Citizen Emperor

by Philip Dwyer

  71. Monnier, Républicanisme, patriotisme et Révolution, pp. 307–8, and on the eulogies to Desaix, pp. 310–15.

  72. Marie-Louise Biver, Le Paris de Napoléon (Paris, 1963), pp. 151–61.

  73. This is in Jean-Roche Coignet, The Note-Books of Captain Coignet: Soldier of the Empire, 1776–1850 (London, 1998), p. 77. Also Louis-François, baron Lejeune, Souvenirs d’un officier de l’Empire, 2 vols (Toulouse, 1851), i. pp. 55–6; Montaglas, Historique du 12e chasseurs à cheval, pp. 78–82; Victor-François Perrin, duc de Bellune, ‘Mémoires inédits de feu M. le maréchal duc de Bellune: Campagne de l’Armée de Réserve, en l’an VIII’, Spectateur militaire, xli (1846), 121–204.

  74. Thiébault, Mémoires, ii. p. 6.

  75. According to Monnier, Républicanisme, patriotisme et Révolution, p. 305.

  76. Albert Soboul, ‘Le héro et l’histoire’, Annales historiques de la Révolution française, 42 (1970), 1–7.

  77. Blanning, Pursuit of Glory, p. 652. A sentiment echoed by a number of historians, including François Furet, Revolutionary France, 1770–1880, trans. Antonia Nevill (Oxford, 1992), p. 218, who describes it as ‘the true coronation of his power and his regime’; and Petiteau, Les Français et l’Empire, p. 46, who describes Marengo, after Brumaire, as the ‘essential moment in the establishment of Bonaparte’s power’.

  78. Natalie Petiteau, ‘Marengo, histoire et mythologie’, in Messiez and Sorel (eds), La deuxième campagne d’Italie, pp. 209–20; Jacques Garnier, ‘Marengo’, in Jean Tulard (ed.), Dictionnaire Napoléon (Paris, 1989), p. 1137.

  79. Lanzac de Laborie, Paris sous Napoléon, i. pp. 94–5; Louis-Henry Lecomte, Napoléon et l’Empire racontés par le théâtre, 1797–1899 (Paris, 1900), pp. 55–6. A number of other plays appeared about the same time, among them: Bientôt la paix, ou la Voiture cassée (Soon peace. or The broken carriage) at the Cité-Variétés; La Pièce curieuse, ou Petit tableau d’un grand evenement (The curious play, or The small tableau of a great event) at the Vaudeville; and Paris illuminé, ou le Retour de Marengo (Paris illuminated, or The return from Marengo) (9 July 1800) at the Gaîté.

  80. Gruyer to Berdot, 1 prairial an VIII (18 June 1800), ‘Un récit de la bataille de Marengo’, Le carnet historique et littéraire, ii (1898), 878.

  81. According to Chandler, ‘“To Lie Like a Bulletin”’, 38, the bulletin was written by General Pierre Dupont de l’Etang, serving as chief of staff to Berthier, nominally in command of the Army of the Reserve. On the bulletins see Joseph J. Mathews, ‘Napoleon’s Military Bulletins’, Journal of Modern History, 22:2 (1950), 137–4; Cabanis, La presse, pp. 271–4; Robert B. Holtman, Napoleonic Propaganda (Baton Rouge, 1950), pp. 92–6; David p. Jordan, Napoleon and the Revolution (Basingstoke, 2012), pp. 144–8.

  82. Between 24 May and 15 June 1800, fifteen bulletins were dictated by Bonaparte and sent to Paris. Corr. vi. nos 4846, 4848, 4855, 4856, 4858, 4862, 4864, 4865, 4882, 4886, 4893, 4900, 4903, 4905, 4910.

  83. Corr. vi. n. 4846 (24 May 1800).

  84. Chandler, ‘“To Lie Like a Bulletin”’, 33–43; Chandler, ‘Adjusting the Record’, 326–32 and 378–85; Owen Connelly, Blundering to Glory: Napoleon’s Military Campaigns (Wilmington, Del., 1987), pp. 66–70.

