Citizen Emperor

by Philip Dwyer

  90. Corr. vii. n. 5907 (2 January 1802).

  91. Corr. vii. n. 5922 (18 January 1802); Savary, Mémoires, i. pp. 282–3; Girardin, Mémoires, journal et souvenirs, ii. pp. 247–8; Thibaudeau, Mémoires sur le Consulat, pp. 222–3.

  92. Halpérin, L’impossible code civil, p. 274; Collins, Napoleon and his Parliaments, p. 62.

  93. Martin Staum, Minerva’s Message: Stabilizing the French Revolution (Montreal, 1996), p. 222.

  94. Lentz, Grand Consulat, pp. 320–1; Jacques-Olivier Boudon and Philippe Bourdin, ‘Les héritages républicains sous le Consulat et l’Empire’, Annales historiques de la Révolution française, 346 (2006), 6–7.

  95. Mathieu-Augustin Cornet, Souvenirs sénatoriaux, précédés d’un essai sur la formation de la Cour des Pairs (Paris, 1824), pp. 5–6, 7.

  96. Cornet, Souvenirs sénatoriaux, pp. 63–4.

  97. Roederer, Oeuvres, iii. p. 427.

  98. Corr. vii. nos. 5922, 5927 and 5931 (18, 21 and 24 January 1802); Jean-Yves Coppolani, Les élections en France à l’époque napoléonienne (Paris, 1980), pp. 52–4.

  99. According to Chatel de Brancion, ‘Napoléon et Cambacérès’, in Chatel de Brancion (ed.), Cambacérès, p. 133.

  100. Cambacérès talks about this, obliquely, in his memoirs, Cambacérès, Mémoires inédits, i. p. 601. See also Martin Staum, Cabanis: Enlightenment and Medical Philosophy in the French Revolution (Princeton, 1980), p. 293; Lentz, Nouvelle histoire du Premier Empire, iii. p. 129; Fauriel, Les derniers jours du Consulat, p. 23; Collins, Napoleon and his Parliaments, pp. 63–4, 69–71; Fabien Menant, Les députés de Napoléon, 1799–1815 (Paris, 2012), pp. 328–52. According to Woloch, Napoleon and his Collaborators, p. 92, the architect of the purge was François-Denis Tronchet, although Tulard and Lentz believe it was Cambacérès. At least half of the outgoing members of the Tribunate, and at least a third of the Legislative, were dismissed and given official postings within the administration (Collins, Napoleon and his Parliaments, pp. 66–7). They thereby became beholden to and supporters of the regime.

  101. Extracts from the debates can be found in Moniteur universel, 19 and 20 germinal an X (9 and 10 April 1802).

  102. Staum, Cabanis, pp. 287–97.

  103. Woloch, Napoleon and his Collaborators, p. 83.

  104. AN F7 3830, rapport de la préfecture de police, 17 fructidor an X (4 September 1802); Camille Latreille, L’opposition religieuse au Concordat, de 1792 à 1803 (Paris, 1910), pp. 219–20; Boudon, Napoléon et les cultes, pp. 172–3.

  105. Roberts, ‘Napoleon, the Concordat of 1801’, p. 55; Jean Godel, ‘L’Eglise selon Napoléon’, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, 17 (1970), 837–45; Englund, Napoleon, p. 184.

  106. Corr. viii. n. 6420 (11 November 1802).

  107. Cited in Boudon, ‘L’incarnation de l’état de Brumaire’, p. 342.

  108. Boudon, ‘L’incarnation de l’état de Brumaire’, pp. 339–40.

  109. Boudon, ‘L’incarnation de l’état de Brumaire’, p. 342.

  110. It was a recurring theme throughout the Consulate. See, for example, V.-R. Barbet Du Bertrand, Les trois hommes illustres, ou Dissertations sur les institutions politiques de César-Auguste, de Charlesmagne et de Napoléon Bonaparte (Paris, 1803), pp. 244–5, in which Bonaparte is lauded as the man who pacified the Vendée and who brought about religious reconciliation and achieved peace through military victories; J.-G.-M.-R. de Montgaillard, La France sous le gouvernement de Bonaparte (Paris, 1803), p. 44.

  111. Petiteau, Les Français et l’Empire, p. 51.

  112. On the competition see Foucart, ‘L’accueil de la Paix d’Amiens’, pp. 232–4. Five of the paintings entered are examined by Guy and Christian Ledoux-Lebard, ‘Les tableaux du concours institué par Bonaparte en 1802 pour célébrer le rétablissement du culte’, Archives de l’art français, 25 (1978), 251–61.

