Citizen Emperor

by Philip Dwyer

  80. Oscar Browning (ed.), England and Napoleon in 1803, being the despatches of Lord Witworth and others (London, 1887), p. 17; Peter A. Lloyd, The French Are Coming: The Invasion Scare of 1803–5 (Tunbridge Wells, 1991), p. 16.

  81. Browning (ed.), England and Napoleon in 1803, p. 190.

  82. See, for example, Corr. n. 6743 (13 May 1803).

  83. On Bonaparte’s version of events see Corr. viii. nos. 6630 and 6636 (13 and 16 March 1803). See Grainger, The Amiens Truce, pp. 174–6.

  84. Bury and Barry (eds), An Englishman in Paris, pp. 93–4.

  85. Papers Relative to the Discussion with France in 1802 and 1803 (London, 1803), pp. 133–5; Browning (ed.), England and Napoleon in 1803, pp. 117–20; Kagan, The End of the Old Order, p. 43. It is nonsense, however, to suggest, as does Lentz, Grand Consulat, p. 467, that Bonaparte fell into a trap laid for him by the British.

  86. Greig (ed.), The Farington Diary, ii. pp. 136–7.

  87. Petr Ivanovich Bartenev (ed.), Arkhiv kniazia Vorontsova, 40 vols (Moscow, 1870–95), xx. pp. 119–21; Morkov, 4/16 March 1803, in Sbornik Imperatorskogo russkogo istoricheskogo obschestva, 148 vols (Petersburg, 1867–1916), lxxvii. pp. 63–8. On Morkov’s reactions see A. W. Ward and G. p. Gooch, The Cambridge History of British Foreign Policy, 1783–1919, 3 vols (Cambridge, 1922–3), i. p. 319.

  88. On this point see Stuart Woolf, ‘French Civilization and Ethnicity in the Napoleonic Empire’, Past & Present, 124 (1989), 96–120.

  89. There were rumours to that effect in Paris as early as July/August 1802 (AN F7 3830, 13 and 30 thermidor an X (1 and 18 August 1802)).

  90. For a summary of the conditions leading to the breakdown of peace in 1802–3 see Conrad Gill, ‘The Relations between England and France in 1802’, English Historical Review, 24 (1909), 61–78; Albert Sorel, L’Europe et la Révolution française, 9 vols (Paris, 1885–1991), vi. pp. 266–300; Schroeder, Transformation of European Politics, pp. 231–45; Grainger, The Amiens Truce.

  91. Although it was not until 1803 that Bonaparte became the ‘Mediator’ of the Swiss Republic. See Gray, ‘Revolutionism as Revisionism’, pp. 128–9; Georges Andrey, ‘L’Acte de médiation du 19 février 1803 porte-il bien son nom?’, in Alain-Jacques Czouz-Tornare (ed.), Quand Napoléon Bonaparte recréa la Suisse: la genèse et la mise en oeuvre de l’Acte de médiation, aspects des relations franco-suisses autour de 1803 (Paris, 2005), pp. 15–39.

  92. Simon Schama, Patriots and Liberators: Revolution in the Netherlands 1780–1813 (London, 1992), pp. 399–409, 410–19.

  93. Browning (ed.), England and Napoleon in 1803, pp. 16–19. These fears were fuelled by the departure of Colonel Horace Sébastiani for the Middle East in September 1802 to make sure that the British complied with the Treaty of Amiens and withdrew from Egypt. On his return to Paris, he submitted a report to Bonaparte, made public in the Moniteur universel, 10 pluviôse an XI (30 January 1803), in which he claimed that 6,000 troops could easily retake Egypt. On this see Corr. viii. nos. 6276 and 6308 (29 August and 5 September 1802); p. Coquelle, ‘La mission de Sébastiani à Constantinople’, Revue d’histoire diplomatique, 17 (1903), 438–55; Jean-Tiburce de Mesmay, Horace Sébastiani, soldat, diplomate, homme d’Etat, maréchal de France, 1772–1851 (Paris, 1948), pp. 42–50; Simon Burrows, ‘Culture and Misperception: The Law and the Press in the Outbreak of War in 1803’, International History Review, 18 (1996), 811.

  94. See Alfred Dufour, ‘D’une médiation à l’autre’, in Alfred Dufour, Till Hanisch and Victor Monnier (eds), Bonaparte, la Suisse et l’Europe (Geneva, 2003), pp. 7–37; and Mario Turchetti (ed.), La Suisse de la médiation dans l’Europe napoléonienne (1803–1814) (Fribourg, 2005).

  95. Thomas M. Iiams, Peacemaking from Vergennes to Napoleon: French Foreign Relations in the Revolutionary Era, 1774–1814 (Huntington, NY, 1979), p. 67, asserts that the Foreign Office records show the British were thinking about retaining Malta before Bonaparte annexed Piedmont.