  85. Dwyer, Napoleon: The Path to Power, pp. 2, 4, 169.

  86. Annie Jourdan, ‘Bonaparte et Desaix, une amitié inscrite dans la pierre des monuments?’, Annales historiques de la Révolution française, 324 (2001), 149–50. Within a week, the legend had become reality. A soldier by the name of Rué des Sagets wrote a long letter to his father on 3 July (that is, after he had had time to absorb the regime’s own propaganda on the subject): ‘he [Desaix] was carried by four grenadiers who loudly lamented him: “Speak softer my friends, he told them, be careful not to discourage the troops. Tell the First Consul that my regret is to not have done enough to pass into posterity.” And he died.’ Rué des Sagets to his father, G.M., ‘La bataille de Marengo, d’après un témoin bourbonnais’, Bulletin de la société d’émulation du Bourbonnais, xix (1911), 3780.

  87. Printed in the Moniteur universel, 3 messidor VIII (22 June 1800). On the portrayal of the death of Desaix in the press of the day see Raymond Monnier, ‘Vertu antique et nouveaux héros: la presse autour de la mort de Desaix et d’une bataille légendaire’, Annales historiques de la Révolution française, 324 (2001), 118–22.

  88. Suzanne Glover Lindsay, ‘Mummies and Tombs: Turenne, Napoleon, and Death Ritual’, Art Bulletin, 82 (2000), 491.

  89. Bernard Gainot, ‘Les mots et les cendres: l’héroïsme au début du Consulat’, Annales historiques de la Révolution française, 324 (2001), 129.

  90. Jean de Cugnac, ‘Mort de Desaix à Marengo’, Revue des études napoléoniennes, 39 (1934), 14; Gainot, ‘Les mots et les cendres’, 129.

  91. Savary, Mémoires, i. pp. 179–80; Auguste Frédéric Louis Wiesse de Marmont, Mémoires du maréchal Marmont duc de Raguse: de 1792 à 1841, 9 vols (Paris, 1856–7), ii. p. 140.

  92. Moniteur universel, 3 messidor VIII (22 June 1800); Journal de Paris, 3 messidor an VIII (22 June 1800).

  93. Anne Vincent-Buffault, Histoire des larmes, XVIIIe–XIXe siècles (Paris, 2001).

  94. Jourdan, ‘Bonaparte et Desaix’, 139–40.

  95. See, for example, the letter from Auguste de Colbert, one of Murat’s aides-de-camp, to his mother, in Ciotti, ‘La dernière campagne de Desaix’, 94; Jeanne A. Ojala, Auguste de Colbert: Aristocratic Survival in an Era of Upheaval, 1793–1809 (Salt Lake City, 1979), pp. 56–7.

  96. Corr. vi. n. 4909 (15 June 1800).

  97. Gainot, ‘Le dernier voyage’, p. 106; Susan Locke Siegfried, ‘Naked History: The Rhetoric of Military Painting in Postrevolutionary France’, Art Bulletin, 75:2 (1993), 240.

  98. For this and the following, Petiteau, ‘Marengo, histoire et mythologie’, pp. 214–15; Petiteau, Les Français et l’Empire, pp. 61–2. In 1805, Napoleon received the official version of the battle written by the Dépôt de la Guerre. He ordered it destroyed and rewritten. The second version is an imagined, idealized battle refought in Napoleon’s mind (Pierre Gourmen, ‘La second campagne d’Italie’, in Napoléon, de l’histoire à la légende (Paris, 2000), p. 57).

  99. Alexandre Berthier, Relation de la bataille de Marengo (Paris, 1805, reprinted 1998); Ciotti, ‘La dernière campagne de Desaix’, 83–97. See also Petit, Marengo, ou Campagne d’Italie, esp. pp. 55–6, which focuses entirely on Bonaparte’s sangfroid and only fleetingly mentions Desaix, and Kellerman not at all.

  100. Cited in Ciotti, ‘La dernière campagne de Desaix’, 97; René Reiss, Kellermann (Paris, 2009), pp. 344–59.

  101. AN F7 3829, rapport de la préfecture de police, 14 prairial an IX (2 June 1801); Picard, Bonaparte et Moreau, p. 365.

  102. Moniteur universel, 3 frimaire an VIII (24 November 1799).

  103. Marcel Reinhard, ‘L’armée et Bonaparte en 1801’, Annales historiques de la Révolution française, 25 (1953), 293–5 (letters dated 2 and 21 March 1801); and Aulard, Paris sous le Consulat, i. pp. 779–80.