  113. Bruno Foucart, ‘Les iconographies du Concordat, laboratoire d’une nouvelle politique de l’image’, in Boudon (ed.), Le Concordat et le retour de la paix religieuse, pp. 151–67; Philippe Bordes and Alain Pougetoux, ‘Les portraits de Napoléon en habits impériaux par Jacques-Louis David’, Gazette des Beaux Arts, 202 (1983), 21; Edward Lilley, ‘Consular Portraits of Napoleon Bonaparte’, Gazette des Beaux Arts, 106 (1985), 143–56.

  114. Marc Gerstein, ‘Le regard consolateur du grand homme’, in Marie-Anne Dupuy (ed.), Dominique-Vivant Denon: l’oeil de Napoléon (Paris, 1999), p. 324.

  115. Lilley, ‘Consular portraits’, 144.

  116. Bordes and Pougetoux, ‘Les portraits de Napoléon’, 21.

  117. Werner Telesko, Napoleon Bonaparte: der ‘Moderne Held’ und die bildende Kunst, 1799–1815 (Vienna, 1998), p. 42.

  118. Boime, Art in an Age of Bonapartism, ii. pp. 49–50.

  119. Peter Burke, The Fabrication of Louis XIV (New Haven, 1992), pp. 19, 22; Dimitri Casali and David Chanteranne, Napoléon par les peintres (Paris, 2009), p. 61.

  120. Mavor (ed.), The Grand Tours of Katherine Wilmot, pp. 16–17 (13 December 1801).

  121. Boime, Art in an Age of Bonapartism, ii. p. 50.

  122. Dawson Warren, The Journal of a British Chaplain in Paris during the Peace Negociations of 1801–2 (London, 1913), p. 208; Yorke, France in Eighteen Hundred and Two, pp. 123–6; Kotzebue, Souvenirs, i. pp. 140–1.

  123. Boudon, ‘L’incarnation de l’état de Brumaire’, p. 342.

  124. Udolpho van de Sandt, ‘Le Salon’, in Bonnet (ed.), L’Empire des muses, pp. 59–78.

  125. Udolpho van de Sandt, ‘La fréquentation des Salons sous l’Ancien Régime, la Révolution et l’Empire’, Revue de l’Art, 73 (1986), 46.

  126. Frédéric Bluche, Le Bonapartisme: aux origines de la droite autoritaire (1800–1850) (Paris, 1980), p. 26.

  127. David A. Wisner, The Cult of the Legislator in France 1750–1830: A Study in the Political Theology of the French Enlightenment (Oxford, 1997), pp. 125, 129–30.

  128. David O’Brien, After the Revolution: Antoine-Jean Gros, Painting and Propaganda under Napoleon (University Park, Pa., 2006), p. 84; Dwyer, Napoleon: The Path to Power, pp. 1–5, 249–53.

  EMPIRE, 1802–1804

  6: The Conservative Turn

  1. Claude-François de Méneval, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de Napoléon Ier depuis 1802 jusqu’à 1815, 3 vols (Paris, 1893–4), i. p. 173.

  2. Pierre-Louis Roederer, Un citoyen à un sénateur (n.p., n.d.). It was probably printed too late to make much of an impression (Jean Thiry, Le Sénat de Napoléon: 1800–1814 (Paris, 1949), pp. 95–6).

  3. Girardin, Mémoires, journal et souvenirs, ii. pp. 265–6.

  4. According to Girardin, Mémoires, journal et souvenirs, i. p. 266.

  5. Moniteur universel, 22 floréal an X (12 May 1802); Thibaudeau, Mémoires sur le Consulat, pp. 238–9; Thiers, Histoire du Consulat et de l’Empire, iii. p. 501.

  6. François-Alphonse Aulard, ‘L’établissement du Consulat à vie’, in Etudes et leçons sur la Révolution française, pp. 255–6.

  7. According to Woloch, Napoleon and his Collaborators, p. 91.

  8. Lentz, Grand Consulat, pp. 338–9.

  9. Girardin, Mémoires, journal et souvenirs, i. pp. 268–9; Cornet, Souvenirs sénatoriaux, pp. 18–19, 26–7.

  10. Corr. vii. n. 6079 (9 May 1802). Thibaudeau, Mémoires sur le Consulat, p. 247; Thiry, Le Sénat de Napoléon, pp. 98–9; Woloch, Napoleon and his Collaborators, p. 92.

  11. Thibaudeau, Mémoires sur le Consulat, pp. 248–54.

  12. Thibaudeau, Mémoires sur le Consulat, p. 249.

  13. Thibaudeau, Mémoires sur le Consulat, pp. 251–2; Roederer, Oeuvres, iii. p. 447.

  14. Théophile Berlier, Précis de la vie politique de Théophile Berlier (Dijon, 1838), p. 88; Woloch, Napoleon and his Collaborators, p. 93.

  15. Thibaudeau, Mémoires sur le Consulat, p. 264.

  16. The most complete discussion on the question of an heir is in Thiry, Le Sénat de Napoléon, pp. 90–109; Jean Thiry, Le Concordat et le Consulat
à vie: mars 1801–juillet 1802 (Paris, 1956), pp. 195–224.

  17. Thiry, Le Sénat de Napoléon, pp. 99–100; Lentz, Grand Consulat, pp. 340–1.

  18. Thibaudeau, Mémoires sur le Consulat, p. 282.

  19. See also Cornet, Souvenirs sénatoriaux, pp. 18–19, 21.

  20. In pamphlets such as Louis Pasquier, comte de Franclieu, Opinion sur la question qui nous est proposée: Napoléon Bonaparte sera-t-il consul à vie? (Paris, 1801); and Félix Nouvel, Opinion de Félix Nouvel, du Finistère, sur cette question: Napoléon Bonaparte sera-t-il consul à vie? (Brest, 1801).

  21. Thierry Lentz, ‘Contribution à l’étude des plébiscites du Consulat et du Premier Empire: l’exemple de la Moselle’, Revue de l’Institut Napoléon, 151 (1988), 38.

  22. Langlois, ‘Napoléon Bonaparte plébiscité’, pp. 81–93.

  23. Results in AN B II 667, 671. Malcolm Crook, ‘Confidence from Below? Collaboration and Resistance in the Napoleonic Plebiscites’, in Rowe (ed.), Collaboration and Resistance in Napoleonic Europe, p. 23; Philippe Sagnac, ‘L’avènement de Bonaparte à l’Empire: le Consulat à vie’, Revue des études napoléoniennes, 24 (1925), 149.

  24. Sagnac, ‘L’avènement de Bonaparte’, 149–50, 53–4.

  25. One can recognize in the phrasing the Roman formula SPQR (Senatus Populusque Romanus) (Valérie Huet, ‘Napoleon I: A New Augustus?’, in Catherine Edwards (ed.), Roman Presences: Receptions of Rome in European Culture, 1789–1945 (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 53–69, here p. 55).

  26. Valentine Cloncurry, Personal Recollections of the Life and Times of Valentine, Lord Cloncurry (Dublin, 1849), p. 157.

  27. Corr. vii. n. 6320 (3 August 1802).

  28. Thibaudeau, Mémoires sur le Consulat, p. 263; Sagnac, ‘L’avènement de Bonaparte’, 195.

  29. Aulard, Paris sous le Consulat, iii. pp. 206–7; Cambacérès, Mémoires inédits, i. p. 633.

  30. Roederer, Oeuvres, iii. p. 331; Cabanis, Le sacre de Napoléon, p. 113.

  31. Miot de Mélito, Mémoires, i. pp. 296, 297 and 298.

  32. Jean Pelet de La Lozère, Opinions de Napoléon sur divers sujets de politique et d’administration (Paris, 1833), p. 53; Adrien Dansette, Napoléon: pensées politiques et sociales (Paris, 1969), p. 48 (August 1802).

  33. Cited in Bluche, Le Bonapartisme, p. 30; from Dansette, Pensées politiques et sociales, pp. 47–8 (August 1802, to Thibaudeau).

  34. Miot de Mélito, Mémoires, i. p. 299.

  35. Boudon, ‘L’incarnation de l’état de Brumaire’, p. 340.

  36. Staël, Considérations, ii. p. 228.

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

  38. Miot de Mélito, Mémoires, i. p. 307.

  39. Remacle, Relations secrètes, pp. 31, 78; Barante, Souvenirs, i. pp. 100–1; Etienne-Denis Pasquier, Histoire de mon temps: mémoires du chancelier Pasquier, 6 vols (Paris, 1894–6), i. pp. 159–61; Aulard, Paris sous le Consulat, ii. p. 492; Petiteau, Les Français et l’Empire, pp. 52–3.

  40. Petiteau, Les Français et l’Empire, p. 108.

  41. A good many grumblings were picked up by the secret police. See, for example, AN F7 3829, 7 frimaire an IX (27 November 1800); F7 3830, 19 frimaire, 3 prairial, 3, 17 fructidor, 1er complimentaire, an X (9 January, 22 May, 21 August, 4, 18 September 1802).

  42. See Picard, Bonaparte et Moreau, pp. 366–7. An insult could be as banal as naming a pet dog after the First Consul (Alfred Hachette, ‘Sur un militaire qui, en passant à Sisteron, donnait à son chien le nom de Bonaparte’, Revue des études napoléoniennes, 12 (1917), 116–18).

  43. See, for example, Miot de Mélito, Mémoires, p. 313; Haegele, Napoléon et Joseph Bonaparte, pp. 136–7.

  44. Thibaudeau, Mémoires sur le Consulat, p. 152.

  45. Lentz, ‘La proclamation du Concordat’, p. 112.

  46. Picard, Bonaparte et Moreau, p. 374.

  47. Gaubert, Conspirateurs au temps de Napoléon, pp. 127–36; Edouard Guillon, Les complots militaires sous le Consulat et l’Empire: d’après les documents inédits des archives (Paris, 1894), pp. 16–25; Dunbar Plunket Barton, Bernadotte and Napoleon, 1763–1810 (London, 1921), pp. 47–52; Gérard Minart, Les opposants à Napoléon: l’élimination des royalistes et des républicains (1800–1815) (Paris, 2003), pp. 109–13; Boscher, Histoire de la repression, pp. 143–7.

  48. Chaptal, Mes souvenirs, p. 250; Villefosse and Bouissounouse, L’opposition à Napoléon, pp. 224–5.

  49. See the police reports in AN F7 3089, 27 July, 16 November, 14 December 1804 and 18 January 1805; Petiteau, Les Français et l’Empire, pp. 111–12.

  50. Gaubert, Conspirateurs au temps de Napoléon, pp. 142–3.

  51. Guillon, Les complots militaires sous le Consulat et l’Empire, p. 30.

  52. AN F7 6315, dossier 6659: Prefect of the Department of Seine et Oise to Fouché, 2 thermidor an X (20 July 1802); Mounier to Fouché, prairial an X (May 1802); report 13 prairial an X (2 June 1802); Gilbert-Augustin Thierry, Conspirateurs et gens de police: le complot des libelles (1802) (Paris, 1903); Villefosse and Bouissounouse, L’opposition à Napoléon, pp. 225–7; Guillon, Les complots militaires sous le Consulat et l’Empire, pp. 26–43; Barton, Bernadotte and Napoleon, pp. 59–65; Léonce Pingaud, Bernadotte et Napoléon (1797–1814) (Paris, 1933), pp. 68–70; T. T. Höjer, Bernadotte, maréchal de France, trans. from the Swedish by Lucien Maury, 2 vols (Paris, 1943), pp. 220–6; Boscher, Histoire de la repression, pp. 147–51; Franck Favier, Bernadotte, un maréchal d’Empire sur le trône de Suède (Paris, 2010), pp. 112–19.

  53. AN F7 6315, dossier 6659, for their files.

  54. Höjer, Bernadotte, i. p. 225; Emmanuel Cherrier, ‘Un itinéraire politique original, l’ascension de Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte’, Nordic Historical Review/Revue d’Histoire Nordique, 5 (2007), 85–7.

  55. Miot de Mélito, Mémoires, ii. pp. 41–2.

  56. Arthur-Léon Imbert de Saint-Amand, Les femmes des Tuileries: la femme du Premier consul (Paris, 1884), pp. 128–34; Kale, ‘Women, Salons, and the State’, 62.

  57. On court life under Louis XIV see Burke, The Fabrication of Louis XIV, pp. 87, 89, 90–1; T. C. W. Blanning, The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture: Old Regime Europe, 1660–1789 (Oxford, 2002), pp. 7, 29–31, 39–41.

  58. Louis-Sébastien Mercier, Tableau de Paris, 12 vols (Amsterdam, 1788), ix. ch. dcxci, p. 78.

  59. See Dwyer, Napoleon: The Path to Power, pp. 296–302. Comte Emmanuel de Las Cases, Le Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène, ed. and annotated by Marcel Dunan, 2 vols (Paris, 1983), ii. p. 305; Lentz, Grand Consulat, p. 373.

  60. Eléonore-Adèle d’Osmond, comtesse de Boigne, Récits d’une tante: mémoires de la comtesse de Boigne, 4 vols (Paris, 1907–8), i. pp. 395–6; Martin-Fugier, La vie élégante ou La formation du Tout-Paris, p. 44; Pierre Branda, Napoléon et ses hommes: la Maison de l’Empereur, 1804–1815 (Paris, 2011), pp. 322–6. Later, all imperial palaces were reorganized to make access to his person more difficult (Mansel, The Eagle in Splendour, pp. 75–8).

  61. Blagdon, Paris As It Was and As It Is, i. p. 328.

  62. Alméras, La Vie parisienne sous le Consulat et l’Empire, pp. 285–9; Charles-Otto Zieseniss, Napoléon et la cour impériale (Paris, 1980), pp. 74–5; Kale, French Salons, p. 83; Branda, Napoléon et ses hommes, pp. 307–26.

  63. See Kale, French Salons, pp. 83–4.

  64. AN F7 3831, 3 vendémiaire an XI (25 September 1802); Aulard, Paris sous le Consulat, iii. pp. 271–2.

  65. Rémusat, Mémoires, iii. pp. 233–4, 237, 260.

  66. Michael Rowe, From Reich to State: The Rhineland in the Revolutionary Age, 1780–1830 (Cambridge, 2003), p. 115. On the importance of dress and the uniform, particularly at court, see Mansel, Dressed to Rule, esp. pp. 78–88.

  67. Boudon, ‘L’incarnation de l’état de Brumaire’, p. 341; Mansel, Dressed to Rule, p. 80.

  68. Remacle, Relations secrètes, p. 230 (15 January 1803).

  69. Rémusat, Mémoires, i. pp. 174–5; Raoul Brunon, ‘Uniforms in the Napoleonic Era’, in Katell
le Bourhis (ed.), The Age of Napoleon: Costume from Revolution to Empire, 1789–1815 (New York, 1989), pp. 180–1. It was a practice that could also be found in, for example, the British army. See Myerly, British Military Spectacle, pp. 40–1.

  70. Alan Forrest, ‘The Napoleonic Armies and their World’, Revista Napoleonica, 1–2 (2000), 280.

  71. Cited in Madeleine Delpierre, ‘Une révolution, en trois temps’, in Modes et révolutions, 1780–1804 (Paris, 1989), pp. 11–40; Margaret Waller, ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes: Display, Cover-Up and Exposure in Modern Masculinity’, in Timothy Reeser and Lewis Seifert (eds), Entre hommes: French and Francophone Masculinities in Literature and Culture (Newark, 2008), pp. 115–42.

  72. Marsha and Linda Frey, ‘“The Reign of the Charlatans is Over”: The French Revolutionary Attack on Diplomatic Practice’, Journal of Modern History, 65 (1993), 706–44.

  73. Etiquette du palais imperial (Paris, 1806).

  74. A lever took place when the sovereign left his apartments and made his appearance in public; only certain people could attend. The coucher was the moment when the sovereign retired to his apartments.

  75. Waller, ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’, pp. 115–42.

  76. Philippe Séguy, ‘Costume in the Age of Napoleon’, in le Bourhis (ed.), The Age of Napoleon, pp. 84, 110–12. On military uniforms see Brunon, ‘Uniforms in the Napoleonic Era’, pp. 179–201; and Philip Mansel, ‘Monarchy, Uniform, and the Rise of the Frac, 1760–1830’, Past & Present, 96 (1982), 103–32.

  77. Mansel, Dressed to Rule, pp. 81–2.

  78. Figures varied enormously over time, but there were around 1,200 people attached to Louis XIV’s household in 1689 and around 2,000 under Louis XVI. See Jeroen Duindam, Vienna and Versailles: The Courts of Europe’s Major Dynastic Rivals, ca. 1550–1780 (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 54–5.

  79. Mansel, The Eagle in Splendour, pp. 27, 34; Philip Mansel, The Court of France, 1789–1830 (Cambridge, 1988), p. 188; Kale, French Salons, pp. 92–4; Branda, Napoléon et ses hommes, pp. 61–2. For an interesting comparative study on the courts of Paris, Vienna and Berlin see, Jeroen Duindam, ‘The Dynastic Court in an Age of Change: Frederick II Seenfrom the Perspective of Habsburg and Bourbon Court Life’, in Jürgen Luh and Michael Kaiser (eds), Friedrich300 – Colloquien, Friedrich der Große und der Hof, 2009, www.perspectivia.net/content/publikationen/friedrich300–colloquien/friedrich-hof/Duindam_Court?set_language=tr.