Citizen Emperor

by Philip Dwyer

  45. Moniteur universel, 5 pluviôse an VIII (4 February 1800).

  46. See, for example, the articles entitled ‘Observations’ and ‘Suite des lettres du lord Grenville’, published in the Moniteur universel, 11–17 ventôse an VIII (2–8 March 1800). Henry Richard, Lord Holland, Memoirs of the Whig Party during my Time, 2 vols (London, 1852), i. pp. 154–6.

  47. Moniteur universel, 18 ventôse an VIII (9 March 1800). The assertion by Antoine-Clair Thibaudeau, councillor of state, that the proclamation caused an ‘élan’ throughout the country is suspicious (Antoine-Clair Thibaudeau, Mémoires de A.-C. Thibaudeau, 1799–1815 (Paris, 1913), pp. 24–5).

  48. Aulard, Paris sous le Consulat, i. pp. 225–6.

  49. Edouard Gachot, Histoire militaire de Masséna: le siège de Gênes (1800) (Paris, 1908), pp. 213–28.

  50. Cited in Ernest Picard, Bonaparte et Moreau: l’entente initiale, les premiers dissentiments, la rupture (Paris, 1905), pp. 61, 69.

  51. Cited in Gunther E. Rothenberg, The Art of Warfare in the Age of Napoleon (Bloomington, 1980), p. 127.

  52. David G. Chandler, The Campaigns of Napoleon (London, 1966), p. 266; Claus Telp, The Evolution of Operational Art, 1740–1813: From Frederick the Great to Napoleon (London, 2005), p. 41.

  53. Isser Woloch, The New Regime: Transformations of the French Civic Order, 1789–1820s (New York, 1994), pp. 391–7. For a brief overview of conscription see Stuart Woolf, Napoleon’s Integration of Europe (London, 1991), pp. 156–65.

  54. Corr. vi. n. 4552 (25 January 1800).

  55. Corr. vi. n. 4432 (21 December 1799).

  56. Picard, Bonaparte et Moreau, p. 143.

  57. Corr. vi. nos. 4432, 4557, 4681, 4695, 4713, 4759 (21 December 1799, 31 January, 19,22 March, 11 April, 5 May 1800); Jean de Cugnac, Campagne de l’Armée de Réserve en 1800, 2 vols (Paris, 1900–1), i. esp. pp. 87–119.

  58. Reichardt, Un hiver à Paris sous le Consulat, p. 146.

  59. See, for example, Corr. vi. n. 4433 (21 December 1799).

  60. Corr. vi. n. 4674 (16 March 1800); Pierre Savinel, Moreau, rival républicain de Bonaparte (Paris, 1986), pp. 81–2.

  61. Chandler, Campaigns of Napoleon, p. 269.

  62. See, for example, Corr. vi. n. 4713 (11 April), n. 4725 (22 April 1800).

  63. Picard, Bonaparte et Moreau, pp. 205–12.

  64. According to A. B. Rodger, The War of the Second Coalition, 1798 to 1801: A Strategic Commentary (Oxford, 1964), p. 231.

  65. Miot de Mélito, Mémoires, i. p. 273.

  66. Cited in Jean Tulard and Louis Garros, Itinéraire de Napoléon au jour le jour, 1769–1821 (Paris, 1992), p. 154.

  67. Lucien Lathion, Bonaparte et ses soldats au Grand-Saint-Bernard (Neuchatel, 1978), p. 44.

  68. According to Paul Charles François Adrien Henri Dieudonné, baron Thiébault, Mémoires du général Bon Thiébault, 5 vols (Paris, 1893–5), iii. p. 73. This is not, however, what Thiébault wrote earlier in his career. In his Journal des opérations militaires du siège et du blocus de Gênes (Paris, an IX), pp. 50–1, he credited Bonaparte with the plan. See also Corr. vi. n. 4738 (27 April 1800); Lathion, Bonaparte et ses soldats, pp. 15, 27.

  69. R. J. Knecht, Francis I (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 42, 164–5.

  70. Jérémie Benoît and Bernard Chevalier (eds), Marengo: une victoire politique (Paris, 2000), pp. 110–11.

  71. Yuval Noah Harari, The Ultimate Experience: Battlefield Revelations and the Making of Modern War Culture, 1450–2000 (Basingstoke and New York, 2008), pp. 210–11.

  72. Corr. vi. n. 4812 (18 May 1800).

  73. Corr. vi. n. 4811 (18 May 1800); Lathion, Bonaparte et ses soldats, pp. 9–10.

  74. Chantal de Tourtier-Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour à Joséphine (Paris, 1981), p. 150 (18 May 1800). Antoine-Augustin-Flavien Pion des Loches, Mes campagnes, 1792–1815: notes et correspondance du colonel d’artillerie Pion des Loches (Paris, 1889), p. 75, described the Saint-Bernard as a ‘magnificent horror’, but insisted that the crossing was not dangerous.

  75. Corr. vi. n. 4846 (24 May 1800); Lubin Griois, Mémoires du général Griois: 1792–1822,2 vols (Paris, 1909), i. pp. 120–2.

  76. Allain Bernède, ‘Autopsie d’une bataille: Marengo, 14 juin 1800’, Revue historique des armées, 181 (1990), 35. On paper, a demi-brigade would be made up of 2,437 men. The demi-brigade was later replaced by the regiment.

  77. Bernède, ‘Autopsie d’une bataille’, 35; Derrécagaix, Le maréchal Berthier, i. pp. 384–400.

  78. Corr. vi. n. 4836 (24 May 1800).

  79. Tourtier-Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour à Joséphine, pp. 151–2 (29 May 1800).

  80. Joseph Petit, Marengo, ou Campagne d’Italie, par l’armée de réserve, commandé par le général Bonaparte (Paris, an IX), pp. 30–3, wrote about ‘the hero who commanded us’ being enthusiastically received in the main square of the city, the Piazza del Duomo, by a large crowd. The journal of Commandant Brossier, cited in Cugnac, Campagne de l’Armée de Réserve en 1800, ii. pp. 42, 85–6, written after the campaign, states that the people of Piedmont, and especially those of Vercelli, about halfway between Turin and Milan, received the French with ‘enthusiasm’, and that they were received in Milan amid ‘general rejoicing’. These accounts are possibly exaggerated. A letter from Pétiet to the municipal officers of Milan (2 June 1800) complains of the ‘indifference’ and often the ‘contempt’ (mépris) with which the French were received.

  81. According to James R. Arnold, Marengo and Hohenlinden: Napoleon’s Rise to Power (Barnsley, 2005), p. 108.

  82. Bourrienne, Mémoires, iv. pp. 110–11.

  83. Corr. vi. n. 4887 (6 June 1800).

  84. Frédéric Masson, Napoléon et les femmes (Paris, 1894), pp. 84–6.

  85. Geoffrey Ellis, ‘A Historian’s Critique of the Screenplay’, in Alison Castle (ed.), Kubrick’s Napoleon: The Greatest Movie Never Made (Paris, 2011), p. 242.

  86. Tourtier-Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour à Joséphine, pp. 147, 148 (11 and 13 May 1800).

  87. Albert Boime, Art in an Age of Bonapartism, 1800–1815, 2 vols (Chicago, 1990), ii. pp. 39–42; Jean-Etienne Delécluze, Louis David, son école et son temps: souvenirs (Paris, 1855), p. 233.

  88. Antoine Schnapper and Arlette Sérullaz (eds), Jacques-Louis David 1748–1825 (Paris, 1989), pp. 381–6; Dorothy Johnson, Jacques-Louis David: Art in Metamorphosis (Princeton, 1993), pp. 179–83; Alain Pillepich, ‘Un tableau célèbre replacé dans son contexte: Bonaparte franchissant les Alpes au Grand-Saint-Bernard de David’, Revista Napoleonica, 1–2 (2000), 77–9.

  89. Journal des arts, des sciences, et de littérature, 30 fructidor an IX (17 September 1801), x, n. 156, 419–26; Richard Wrigley, The Origins of French Art Criticism: From the Ancien Régime to the Restoration (Oxford, 1993), p. 336. Joseph took the painting with him when he left Spain and later brought it to the United States (Pillepich, ‘Un tableau célèbre replacé dans son contexte’, 78).

  90. See Schnapper and Sérullaz (eds), Jacques-Louis David 1748–1825, pp. 381–6. The other versions can today be seen at Versailles, Charlottenburg and Vienna.

  91. The Journal des arts, des sciences, et de littérature commented that it suffered from excessive abstraction, idealizing Bonaparte out of recognition (Christopher Prendergast, Napoleon and History Painting: Antoine-Jean Gros’s La Bataille d’Eylau (Oxford, 1997), p. 110).

  92. See Dwyer, Napoleon: The Path to Power, pp. 133–4.

  93. Peter Burke, Eyewitnessing: The Uses of Images as Historical Evidence (London, 2001), p. 61.

  94. Prendergast, Napoleon and History Painting, p. 188.

  95. Aulard, Paris sous le Consulat, i. p. 397; Vandal, L’avènement de Bonaparte, ii. pp. 329, 416–17.

  96. Vandal, L’avènement de Bonaparte, ii. pp. 417–18.

  97. AN F7 3701, Minutes des bulletins quotidiens de police, 21 priairal an VIII (10 June 1800).

  3: Italy and the Consolidation of Power

  1. Bourrienne, Mémoires, iv. pp. 85–7.

  2. Hermann
Hüffer, Die Schlacht von Marengo und der italienische Feldzug des Jahres 1800, 3 vols (Leipzig, 1900), ii. pp. 302–3. A good description of the battle of Marengo can be found in Chandler, Campaigns of Napoleon, pp. 286–98.

  3. Cugnac, Campagne de l’Armée de Réserve en 1800, ii. p. 340.

  4. Figures in Bruno Ciotti, ‘La dernière campagne de Desaix’, Annales historiques de la Révolution française, 324 (2001), 86–7.

  5. Hüffer, Die Schlacht von Marengo, ii. pp. 309–12.

  6. Cugnac, Campagne de l’Armée de Réserve en 1800, ii. pp. 395–6.

  7. ‘Mémoires du general Danican’, in La bataille de Marengo et ses préliminaires racontés par quatre témoins (Paris, 1999), p. 139.

  8. Benoît and Chevalier (eds), Marengo, p. 122. Chandler, Campaigns of Napoleon, p. 296, gives 6,000 killed and 8,000 captured.

  9. Heinrich Dietrich von Bülow, Der Feldzug von 1800: militärisch-politisch betrachtet von dem Verfasser des Geistes des neuern Kriegssystems (Berlin, 1801), p. 531.

  10. Cited in David A. Bell, The First Total War: Napoleon’s Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It (Boston, 2007), p. 225.

  11. According to Chandler, Campaigns of Napoleon, p. 296. Gachot, La deuxième campagne d’Italie (1800), p. 307 n. 3, gives different figures.

  12. There were in all four different accounts of the battle written in 1800, 1803 and 1805 as well as the account told on St Helena. David Chandler, ‘Adjusting the Record, Napoleon and Marengo’, History Today, 17 (1967), 378–85; David Chandler, ‘“To Lie Like a Bulletin”: An Examination of Napoleon’s Rewriting of the History of the Battle of Marengo’, Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Western Society for French History, 18 (1991), 37–40.

  13. On the first Italian campaign see Dwyer, Napoleon: The Path to Power, chs 9–13.

  14. Comte de Neipperg, ‘Aperçu militaire sur la bataille de Marengo et l’armistice’, Revue de Paris, 4 (1906), 5–36, here 27. This is the same Count von Neipperg who was later to become the lover of Napoleon’s second wife, Marie-Louise.

  15. Stanislas Girardin, Mémoires, journal et souvenirs, 2 vols (Paris, 1829), i. pp. 175–88; Miot de Mélito, Mémoires, i. pp. 275–82.

  16. Masson, Napoléon et sa famille, i. p. 342.

  17. Pierre-Louis Roederer, Bonaparte me disait: conversations (Paris, 1942), p. 89; Haegele, Napoléon et Joseph Bonaparte, p. 124.

  18. Bastid, Sieyès, p. 269; Woloch, Napoleon and his Collaborators, pp. 96–7.

  19. Gilbert Martineau, Lucien Bonaparte: prince de Canino (Paris, 1989), pp. 94–5. See also Antonello Pietromarchi, Lucien Bonaparte: prince romain (Paris, 1985), pp. 86–90.

  20. According to Masson, Napoléon et sa famille, i. pp. 339–41.

  21. See Vandal, L’avènement de Bonaparte, ii. pp. 399–402; Bastid, Sieyès, p. 269; Woloch, Napoleon and his Collaborators, pp. 96–7.

  22. Lazare Carnot, Mémoires historiques et militaires sur Carnot (Paris, 1824), p. 111.

  23. The scene is described by Fouché, Mémoires, i. pp. 183–5. See Henri Gaubert, Conspirateurs au temps de Napoléon Ier (Paris, 1962), p. 92; Woloch, Napoleon and his Collaborators, p. 97, believes that he ‘made a show of fury’.

  24. According to Roederer, Oeuvres, iii. p. 330.

  25. Roederer, Oeuvres, iii. p. 333.

  26. Woloch, Napoleon and his Collaborators, p. 98. After the execution of Louis XVI in 1793, his son was recognized as the titular heir to the throne under the name of Louis XVII. When he died in the Temple prison in June 1795, Louis XVI’s brother, the Comte de Provence, took the title Louis XVIII.

  27. Roederer, Oeuvres, iii. p. 332.

  28. Annie Jourdan, ‘The Napoleonic Empire in the Age of Revolution: The Contrast of Two National Representations’, in Michael Broers, Peter Hicks and Agustin Guimerá (eds), The Napoleonic Empire and the New European Political Culture (Basingstoke, 2012), pp. 314–15.

  29. Corr. vi. n. 4910 (15 June 1800).

  30. Journal des hommes libres, 5 messidor an VIII (24 June 1800).

  31. Raymond Monnier, Républicanisme, patriotisme et Révolution française (Paris, 2005), pp. 318–19.

  32. Cambacérès, Mémoires inédits, i. p. 510.

  33. Journal de Paris, 3 messidor an VIII (22 June 1800).

  34. Laure Junot, duchesse de Abrantès, Mémoires de Madame la duchesse d’Abrantès, ou Souvenirs historiques sur Napoléon: la Révolution, le Directoire, le Consulat, l’Empire et la Restauration, 18 vols (Paris, 1831–5), ii. pp. 172–3.

  35. Lanzac de Laborie, Paris sous Napoléon, i. p. 93. The next day, the papers reported that the ‘greatest joy was depicted on all faces’ (Le Publiciste, 3 messidor an VIII (22 June 1800). See also La Clef du cabinet des souverains, 5 messidor an VIII (25 June 1800)).

  36. Aulard, Paris sous le Consulat, i. pp. 446, 447; Rodney J. Dean, L’église constitutionnelle: Napoléon et le Concordat de 1801 (Paris, 2004), pp. 83–4.

  37. Fouché, Mémoires, i. p. 182.

  38. Miot de Mélito, Mémoires, i. p. 301.

  39. According to Anne-Jean-Marie-René Savary, Mémoires du duc de Rovigo, pour servir à l’histoire de l’empereur Napoléon, 8 vols (Paris, 1828), i. pp. 185–6.

  40. Corr. vi. n. 5034 (28 July 1800), in which he urged Spain to declare war on Portugal ‘at a time when the Continental war is going to finish’.

  41. Corr. vi. n. 4955 (29 June 1800).

  42. See the bulletin of 24 May 1800 (Corr. vi. n. 4846) for allusions to mountains and snow and so on.

  43. According to Bourrienne, Mémoires, iv. p. 168.

  44. Le Publiciste, 14 messidor an VIII (3 July 1800).

  45. La Décade philosophique, littéraire et politique, 10 messidor an VIII (29 June 1800), n. 28, pp. 62–3; Journal des hommes libres, 14 messidor an VIII (3 July 1800); La Clef du cabinet des souverains, 15 and 18 messidor an VIII (4 and 7 July 1800); Alan Forrest, ‘La perspective de la paix dans l’opinion publique et la société militaire’, Bulletin de la Société des Antiquaires de Picardie, 166 (2002), 252.

  46. There is no doubt that the French ‘craved’ peace at the outset of the Consulate. For the first year see Aulard, Paris sous le Consulat, i. pp. 225–6, 227, 241, 270, 333, 341, 500, 535, 540, 562, 566, 569, 579, 591, 666, 768 and 778.

  47. Monnier, Républicanisme, patriotisme et Révolution, p. 321.

  48. La Décade philosophique, littéraire et politique, 30 thermidor an VIII (18 August 1800), p. 383.

  49. Hyde de Neuville, Mémoires et souvenirs, i. p. 328. Monnier, Républicanisme, patriotisme et Révolution, p. 305, argues that Marengo placed Bonaparte at the centre of the state and enabled him to appear as the guarantor of stability for the regime.