  104. Picard, Bonaparte et Moreau, p. 375.

  105. AN F7 3830, 13 and 22 floréal an IX (3 and 12 May 1801), and 19 nivôse an X (9 January 1802).

  106. Jean Tulard, ‘La notion de tyrannicide et les complots sous le Consulat’, Revue de l’Institut Napoléon, 111 (1969), p. 133.

  107. See Jens Ivo Engels, ‘Furcht und Drohgebärde. Die Denunzianten “falscher Komplotte” gegen den König von Frankreich, 1680–1760’, in Michaela Hohkamp and Claudia Ulbrich (eds), Der Staatsbürger als Spitzel: Denunziation während des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts aus europäischer Perspektive (Leipzig, 2001), pp. 323–40.

  108. Manuel Eisner, ‘Killing Kings: Patterns of Regicide in Europe, ad 600–1800’, British Journal of Criminology, 51:3 (2011), 556–77.

  109. Tulard, ‘La notion de tyrannicide’, p. 135; Petiteau, Les Français et l’Empire, p. 108.

  110. M. Bernard, Le Turc et le militaire français (n.p., n.d.), pp. 4, 16–17; Aulard, Paris
sous le Consulat, i. p. 670 (25 September 1800).

  111. Silas Titus, Le Code des tyrannicides, adressé à tous les peuples opprimés (Lyons, 1800), p. ii. See also Jean Tulard, Napoléon: Jeudi 12 octobre 1809: le jour où Napoléon faillit être assassiné (Paris, 1993), pp. 44 and 78; and Bernard Gainot, ‘La République contre elle-même: figures et postures de l’opposition à Bonaparte au début du Consulat (novembre 1799–mars 1801)’, in Antonino De Francesco (ed.), Da Brumaio ai cento giorni: cultura di governo e dissenso politico nell’Europa di Bonaparte (Milan, 2007), pp. 143–55. The quotation is from Bonaparte’s address to the Council of Elders on 19 brumaire.

  112. Such as Tuer n’est pas assassiner, originally a tract written against Cromwell, but reprinted in the Courrier de Londres, 55 nos. 2–5 (6–17 January 1804), cited in Simon Burrows, ‘The Struggle for European Opinion in the Napoleonic Wars: British Francophone Propaganda, 1803–14’, French History, 11 (1997), 38.

  113. Some of the details are to be found in AN F7 3702, Minutes des bulletins quotidiens de police, 21 vendémiaire an IX (13 October 1800). See also Aulard, Paris sous le Consulat, i. pp. 709–11; Gustave Hue, ‘Un complot de police sous le Consulat’, Les Contemporains(10 October 1909), 139–64; Jean Thiry, La machine infernale (Paris, 1952), pp. 32–9; Gaubert, Conspirateurs au temps de Napoléon, pp. 47–61; Tulard, Fouché, pp. 146–49; Elizabeth Sparrow, Secret Service: British Agents in France, 1792–1815 (Woodbridge, 1999), p. 219; Laurent Boscher, Histoire de la répression des opposants politiques, 1742–1848: la justice des vainqueurs (Paris, 2006), pp. 120–5.

  114. The Opera, which was then called the Théâtre des Arts, was to be found in the rue de la Loi (rue Richelieu), where the Square Louvois is today, just across from the Bibliothèque nationale, Richelieu.

  115. Leo Gershoy, Bertrand Barère: A Reluctant Terrorist (Princeton, 1962), pp. 311–13; Michael J. Sydenham, ‘The Crime of 3 Nivôse (24 December 1800)’, in J. F. Bosher (ed.), French Government and Society, 1500–1850 (London, 1973), pp. 301–2.

  116. Aulard, Paris sous le Consulat, i. p. 722; Lanzac de Laborie, Paris sous Napoléon, i. p. 121.

  117. Aulard, Paris sous le Consulat, i. pp. 696, 700–1; Bernard Gainot, ‘Un itinéraire démocratique post-thermidorien: Bernard Metge’, in Christine Le Bozec and Eric Wauters (eds), Pour la Révolution française (Rouen, 1998), pp. 93–106.

