Citizen Emperor

by Philip Dwyer

  This was not the case for the rest of Europe.48 Historians often point to the reaction among the courts of Europe and the extent to which Enghien’s execution was supposed to be considered one of the most infamous public crimes of the era. It is true that Enghien’s execution heightened the mistrust that existed in Berlin, Vienna and Petersburg, but relations between these courts and Paris were already strained – in the case of Russia and Austria, to breaking point. The execution did not, therefore, have as great an impact as some historians have contended.49 News of the execution in Petersburg came on a Saturday; the next day the Tsar ordered his court to go into mourning. After mass that Sunday, as the Tsar and Tsarina passed through the room in which the diplomatic corps was in attendance, they made a point of ignoring the French ambassador.50 Admittedly, the execution of Enghien did not directly affect Russia, but the court of Petersburg, and Russian educated opinion, was nevertheless horrified.51 One should, however, take this show of outrage, this public rebuke, with a grain of salt. The court would not have gone into mourning in normal circumstances – that is, if Enghien had died while a Bourbon was on the throne. It was not entirely cold calculation on Alexander’s part but was nevertheless a convenient pretext for acting against France.52

  In practical terms Russia responded with little more than a strongly worded letter sent to Bonaparte by the Tsar. He could hardly take the moral high ground. Not only had Alexander’s father, Paul I, been assassinated in a palace plot only a few years before, but Alexander himself seems to have been involved in the affair. Bonaparte publicly baited Alexander on that possibility by publishing an article in the Moniteur in which he defended his actions, asking whether the Tsar would not have acted to seize the English involved in the killing of his father, Paul I, if he had found them no more than a league from the frontier.53 Alexander was duly infuriated by the newspaper article. The execution of Enghien hardened Russian attitudes towards France and Bonaparte; most of the Russian gentry now came to see the First Consul as a despot – to show his contempt, one nobleman named his dogs ‘Napoleoshka’ and ‘Josephinka’ – even if attitudes were to remain profoundly ambivalent.54

  In Prussia, Frederick William III was shocked by news of the execution, but was determined to hold fast to his policy of neutrality. Even when his wife, Luise, suggested imitating the Russian court by going into mourning, a number of leading ministers at court did their best to dissuade the royal couple from such an action, fearful that it might incur the wrath of Bonaparte.55 And that was the norm: those most directly touched, the Bourbons of Naples, Florence and Madrid, said very little and thought it prudent not to act. So too the court of Vienna, which kept tellingly quiet, and Pope Pius VII, who is reported to have wept copiously at the news; the King of Sweden was indignant.56 A sense of powerless outrage gripped the courts of Europe.

  It has often been argued that the readiness of Europe’s political elite to come to some sort of arrangement with Bonaparte disappeared in 1804, largely as a result of the execution of Enghien (and later with the proclamation of the Empire).57 The execution may have been carried out for reasons of state, but it dealt a moral blow to the regime. Some nobles who had rallied to Bonaparte now turned their backs on him. Chateaubriand is a case in point. Convinced that Brumaire represented a turning point in French political affairs, he had become so accepting of the regime that he dedicated the second edition of his book Le Génie du christianisme (The genius of Christianity) to Bonaparte with the following words: ‘One cannot help but recognize in your destiny the hand of Providence who marked you from afar for the accomplishment of his prodigious designs. The people look upon you. France, extended by its victories, has placed in you its hopes.’58 He even went so far as to write to Bonaparte’s sister, Elisa, ‘You know my deep admiration and my absolute devotion to this extraordinary man.’59 But once Enghien had been executed, Chateaubriand completely repudiated the man and his regime; to him Bonaparte’s methods smacked of the Jacobin terrorist.

  Six days after the execution of Enghien, echoes of a resumption of monarchical forms began to be heard.60

  Bonaparte Becomes Napoleon

  The possibility of introducing an empire was raised and openly discussed for the first time in a Council meeting at Saint-Cloud on 13 April 1804.61 By that stage, the groundwork had been laid. We have seen how Bonaparte’s entourage began to take on the appearances of an ancien régime court, displacing the few republican attitudes that had survived. The Prussian ambassador, the Marquis de Lucchesini, remarked on this, as did the English chargé d’affaires, Anthony Merry, who wrote home in May 1802 that Bonaparte would be ‘Caesar or nothing’, ‘provided he does not go towards it with too much precipitation’, while the Russian ambassador was speaking of Bonaparte having revived the ‘empire of the Gauls’.62 Bonaparte’s profile was readily available on coin by that time. That same year, the secretary of the German legation in Paris was openly referring to Bonaparte as ‘der Fürst’, or the Prince.63 The Swedish ambassador, Jean-François, Baron de Bourgoing, received at the Tuileries in 1801, gave a speech in which he pointed out that the difference between his own country’s monarchical Constitution and the Consular Constitution was nominal.64

  Contemporaries were well aware then that a political transition was taking place. It fuelled talk about the possibility of bringing back some sort of monarchy. That does not mean the transition was seamless. Opinions were divided, with certain former revolutionaries against Bonaparte increasing his power any further,65 while others were keen to see his position enhanced. According to the Marquis de Lucchesini, two factions formed over this issue. On the one hand were what he called the ‘Constitutionals’, in favour of any measures that supported a restoration of monarchical structures.66 The Constitutionals were purposefully seeking to cement the Brumaire settlement with a hereditary succession, and they led a campaign in the press between March and June 1802 in that vein.67 As we have seen, they had tried to slip the question of heredity into the plebiscite over the Consulship for life, without Bonaparte’s knowledge.68 On the other hand were what Lucchesini dubbed the ‘Conventionals’, who considered the move towards a Consulate for life a violation of the agreement that had been concluded among the Brumairians.69 The idea of a return to monarchical forms was repulsive to them. Fouché boasted to foreign diplomats in Paris that if Bonaparte tried to have himself crowned, he would be stabbed to death before the day was out.70

  A struggle then had been taking place in Bonaparte’s entourage over the future political direction of the country. By the beginning of 1804, the proponents of a monarchical system had become the dominant faction and they had succeeded in getting Bonaparte to come around to the idea. It is erroneous to think he was pushing for an empire out of bald ambition; there were a considerable number of influential people in his entourage who thought along similar lines, namely, that a type of constitutional hereditary monarchy was the best political system available. Bonaparte, nevertheless, wanted the matter discussed with absolute candour in the Council of State – he even absented himself from the deliberations to make them feel at ease – as long it did not become a public debate.

  Michel Regnaud de Saint-Jean d’Angély took the initiative to propose that the Council move towards a hereditary dynasty. He argued that it was ‘the only means of preserving France from the rifts associated with the changes and the election of the first magistrate’.71 But when another member of the Council, Antoine-François de Fourcroy, proposed that they go on record to approve the principle of a hereditary empire, silence followed. It was broken by Théophile Berlier, a regicide and committed republican, who expressed his reservations about sacrificing that for which so many had died – the Republic. Berlier had also opposed the Consulate for life, and was not about to give ground on this issue.72

  The debate that followed, and it appears to have been vigorous since it lasted over four sessions, was about whether, at a time when things seemed to be going so well, such a change was necessary. In the end, twent
y members voted in favour of hereditary rule while seven voted to postpone the transformation.73 When those seven members refused to sign the address to Bonaparte on the grounds that they could not sign something that had been against their wishes, the First Consul insisted that individual opinions were to be submitted and signed by each councillor of state. He was worried that if the dissenters signed a separate counter-address, it might somehow become public knowledge.74 Anything less than a unanimous façade at this stage would be an embarrassment. In other words, by inviting each councillor of state to write down his objections the opposition was fobbed off.75 This is what happened; nothing came of their opposition and no sanctions were imposed against the seven members who had expressed reservations; they played by Bonaparte’s rules and kept their views in-house.

  The question was also debated in the Tribunate. Speeches from the Tribunate were often printed in the Moniteur. Dissenting voices here, therefore, were likely to be heard in public. Admittedly, the more difficult tribunes had been purged in 1802, but there was still enough life left in the institution to cause a potential upset. Here the motion was put that Bonaparte ‘be named Emperor and in that quality charged with the government of the Republic’.76 An obscure tribune by the name of Jean François Curée, a former Jacobin, member of the Convention and a regicide to boot, but one who had supported Brumaire, was given the opportunity to introduce the proposition (the result of weeks of manoeuvring). On 28 April, he gave a long speech to his colleagues in which he posed the question whether the First Consul should be declared emperor and whether the imperial dignity – imperiality as it was called at the time77 – should be declared hereditary in his family. Curée argued for a new dynasty that would act as a barrier against a return of ‘factions and of that house that we proscribed in 1792’ – that is, the House of Bourbon.78 The argument repeated by almost all of the tribunes who followed was that France’s political stability could be founded only on the institution of hereditary power. The insistence with which tribune after tribune got up and argued in favour of the principles of 1789 as the rationale for a return to monarchical forms ought to give pause for reflection.

  The vast majority of those who spoke expressed their gratitude towards Bonaparte. Only five or six members of the Tribunate (out of forty-nine present) expressed their opposition. Nevertheless, there was one prominent voice of dissent – Lazare Carnot. He had been named to the Tribunate in March 1802, and had stubbornly opposed the slow decline of the principle of elective government. He got up and made a number of critical observations. He pointed to the United States as an example of a working republic.79 He declared that he would not vote for the re-establishment of the monarchy, but he watered down his oppositional stance by stating that if the Empire were adopted by the French people, he would adhere to it. Carnot’s association with the Committee of Public Safety and with the Directory took a lot of shine from his moral aura, however. Besides, given the number of tribunes who scrambled to undo his message by extolling the virtues of Bonaparte, it probably did not make much of an impact.

  It was the Senate, however, that had the power to sanction the transformation to Empire. It had, in any event, initiated the whole movement in the first place when it underlined the desirability of making Bonaparte’s achievements permanent in March 1804.80 It was more than ready then to endorse any proposals to implement a hereditary monarchy. How could it have been otherwise? Bonaparte had ‘bought’ the Senate shortly after the Consulate for life when he created special dignities called ‘senatories’. There were thirty-one in all, each covering an area of three or four departments. The nominated senator was to keep watch over this region with the obligation of touring it once a year. In exchange, he received a generous gift of property, and an added income of 20,000 livres per year.81 This does not explain why senators voted for the Empire, but it does allow us to understand the element of self-interest in all of this.

  The Senate, nevertheless, voted in the belief that certain conditions would be met – the independence of the institutions of the state; the right to vote on taxation; the guarantee of property; individual freedom; freedom of the press; elections; the responsibility of ministers; and the inviolability of the Constitution – so that the ‘social pact’, as they called it, would remain intact.82 For many, it was a question of getting back to what the Revolution of 1789 had been all about before it started to go badly wrong. In some respects, so the argument went, the proclamation of a hereditary empire was simply returning to what the revolutionaries of 1789 had wanted all along – uniting ‘hereditary power to a representative government’.83 This is what the senators seemed to have opted for, a type of constitutional monarchy, a ‘third way’ between a republic and absolute monarchy. One senator pointed out that ‘the Senate, as a body, did nothing more than sanction measures which it had no means of opposing, even [with] the appearance of resistance’.84 Many historians have assumed as a result that the Senate was a weak institution that rubber-stamped Bonaparte’s unbridled ambition.

  On 18 May 1804, Bernard-Germain de Lacépède appeared before the Senate to read the findings of a commission that had been established to review the Constitution in the light of a declaration of the Empire.85 In the debate that followed, the only dissenting voice to be heard was that of the Abbé Grégoire, who had moreover opposed the Consulate. When it came to a vote, the senatus consultum was overwhelmingly approved with three votes against and two abstentions. The senatus consultum suggested that Bonaparte be recognized, not as ‘Emperor of France’, which would have recalled the appellation of the French kings, but as ‘Emperor of the French’. This meant that Bonaparte’s rule extended to the people of France but that he did not own the territory.86 That same day, Bonaparte used his surname for the last time. From then on he would always sign his name ‘Napoleon’.*

  The day the Empire was proclaimed, the Senate came as a body to Saint-Cloud to deliver the news of the proclamation. They were acting a little precipitately since the change in the Constitution had yet to be confirmed through a plebiscite, but everybody considered it a foregone conclusion. The setting of the scene in the official accounts of the period has the ring of a stage drama. Bonaparte is supposed to have declared: ‘You have judged the heredity of the supreme office necessary in order to shelter the French people from the plots of our enemies and the unrest that would arise from rival ambitions . . . I invite you then to share with me all your thoughts.’87 Cambacérès replied that they had come to offer the title ‘emperor’ to Bonaparte, ‘for the glory as well as the happiness of the Republic’.

