Napoleon
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Whatever his true intentions, Bonaparte acted as though there had been a serious threat, but no danger, thanks to the solidity of his government. It had been necessary, as he put it, to demonstrate once and for all to the Bourbons, the royalists and the British that he would no longer treat their plots as ‘child’s play’. To the outside world he took the opportunity to issue something of a challenge. Talleyrand wrote to every court not at war with France demanding the expulsion of all active French émigrés from their territory. One of the first to comply was the elector of Baden, who should have been the first to protest, his territory having been violated. But being so close to France, and having done well out of French support, he had no intention of doing any such thing. On 26 March, at Bonaparte’s behest Talleyrand held a reception at the foreign ministry, which every diplomat in Paris attended.23
In Warsaw on the same day, Louis XVIII, who had received news of Enghien’s arrest but not of his execution, sent an appeal to all the courts of Europe urging them to intercede on the prince’s behalf. His letters were returned, mostly unopened. The British government offered a reward to anyone who would free Enghien, and Tsar Alexander took the matter to heart; when he heard of the prince’s death, he announced court mourning as for a monarch. As he was treating with Britain over an alliance with the aim of making war on France, he considered making the ‘murder’ of Enghien a casus belli. But the negotiations with Britain were not far advanced, and neither were his military preparations. Instead, he issued a protest against the violation of the territory of Baden and ordered his chargé in Paris to demand ‘a satisfactory explanation’. Bonaparte responded with a taunt, referring in the most diplomatic terms to the fact that Alexander had been a party to the murder of his father, and had ascended the throne over his body.24
Almost every person involved wrote up the events in colourful ways aimed at justifying their role in what later came to be seen as a heinous act. Both Talleyrand and Fouché asserted that they had opposed the execution, and both claimed to have said ‘It is more than a crime, it is a mistake.’ But at the time neither regarded it as anything of the sort. They were as anxious as Bonaparte to put an end to royalist plots aimed at restoring a dynasty that would have shown them little kindness. Both had recently aroused his mistrust (and in Fouché’s case fallen out of favour), and therefore needed to rehabilitate themselves. Bonaparte had shown a decisiveness and ruthlessness Machiavelli would have applauded, and they would have been of the same mind.25
Yet the unholy alliance of these three men sealed by this incident had a seamy side. According to the prefect of police Étienne Pasquier, Talleyrand’s collusion with Bonaparte in the elimination of Enghien had revealed to each the degree of ruthlessness the other was capable of, and it frightened them both. ‘From then on, they expected nothing but perfidy and betrayal from one another,’ he wrote, and while Bonaparte henceforth treated Talleyrand with mounting disgust and hauteur, at the same time fearing him, Talleyrand grew more resentfully servile, while secretly undermining his master. Fouché, on the other hand, used the event to convince Bonaparte of the need for a ministry of police, and got himself reinstated as minister. Instead of gratitude, he henceforth displayed greater arrogance and independence. Having seen his master dip his hand in royal blood, the regicide felt more confident. He extended his brief not only within France but abroad, creating a web of intelligence-gathering and quasi-diplomatic agents all over Europe through whom he entertained relations with most of France’s and Bonaparte’s enemies.26
Machiavellian calculation aside, Bonaparte was emotionally affected by the episode. He noted that people looked at him in a different way, and revealed his unquiet conscience by alternately trying to put the moral case for the execution and making gratingly brutal comments about political necessities. He did not try to shift blame or admit he had blundered, but tried to brazen it out by acting as though nothing had happened. He ignored advice from his entourage to keep out of the public eye for a while, at some cost. One of Josephine’s ladies-in-waiting remembered him entering his box at the opera for the first time after the event, with the air of a man leading an attack on a battery of guns. The audience applauded him as usual.27