  118. Cited in Anita Brookner, Jacques-Louis David (London, 1980), p. 146.

  119. Lentz, Grand Consulat, p. 256.

  120. Aulard, Paris sous le Consulat, i. pp. 729, 730, 732.

  121. Pierre-Louis Roederer, Autour de Bonaparte: journal du Cte P.-L. Roederer, ministre et conseiller d’état, notes intimes et politiques d’un familier des Tuileries (Paris, 1909), p. 50; Girardin, Mémoires, journal et souvenirs, i. p. 197. The pamphlet is reprinted in Iung (ed.), Lucien Bonaparte, i. pp. 421–32. On the connections between Fontanes and Lucien see Guy-Edouard Pillard, Louis Fontanes, 1757–1821: prince de l’esprit (Maulévrier, 1990), pp. 150–2, 158–9. It is often said that it was distributed to all the prefects and indeed to all public functionaries by the ministry of the interior – some contemporary memoirs say that it was and that it caused a ‘grande sensation’ (Claude Fauriel, Les derniers jours du Consulat (Paris, 1886), p. 10), although there is some doubt as to whether it was distributed at all and whether it was suppressed by Fouché before it got to the public (Miot de Mélito, Mémoires, i. p. 317).

  122. The military and political leader of the Franks who stopped the western advance of the Arabs at Poitiers in 732.

  123. Nicolet, La fabrique d’une nation, p. 144.

  124. Miot de Mélito, Mémoires, i. pp. 318–19; Pierre-Louis Roederer, Mémoires sur la Révolution, le Consulat et l’Empire (Paris, 1942), p. 154.

  125. According to Lentz, Grand Consulat, p. 267, but I have not found any of these complaints in the archives.

  126. Savinel, Moreau, p. 92; Miot de Mélito, Mémoires, i. pp. 338–9.

  127. Bourrienne, Mémoires, iii. p. 315.

  128. Roederer, Oeuvres, iii. p. 353.

  129. Lentz, Grand Consulat, p. 267.

  130. Roederer, Mémoires, pp. 148–54.

  131. Aulard, Paris sous le Consulat, i. pp. 770–1, 783; Roederer, Mémoires, p. 154; Iung (ed.), Lucien Bonaparte, i. p. 432. Girardin, Mémoires, journal et souvenirs, i. p. 195, describes how upset Bonaparte looked that evening after a discussion with Lucien.

  132. Roederer, Autour de Bonaparte, p. 41.

  133. Masson, Napoléon et sa famille, i. pp. 354–9.

  134. Girardin, Mémoires, journal et souvenirs, i. p. 192; Iung (ed.), Lucien Bonaparte, ii. pp. 50–2.

  135. Lentz, Grand Consulat, p. 268.

  136. Paul Mansfield, ‘The Repression of Lyon, 1793–94: Origins, Responsibility and Significance’, French History, 2 (1988), 74–101.

  4: Peace

  1. Moniteur universel, 5 and 6 nivôse an IX (26 and 27 December 1800); Arnaud-Louis-Raoul de Martel, Etude sur l’affaire de la machine infernale du 3 nivôse an IX (Paris, 1870); Thibaudeau, Mémoires sur le Consulat, pp. 23–63; Gaubert, Conspirateurs au temps de Napoléon, pp. 72–121; Thiry, La machine infernale, pp. 154–92; Jean Lorédan, La machine infernale de la rue Nicaise (3 nivôse, an IX) (Paris, 1924); Villefosse and Bouissounouse, L’opposition à Napoléon, pp. 150–9; Sydenham, ‘The Crime of 3 Nivôse’, pp. 295–320; Sparrow, Secret Service, pp. 217–22; Boscher, Histoire de la repression, pp. 130–40; Karine Salomé, ‘L’attentat de la rue Nicaise en 1800: l’irruption d’une violence inédite?’, Revue d’histoire du XIXe siècle, 40 (2010), 59–75.

  2. Jacques Marquet de Montbreton de Norvins, Souvenirs d’un historien de Napoléon: mémorial de J. de Norvins, 3 vols (Paris, 1896), ii. p. 271.

  3. Norvins, Souvenirs, ii. p. 272; Thibaudeau, Mémoires sur le Consulat, p. 24.

  4. Hortense de Beauharnais, The Memoirs of Queen Hortense, trans. Arthur K. Griggs and F. Mabel Robinson, 2 vols (London, 1928), i. pp. 62–3.

  5. Alissan de Chazet, Mémoires, souvenirs, oeuvres et portraits, 3 vols (Paris, 1837), iii. p. 70; Lorédan, La machine infernale, p. 55; Tulard (ed.), Dictionnaire Napoléon, pp. 1107–8; Tulard, Fouché, pp. 150–8.