  50. Monnier, Républicanisme, patriotisme et Révolution, p. 319.

  51. Ozouf, Festivals and the French Revolution, esp. ch. 2.

  52. Paul Marmottan, ‘Lucien, ministre de l’intérieur et les arts’, Revue des études napoléoniennes, 25 (1925), 26–30; Monnier, Républicanisme, patriotisme et Révolution, pp. 315–20; Norbert Savariau, Louis de Fontanes: belles-lettres et enseignement de la fin de l’Ancien Régime à l’Empire (Oxford, 2002), pp. 265–7; Jean-Pierre Bois, Histoire des 14 Juillet, 1789–1919 (Rennes, 1991), pp. 87–90; Petiteau, Les Français et l’Empire, pp. 46–7, 48–50, 52. For the festival in the provinces see Christian Pfister, Les Fêtes à Nancy sous le Consulat et le Premier Empire (1799–1813) (Nancy, 1914), pp. 20–41.

  53. Monnier, Républicanisme, patriotisme et Révolution, pp. 319, 320.

  54. The programme of the anniversary of 14 July, as well as the speech given that day by Lucien Bonaparte as minister of the interior, can be found in Anniversaire du 14 juillet, fête de la Concorde: Programme (Paris, messidor an VIII). Fontanes composed a ‘Chant du 14 July’ to which Méhul put the music.

  55. Corr. vi. n. 4938 (21 June 1800), n. 4940 (22 June 1800).

  56. Lucien Bonaparte, Ministère de l’Intérieur. Courses dans le Champ-de-Mars (Paris, messidor an VIII).

  57. Journa
l des hommes libres, 26 messidor an VIII (15 July 1800); Moniteur universel, 27 prairial an VIII (16 June 1800).

  58. Vandal, L’avènement de Bonaparte, ii. pp. 444–9.

  59. The project was never carried out (Franck Folliot, ‘Des colonnes pour les héros’, in Les architectes de la Liberté: 1789–1799 (Paris, 1989), pp. 305–22; Jean-Marcel Humbert, ‘Entre mythe et archéologie: la fortune statuaire égyptisante de Desaix et Kléber’, in Jackie Pigeaud and Jean-Paul Barbe (eds), Le culte des grands hommes au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1998), pp. 219–32). Extracts of Lucien’s speech were published in the Mercure de France, 1 thermidor an VIII (20 July 1800), pp. 228–36.

  60. Mercure de France, 1 thermidor an VIII (20 July 1800).

  61. Adresse aux français sur le Quatorze juillet (n.p., n.d.), p. 6.

  62. Adresse aux français sur le Quatorze juillet, p. 8.

  63. See, for example, Journal de Paris, 27 messidor an VIII (16 July 1800).

  64. Journal des Débats, 28 messidor an VIII (17 July 1800); Aulard, Paris sous le Consulat, i. p. 514. And for other descriptions of crowd reactions see Journal de Paris, 27 messidor an VIII (16 July 1800); Aulard, Paris sous le Consulat, i. pp. 513–14.

  65. La Clef du cabinet des souverains, 26 messidor an VIII (15 July 1800).

  66. According to the marquise de la Tour du Pin, Journal d’une femme de cinquante ans: 1778–1815, 2 vols (Paris, 1913), ii. pp. 220–1, the celebrations on the Champ de Mars that 14 July elicited ‘very few signs of joy’. That assertion, however, has to be taken with a grain of salt since the marquise was a royalist whose dislike of the Revolution was patent.

  67. Lanzac de Laborie, Paris sous Napoléon, i. p. 102.

  68. La Clef du cabinet des souverains, 27 messidor an VIII (16 July 1800); Aulard, Paris sous le Consulat, i. pp. 667–8.

  69. Monnier, Républicanisme, patriotisme et Révolution, p. 305.

  70. On the public honours given to revolutionary generals see Joseph Clarke, Commemorating the Dead in Revolutionary France: Revolution and Remembrance, 1789–1799 (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 243–7, who argues that ‘revolutionary culture as a whole had always contained a marked military dimension’; Bernard Gainot, ‘Le dernier voyage: rites ambulatoires et rites conjuratoires dans les cérémonies funéraires en l’honneur des généraux révolutionnaires’, in Philippe Bourdin, Mathias Bernard and Jean-Claude Caron (eds), La voix & le geste: une approche culturelle de la violence socio-politique (Clermont-Ferrand, 2005), pp. 97–113.