Although he professed feeling no fear, Bonaparte did admit that the many plots against him made him shudder at the thought of what would happen to France were he to be killed. That fear was felt by the majority of the population. He was commonly referred to as ‘the man called by Providence and protected by the heavens’, and after the discovery of the Pichegru–Cadoudal plot there was talk of ‘the happy star which has saved the saviour of the fatherland from the assassins’, and of ‘the protective spirit which arrested the fatal stroke’. Although some termed him ‘the hero, the idol of France, master of the elements, above all perils and all obstacles’, there was an underlying fear that the motherland might lose him.28
Much the same was true for all those who had played a major role in the Revolution, who feared the consequences for themselves of a return of the Bourbons. Not only would all the achievements of the past decade and a half be overturned, they would at best find themselves obliged to seek safety in obscurity. Émigré nobles who had returned to France, thereby abandoning the Bourbon cause and accepting the legitimacy of the first consul, could also expect little understanding from a returning Louis XVIII, so they too looked for a consolidation of the existing regime. ‘They want to kill the consul,’ a worried Regnaud de Saint-Jean d’Angély wrote to Thibaudeau. ‘We must defend him and make him immortal.’ The form this would take seemed obvious to most. ‘The question was not whether Bonaparte had those qualities which are most desirable in a monarch,’ explained Talleyrand. ‘He certainly possessed those which were indispensable …’29
‘The feasibility of establishing in France a republic like those of antiquity had been dismissed long ago, but people had not given up hope of a government compatible with the dignity of man, with his interests, his nature and his aspirations,’ in the words of Thibaudeau. ‘People did not believe such a government to be incompatible with having a single head, and the one France had given herself seemed on the contrary to have been conjured up by Providence to resolve this problem so long discussed by writers and philosophers.’ In a word, Bonaparte appeared to provide the ideal solution to the conundrum of bridging the ideological gap between monarchy and the sovereignty of the people. As this conviction grew, so did the desire to make his authority permanent, and therefore hereditary. ‘Consul for a term, any coup could see him off like the others. Consul for life, it only needed one assassin …’ explained Maret. ‘He took hereditary government as a shield. It would no longer be enough to kill him; it would be necessary to overthrow the state.’ When people spoke of heredity, they meant monarchy. During the negotiations over the Treaty of Amiens, Cornwallis had even suggested that since George III agreed to drop the title of King of France, the first consul should assume it.30
Fouché urged his fellow senators to create ‘institutions which could destroy the hopes of conspirators by ensuring the survival of the government beyond the life of its head’. On 28 March the Senate duly delivered an address to Bonaparte stressing that every attack on his person was an attack on France, as he had rescued the country from chaos and brought huge benefits for all, and it was therefore his duty to guarantee the future. ‘You have created a new era; you must perpetuate it. Glory is nothing if it is not lasting,’ it ran. The only opposition came from Sieyès, Volney and Grégoire. When the delegation of senators called to deliver the proposal, Bonaparte affected surprise, but graciously agreed to consider it.31
In effect, his brothers Joseph and Lucien, Fouché and Talleyrand, and many others were canvassing hard, encouraging local authorities and military units all over the country to send in appeals begging him to accept supreme authority. He spent most of these months at Saint-Cloud, where he held sessions of his privy council and the Council of State, and received delegations from the assemblies like a monarch attended by h
is subjects.32
On 13 April his privy council directly addressed the question of his becoming emperor. No other title seemed appropriate. Louis XVI had been executed and declared to be ‘the last of the Kings’, so that title was out of the question. The kingdom of France had been abolished and superseded by the French Republic, which had grown into an empire. People at the time referred to the British and Ottoman empires, even though one was a kingdom and the other a sultanate. Given the size and power of France, her ruler could be compared only with Caesar or Charlemagne. The titles of the only two emperors in Europe both supposedly derived from Rome, the word ‘tsar’ being a Russian version of ‘Caesar’, while the title of Holy Roman Emperor spoke for itself. If the head of the French Republic were to take a title, it could only derive from Rome. He was consul, and would become Imperator.
Bonaparte did voice some reservations. ‘So many great things have been achieved over the past three years under the title of consul,’ he had said to Roederer in January 1803. ‘It should be kept.’ Cambacérès agreed. ‘As First Consul, your greatness has no limits and the example of your success being a lesson to them, the kings of Europe will, if they are wise, seek to respect you and avoid all cause for war, so as to prevent French troops from spreading the principles of the Revolution in their possessions,’ he warned. ‘As Emperor, your position changes and places you at odds with yourself.’ Although he had embraced the idea of the imperial title, Bonaparte clung to his revolutionary heritage. It would, it was understood, be a liberal parliamentary monarchy. ‘The citizens will not become my subjects, and the French nation will not become my people,’ he affirmed.33
On 30 April the Tribunate voted in favour of declaring France an empire, with Carnot among the very few dissenters. On 3 May this was communicated to the Senate, which had been working on how to bring it about for the past month. The following day it sent a delegation to Bonaparte which declared that circumstances had made it imperative he accept the dignity of hereditary emperor. It set out a number of conditions, insisting that liberty and equality must never be jeopardised and the sovereignty of the people safeguarded, ending with the hope that the nation should never be placed in the position of having to ‘reclaim its power and to avenge its outraged majesty’. The address was accompanied by a long memorandum listing all the conditions in detail, such as the inviolability of laws, the freedom of institutions, of the individual, of the press, and others quite unacceptable to Bonaparte. It was he who was outraged, and he forbade publication of the document.34
At Saint-Cloud over the next few days he oversaw the work of a commission working on what was effectively a new constitution. The resulting document opened with the words: ‘The Government of the Republic is entrusted to an Emperor, who takes the title Emperor of the French.’ The state continued to be referred to as the Republic (and would be until 1809), and the sovereignty of the people was given its titular due. But the succession was to be by male descent in the Bonaparte family, and the master of France was now Napoleon I. It was presented to the Senate for approval and passed into law on the morning of 18 May. Following the vote, the senators climbed into their carriages and drove en masse from the Luxembourg to Saint-Cloud.
Bonaparte, in military uniform, was waiting for them in the Gallery of Apollo, in which he had addressed the Ancients on 19 Brumaire. He was surrounded by the male members of his family, his fellow consuls, ministers and other dignitaries. When Cambacérès ushered in the senators, he addressed Bonaparte as ‘Sire’ and ‘Majesty’, words not used in France for over a decade. Many of those present felt uneasy on hearing them, but Bonaparte did not flinch. ‘He seemed the least embarrassed of all those present,’ recorded one.35
Lebrun made a speech, at the end of which he proclaimed Napoleon I Emperor of the French. Napoleon graciously accepted the honour. ‘Anything that can contribute to the good of the motherland is closely bound up with my own happiness,’ he said. ‘I accept this title which you believe to be in the interests of the nation.’ As they waited to file in to lunch, Duroc moved among the dignitaries informing them how they should henceforth address each other. They were no longer citizens.36
27
Napoleon I
‘This new dignity bestowed on the most insolent of all the usurpers who have ever mounted the world stage has accumulated and consummated our shame and our misfortunes,’ the Austrian official and British agent Friedrich von Gentz wrote to the British minister in Berlin, Francis James Jackson, on 22 August 1804. ‘The ease and indeed the joy with which this impudent procedure has been received and applauded at every court marks the extent of the world’s decadence.’ Frederick William of Prussia did indeed write a letter of congratulation to Napoleon which was nothing if not cordial. The other states of Europe were more or less grudging, but all except Britain, Russia and Sweden recognised Bonaparte’s elevation. Francis II, whose title of Holy Roman Emperor had grown meaningless with the dissolution of that political unit, proclaimed himself emperor of Austria as Francis I, citing as precedents the Russian monarchy and the elevation of ‘the new sovereign of France’. He had sought Napoleon’s approval first.1
Reactions in France were mixed. Scorn was poured on the enterprise by the people of the street in Paris, who were strangers to reverence. During the performance of a play about Peter the Great at the Théâtre-Français on 19 May the words ‘emperor’ and ‘empire’ were hissed by the audience. But there were no disturbances, and according to a police report of 25 May the workers of Paris ‘were making much of their right to vote [in the plebiscite held to sanction it] for the hereditary empire’ and turning up at the Préfecture in large numbers to do so.2
Many in the army felt their past glories and the epic days of marching barefoot and beating the Austrians on empty stomachs would be submerged in the new pomp. General Rapp disliked the ceremonial, resented the growing number of nobles in Napoleon’s entourage, and regretted his former familiarity with the great man, as did Lannes.3
‘As for me,’ wrote another veteran of Italy and Egypt, ‘while regretting the austere yet noble trappings of the Consulship, which suited me better than the pomp of the Empire, along with my old comrades of the Pyrenees, of Arcole, Rivoli and the Pyramids I sincerely welcomed this great political event.’ In an official address, General Davout assured Napoleon that the troops under his command saw in his elevation ‘not so much an honour for you as a guarantee of future happiness for us’. In a private letter to his friend Murat, General Belliard, then stationed in Brussels, noted that his men were ‘on the whole pleased with the new form of Government and the idea of heredity’.4
It was unfortunate that the trial of Moreau, Cadoudal and the other conspirators opened only ten days after the proclamation of the empire. Pichegru did not feature, as he had been found strangled in his cell with his neckcloth. The official verdict was suicide, but many did not believe it. Moreau still elicited sympathy, and people were not convinced of his culpability; he defended himself ably and was acquitted. Napoleon put pressure on the judges and a retrial found him guilty. Sentence was passed on 10 June. Cadoudal and nineteen of his fellow conspirators were condemned to death, Moreau and others to two years in prison.5
That morning Josephine had brought the parents of the marquis de Rivière and Prince Jules de Polignac to the Tuileries, where they pleaded with the emperor. The mother of Polignac fainted and fell at his feet. Napoleon pardoned the two young men, along with two more nobles for whom his sisters had interceded. In doing so, he sent out a message to royalist nobles that they, unlike the Bourbons, did have a future in the new empire. Not so Moreau, whom he had hoped to see condemned to death so he could pardon him. As it was, Moreau could appeal against the verdict, which would lead to another trial, so Bonaparte quickly commuted the sentence to banishment from France, and sent him to America. The episode had stirred powerful emotions. ‘The animosity and outbursts of rage against the government were as violent and as widespread as any that I saw in the days leadin
g up to the Revolution,’ noted Roederer. But they did not affect the general acquiescence in the change of regime.6
Miot de Melito was surprised at the degree to which people found the idea of hereditary succession reassuring. ‘It was not as if any surge of affection for the first consul inclined public opinion to favour this new increase in grandeur for him and his family – he had never been less popular – but the need for peace and stability was so pressing, the future so alarming, the fear of terrorism so great, the return of the Bourbons, who had so much to avenge, so fearsome, that people eagerly grasped anything they could to elude these dangers against which they could see no other means of defence.’ Many assumed that Napoleon would, having first dealt with the impediment of Josephine by repudiating her, marry into the network of European royalty, to reinforce his legitimacy and guarantee France membership of the club. Some talked of the sister of the elector of Bavaria, which would have made Bonaparte the brother-in-law of Tsar Alexander.7
The marquis de Bouillé, an émigré who had returned during the peace of Amiens, was so struck by how strong and proud France had grown that he felt justified in switching his allegiance from the Bourbons to the man who had achieved this. Being a monarchist at heart, he believed Napoleon had a right to the throne. The ageing Cardinal Maury, a devoted adherent of the Bourbons, congratulated Napoleon on his accession. ‘I am French,’ he wrote. ‘I wish to remain so always. I have constantly and loudly maintained that the government of France must be from every aspect essentially monarchical.’8