  96. Browning (ed.), England and Napoleon, pp. 52–3, 95–6; Yorke, France in Eighteen Hundred and Two, p. 120; Bourrienne, Mémoires, iv. pp. 305–7. Bonaparte appointed a secretary by the name of Nettement to translate articles from the English press (cited in Gill, ‘The Relations between England and France’, 63). On the press and Bonaparte see Simon Burrows, ‘The Struggle for European Opinion in the Napoleonic Wars: British Francophone Propaganda, 1803–14’, French History, 11 (1997), 33–5; and Simon Burrows, ‘The French Emigré Press, 1789–1814: A Study in Impotence?’, in David W. Lovell (ed.), Revolution, Politics and Society: Elements in the Making of Modern France (Canberra, 1994), pp. 31–9; Grainger, The Amiens Truce, pp. 146–50.

  97. Hélène Maspero-Clerc, Un journaliste contre-révolutionnaire, Jean-Gabriel Peltier, 1760–1825 (Paris, 1973), p. 148.

  98. Morning Post, 1 February 1803.

  99. Fedorak, Henry Addington, p. 113; Burrows, ‘Culture and Misperception’, 808.

  100. Maspero-Clerc, Un journaliste contre-révolutionnaire, pp. 159–68; Simon Burrows, French Exile Journalism and European Politics, 1792–1814 (Woodbridge, 2000), pp. 114–26.

  101. Fedorak, Henry Addington, p. 114.

  102. On the English press during the Revolution see Lucyle Werkmeister, The London Daily Press, 1772–1792 (Lincoln, 1963), pp. 317–79. On freedom of the press see Arthur Aspinall, Politics and the Press, c. 1780–1850 (London, 1949), pp. 33–65. On the expulsion of pro-French journalists see Burrow, ‘The War of Words’, 51.

  103. Burrows, French Exile Journalism, pp. 107–8; Burrows, ‘Culture and Misperception’, 818. The sentiment is echoed by Gill, ‘The Relations between England and France’, 63–5, 66, who suggests that Bonaparte went to war, despite advice from his ministers, because he was irritated by the personal attacks against him in the English press. It prompted Talleyrand to say that if peace failed it was because of the little regard shown for Bonaparte’s amour-propre (Browning (ed.), England and Napoleon, p. 266).

  104. Anglophobia had been rampant in France for a very long time. See Frances Acomb, Anglophobia in France, 1763–1789: An Essay in the History of Constitutionalism and Nationalism (Durham, NC, 1950), pp. 89–123; Norman Hampson, The Perfidy of Albion: French Perceptions of England during the French Revolution (New York, 1998); Jean-Paul Bertaud, Alan Forrest and Annie Jourdan, Napoléon, le monde, et les Anglais: guerre des mots et des images (Paris, 2004), pp. 13–29; Jean Guiffan, Histoire de l’anglophobie en France: de Jeanne d’Arc à la vache folle (Rennes, 2004), pp. 89–104; Bertaud, Quand les enfants parlaient de gloire, pp. 203–47. On Anglo-French relations in general see Robert and Isabelle Tombs, That Sweet Enemy: The French and the British from the Sun King to the Present (London, 2006), esp. chs 5 and 6.

  105. Browning (ed.), England and Napoleon, pp. 192–6.

  106. Grainger, The Amiens Truce, p. 188.

  107. Thibaudeau, Mémoires sur le Consulat, pp. 405–7; Sorel, L’Europe et la Révolution française, vi. p. 217.

  108. Throughout the month of April 1803, there were rumours of the inevitability of war. Aulard, Paris sous le Consulat, iv. pp. 5, 9, 12, 16, 18–19, 21, 23, 24, 25, 27, 29, 32.

  109. Corr. viii. n. 6759 (22 May 1803). On this episode see Grainger, The Amiens Truce, pp. 200–3; Michael Lewis, Napoleon and his British Captives (London, 1962), pp. 22–30; Alger, Napoleon’s British Visitors, pp. 177–80.

  110. [Bertie Greatheed], A Tour in France, 1802 (London, 1808), p. 86.

  111. According to Lewis, Napoleon and his British Captives, p. 36; Roy and Lesley Adkins, War for All the Oceans: From Nelson at the Nile to Napoleon at Waterloo (London, 2006), p. 116.

  112. Corr. ix. n. 7273 (12 November 1803).

  113. Bell, Total War, p. 234.

  114. Bertaud, Quand les enfants parlaient de gloire, p. 216.

  115. Gershoy, Bertrand Barère, pp. 317–18.

  116. Mémorial anti-britannique, journal historique et politique, which went from 26 September 1803 to 30 November 1804. It was then renamed the Mémorial Eur
opéen; journal de politique et de littérature, until March 1810. See also Barère de Vieuzac’s Les Anglais au XIXe siècle (Paris, 1804). Barère fell out with Napoleon around the time of the Empire (Jean-Pierre Thomas, Bertrand Barère: la voix de la Révolution (Paris, 1989), pp. 263–4).