  For the first time, Bonaparte was addressed as ‘Sire’ and ‘Majesty’. It would take time for some of the revolutionaries, even if they supported the Empire, to get used to a term not heard in Paris for over ten years. After the ceremony, when Napoleon spoke to a number of those present, a few were able to address him as ‘Sire’ without any difficulty, whereas others stumbled over the right formula, commencing their sentences with ‘Citizen First Consul’ or ‘General’, before remembering that ‘Sire’ and ‘Majesty’ were now de rigueur.88 The new Emperor was to be surrounded with imperial dignitaries: Joseph was named grand elector; Cambacérès arch-chancellor of the Empire; Eugène arch-chancellor of state; Lebrun arch-treasurer; Louis connétable, or constable, a military distinction; and Murat grand admiral. One of the most notable nominations among the civil dignitaries was that of Talleyrand as grand chamberlain, who thereby eclipsed Duroc as marshal of the palace, Ségur as grand master of ceremonies and Caulaincourt as grand écuyer. In addition, eighteen marshals were named, although several of them, not least Bernadotte, had hardly been the most loyal of generals.

  ‘Sea of Dreams, Empire of Reality’

  The title ‘emperor’ was more than a change of form; it carried a number of implications that had been rejected by the Revolution. The power of transmitting the title to an heir was given to Bonaparte by plebiscite, something the kings of France never enjoyed. The plebiscite was the basis of
the legitimacy of Napoleon’s regime – supporters of the Empire could always argue that no other ‘nation has exercised so fully the right of sovereignty; never has it delegated more freely to a head of state the power to reign over it; never has a prince, in ascending the throne, rallied to him a suffrage that was more unanimous and more solemn’.89 Napoleon, nevertheless, had to convince the French public that the transition to Empire was not only fitting but also desirable. He ordered one of his propagandists, Joseph Fiévée, to conduct a campaign in the press emphasizing the advantages of a monarchy.90 The Journal des Débats, for example, underlined how much the previous monarchy had deserved to lose the throne – it had shown itself to be unworthy – all the while carefully pointing out that the institution was in itself perfectly desirable; it was the monarch who had been abandoned through an excess of weakness and incapacity.91 In short, the argument was that the Bourbons had lost the throne, and that the French people had deposed them because of their inability to rule.92 From there it follows that if one dynasty was incapable of ruling then, as had occurred throughout the history of France, it would be replaced by another, in the same way that Clovis and Charlemagne came to the throne.93

  The notion of empire was part and parcel of the French elite’s intellectual and cultural baggage, although the connotations associated with the word were very different from the meaning it later assumed when the French dominated the Continent.94 Nor was the idea of empire incompatible with the idea of a republic. On the contrary, unlike a monarchy, which was associated with divine right, an empire was acquired by merit.95 And yet it was a vague enough term for Napoleon and his supporters to use in the creation of a new political model.96 It is perhaps one of the reasons why ‘empire’ was chosen over ‘monarchy’: it helped draw a clear distinction between the new regime and that of the Bourbons.97 The concept of empire should not, however, be confused with that of hereditary monarchy; they are two distinct notions (although this is invariably overlooked in accounts of the transformation of the French Republic in which ‘empire’ and ‘hereditary monarchy’ become synonymous). What Napoleon and the political elite instituted in May 1804 was in effect a constitutional monarchy, which is what conservative and moderate political thinkers had wanted since the beginning of the Revolution in 1789. ‘The time has come’, Duvidal de Montferrier proclaimed in the Tribunate, ‘to leave the sea of dreams and to approach the empire of reality . . . The crown of Charlemagne is the just heritage for one who has known how to imitate him.’98