The first thing that needed to be settled was who would preside over the three-man consulate. Sieyès had assumed it would be him, but he was to be disappointed. According to one version of events, Ducos turned to Bonaparte and said, ‘It is quite unnecessary to vote on the presidency; it is yours by right.’ Another has Bonaparte simply taking the president’s chair. On doing so he declared modestly that they should each preside for a day in rotation, but that never happened.2
Thus constituted, the consuls, or rather Bonaparte, proceeded to nominate the new government. He replaced the left-leaning minister for war with his trusty Berthier, left Cambacérès at the ministry of justice, and in a gesture to the ideologues nominated as minister of the interior the mathematician and astronomer Pierre-Simon Laplace (his examiner on graduation from the École Militaire in 1785). He left the current incumbents at the ministries of police, the navy and foreign relations (though he would slip Talleyrand into that ten days later), and allowed Sieyès to nominate his candidate, Martin Gaudin, minister of finance. ‘He was an honest and thorough administrator who knew how to make himself liked by his subordinates, proceeding gradually but with purpose,’ Bonaparte would later write of him, a quality he did not appreciate at the time. ‘Come on, take the oath, we’re in a hurry,’ he chivvied the astonished Gaudin. For reasons that would become apparent later, probably Bonaparte’s most significant appointment was that of the thirty-six-year-old Hugues Maret as secretary to the consuls.3
‘Gentlemen, you have a master,’ Sieyès is reported to have said to the others after Bonaparte left the room. ‘[Bonaparte] wants to do everything, knows how to do everything, and can do everything. In the deplorable position in which we find ourselves, we had better submit rather than excite divisions which would lead to certain defeat.’ He had been completely outmanoeuvred. Bonaparte had long ago concluded that effective government required a dictator. He had been borne to power by a disparate assemblage of people who consequently believed they should have a say in shaping the future. He was prepared to include them, declaring that he was willing to work with all honest patriots. But he made it clear that he would not favour any of the factions, since he now belonged to ‘the faction of the nation’. The nation, he believed, wanted strong government. The posters proclaiming the establishment of the ‘new order’ made it clear that this regime would not be like the others. ‘The old government was oppressive because it was weak; the one which succeeds it has set itself the duty of being strong in order to fulfil that of being just,’ they proclaimed. ‘It appeals for support to all friends of the Republic and of liberty, to all Frenchmen.’4
As far as hard power went, the consuls could count on most of the military in Paris, but not on units stationed around the country, on the Rhine and in Italy, which would probably follow the lead of their immediate commanders, many of whom were not devotees of Bonaparte and had their own views, political or otherwise. The new regime would have to tread carefully and to be all things to all men in order to disarm opposition, which chimed with Bonaparte’s wish to ground his rule on national reconciliation. But he made a false move at the outset.
At their next meeting the consuls took the decision to proscribe what they deemed to be the most dangerous Jacobins, thirty-seven of whom were to be sent to the penal colony of Cayenne and a further twenty-two to be placed under police surveillance on the Île de Ré. The news aroused widespread disapproval and fears that there would be a new wave of score-settling. Cambacérès and Roederer rushed to the Luxembourg and argued vehemently against the measure, which was reversed. It is unclear who suggested it in the first place, as all those involved shifted the blame onto others. Bonaparte did his best to appear as the one who had been for clemency all along, and wrote conciliatory letters to some of those on the list. On 24 December he would proclaim an amnesty for many who had been proscribed following previous coups.5
Many royalists saw Bonaparte as a potential French equivalent of General George Monck, who had enabled the restoration of the Stuarts to the English throne in 1660. Bonaparte thought such a restoration neither desirable nor viable. But he did not wish to provoke its supporters; they kept a civil war simmering in the west of France, where royalist and Catholic sentiment was fanned by émigrés based in England. He began by negotiating a ceasefire with the insurgents, on 23 November, and implemented a policy of firmness with regard to the intransigent and leniency to those prepared to lay down their arms. He aimed to weaken the religious resistance to the Republic by permitting churches to reopen and allowing people to worship on Sundays and feast days, and followed this up by releasing imprisoned priests and honouring the remains of the late Pope, who had died at Valence that summer.
A concurrent policy was to drain the pool of support for the monarchist cause. One of his first acts as consul, on 13 November, was to repeal the so-called Law of Hostages, which allowed the authorities to imprison the relatives of émigrés and active royalists. Having abrogated the law, he went to the notorious Temple and other prisons, and personally released the hostages held there. ‘An unjust law deprived you of liberty, and my first duty is to return it to you,’ he told them.6
The previous day, 12 November, he had gone to the Institute to flatter its members, and after releasing the noble prisoners he called on the octogenarian naturalist Louis Daubenton, who was gravely ill. It was no empty gesture. While the threat from Jacobins and royalists was evident, it was the Ideologues, moderate republicans and constitutional monarchists of the centre ground, whose support was crucial; it was they who would draw up the new constitution.
Bonaparte had moved from the rue de la Victoire to the seat of power. He established himself in a set of rooms on the ground floor of the Petit Luxembourg, while Josephine made herself at home on the floor above, in the apartment vacated by Gohier. The two were connected by an internal staircase leading from his study to her apartment and on to private quarters of his own on the floor above that. He rose early and worked, sometimes with Bourrienne, until about ten o’clock, when he would take a light lunch, after which he was joined by aides and ministers to work on specific subjects. He dined at five, after which he would go up to Josephine’s apartment, where he met and conferred with other ministers and members of his family in a less formal atmosphere. Establishing himself as the driving force in the Consulate had only been a first step; the next required much informal positioning.7
Following the coup, each of the two chambers had delegated a commission of twenty-five members to work on a new constitution, which would be proposed by the Five Hundred and vetted by the Elders once they had reconvened. Its nature would determine whether there had been any purpose to the coup; only if it created a strong executive could political stability be achieved and the work of rebuilding France begin.
Since Sieyès considered himself an authority in this sphere, many looked to him. He set to work with alacrity, and soon came up with a project based on universal male suffrage in which the democratic element was, as Bonaparte put it, ‘entirely metaphysical’: six million voters would elect 600,000, who would in turn choose 60,000, who would select 6,000 ‘notables’, whose votes would determine the composition of two legislative chambers. These would be supervised by a ‘collège de conservateurs’ and presided over by a ‘Grand Elector’ who would reside in the palace of Versailles and fulfil largely ceremonial functions, assisted by two consuls.8
According to Fouché, after Sieyès had read out his draft on 1 December, Bonaparte burst out laughing, dismissing it as metaphysical twaddle. He pointed out that the Grand Elector would be no more than the idle king of caricature. ‘Do you know anyone vile enough to enjoy playing such a farcical role?’ he asked, whereupon Sieyès, who had presumably devised it as a political padded cell for Bonaparte himself, accused him of wanting to rule as a sovereign. In a state of dudgeon, he threatened to withdraw from the whole business. Although he had a considerable following, Sieyès had no way of mustering it. On the morning after the coup, the leading Ideolo
gue Benjamin Constant had told him that he had made a mistake in assenting to the adjournment of the two assemblies for three months, as it deprived him of a forum in which to oppose Bonaparte.9
At their meeting the following day, Sieyès delivered a lecture on the principles of democracy in support of his project, and Bonaparte made a show of submission; he decided not to oppose it, and to concentrate instead on the status and powers of the executive. He suggested that five delegates from each of the commissions meet in the presence of the consuls to give it final form, and they duly convened in his rooms on the evening of 4 December. He kept them there until the early hours of the following morning, going through each article, stripping it of unnecessary verbiage and dictating the lean précis to Pierre-Claude Daunou, who had been designated as secretary. The exercise was repeated relentlessly over the next days. Bonaparte found ‘those long nights of lengthy discussions during which one had to hear out so much nonsense’ utterly exhausting. These men were all significantly older than him. They represented a wealth of knowledge and experience, and watching them grapple with the task taught him that brilliant minds could be remarkably cloudy when it came to converting concepts into comprehensible prose and practical form.10
Although he did manage to slip in a visit to the opera on 9 December, he devoted most of his time to the task, holding meetings on consecutive evenings until he judged it had been accomplished, on 10 December, seven days after the first session. There were still elements to be added, but he feared the process might drag on if it were not wrapped up, so on the evening of 13 December he persuaded all fifty members of the two commissions to sign the project as it stood.
It was a brilliant fraud. It guaranteed universal male suffrage, with every citizen aged over twenty-one having the right to vote. But there were to be no elections as such: they would meet in their commune and choose a tenth of their number. These would convene at the level of the department and repeat the process, designating a tenth of their number, who would then select a tenth of theirs as notables at the national level. These notables would provide a pool from which communal and departmental authorities and members of the four new assemblies were picked – by nomination in the first instance and rotating cooption thereafter.
Only the executive had the right to propose new laws, which were to be formulated by the Council of State (Conseil d’État), a body of thirty to forty experts. The proposed legislation would be submitted for evaluation to the Tribunate (Tribunat), a body of one hundred nominated for five years, a fifth of whom would be replaced annually. It would then be passed to the Legislative Body (Corps législatif), consisting of 300 members also renewed by a fifth each year, which would listen to the spokesmen for the executive and the Tribunate, and then pass or reject the law. The members of the Tribunate and the Legislative Body were to be nominated by the Senate, composed of eighty men aged over forty who were the ultimate guardians of the law, sitting in closed sessions and making up their number by coopting new members.
This roughly conformed to Sieyès’ project, but his idea of a Grand Elector was replaced by an executive consisting of three consuls nominated by the Senate for terms of ten years. The first consul’s prerogatives included the power to initiate laws, nominate members of the Council of State, ministers, state functionaries and judges (except for justices of the peace, who were locally elected), to declare war and sign peace. The other two consuls had a purely consultative function. They did not, like the Directory, constitute a Consulate: they were Consuls of the Republic. And since the Senate had not yet constituted itself, the first three were to be chosen by the two commissions that had just endorsed the new constitution, on 13 December.
