Citizen Emperor

by Philip Dwyer

  Etiquette was not simply a personal display of power. Bonaparte was giving himself, as head of state, a certain prestige, but he was also attempting to efface the egalitarianism that had been one of the primary values of the Revolution. In the process, he could banish from his entourage elements he considered undesirable. The flipside to that coin was that he could confide important functions to members of the former nobility in order to facilitate their reintegration into the state. All of this was codified in the Etiquette du Palais Impérial, which first appeared in print in 1805, and which was a clearer guide to the power structure of the state than the redundant Constitution. It is an extraordinary document for understanding the nature of the Napoleonic Empire, how court life was regulated and who could have access to the Emperor.73 The lever and the coucher, ceremonies surrounding the act of getting up in the morning and going to bed in the evening, which had fallen into disuse under Louis XVI, were revived during the Consulate and were now codified.74 Bonaparte greatly simplified the practice: the bedroom receded into the domain of the private and was no longer the central focus of the lever or the coucher, as it had been; he simply ‘received’ in a salon before going to bed or on getting up. There were two further distinctions: admittance to the court was based on military rank or official position rather than, as at the court of Versailles, social status or lineage; and anyone in an official capacity, as we have seen, was now obliged to wear a uniform. As under the former kings of France, etiquette and uniforms were a means of controlling and dominating those in Napoleon’s entourage.75 Uniform became an important part of court life and was a return in many respects to the ancien régime courts where a coat, knee-breeches and silk stockings were obligatory. For a society now built around the idea of meritocracy, but not equality or egalitarianism, this was also a way of making a clear distinction between those with power and influence and those without.76 It was also a sign of the increasing regimentation, if not militarization, of French society. In July 1804, a decree was issued regulating the official costume of the Empire, designed by Jean-Baptiste Isabey.77

  The court came to dominate French society and politics in a way that it had never done before, even during the time of Louis XIV.78 Napoleon’s court, with more than 2,700 officials and over 100 chamberlains, was much larger than anything that had preceded it – the Houses of the Emperor and Empress were four times larger than those of the royals during the ancien régime – and was the largest in Europe.79 If all the households belonging to his relatives were included, the number probably rose to over 4,000.

  ‘Weeping Tears of Blood’

  In keeping with this new attitude of creating artificial barriers, Bonaparte rarely acted with any warmth at court; he never shook hands, for example. There were, however, a few notable exceptions to the rule, occasions during which Bonaparte lost his sangfroid and displayed emotion, as when he gave foreign diplomats a dressing down. One of those occasions involved the British ambassador to Paris, Charles Whitworth.

  The choice of Lord Whitworth as ambassador is an indication of what the British government thought of the French and the Treaty of Amiens. Whitworth was a zealous anti-revolutionary, was directly involved in the plot to assassinate the Tsar Paul I and was a close friend of Lord Grenville, who had opposed peace with France. Whitworth’s dispatches portrayed Bonaparte as a deranged tyrant of the same ilk as Paul I.80 In one letter written in April 1803, he described the actions taken by the First Consul as exhibiting ‘a picture of despotism, violence, and cruelty, at the contemplation of which humanity sickens’.81 As charming as Bonaparte could be at times, he failed to melt Whitworth’s cold exterior. Paris could not help but interpret Whitworth’s uncompromising stance as being determined by the British government.82 In many respects it was.

  Things came to a head during a reception of the diplomatic corps in the Tuileries on 13 March 1803.83 Josephine, attended for the first time by maids of honour, was holding an audience in one of the drawing rooms, at which the foreign ambassadors were present.84 Bonaparte was not expected – he had just held another audience in one of his own rooms – but he nevertheless decided to pay a visit. At first, he seems to have been in good spirits, doing the rounds, exchanging banter with the foreign diplomats present, including Whitworth. But then he came back to Whitworth and demanded to know why the conditions of Amiens had not yet been fulfilled. He was referring to the requirement that Britain should withdraw from Malta. Whitworth is supposed to have replied that Egypt had been evacuated and that Malta would be as soon as the other conditions of the treaty were filled. Whitworth then had to face a two-hour monologue at the end of which Bonaparte delivered an ultimatum – give up Malta or go to war.

  Whitworth’s version of events in his reports caused a little storm in London.85 He chose to underline Bonaparte’s ‘agitation’, and his own imperturbability. There is one other available British eyewitness account, that by the Reverend John Sanford, who happened to be present in Josephine’s drawing room, which emphatically denies that Bonaparte raised his voice.86 ‘The impropriety consisted in the unfitness of the place for such a subject.’ The Russian plenipotentiary, Arkady Morkov, another Francophobe, wrote of Bonaparte addressing the assembly in a ‘loud voice: Malta or war, and a curse on those who violate treaties!’87 It is possible (although there is nothing to support this view) that Whitworth and Morkov consulted each other in the days that followed, and perhaps even worked each other up into a bit of a lather.