  6. Procès instruit par le tribunal criminel du département de la Seine contre les nommés Saint-Réjant, Carbon, et autres, prévenus de conspiration contre la personne du Premier Consul (Paris, an IX), i. 31–2. On the iconography surrounding the assassination attempt see Karine Salomé, ‘Les représentations iconographiques de l’attentat politique au XIXe siècle: enjeux et usages de la mise en image d’une violence politique’, La Révolution française, lrf.revues.org/index402, although there is a tendency to confound images and periods.

  7. The dream is mentioned in Sigmund Freud, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, 24 vols (London, 1953–74), iv. pp. 26, 233–4.

  8. Woloch, Napoleon’s Collaborators, pp. 74–5.

  9. François-Joseph Boulay de la Meurthe, Boulay de la Meurthe (Paris, 1868), pp. 140–5; Roederer, Mémoires, p. 164; Charles Durand, Etudes sur le Conseil d’Etat napoléonien (Paris, 1949), pp. 632–5; Woloch, Napoleon and his Collaborators, pp. 74–5.

  10. Thibaudeau, Mémoires sur le Consulat, pp. 31, 55.

  11. AN AFIV 1302, n. 41, Police générale, affaire du 3 nivôse. Pierre-Marie Desmarets, Quinze ans de haute police sous le consulat et l’empire (Paris, 1833), pp. 34–66. According to Desmarets, a blacksmith recognized the horse’s hooves, which he had shod. See also Pierre-François Réal, Les indiscrétions d’un préfet de police de Napoléon, 2 vols (Paris, 1986), i. pp. 45–7; Marcel Le Clère, ‘Comment opérait la police de Fouché’, Revue de criminologie et de police technique, 1 (1951), 33–6; Lorédan, La machine infernale, pp. 68–98.

  12. Probably with the backing of the British secret service. See Elizabeth Sparrow, ‘The Alien Office, 1792–1806’, Historical Journal, 33:2 (1990), 378.

  13. Thibaudeau, Mémoires sur le Consulat, pp. 25–6.

&n
bsp; 14. Fouché, Mémoires, i. pp. 222–3; Woloch, Napoleon and his Collaborators, p. 75.

  15. Bonaparte had realized in the course of this whole affair that the Senate, made up of men in whose interests it was to maintain the stability of the regime, could be used to impose his will in the face of opposition from the other legislative bodies. Sydenham, ‘The Crime of 3 Nivôse’, pp. 319–20.

  16. Aulard, Paris sous le Consulat, ii. pp. 98–103.

  17. AN F7 3829, 17 ventôse an IX and ff. (8 March 1801); Lanzac de Laborie, Paris sous Napoléon, i. p. 130.

  18. Jean Destrem, Les déportations du Consulat et de l’Empire (d’après des documents inédits) (Paris, 1885), pp. 7–21; Woloch, Napoleon and his Collaborators, pp. 79–80; Sydenham, ‘The Crime of 3 Nivose’, pp. 309–11; Richard Cobb, ‘Note sur la répression contre le personnel sans-culotte de 1795 à 1801’, in Richard Cobb, Terreur et subsistances, 1793–1795 (Paris, 1965), p. 202.

  19. Prosper Brugière, baron de Barante, Souvenirs du baron de Barante, 1782–1866, 6 vols (Paris, 1890–7), i. p. 73.

  20. They were not ‘enhanced’ by the explosion, as Sydenham, ‘The Crime of 3 Nivôse’, p. 317, maintains; they were already very much present.

  21. Lanzac de Laborie, Paris sous Napoléon, i. pp. 123–5; Sydenham, ‘The Crime of 3 Nivôse’, pp. 300–3.

  22. Roederer, Oeuvres, iii. pp. 355–7; Lanzac de Laborie, Paris sous Napoléon, i. pp. 126–7; Raymonde Monnier, Le Faubourg Saint-Antoine, 1789–1815 (Paris, 1981), p. 275; Woloch, Napoleon and his Collaborators, p. 74.

  23. Woloch, Napoleon and his Collaborators, pp. 72–3; Petiteau, Les Français et l’Empire, pp. 113, 114.

  24. Petiteau, ‘Les fidélités républicaines’, 61, 63, 64.

  25. Léon Lecestre, Lettres inédites de Napoléon Ier (an VIII–1815), 2 vols (Paris, 1897), i. p. 269 (12 January 1809).