A ten-litre measuring jar was placed on the table in lieu of an urn, and the fifty members of the two commissions duly wrote out their choices on slips of paper, folded and dropped them in. Before they could be counted, Bonaparte, who had been nonchalantly leaning on the mantelpiece warming his legs before the fire, strode over and snatched the urn. Turning to Sieyès, he addressed him solemnly as though on behalf of the whole assembly, saying that they should acknowledge his outstanding merits and contribution by allowing him to nominate the three consuls. Sieyès knew he had been sidelined, and was rapidly losing the will to stand up to the energetic young man. He duly nominated Bonaparte as first consul, and acquiesced in his choice of Cambacérès as second, and as third the sixty-year-old former ancien-régime functionary Charles-François Lebrun. As Bonaparte emptied the contents of the urn onto the fire, it was recorded that he and the others had been nominated ‘by unanimous acclamation’. The coup d’état of Brumaire was complete.11
The ‘Constitution of Year VIII’ was proclaimed two days later, on 15 December 1799. In Paris, the garrison was under arms as municipal officers read out the text in the streets and public places. The new constitution came into being ten days after that, and was endorsed by a national plebiscite the results of which would be announced on 7 February 1800: by over three million votes to 1,562. It has been generally assumed that the figures were rigged, but only recent research has revealed to what extent. Lucien, who had by then replaced Laplace at the Ministry of the Interior, made his functionaries in the departments ‘round up’ the figures, giving another 900,000 ‘yes’ votes, and simply added on a further 550,000 in the name of the army, which had not been consulted, adding nearly one and a half million votes in total. In reality, only 20 per cent of the electorate voiced their approval, but that was not much less than in other plebiscites held at various points during the Revolution.12
The publication of the constitution was accompanied by a proclamation composed by Sieyès which affirmed that it was based on ‘the real principles of representative government, on the sacred rights of property, equality and liberty’, and ended with the words: ‘Citizens, the Revolution is affirmed in the principles which initiated it. It is accomplished!’13
Nothing could have been further from the truth. The ninety-five articles of the constitution did not include anything about liberty, equality or fraternity, and made no mention of the Rights of Man. The constitution gave absolute authority to one man, and provided no channels of opposition that he could not block with a stroke of the pen. It was highly prescriptive, Article 88 stipulating, for instance, that the National Institute must work for the perfection of the arts and sciences. Sieyès, who was nominated president of the Senate, summed up its underlying principle with his comment, ‘Authority comes from above; trust from below.’ It established absolutist rule decked out in the spirit of the age.14
It would be wrong to see in the constitution purely the product of Bonaparte’s lust for power. Sieyès and other idealists who had launched the Revolution had seen with their own eyes where unbridled democracy could lead, and all but a very few of those who had witnessed the events of the 1790s longed to close the Pandora’s box they had opened. The new constitution promised to do just that. ‘Here we have democracy purged of all its inconvenience,’ noted the physiologist, philosopher and revolutionary Pierre Cabanis, a member of the Five Hundred, adding that ‘the ignorant classes no longer exert any influence’.15
On 22 December Bonaparte convened in his private apartment at the Luxembourg the twenty-nine men he had chosen to make up the Council of State. Two days later, after he, Sieyès and Ducos had resigned their office as provisional consuls, he held a meeting at eight in the evening with his two new colleagues, his ministers and the Council, at which he formally took office as first consul. Aged thirty years and four months, he dictated a proclamation to the French nation pledging ‘To make the Republic dear to its citizens, respectable to foreigners, formidable to enemies.’ The task ahead was immense, but he could count on the assistance of some of the greatest brains and most talented administrators, jurists, economists and statesmen of the day.16
The second consul, Cambacérès, was a highly intelligent forty-six-year-old lawyer from Montpellier. He had played an active part in the Revolution, working on successive projec
ts for a new civil code of laws worthy of the times. He had been in the Convention that condemned Louis XVI, but voted for a suspended sentence. His political activities had not interfered with his flourishing legal practice, which made him a wealthy man. An urbane homosexual, he was a fastidious dresser, with cascades of lace at his throat and cuffs, who wore his hair studiously curled. He was also a gourmet, boasting the finest table in Paris, at which guests were served by liveried servants. His judgement was sound, his manner subtle, and, thanks to his position as a senior Freemason, his contacts widespread. He valued Bonaparte for what he had done and could do for France, and would serve him well; he was not blind to his faults, and would prevent him making many a mistake.
The third consul, Lebrun, was thirty years older than Bonaparte, a minor noble from Normandy who had been secretary to René de Maupeou, the chancellor of France under the ancien régime who had fought to reinforce the authority of the crown. A man of literary tastes, he had translated the works of Homer and Tasso, and written poetry of his own. He had sat in the Convention as a moderate royalist, miraculously escaping the guillotine under the Terror, and was a deputy under the Directory. Bonaparte had been wary of Lebrun on account of his monarchist connections, and before making up his mind insisted on being shown his literary works. Though retiring by nature, Lebrun was a clever man with a firm grasp of economics, convinced of the necessity of strong executive power and opposed to unruly parliamentary structures. In this he reflected his senior colleague’s views: Bonaparte was determined to work through people and bodies he could direct and control, not ‘chattering chambers’ which wasted time and impeded the efficient functioning of the state.17
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