  Much has been made of this incident, as though it were a turning point in the history of relations between the two countries, but really the scene is indicative of a general malaise between France and the great powers rather than of a deterioration in diplomatic relations. We know that Bonaparte was in the habit of losing his temper, but on this occasion his outburst was not egregious. His behaviour can in part be explained by naivety. In matters of foreign policy and even diplomatic etiquette, he was an inexperienced amateur, credulous enough to think that he could act and speak on the international scene in the same way that he spoke to his soldiers, and that he could do so without consequence. However, his behaviour has also to be seen within a broader context. The French were masters of the Continent, they considered themselves to be the epitome of European civilization,88 and most French generals, not to mention the political elite, agreed with the policies Bonaparte had adopted. The attitude of the British was insufferable and inflexible; they were meddling in Continental affairs and they had failed to fulfil their treaty obligations.

  Neither side was about to give ground, so that by the time Whitworth had arrived in Paris, war between the two countries was inevitable.89 It was simply a question of timing. The reasons why can be rattled off, although it is much more difficult to understand why the British acted at that particular moment.90 The French would appear to be responsible for the rupture. The British objected to France intervening in a civil war that was raging in Switzerland in October 1801, imposing a new constitution and a new treaty, the Act of Mediation that enabled France to control the Alpine passes91; to keeping Holland occupied by French troops;92 to annexing Piedmont in September 1802; but most of all to continuing French designs on Egypt.93 None of the concerns raised by the British breached the Treaty of Amiens. The French intervention in Switzerland, for example, was consistent with French meddling in that country going back more than sixty years.94 French behaviour was aggressive and worrying, and generated suspicion about whether Bonaparte could be trusted. But the British did breach the Treaty of Amiens by failing to give up Malta, and they did so on the pretext of French policy in Piedmont and Switzerland.95 The real reason was that they needed Malta, key to the naval domination of the western Mediterranean, to prevent what they feared most, a second French attempt to conquer Egypt and the consequent threat to India.

  One can add to the mix the virulent anti-French/anti-Bonaparte campaign in the English press that consisted of a series of articles and caricatures attacking both Bonaparte and his family, which by all acco
unts irritated and possibly even hurt him.96 He had his secretary, Bourrienne, read out the British papers during his morning ablutions.97 The Morning Post, for example, described him as a ‘Mediterranean mulatto’.98 It is true that Addington asked newspapers, unofficially, not to publish defamatory articles against Bonaparte, but this could hardly have the desired impact.99 A leading émigré journalist, Jean-Gabriel Peltier, was prosecuted for criminal libel as a sop to Bonaparte, but that was the extent of it.100 The foreign secretary Lord Hawkesbury tried to reassure the First Consul that the British government would deport royalists involved in distributing anti-Bonaparte propaganda, but this was never done.101 Instead, the government paid lip-service to freedom of speech, and protested its impotence regarding the expulsion of émigré journalists, claiming that it lacked the authority to do so. In contrast, pro-French journalists were expelled from Britain using the Alien Act without so much as the pretence of a trial.102 The French consequently perceived London’s position as hypocritical. Bonaparte responded by waging a campaign to silence the hostile press in England by trying to bribe émigré journalists – with some notable successes – and by putting diplomatic pressure on governments to pursue journalists hostile to the Consulate. If the British government did little to placate Bonaparte, it is because it did not want to, exacerbating an already tense situation and creating a climate in which compromise was impossible.103

  Neither side had peace at heart. The French–British disagreement had its root in deep-seated cultural antipathies exacerbated by years of war and an unwillingness to come to an understanding.104 When Whitworth delivered an oral ultimatum to Talleyrand on 26 April – evacuate Holland within a month and agree to a temporary British occupation of Malta (for a period of ten years) – Talleyrand asked for it to be submitted in writing. Whitworth declined, saying that he was unauthorized to do so; Talleyrand did not even bother passing on the ultimatum to Bonaparte (Whitworth repeated the ultimatum to Joseph later that same day).105 Talleyrand quite possibly did not take Whitworth’s threats very seriously, since he was getting upbeat reports from his ambassador General Antoine-François Andréossy in London, suggesting that the talks to prevent a rupture were progressing.106 As for Whitworth, not submitting the ultimatum in writing seems a strange thing to do at such a critical juncture. Either the ultimatum was bluff, therefore, something that he used to prod the French into compromise, or he had determined to precipitate a rupture. The latter seems more likely since two days later he asked for passports for himself and his family to be delivered on 2 May.

  It was obvious to all that war was going to resume sooner rather than later. On 1 May 1803, after a lever at the Palace, Bonaparte addressed a number of senators and councillors of state alluding to the likelihood of war. ‘England will finish by weeping tears of blood,’ he is supposed to have exclaimed; ‘the war, it has begun.’107 It may have been bluster, but he appears to have been genuinely upset by the manner in which Britain had delivered the ultimatum. In Paris, the certainty of war had been on everyone’s lips for the past weeks and months.108 The British, too, had been preparing for war, at least since March 1803, when most of the navy had been manned and supplied.

