Citizen Emperor

by Philip Dwyer

131. Yorke, France in Eighteen Hundred and Two, pp. 51–5 and 74.

  132. Samuel Romilly, Memoirs of the Life of Sir Samuel Romilly, 3 vols (London, 1840), ii. p. 90; James Greig (ed.), The Farington Diary, 8 vols (London, 1923), ii. p. 28.

  133. Raimbach, Memoirs, 49; John Carr, The Stranger in France, or A Tour from Devonshire to Paris (London, 1803), pp. 101, 106–12; Yorke, France in Eighteen Hundred and Two, pp. 123–9, 153–8; The Manuscripts of the Earl of Westmorland (London, 1885), p. 56. French tourist guides of Paris date back to the seventeenth century. See Natacha Coquery, Tenir boutique à Paris au XVIIIe siècle: luxe et demi-luxe (Paris, 2011), pp. 60–78.

  134. Yorke, France in Eighteen Hundred and Two, pp. 118–19; Raimbach, Memoirs, p. 69.

  135. Muriel E. Chamberlain, Lord Aberdeen: A Political Biography (London, 1983), p. 32.

  136. Greig (ed.), The Farington Diary, ii. p. 7. On other English encounters with Bonaparte see: Beata Frances and Eliza Kenny (eds), The Francis Letters, by Sir Philip Francis and Other Members of the Family, 2 vols (London, 1908), ii. pp. 502–3 (14 August 1802); Theresa Lewis (ed.), Extracts of the journals and correspondence of Miss Berry, from the year 1783 to 1852, 3 vols (London, 1866), ii. pp. 163–5; Anne Plumptre, A Narrative of a Three Years Residence in France, 3 vols (London, 1810), i. pp. 109–10.

  137. Romilly, Memoirs, ii. p. 90.

  138. Greig (ed.), The Farington Diary, ii. p. 54.

  139. On the meeting between the two men see Grainger, The Amiens Truce, pp. 94–5; John Bernard Trotter, Memoirs of the latter years of the Right Honourable Charles James Fox (London, 1811), pp. 258–74; Earl of Ilchester, Journal of Elizabeth Lady Holland, 2 vols (London, 1908), ii. p. 150; Christopher Hobhouse, Fox (London, 1947), pp. 279–82; L. G. Mitchell, Charles James Fox (Harmondsworth, 1997), pp. 174–6 and 200.

  140. Hobhouse, Fox, p. 283.

  141. Castalia Countess Granville (ed.), Lord Granville Leveson Gower: Private Correspondence, 1781–1821, 2 vols (London, 1916), i. pp. 353–4.

  142. Mitchell, Charles James Fox, p. 175.

  143. Cited in Johnson, ‘Amiens 1802’, p. 25.

  144. Cited in Earl of Ilchester, The Home of the Hollands, 1605–1820 (London, 1937), p. 188.

  5: The Politics of Fusion

  1. François-René de Chateaubriand, Mémoires d’outre-tombe (Paris, 1997), i. pp. 755–6.

  2. Cited in Cabanis, Le sacre de Napoléon, p. 77.

  3. The Kaiser said the same thing to Germans on the outbreak of war in 1914 (my thanks to Peter Hempenstall for pointing this out). Cited in Cabanis, Le sacre de Napoléon, p. 50. The circular was dated 21 ventôse an VIII (13 March 1800). The sentiment was later echoed by the tribune Nicolas Parent-Réal on 3 September 1800 (in Archives parlementaires: recueil complet des débats législatifs et politiques des chambres française de 1800 à 1860, 2e série, 127 vols (Paris, 1862–1913), ii. p. 702).

  4. Jean Vidalenc, Les émigrés français: 1789–1825 (Caen, 1963), pp. 52–5, 115–36; Thierry Lentz, Nouvelle histoire du Premier Empire, 4 vols (Paris, 2002–10), iii. p. 623.

  5. John Dunne, ‘Quantifier l’émigration des nobles pendant la Révolution française: problèmes et perspectives’, in Martin (ed.), La Contre-Revolution en Europe, pp. 133–41.

  6. Lentz, Grand Consulat, p. 331; William Doyle, Aristocracy and its Enemies in the Age of Revolution (Oxford, 2009), pp. 311–14.