  117. Mémorial anti-britannique, 16 November 1804.

  118. Mémorial anti-britannique, 2 December 1804.

  119. Take, for example, Comte de Montlosier’s Le peuple anglais, bouffé d’orgueil, de bière et de thé, jugé au tribunal de la raison (Paris, 1802). But there were also political pamphlets, like the Comte d’Hauterive’s Observations sur le manifeste du roi d’Angleterre (Paris, 1802).

  120. Examples in Aulard, Paris sous le Consulat, iv. pp. 152–3, 635.

  121. Lloyd, The French Are Coming, pp. 92–4.

  122. Lloyd, The French Are Coming, pp. 17–23.

  123. Morning Chronicle, 5 October 1803.

  124. For the rumours around the invasion see Wheeler and Broadley, Napoleon and the Invasion of England, pp. 281–3, 349–50; Carola Oman, Britain against Napoleon (London, 1942), pp. 205–13.

  125. John Newman, ‘“An Insurrection of Loyalty”: The London Volunteer Regiments’ Response to the Invasion Threat’, in Philp (ed.), Resisting Napoleon, pp. 75–89; Richard Glover, Britain at Bay: Defence against Bonaparte, 1803–14 (London, 1973), pp. 30–54; and Charles John Fedorak, ‘In Defence of Great Britain: Henry Addington, the Duke of York and Military Preparations against Invasion by Napoléonic France, 1803–1804’, in Philp (ed.), Resisting Napoleon, pp. 75–89 and 91–110.

  126. Norman Longmate, Island Fortress: The Defence of Great Britain, 1603–1945 (London, 1993), pp. 271–3.

  127. See Wheeler and Broadley, Napoleon and the Invasion of England, pp. 329–62; Alexandra Franklin and Mark Philp, Napoleon and the Invasion of Britain (Oxford, 2003), pp. 60–3.

  128. The Martello was a small defensive fort twelve metres high with thick walls built to withstand cannon, garrisoned by fifteen to twenty-five men. It was based on the Genoese tower in Corsica. Frank McLynn, Invasion: From the Armada to Hitler, 1588–1945 (London, 1987), pp. 100–1; Longmate, Island Fortress, pp. 275–9.

  129. Longmate, Island Fortress, pp. 267–9.

  130. Longmate, Island Fortress, pp. 279–83.

  131. Spirit of the Public Journals for 1805 (London, 1806), p. 308.

  7: The End of the Revolution

  1. AN F7 6391, Signalements de plusieurs individus dont la recherche et l’arrestation sont ordonnées par le Gouvernement, pluviôse an XII; Moniteur universel, 7 March 1804.

  2. The best biographical description of Cadoudal is Jean-Paul Bertaud, Bonaparte et le duc d’Enghien, le duel des deux France (Paris, 1972), pp. 45–54.

  3. Forty-six in all, according to Aurélien Lignereux, ‘Le moment terroriste de la chouannerie: des atteintes à l’ordre public aux attentats contre le Premier Consul’, La Révolution française, lrf.revues.org/index390.

  4. See Burrows, French Exile Journalism, pp. 191–7.

  5. Miot de Mélito, Mémoires, ii. pp. 135–7.

  6. Questions have, nevertheless, been raised about the complicity of Fouché in this affair. Royalists had, it would appear, completely penetrated all branches of the Paris police (Sparrow, ‘The Alien Office’, 380–81).

  7. For the following, Moreau, Jean-Victor Moreau, pp. 94–5. On Moreau’s involvement in the conspiracy see Maurice Garçot, Le duel Moreau–Napoléon (Paris, 1951), pp. 48–52, 55–66.

  8. See, for example, the account by Barante, Souvenirs, i. pp. 112–13.

  9. AN F7 6403, dossier de Jean Louis Picot.

  10. AN F7 6391, declaration by and interrogation of Bouvet de Lozier.

  11. At least according to his own admission. See Las Cases, Mémorial, ii. pp. 622–8; Moreau, Jean-Victor Moreau, pp. 95–6.

  12. Las Cases, Mémorial, i. pp. 656–62; ii. pp. 617–22.

  13. Picard, Bonaparte et Moreau, pp. 366–76.

  14. Moreau’s interrogation can be found in AN F7 6391.

  15. According to Lentz, Grand Consulat, p. 533. In all, 356 conspirators were arrested during this time (Sparrow, Secret Service, pp. 291–2).

