Citizen Emperor

by Philip Dwyer

  At the end of the negotiations, Bonaparte is supposed to have said to a senator by the name of Pierre-Jean-Georges Cabanis, ‘Do you know what is this Concordat I have just signed? It is a vaccine against religion: in fifty years, there will be no religion in France.’63 It was a rather glib prognostication. Rather than the end of all religious problems in France – the Concordat is after all highlighted as one of the main achievements of Bonaparte’s early reign – it was really the start of a new set of problems that would quickly deteriorate into a bitter and protracted struggle between the Church and the French state, the likes of which had not been seen since the Middle Ages.64 Little was resolved by the Concordat. Certainly, the pope had conceded a great deal. In order to maintain the right to invest bishops, he was obliged to recognize the Republic, to accept the existence of a French Church that was subordinate to the state, to submit to the nationalization of Church lands, to see Catholicism reduced to a religion rather than the religion of France, and to agree to the collective resignation of all bishops, something that Bonaparte insisted on so that he could then recompose the whole French episcopacy according to his own likes and dislikes. The negotiations around the naming of bishops had been, moreover, long and bitter. Indeed, both the Church in Rome and the negotiators in Paris were surprised at just how bitter and protracted affairs became.65 Of the ninety-four bishops holding sees before the Concordat, fifty-five had to resign while the remaining thirty-seven formally opposed the measure and formed a small schismatic Church, dubbed the ‘Petite Eglise’, hostile to both Bonaparte and the Concordat.

  The Concordat, coming on top of Lunéville and Amiens, was nevertheless to give a tremendous boost to Bonaparte’s reputation in ways we might find difficult to grasp today. He had realized that the only way to resolve the religious question in France, without recourse to constant repression, was to defuse the schism that had been precipitated by the Constitutional Oath of the Clergy during the Revolution.66 However, much like the revolutionaries who had precipitated the conflict in the first place, he was determined that the state should remain in control of the Church. With the Church now seemingly onside, Bonaparte took a considerable step towards the further consolidation of his regime.

  ‘The Head of Medusa Should Show Itself No More!’

  Opposition to the Concordat came from all quarters, but the most important within the assemblies were the Ideologues – philosophes with moderate republican convictions.67 Outspoken anti-clericals, republicans still locked in a revolutionary mind-set, were to be found in the Council of State, in the Legislative Corps and in the Tribunate where they were to cause trouble when the first drafts of the Concordat were presented to them in October 1801. For these men of the Revolution, any compromise with the Church was seen as a concession to ‘religious fanaticism’, the type that had produced the schism in the Church and had inspired counter-revolution in the Vendée.

  Those who opposed the Concordat waited until the legislature reconvened after a lengthy vacation in November 1801. Among them was the constitutional bishop Henri Grégoire, a former revolutionary who had fought for an independent Gallican Church.68 The opponents of the rapprochement with Rome expected Bonaparte to present the Concordat for approval early on, at which time they planned to flex their collective muscle by vigorously opposing it.69 However, the tension flaring between Bonaparte and his opponents came to a head not over the Concordat itself, but over the ratification of a peace treaty with Russia. When the treaty was brought before the Tribunate for approval in December 1801, a storm erupted over the use of the word ‘subject’ in the phrase ‘the subjects of the two powers’.70 A former Jacobin in the Tribunate objected that Frenchmen were citizens, and not subjects. Even though the session was held in secret – the gallery was cleared so that dissent could not be heard in public – and even though the Tribunate eventually passed the treaty by sixty-five votes to thirteen, Bonaparte was taken aback. In an audience with the tribune Stanislas de Girardin, the First Consul is supposed to have said, ‘You know that I am always ready to give each of you the explanations you might want on any of the bills. My kindness does not go so far, however, as to want to enter into a discussion with those curs [chiens], because you would have to be a cur to risk the resumption of war for the sake of one word.’71

  The ‘war’ that Bonaparte was referring to was probably the rivalry between political factions that had radicalized the Revolution. If such a trivial matter as the use of the word ‘subject’ could be the cause of dispute, one could only imagine what would happen when something as controversial as the Concordat was debated. Bonaparte could not afford to lose that vote; it was something in which he had personally invested a great deal in the face of vehement opposition from republicans. To risk a showdown over the Concordat at this stage was to risk a possible defeat at the hands of the legislative bodies.72 In order to test their loyalty, therefore, Bonaparte submitted the Civil Code instead.