  7. Kale, French Salons, p. 78.

  8. For this, Louis Madelin, Fouché, 1759–1820, 2 vols (Paris, 1903), i. pp. 296–301, 311–13; Vidalenc, Les émigrés français, pp. 52–6; Emmanuel de Waresquiel, ‘Joseph Fouché et la question de l’amnistie des émigrés (1799–1802)’, Annales historiques de la Révolution française, 372 (2013); 105–20.

  9. Le Diplomate, 19 and 24 nivôse an VIII (9 and 14 January 1800). He adopted this line of thinking in a letter to General Beurnonville, French minister plenipotentiary in Berlin, in October 1800 (see Henri Forneron, Histoire générale des émigrés pendant la Révolution française, 3 vols (Paris, 1884–90), ii. pp. 386–7).

  10. See Madelin, Fouché, i. pp. 345–51.

  11. Lentz, Grand Consulat, p. 334.

  12. Ghislain de Diesbach, Histoire de l’émigration, 1789–1814 (Paris, 1984), pp. 532–42.

  13. Ange-Achille-Charles de Brunet, comte de Neuilly, Dix années d’émigration: souvenirs et correspondance du comte de Neuilly (Paris, 1863), p. 326.

  14. See, for example, Aulard, Paris sous le Consulat, i. p. 303; ii. p. 51; Madelin, Fouché, i. p. 346; Brown, Ending the French Revolution, pp. 344–5.

  15. Simon Schama, Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution (New York, 1990), pp. 586–8; Doyle, Aristocracy and its Enemies, pp. 274–310.

  16. Aulard, Paris sous le Consulat, ii. pp. 836, 839, 845, 848.

  17. Report from the prefecture of police, in Aulard, Paris sous le Consulat, iii. p. 17 (27 April 1802).

  18. Olivier Paradis, ‘De la difficulté à vivre ses choix politiques: les jeunes officiers de l’armée, du service du roi à celui de l’empereur’, in Annie Crépin, Jean-Pierre Jessenne and Hervé Leuwers, Civils, citoyens-soldats et militaires dans l’Etat-Nation (Paris, 2006), pp. 141–4.

  19. Aulard, Paris sous le Consulat, ii. pp. 62–3 (13 December 1800).

  20. Chastenay, Mémoires, i. p. 449; Kale, ‘Women, Salons, and the State’, 60.

  21. Woloch, Napoleon and his Collaborators, p. 57. The return of the émigrés and the role the question assumed in domestic politics is a subject that has been entirely neglected. Jean Tulard calculates that the nobility recuperated more than a quarter of their old lands (Jean Tulard, ‘Problèmes sociaux de la France napoléonienne’, Annales historiques de la Révolution française, 199 (1970), 141).

  22. A Te Deum is not a mass but rather a hymn to God, one which became increasingly politicized in the course of the eighteenth century, and which was intended to celebrate royal power. The practice of singing a Te Deum to give thanks for a military success dates back to the early sixteenth century (Frédérique Leferme-Falguières, Les courtisans: une société de spectacle sous l’Ancien Régime (Paris, 2007), p. 51); Thierry Lentz, ‘La proclamation du Concordat à Notre Dame le 18 avril 1802’, in Jacques-Olivier Boudon (ed.), Le Concordat et le retour de la paix religieuse (Paris, 2008), pp. 101–12.

  23. Mavor (ed.), The Grand Tours of Katherine Wilmot, p. 33.

  24. Aulard, Paris sous le Consulat, ii. pp. 802, 808, 814, 820, 833.

  25. Bury and Barry (eds), An Englishman in Paris, p. 122.

  26. Lanzac de Laborie, Paris sous Napoléon, i. pp. 370–1.

  27. Plumptre, A Narrative of a Three Years Residence in France, i. pp. 123–5; Philip Mansel, Dressed to Rule: Royal and Court Costume from Louis XIV to Elizabeth II (New Haven, 2005), p. 81.

  28. AN F7 3830, rapport du préfet de police, 30 germinal an X (20 April 1802); Aulard, Paris sous le Consulat, ii. pp. 844–5; Lanzac de Laborie, Paris sous Napoléon, i. pp. 372–4.

  29. Cambacérès, Mémoires inédits, i. p. 615; Alfred Boulay de la Meurthe, Documents sur la négociation du Concordat et sur les autres rapports de la France avec le Saint-Siège en 1800 et 1801, 5 vols (Paris, 1891–7), v. pp. 567, 568.

  30. De Staël to Dupont de Nemours (25 April 1802), in James F. Marshall (ed.), De Staël–Du Pont Letters: Correspondence of Madame de Staël and Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours (Madison, Milwaukee and London, 1968), p. 127.

  31. Richard Burton, Blood in the City: Violence and Revelation in Paris, 1789–1945 (Ithaca, 2001), p. 72.

  32. Gaubert, Conspirateurs au temps de Napoléon, p. 139.

  33. Frédéric Hulot, Le maréchal Masséna (Paris, 2005), p. 177.

  34. Thiébault, Mémoires, iii. pp. 274–5; Hulot, Masséna, p. 179.

  35. Ferdinand de Bertier, Souvenirs inédits d’un conspirateur: Révolution, Empire et première Restauration (Paris, 1990), p. 78.

  36. Jean-François Boulart, Mémoires militaires du général Bon Boulart sur les guerres de la république et de l�
�empire (Paris, 1892), pp. 124, 125.

  37. Noël, Souvenirs militaires, p. 36.

  38. Chaptal, Mes souvenirs, p. 264; Picard, Bonaparte et Moreau, pp. 367–8.

  39. Comte Remacle, Relations secrètes des agents de Louis XVIII à Paris sous le Consulat (1802–1803) (Paris, 1899), p. 30.

  40. Philippe de Ségur, De 1800 à 1812: un aide de camp de Napoléon: mémoires du général comte de Ségur, 3 vols (Paris, 1894–5), i. pp. 67–8.

  41. Remacle, Relations secrètes, p. 31.

  42. Soizik Moreau, Jean-Victor Moreau: l’adversaire de Napoléon (Paris, 2005), p. 82.

  43. Reichardt, Un hiver à Paris sous le Consulat, p. 147.

  44. Jacques-Olivier Boudon, ‘Les fondements religieux du pouvoir impérial’, in NataliePetiteau (ed.), Voies nouvelles pour l’histoire du Premier Empire: territoires, pouvoirs, identités (Paris, 2003), pp. 203–6.

  45. See Bonaparte’s remarks in Roederer, Oeuvres, iii. pp. 334–5, 342.

  46. As early as December 1800, a journalist writing for the Mercure de France compared Bonaparte to Cyrus II of Persia (600 or 576–530 bc), who allowed Jews to return to the Holy Land from exile and to rebuild the Temple of Jerusalem. The bishops of France often used the comparison and not always in a sycophantic manner. See Bernard Plongeron, ‘Cyrus ou les lectures d’une figure biblique dans la rhétorique religieuse de l’Ancien Régime à Napoléon’, Revue d’histoire de l’Eglise de France, 68 (1982), 31–67. For other mentions see Mercure de France, 16 frimaire an IX (2 December 1800); Jean-Claude Berchet, ‘Le Mercure de France et la “Renaissance” des lettres’, in Jean-Claude Bonnet (ed.), L’Empire des muses: Napoléon, les arts et les lettres (Paris, 2004), p. 36.

  47. Eviatar Zerubavel, The Seven Day Circle: The History and Meaning of the Week (London, 1985), p. 34.

  48. Jacques-Olivier Boudon, Histoire du Consulat et de l’Empire: 1799–1815 (Paris, 2000), pp. 79–80.

  49. Corr. vi. n. 4884 (5 June 1800); Roger Dufraisse, Napoléon: correspondence officielle (Paris, 1970), i. pp. 93–4.

  50. Contrary to what some assert (Antoine Casanova, Napoléon et la pensée de son temps: une histoire intellectuelle singulière (Paris, 2000), p. 28). On Napoleon, the Church and religion see Jacques-Olivier Boudon, Napoléon et les cultes: les religions en Europe à l’aube du XIXe siècle, 1800–1815 (Paris, 2002), pp. 39–46.

  51. François G. de Coston, Biographie des premières années de Napoléon Bonaparte, 2 vols (Paris, 1840), i. p. 30.

  52. As John McManners, The French Revolution and the Church (London, 1969), p. 140, pointed out, religion was peripheral to Bonaparte’s decision to reconcile with the Church. See also Geoffrey Ellis, ‘Religion According to Napoleon: The Limits of Pragmatism’, in Nigel Aston (ed.), Religious Change in Europe, 1650–1914: Essays for John McManners (Oxford, 1997), p. 244; Marie-Christine de Bouët du Portal, ‘A propos de la Saint-Napoléon: la solennité du 15 août sous le Premier et le Second Empire’, Revue de l’Institut Napoléon, 158–9 (1992), 145.

  53. See Dwyer, Napoleon: The Path to Power, pp. 274–6.

  54. There is a substantial literature on the Concordat. Some of the more important works are: Henry Horace Walsh, The Concordat of 1801: A Study of the Problem of Nationalism in the Relations of Church and State (New York, 1933), pp. 39–61; William Roberts, ‘Napoleon, the Concordat of 1801, and its Consequences’, in Frank J. Coppa (ed.), Controversial Concordats: The Vatican’s Relations with Napoleon, Mussolini, and Hitler (Washington, DC, 1999), pp. 34–83; Boudon, Napoléon et les cultes, pp. 55–67; Jacques-Olivier Boudon (ed.), Le Concordat et le retour de la paix religieuse (Paris, 2008); André Latreille, Napoléon et le Saint-Siège, 1801–1808: l’ambassade du Cardinal Fesch à Rome (Paris, 1935), pp. 1–21; Jean Leflon, La crise révolutionnaire 1789–1846, vol. xx: Histoire de l’Eglise depuis les origines jusqu’à nos jours (Paris, 1949), pp. 178–99. The most detailed treatment of this period is Dean, L’église constitutionnelle.

  55. McManners, The French Revolution and the Church, p. 143.

  56. François-Désiré Mathieu, Le Concordat de 1801: ses origines, son histoire (Paris, 1903), p. 223.

  57. According to Adolphe Thiers, Histoire du Consulat et de l’Empire, 20 vols (Paris, 1845–62), iii. pp. 255–6. Ercole Consalvi, Mémoires du cardinal Consalvi, 2 vols (Paris, 1866), i. p. 351, relates a different version of events. See also John Martin Robinson, Cardinal Consalvi, 1757–1824 (London, 1987), pp. 66–79.

  58. Mathieu, Le Concordat de 1801, p. 256.

  59. Boudon, ‘Les fondements religieux du pouvoir impérial’, p. 205.

  60. Corr. vii. n. 5642 (20 July 1801).

  61. They were compiled by the newly appointed director of religious affairs, Jean-Etienne-Marie Portalis. See Jean-Luc A. Chartier, Portalis, le père du Code civil (Paris, 2004), pp. 251–7. Roberts, ‘Napoleon, the Concordat of 1801’, pp. 45–6, explains that the term ‘Organic Articles’ is inaccurate and describes them as ‘administrative regulations’.

  62. Ellis, ‘Religion According to Napoleon’, p. 244.

  63. Germaine de Staël, Considérations sur les principaux événements de la Révolution française, 2 vols (Paris, 1818), ii. pp. 275–6; Cabanis, Le sacre de Napoléon, p. 90.

  64. Bernard Plongeron, ‘De Napoléon à Metternich: une modernité en état de blocus’, in Jean-Marie Mayeur, Charles and Luce Pietri, Andre Vauchez and Marc Venard (eds), Histoire du christianisme: des origines à nos jours, 14 vols (Paris, 1997), x. pp. 635–50, highlights the problems that immediately occurred.

  65. On this see Bernard Plongeron, ‘Face au Concordat (1801), résistances des évêques anciens constitutionnels’, Annales historiques de la Révolution française, 337 (2004), 85–115.

  66. Arno Mayer, The Furies: Violence and Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions(Princeton, 2000), p. 572.

  67. Martin S. Staum, ‘The Class of Moral and Political Sciences, 1795–1803’, French Historical Studies, 11:3 (1980), 372 n. 3. See also Jean-Luc Chappey, ‘Les Idéologues et l’Empire: étude des transformations entre savoirs et pouvoir (1799–1815)’, in Antonino De Francesco (ed.), Da Brumaio ai cento giorni: cultura di governo e dissenso politico nell’Europa di Bonaparte (Milan, 2007), pp. 211–27.

  68. Norman Ravitch, ‘Liberalism, Catholicism, and the Abbé Grégoire’, Church History, 36:4 (1967), 419–39; Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall, The Abbé Grégoire and the French Revolution: The Making of Modern Universalism (Berkeley, 2005), pp. 160–2.

  69. Aulard, Paris sous le Consulat, ii. pp. 614–15, 642.

  70. Gazette de France, 16 frimaire an X (7 December 1801). On this episode, Collins, Napoleon and his Parliaments, pp. 57–8.

  71. Girardin, Mémoires, journal et souvenirs, i. p. 233.

  72. AN F7 3830, rapport de la préfecture de police, 16 frimaire an X (7 December 1801).

  73. Charles Jean Tristan de Montholon, Récits de la captivité de l’empereur Napoléon à Sainte-Hélène, 2 vols (Paris, 1847), i. p. 401.

  74. Cambacérès presented three projects for a Civil Code, two to the Convention, in 1793 and in 1794, and again in 1796 to the Directory. The 1796 draft would serve as the core to Bonaparte’s Code. Jean-Louis Halperin, ‘Le codificateur au travail, Cambacérès et ses sources’, in Laurence Chatel de Brancion (ed.), Cambacérès, fondateur de la justice moderne (Saint-Rémy-en-l’Eau, 2001), pp. 154–65, questions the extent of Cambacérès’ involvement.

  75. René Savatier, L’art de faire les lois: Bonaparte et le Code civil (Paris, 1927); and Pierre Villeneuve de Janti, Bonaparte et le Code civil (Paris, 1934); Jean Carbonnier, ‘Le Code Civil’, in Pierre Nora (ed.), Les lieux de mémoire, 3 vols (Paris, 1984–92), ii. p. 297; Eckhard Maria Theewen, Napoléons Anteil am Code civil (Berlin, 1991).

  76. Jean-Louis Halpérin, L’impossible code civil (Paris, 1992), pp. 263–86.

  77. The reported number of sessions over which Bonaparte presided vary from fifty-two to fifty-five (Jean-Pierre Royer, ‘Napoléon et l’élaboration du Code civil’,
in Françoise Bastien-Rabner and Jean-Yves Coppolani (eds), Napoléon et le Code civil (Ajaccio, 2009), p. 75 n. 4).

  78. Bertrand, Cahiers de Sainte-Hélène, i. p. 250.

  79. Broglie, Souvenirs, i. pp. 65–7.

  80. The preponderant role in the preparation of the Code given to Bonaparte in older works like Amédée Madelin, Le premier Consul législateur, étude sur la part que prit Napoléon aux travaux préparatoires du code (Paris, 1865), and Honoré Pérouse, Napoléon Ier et les lois civiles du consulat et de l’empire (Paris, 1866), written during the reign of Napoleon III, is an exaggeration, one that is repeated in more recent works such as Frank McLynn, Napoleon: A Biography (London, 1997), pp. 254–7, and Englund, Napoleon, pp. 189–90.

  81. Jean-Guillaume Locré, Esprit du Code Napoléon, tiré de la discussion, ou Conférence . . . du projet de Code civil, des observations des tribunaux, des procès-verbaux du Conseil d’Etat, des observations du Tribunat, des exposés de motifs, 5 vols (Paris, 1805–7); and Pierre-Antoine Fenet, Recueil complet des travaux préparatoires du Code civil, 15 vols (Paris, 1836).

  82. Halpérin, L’impossible code civil, pp. 266–9.

  83. Jean-Etienne-Marie Portalis, Discours préliminaire au premier projet de Code civil (Bordeaux, 1999), p. 15; Chartier, Portalis, pp. 165–77. According to Jordan, Napoleon and the Revolution, pp. 104–7, the Discours préliminaire is a ‘superb introduction’ to the Code.

  84. Natalie Petiteau, ‘La Contre-Révolution endiguée? Projets et réalisations sociales impériales’, in Martin (ed.), La Contre-Revolution en Europe, p. 186.

  85. This is the thesis of Xavier Martin, Mythologie du Code Napoléon: aux soubassements de la France moderne (Bouère, 2003).

  86. Alan Forrest, ‘State-Formation and Resistance: The Army and Local Elites in Napoleonic France’, in Michael Rowe (ed.), Collaboration and Resistance in Napoleonic Europe: State-Formation in an Age of Upheaval, c.1800–1815 (Basingstoke, 2003), pp. 44–5.

  87. Petiteau, ‘Les fidélités républicaines’, 65.

  88. Collins, Napoleon and his Parliaments, pp. 58–62.

  89. AN F7 3830, rapport de la préfecture de police, 16 and 26 frimaire an X (7 and 17 December 1801).