  Britain officially declared war on 18 May 1803. Two days before the declaration, the British seized 1,200 French and Dutch merchant ships and more than £200 million-worth of merchandise. Bonaparte responded on 22 May by ordering the arrest of all British subjects and the seizure of all British ships and merchandise in France and the Italian Republic (the name of the Cisalpine Republic was changed in January 1802).109 The increased political tensions and the likelihood of war had already decided many tourists to leave and they had been doing so in a steady stream since March, some returning home, others moving on to neighbouring countries. ‘Flight was the order of the day,’ according to one English tourist, Bertie Greatheed, ‘and the most judicious prepared immediately for their departure.’110 Surprisingly, Bertie was not one of them; when he went to get his passport on 23 May, he was informed that he was a prisoner of war. As a result of Bonaparte’s decree, unusual in that there was no precedent for the internment of foreign nationals on the outbreak of war, just about every British man, woman and child who could be got hold of was arrested and held, in some instances until the end of the conflict. They were at first kept in Paris and then progressively dispersed to a number of provincial towns, the most important of which was Verdun, where they were held in the local fortress. The French claimed that 7,500 were arrested, but this seems to be a grossly inflated figure and it is more likely that 700–800 were detained.111 How many of these people escaped in the course of the conflict is difficult to know.

  The peace had lasted fourteen months. The war was going to last another twelve years.

  ‘Six Centuries of Outrage to Avenge’112

  The arrest of British nationals was accompanied by a campaign in the French press against Britain that was reminiscent of language directed against the Revolution’s enemies at the height of the Terror; it called for the extermination of perfidious Albion.113 Before the peace, Britain had been portrayed as the new Carthage, a tyrant on the high seas, with an immense and insatiable ambition, countered by a French government that fought only ‘for peace and the Happiness of the world’.114 In September 1803, Bonaparte enlisted the help of Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac, renowned for having called for the extermination of all rebels in the Vendée in 1793, and asked him to direct his talents at the English.115 He did so with a newspaper whose sole purpose was to underline the perfidy of the English government, the despotism of its commerce and the problems the country faced.116 ‘There is no piracy, no brigandage, no crime, no cowardice in Europe of which it [the British government] is not the instigator, the agent or the accomplice.’117 The person most responsible for everything from piracy to espionage, to assassinations and counterfeiting was that ‘degenerate child’ Pitt.118

  The newspaper was hardly a roaring success, but it was playing a tune most French people were familiar with. Some of the more extreme examples of Anglophobia could be found in the popular pamphlets of the day.119 This propaganda campaign was one of the reasons why the French, although by no means welcoming it, believed war justified, especially when, as we shall see, a plot to kill Bonaparte was tied to the British government. Bonaparte capably portrayed himself during this period as the victim, and not as the aggressor, as someone whom Britain despised and hired assassins to murder. If he had to draw his sword once more to defend the patrie it was because perfidious Albion, the term most commonly associated with Britain,120 obliged him to do so. It was a theme that the regime played on throughout the Empire. It was able to do so successfully because of the longstanding and traditional hatred between the two countries.

  George III, as well as most of the military and political elite, remained supremely confident that the French would fail in their attempt to cross the Channel.121 The English public, on the other hand, was a good deal more anxious.122 The Morning Post reported in the first week of October that the invasion was to take place ‘immediately’, after strong gales had dispersed the British fleet.123 In some regions, rumours about an impending invasion caused a panic that has been dubbed the Great Terror. The Reverend Thomas Twining left Colchester, because he was ‘afraid to stay in it’.124 To meet this threat there was, apart from the Royal Navy, a militia of around 110,000 men – whose fighting quality was dubious, but who might have been used in guerrilla actions – and about 129,000 regular army troops.125 Admiral Nelson suggested that Charles-François Dumouriez, a French general who had defected to the Austrians in 1793, be brought to London to draw up plans on how to meet an invasion.126 It led to schemes for a scorched-earth policy and the creation of a vast network of coastal defences.127 Seventy-four Martello towers were constructed along the coast.128 A telegraph system – consisting of wooden cabins with frames containing shutters – was set up to communicate between the coast and the roof of the Admiralty in London.129 But some hare-brained schemes were also born
of the moment, which, in hindsight, appear to have been an overreaction. They included the construction of the Royal Military Canal behind the Romney Marshes in the south-east of England – nineteen metres wide, and almost three metres deep – which was somehow meant to impede the advancing French, and the construction of dams built to flood the Lea Valley outside London.130 Much of this was offset by satire. The Times published a piece loosely based on the Hamlet soliloquy in which Bonaparte is heard to repeat the lines, ‘T’invade or not t’invade – that is the question.’131

  7

  The End of the Revolution

  The Plot to Kill Bonaparte

  Victory in war was not the only means of eliminating Bonaparte from the scene.