  Bonaparte’s name is linked to the uniform body of laws that was the Civil Code – he later claimed that it was his greatest achievement – but in reality he neither inspired nor wrote those laws.73 It was something that had been envisaged both by the monarchy and by the revolutionaries.74 After Brumaire, Bonaparte set up a commission of four people to work on a draft text. It was finished in January 1801, and was then handed over to the Council of State for discussion and modification. Ever since, historians have debated the extent to which he influenced the Code.75

  Why did Bonaparte succeed where the revolutionaries failed?76 Was he really the driving force behind it, or was it that the Code could be brought to fruition only in a period of political stability? This is one of those occasions in which his dynamism came to the fore. We know that he took part in a little over half the sessions of the Council of State dedicated to discussing the Code over a three-year period, but, like any body of law, the Code was the result of a collective effort, reflecting the needs of an emerging elite.77 According to Bonaparte’s own account, he listened and generally let the members of the committee get on with the job.78 He does not seem, according to some witnesses, to have had much impact on the proceedings. His almoner, the Duc de Broglie, recalled that he would often ask questions and listen patiently, but when things went on too long he would interrupt, and then talk at length without much coherence.79 He may have pushed the debates in certain directions they may not have otherwise taken, but it is certainly an exaggeration to think that the Code would not have seen the light of day without him.80 The minutes of the sessions at which he assisted, published during the Empire, appear to have given him a larger role than he actually had.81

  Where Bonaparte did facilitate the completion of the Code is in allowing specialists to advise him, and by getting jurists onside (in much the same way as he had used scientists on the expedition to Egypt). And, as we shall shortly see, he got it passed into law.82 The whole point of the Code was to establish a peaceful society based on the notions of patriarchy and private property.83 Doing so was a means of disarming the counter-revolution, for only through a uniform set of laws could the Brumairians hope to build a harmonious society.84 What Bonaparte was attempting to do over and above the codification of laws, however, was to impose a powerful image of himself as father of the nation.85 Thus the newly codified legal system emphasized duty and structure, while the Revolution’s egalitarian inheritance laws were abandoned in favour of more paternalistic legislation in which the authority of the father was paramount.86

  When Bonaparte submitted the Civil Code to the Legislative Corps and the Tribunate, things did not go smoothly. Both institutions criticized the articles severely, asserting that the Republic was being enslaved, that the Legislative Corps had to be put before those who had the power to execute the law (that is, Bonaparte),87 and overwhelmingly voted to reject the first bill.88 The public’s reaction to the rejection was not favourable, and was seen for what it was – a clash, unwelcome from the public’s point of view, between Bonaparte and the legislative bodies.89
When the second bill was rejected in the Tribunate at the beginning of 1802, Bonaparte announced that he was withdrawing any laws being considered by the chambers, regretting that he would have to put them off for another time.90 He effectively sent the legislative bodies to Coventry; for the next two and a half months, they were starved of laws so that in effect they could not function.

  Supporters of Bonaparte scratched their heads trying to figure out why both the Tribunate and the Legislative Corps had rejected the Civil Code with such vehemence. Different reasons were put forward, none of them convincing: the deputies disliked Bonaparte; they were jealous of the role of the Council of State; it was the fault of the émigrés; it was the Jacobins in the assemblies; it was Sieyès.91 The most likely explanation is that, offended that just about everybody other than the legislative assemblies had been consulted in the drafting of the Code, the deputies were sending a message to Bonaparte, warning him to take them more seriously.92

  Bonaparte’s ire against the legislative assemblies had been brewing for some time, ever since the machine infernale. In a newspaper article in the Journal de Paris, he complained of the ‘twelve or fifteen obscure metaphysicians’ who ‘believed themselves a party’ and who made ‘long speeches they think perfidious but which are only ridiculous’.93 Part of the explanation has to do with Bonaparte’s character. He was incapable of tolerating criticism, because any criticism was perceived as a direct attack on his person. Those who did not agree with him were tongue-lashed, almost always in public, in an attempt to humiliate them into submission. We will come across this overblown response time and again, whenever he met with resistance.

  Part of the explanation, however, was also political and had to do, somewhat perversely, with what Bonaparte saw as an ideal form of government. He simply could not fathom how such a body could be so obstructionist, possibly fearing what had happened to Louis XVI in the face of a difficult assembly. It was the type of factionalism that had led to the worst excesses of the Revolution and therefore could not be tolerated. Such was the obsession with factions, such was the demand for unity, that any opposition was considered a threat to the government. In private, Bonaparte was calling the deputies ‘vermin that I have on my clothes’, characterizing opposition as an ‘intolerable insolence’.94 The state’s representatives were expected to keep their mouths shut, or suffer the ultimate penalty – dismissal – from what was, after all, a lucrative sinecure. There was no lack of men ready to fill vacant posts.95 Besides, the vast majority of the political elite were compliant, even when they disliked or disagreed with the bills that were before their consideration. No one, for example, resigned from the Senate in protest against a measure they might have disagreed with.96

  Bonaparte did not come away from this experience thinking that he had to improve parliamentary strategizing, something he certainly could have been better at, or that he should make do with having his bills passed by a majority vote. No, Bonaparte came away resenting the opposition, and thinking he had to have a polity completely subservient to his will. He used the same argument once used by the revolutionaries, namely, that his government represented the sovereign will of the people, and the will of the people could not be opposed.97 It was ‘the nation’s will’, he wrote, ‘that they [the members of the Tribunate] should in no way obstruct the government, and that the head of Medusa should show itself no more either among our Tribunes or in our assemblies’.98

  In private, Bonaparte considered the possibility of another coup against these obstructive parliamentary bodies,99 but Cambacérès came up with an alternative solution. The Constitution stipulated that one-fifth of deputies in each chamber – twenty tribunes and sixty legislators – should be renewed every year, which would normally be effected by the drawing of lots. Instead, Cambacérès suggested that the Senate compile a list of those who would be excluded.100 In effect, Cambacérès used existing parliamentary regulations to eliminate those who were considered too critical or who had demonstrated an independence of mind that displeased the First Consul.

  In this manner, Bonaparte succeeded in purging the chambers of the most recalcitrant elements, and replacing them with more malleable characters. With the purge came a change in procedures in the Tribunate so that all bills were now sent for preliminary examination to one of three new committees – finance, interior and legislation. Lucien, who had returned from Madrid ostensibly reconciled with his brother, was one of the newly appointed members to the Tribunate. On 1 April, he was elected president of the committee that reviewed the Concordat. There was no question of the Concordat not passing now; the agreement was adopted on 3 April 1802, only a week after the Peace of Amiens was signed. When it came to the vote in the Tribunate, only seven members (out of eighty-five) voted against. Similar figures occurred in the Legislative Corps – 228 for and 21 against.101 The Concordat had, however, taken nine months to pass through the legislative bodies.

  The purge did not entirely eliminate opposition to Bonaparte, which continued, but it was timid and limited. After a while, those who stood on principle usually gave up trying and retired from public life. Cabanis is an example.102 He was one of the Ideologues who had supported Brumaire and a strong executive as the best means of assuring democracy, and who had been given a position in the Senate as a reward. But increasingly he became disillusioned with the way in which Bonaparte co-opted power. Every now and then he would dare to criticize the First Consul, indeed he was one of the few who did, and occasionally he would cast a negative vote in the Senate. But that is as far as his opposition went. He eventually turned away from public life to pursue private scholarship, giving vent now and then in private to his feelings against Bonaparte and later Napoleon.103

  Bonaparte faced grumblings from staunch republicans and the Ideologues over the Concordat, but he also had to face refractory elements within the clergy – as we have seen, thirty-seven bishops refused to resign from their sees as they were required to by the treaty – and within the army.104 Despite this, the Concordat was an overwhelming success in garnering support for the regime. The treaty and many of the religious institutions put in place under Bonaparte had but one objective – for the state to regain control over the religious question and to heal the social rift that had occurred during the Revolution. Bonaparte would now have at his disposal a corps of ‘prefects in purple’ who could help him extend his power over the French, but no more so, it has to be said, than the former kings of France.105 If Bonaparte was able to write to his uncle, Cardinal Fesch, ‘The Concordat is not the triumph of any one party, but the reconciliation of all,’106 it was because the agreement with the Church deprived royalists and the counter-revolutionaries of their most powerful ammunition. Religion had been a fundamental factor in the revolts in the Vendée and in the Midi; the Concordat solidly placed the Church on the side of Bonaparte and the Consulate.

  The Concordat was by no means perfect, nor indeed had the whole of French society been reconciled to the regime and to Bonaparte. For the moment, however, it enabled Catholics to rally to a ‘monarchical plebiscitary republic’. Leading ecclesiastics helped this process by depicting Bonaparte as a providential man, placed by God at the head of France, in the same way Cyrus, Constantine and Clovis had once been placed by God at the head of their people.107 Religion was to become one of the foundations of the new regime and of Bonaparte’s political legitimacy. In signing the treaty with Pope Pius VII, he assumed the same rights and prerogatives towards the Catholic Church as the former kings of France.108 In the eyes of the pope, therefore, he held his power from God. The state, Bonaparte and religion were increasingly intermixed. According to article 8 of the Concordat, for example, mass was to end with the following prayer: ‘O Lord, save the Republic; O Lord, save the consuls’ (Domine, salvam fac rempublicam; domine, salvos fac consules).109 It wasn’t long before the word ‘consuls’ was replaced with ‘consul’.

  Portraying Bonaparte

  The peace treaties and the Concordat were fully exploit
ed by the regime, and reinforced the reputation gained by Bonaparte in Italy as a warrior who despised war and who offered peace to vanquished enemies.110 The religious and military peace enabled Bonaparte to conquer areas of public opinion that had not yet come over to the regime.111 Much of what we see in the press during this period is about France returning to the ‘European family’, while the artistic representations of Bonaparte during this period also played to this theme. For example, a competition was organized under the auspices of Lucien’s successor as minister of the interior, Jean-Antoine Chaptal, calling on artists to celebrate the Peace of Amiens and the re-establishment of religious cults.112

  Anonymous, Allégorie du Concordat (Allegory of the Concordat), 1802. Bonaparte appears to be parting the darkness in order to reveal religion, bathed in light, to France. This painting was probably the result of a competition that was held in 1802.

  The results were mediocre. The director of the Central Museum of the Arts, Dominique Vivant Denon, was so disappointed by the absence of submissions from the great artists, and by the pedestrian quality of those paintings submitted, that he recommended the regime abandon altogether the use of competitions for art works.113 The government consequently thought through the manner in which the regime interacted with artists. From the beginning of 1803, artistic competitions were mostly replaced by the commissioning of works of art from chosen artists.114 This gave the regime a great deal more control over what was portrayed, but it also provided Bonaparte with much greater say in how he and his accomplishments were represented: he ordered at least ten portraits in 1803 alone from artists who included Jean-Antoine Gros, Jean-Baptiste Greuze and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres.