Citizen Emperor

by Philip Dwyer

  Anonymous, Pyramide élevé à l’Auguste empereur des Français, Napoléon 1er (Pyramid erected to the August Emperor of the French, Napoleon I), no date. On his own initiative, General Marmont built this imposing pyramid in the space of a month at the Camp of Utrecht. Forty-five metres tall, it was surmounted by an eighteen-metre obelisk.49 Today dubbed the Pyramid of Austerlitz, it can still be seen outside the city of Utrecht in Holland. Each face was marked with an inscription, one of which contained the declaration that the pyramid was built as a testimony to the army’s ‘admiration and love’ for Napoleon.

  In spite of this public outpouring, support for the Empire was by no means unanimous. There was never a concerted intellectual or political opposition to it, but resistance to it can be found throughout its existence.50 Most of it came either from republican elements in the military,51 from former Jacobins or from royalists. General Verdier, for example, a friend of the defunct General Kléber, was at Leghorn when news of the proclamation reached the army through the Moniteur. He was so angry that he tore up the newspaper in front of several other officers (he was denounced and disgraced for three years).52 At Toulon, opinions were divided; pamphlets and caricatures were being circulated against Napoleon. At Clermont-Ferrand, he was publicly insulted, enough for the police to take note.53 At Nîmes, during the night of 7–8 August, a group of opponents calling themselves the ‘Implacables’ posted insults against Napoleon in the public squares of the town.54 At the camp of Bolougne, where the gathered army was predominantly republican, the proclamation of the Empire represented for many a return to old monarchical structures. Despite this, few officers refused to sign the petitions in favour of empire and some that did refuse were relieved of their commands.55 Even some who admired Napoleon were a little worried about the extent of his ambition. ‘He only wanted supreme power’, wrote one officer, ‘to break all the chains that, as First Consul, he still encountered . . . Why did we have a bloody revolution to return [to the monarchy] so quickly?’56

  Plebiscitary Leadership

  The matter of heredity was taken to the people of France. Another plebiscite was held, this time during the month of June 1804. There was no mention of the imperial title, and the people were not asked to approve or disapprove of the Empire. They were simply asked to ratify what had already taken place.

  The official results, revealed in August, were almost the same as those of the plebiscite of 1802 – over 3.5 million had voted ‘yes’ and only 2,569 had voted ‘no’ – but in reality the overall turnout had fallen, in some regions dramatically, so that there were 300,000 fewer votes than in 1802.57 One has to take into account that by this stage France was actually larger than it had been in 1802 – several new departments had been added – and that the results for the army and navy were grossly exaggerated.58 In some departments, the local prefects simply doubled the number of ‘yes’ votes received from their subordinates, and at the same time slightly reduced the number of negative votes.59 This kind of fraud appears to have been common. It tells us at the very least that some local administrators were keen to produce strong positive returns so that their administration looked well in Paris. Corruption was built into the imperial system at the lowest levels, and was indicative of a hierarchy dependent on the approval of one man.

  About 35 per cent of the electorate turned out to vote (the regime boasted that it was 40 per cent), which in itself was a better turnout than previous elections and plebiscites had achieved. It is also interesting to note that while some departments returned a higher ‘yes’ vote, many more – including Brittany, the east, the centre, the south-west and Languedoc – returned a much lower ‘yes’ vote than in 1802, sometimes up to 40 and even 50 per cent lower. This has been interpreted to mean that popular support for Napoleon was starting to wane,60 but it is more likely there were real concerns about the nature of a hereditary regime and about the future of the representative system. ‘I would vote affirmatively’, wrote one voter in the Aube, ‘if the history of all peoples did not teach me that the granting of supreme power for life, even in the hands of the most honest man, has very often changed the attitude of the individual in question. Such an accretion of power has frequently been dangerous for public and personal liberties.’61 Nevertheless, the vote was still a resounding vote of confidence in the person of Napoleon.62 Given the figures and in the face of a reasonably high turnout, it would appear that his policy of national reconciliation was finally starting to bear fruit. But the real victory came from the manner in which the plebiscite was used by the regime to promote Napoleon as someone who had been called to the throne by the people of France, and that it was his personal merits that had led him there.

  Trinkets and Baubles

  In the six months between the declaration of the Empire in May and the coronation ceremony in December, an entirely new, original iconography had to be invented. Just as former and indeed future monarchs created symbols to assert and strengthen a claim to the throne, so too did Napoleon and his entourage have to devise symbols that had their roots in both the Roman and Carolingian Empires, as well as reconnecting with French national history.63 Napoleon appears to have temporized. Prior to the Revolution, enormous importance had been placed in the body of the king as representative of the monarchy. After the execution of Louis XVI in 1792, the sacred character of the king’s body had been defiled, so to speak, and it would have been difficult to turn back the clock. As a consequence, the importance of kingship began to be displaced on to the trappings of rule, in this case on to the new symbols and insignia that were created to represent Napoleon’s new status as emperor.64

  One of the most important decisions concerned the icons that would represent the new dynasty, for that was in effect what Napoleon was founding. The architects Charles Percier and Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine suggested a lion resting its paw on a glaive or spear.65 After discussing a number of possibilities – the eagle, the owl, the elephant (very fashionable at the time), the lion, the cock and even the fleur de lys – Napoleon favoured the lion.66 This was eventually rejected around July 1804 in favour of the eagle, on the urging of Vivant Denon. The eagle not only evoked Charlemagne, but inspired the imagination of contemporaries, and placed Napoleon’s reign firmly within the tradition of the universal empires of the past.67

  That was not to be the only symbol, however. In June 1804, when the coat of arms was being designed, Cambacérès proposed the bee. In ancient times, the bee was a symbol of immortality and resurrection, but people also remembered that metal jewellery in the form of bees had been discovered in the tomb of the father of Clovis, Childeric I (440–81), at Tournai in 1653, during the reign of Louis XIV.68 It is more likely that what was discovered were cicadas or crickets, and they were not emblems but votive objects placed on the royal clothes: insects enabled the soul of the departed to fly more easily towards heaven.69 The bee was nevertheless a symbol that drew on the past, even if contemporaries had incorrectly interpreted its historical significance. It was also meant to be a metaphor for France: the beehive was the Republic, with its leader a hard worker. And perhaps it was hoped that the French would be as submissive as drones working for the queen. The bee enabled the regime to draw a link between the furthest reaches of French history – the Merovingian dynasty founded by Childeric – and the present.

  On 15 July 1804, Their Majesties put on a display for the people. Napoleon arrived at the Church of the Invalides in the uniform of a colonel of the Guard, riding a horse covered in gold, his boots resting in stirrups of solid gold. Josephine was in a carriage drawn by eight horses, bedecked in diamonds. They assisted at a mass by Cardinal Caprara, the papal legate – Napoleon was sitting on a throne during the proceedings – after which the Emperor personally awarded the first civilian Legion of Honour. Julie Talma, the wife of the well-known actor François-Joseph Talma, called the ceremony the ‘distribution of the trinkets’.70

  The Legion of Honour had been established by decree in May 1802, in the face of
strong opposition. Two years of bitter political battles followed before the award was realized in the form of a medal in July 1804.71 More deputies opposed the Legion of Honour than opposed the reintroduction of slavery in 1802.72 They feared Bonaparte was returning to the principles of the ancien régime, while others feared the creation of a class of notables, a type of (military) aristocracy, that would become exclusively loyal to him. Bonaparte had gone against the revolutionary grain by introducing this system of awards, but it reflects his personal preferences. In Italy in 1796, he had begun to invent new awards for his soldiers, usually in the form of swords of honour, in order to create an affective bond with his men.73 Moreover, the Legion was designed to reward those who had rendered services to the state – merit was the defining condition of entry – thereby creating a kind of elite that would remain loyal to the state, that is, Bonaparte, and on which he could count. It was also designed to recompense those who had fought to establish the Revolution and those who had helped bring about Brumaire.74 More than that, however, it was based on a conception of ‘social amelioration’ – people could strive to get ahead in the service of the state.75

  The Legion also has to be seen as one among many attempts to rally the elite to the regime, and not only within France. It was, therefore, a form of political control, or at least of political persuasion, in which the holders of the medal were expected not only to remain loyal to the state, but in some respects to become propagandists for the regime. Along with a pension, the person received a medal with Napoleon’s image on one side, and the imperial eagle on the other, with the inscription Honneur et Patrie. Republican virtues and national honour were meant to inspire Frenchmen to serve the patrie, one of the reasons many republicans hated the idea; the concept of ‘honour’ not only smacked of the old monarchy, but was also associated with the nobility.76 Napoleon was, in some respects, creating a civil society modelled on the army, a strictly hierarchical order of merit.77

  As a result of opposition to the introduction of the Legion, Bonaparte was forced to push the matter through the Council of State, but even then ten out of fourteen voted against the law. In part, their reaction was one of revenge for the defeats they had suffered in the course of 1802. It then went to the Legislative Corps where, after one of the most open and heated debates, the measure was finally endorsed, but only by 166 to 110 votes. Such a margin was unheard of before and was particularly noticeable given that its members had only recently been purged. The Tribunate saw similar scenes, but there too it passed by 56 votes to 38. Former revolutionaries were particularly vociferous; they feared the introduction of an ‘order’ (although the word was never used) that would lead to the abandonment of the principle of equality. Even those who normally supported Napoleon in the Tribunate spoke against it.78

  If former revolutionaries criticized the new project, the military were not particularly keen either. The idea of being associated with a medal that would also be awarded to civilians was distasteful.79 Moreau publicly ridiculed the idea by making his cook a ‘knight of the pot’ (chevalier de la casserole).80 Students at the Ecole Polytechnique denigrated the Legion of Honour as a reward for charlatanism and not merit.81 And yet Bonaparte’s reaction to all this was quite moderate; he tried to get a number of generals who had resisted the idea of empire on side by promoting them to his Guard.82 And once the medal was distributed, it soon became accepted if not coveted.

  Boulogne

  The Legion of Honour was taken to the army. Ever since the declaration of war, Bonaparte had been gathering troops along the northern shorelines in preparation for an invasion of England. Between June 1803 and September 1805, some 170,000 men were assembled along the coast between Montreuil in the north of France and Utrecht in Holland, possibly the largest number of men in history brought together for a single campaign.83 The central point of this concentration was the port town of Boulogne.

  One day after Napoleon’s thirty-fifth birthday, on 16 August 1804, a grand ceremony took place near Boulogne, on the cliffs overlooking the English Channel, with the French fleet sailing off the coast, in what has been described as one of the ‘most elaborate military festivals of the Napoleonic period’.84 Over 100,000 men were drawn up in a semicircle around a raised platform, forming a sort of natural amphitheatre, on top of which was the bronze throne of Dagobert, the Merovingian king who helped unify the Franks in the seventh century.85 A salvo of artillery and 2,000 beating drums announced the arrival of Napoleon, easily recognizable on his grey horse and by the clothes he wore. He dismounted, walked up the steps to the enormous stage, to the music of Jean-François Le Sueur, composed for the occasion, keeping the rhythm of the music in his step. The music would be used again during the coronation. The Emperor took his place on the throne. Behind him were over 200 captured enemy flags. To the left was a helmet supposed to have belonged to Bertrand du Guesclin, Constable of France during the Hundred Years’ War. To the right, a breastplate of the Chevalier Bayard, hero of the Italian Wars of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, and the shield of the French Renaissance king Francis I, who conducted a series of wars in Italy at the beginning of the sixteenth century; two further shields contained the 2,000 medals of the Legion of Honour that were about to be distributed.86

  Very few people would have appreciated the significance of these artefacts – not even, it would appear, the artist Philippe-August Hennequin, who accompanied Vivant Denon to Boulogne. In his memoirs, he was more concerned with describing how the weather seems to have been subject to Napoleon’s will. There had been an overcast stormy sky, he wrote, until the moment Napoleon sat on the throne, when ‘the clouds divided and let a ray of light escape that fell on the trophy behind the emperor’.87 Nevertheless, the fact that ancient symbols of royal power were used as a central prop during a ceremony to celebrate the distribution of the controversial Legion meant that notions of royalism, republicanism and even imperialism were combined on stage for the first time.88

  Detail from Philippe Auguste Hennequin, Napoléon Ier distribue les croix de la légion d’honneur au camp de Boulogne le 16 août 1804 (Napoleon distributing the Cross of the Legion of Honour at the camp of Boulogne on 16 August 1804), 1806. The painting appeared in the Salon of 1806. Today, an obelisk marks the spot where the throne of Dagobert was placed for the ceremony.

  Once on stage, the grand chancellor of the Legion of Honour, Bernard-Germain de Lacépède, asked Napoleon to swear the oath of the Legion of Honour. Not many people would have heard him in the wind but, on cue, hundreds of thousands of voices rang out with ‘Vivat!’ when the oath was taken. Napoleon also asked the troops to swear an oath of loyalty to him. ‘And you, soldiers, do you swear to defend, at the peril of your life, the honour of the French name, your patrie and your Emperor?’89 This ceremony, which harks back to the ancient Roman tradition of the troops swearing an oath of loyalty to the emperor, was one means used by Napoleon to invest the Empire with princely forms of traditional obedience, as well as legitimating the transformation of the Republic into an empire. According to one eyewitness, those present were ‘electrified’, although whether this was the case for everyone is questionable.90 The ceremony was, in any event, a blatant attempt to seduce the army and to garner support for Napoleon, especially in the context of the recent trial of General Moreau. That, along with the Concordat and the proclamation of the Empire, had disaffected a good number of republicans among the military.

  Charlemagne, Not Caesar (or Alexander)

  Legitimating what contemporaries began to call the ‘fourth dynasty’ took place on another level as well.91 In order to be accepted as a sovereign by the other European monarchs, and in order to impose his dynasty, Napoleon had to invent a past, or rather legitimate the transformation of power by making a link between his own regime and those of the past.92 He therefore actively encouraged the comparison not only with Charlemagne but also with Alexander, Caesar and Hannibal, as well as with a number of other historical figures, in the press as we
ll as in paintings, engravings and medals. Caesar was an obvious reference point since he was not only the head of a dictatorship of public safety, so to speak, but sought to legitimate and perpetuate his power through a hereditary succession.93 Many of the institutions created during the early years of Napoleon’s reign were modelled, very loosely, on this period of Roman history: the consuls held executive power; the tribunes shared legislative power with the senators, and so on. The French Republic was thus subtly assimilated with the Roman Republic. The proclamation of the Empire in 1804 seemed, in many respects, the logical outcome of these Roman Republican institutions. It was important though that Napoleon was associated not only with a French but also with a European heritage.94