Le Code Napoléon is the designation officially applied in 1807 C.E. to the code of French civil law originally enacted in March 1804 C.E. as the Code Civil des Français and still in force in France. An initial draft completed following the outbreak of the French Revolution was a protest against the extreme diversity in the laws then in force in different parts of France. It was named in honor of Napoleon, emperor of France, who had participated in the formulation. The Code Napoléon was a compromise between the customary law, basically Germanic, of the northern provinces of France, and the essentially Roman law of the southern and eastern regions of the country. In arrangement, the code corresponds to the Institutes, contributions made by the Byzantine emperor Justinian I to the Roman Corpus Juris Civilis, or body of Civil Law. Among the merits of the French code are its simplicity and clearness of statement. As a result of the Napoleonic conquests, the code was introduced into a number of European countries, notably Belgium, where it is still in force. It also became the model for the civil codes of the province of Québec, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, some Latin American republics, and the state of Louisiana.