  16. Cambacérès, Mémoires inédits, i. p. 706.

  17. Aulard, Paris sous le Consulat, iv. pp. 679–80, 682 (16 and 17 February 1804); Bertaud, Bonaparte et le duc d’Enghien, pp. 96–7.

  18. Picard, Bonaparte et Moreau, p. 285; Savinel, Moreau, p. 91.

  19. Ségur, Un aide de camp de Napoléon, i. pp. 102–3; Bourrienne, Mémoires, vi. pp. 21–2.

  20. Jérôme Laugier, Les cahiers du capitaine Laugier (Paris, 1893), pp. 257–8. On the other hand, those same officers appear willingly to have signed a letter congratulating Napoleon on his ascension to the thrones of the Empire and the Kingdom of Italy (AN AFIV 1953, no date).

  21. Cambacérès, Mémoires inédits, i. p. 708.

  22. The marquis de Gallo cited in Gaubert, Conspirateurs au temps de Napoléon, p. 201.

  23. AN F7 6403, interrogation of Pichegru.

  24. Aulard, Paris sous le Consulat, iv. pp. 720, 721, 722.

  25. Aulard, Paris sous le Consulat, iv. pp. 330–1, 446 (24 August and 23 October 1803).

  26. Alfred Boulay de la Meurthe, Les dernières années du duc d’Enghien (1801–1804) (Paris, 1886), pp. 226, 321.

  27. Sidney B. Fay, ‘The Execution of the Duc d’Enghien I’, American Historical Review, 3 (1898), 620–1.

  28. Cambacérès, Mémoires inédits, i. pp. 710–13; Pasquier, Mémoires, i. p. 179.

  29. Pasquier, Mémoires, i. p. 180.

  30. Joseph Othenin Bernard de Cléron, comte d’Haussonville, ‘L’Eglise Romaine et le premier Empire 1800–1814: le Pape à Savone’, Revue des Deux Mondes, 67 (1867), 43.

  31. Méneval, Mémoires, i. pp. 284–5.

  32. According to Cambacérès, Mémoires inédits, i. pp. 712–13. See also Henri Welschinger, Le duc d’Enghien, 1772–1804: l’enlèvement d’Ettenheim et l’exécution de Vincennes (Paris, 1913), pp. 388–5.

  33. It is often said that this commando was led by Armand de Caulaincourt, but in fact it was General Ordener who went to Ettenheim to arrest Enghien. Caulaincourt suffered by association all his life, railing against the misconception on his deathbed. See Armand Augustin Louis, marquis de Caulaincourt, duc de Vicence, Memoirs of General de Caulaincourt, Duke of Vicenza, ed. Jean Hanoteau, 3 vols (London, 1950), i. pp. 17–20; Jean-Paul Bertaud, Le duc d’Enghien (Paris, 2001), pp. 349, 351.

  34. Bertaud, Le duc d’Enghien, pp. 351–2.

  35. Bertaud, Le duc d’Enghien, pp. 383–4.

  36. Alan Forrest, ‘Napoleon as Monarch: A Political Evolution’, in Alan Forrest and Peter H. Wilson (eds), The Bee and the Eagle: Napoleonic France and the End of the Holy Roman Empire, 1806 (Basingstoke, 2009), p. 117.

  37. Bertrand, Cahiers de Sainte-Hélène, i. p. 58; Las Cases, Mémorial, ii. p. 627.

  38. On the role of Savary see Thierry Lentz, Savary: le séide de Napoléon (Paris, 2001), pp. 113–36.

  39. Hortense, Memoirs, i. pp. 95–6.

  40. Andrew Hilliard Atteridge, Joachim Murat, Marshal of France and King of Naples (New York, 1911), p. 108; Jean Tulard, Murat (Paris, 1999), pp. 70–2.

  41. Eugène de Beauharnais, Mémoires et correspondance politique et militaire du prince Eugène, 10 vols (Paris, 1858–60), i. p. 91.

  42. Beauharnais, Mémoires et correspondance politiques, i. pp. 90–1.

  43. Cornet, Souvenirs sénatoriaux, pp. 39–41.

  44. Translation from William Francis Henry King, Classical and Foreign Quotations (London, 1889).

  45. François-Joseph-Charles-Marie, comte de Mercy-Argenteau, Memoirs of the Comte de Mercy-Argenteau: Napoleon’s Chamberlain and his Minister Plenipotentiary to the King of Bavaria (New York, 1917), i. p. 94.

  46. Aulard, Paris sous le Consulat, iv. p. 730 (20 March 1804); Dalberg to Edelsheim (22 March 1804), Bernhard Erdmannsdörffer and K. Obser (eds), Politische Correspondenz Karl Friedrich
s von Baden, 1783–1806, 5 vols (Heidelberg, 1888–1901), v. p. 27; