biographer with due seriousness and truth observes: "a reasoning mind must acknowledge there is not much objectionable."

'Imitators, of course, always exceed their model and the cravat adopted by the dandies soon became excessively starched; the test being that of raising three parts of their length by one corner without bending. Yet Brummell, though he adhered to the happy medium, and was moderate in his starch, was rigorous in his tie. If his cravat did not correspond to his wishes in its first arrangement, it was instantly cast aside. His valet was seen one morning leaving his chamber with an armful of tumbled cravats, and in being asked the cause, solemnly replied, "These are our failures."

'Perfection is slow in all instances; but talent and diligence are sure to advance. Brummell's "tie" became speedily the admiration of the beau monde. The manner in which the dexterous operation was accomplished was perfectly his own, and deserves to be recorded for the benefit of posterity.'

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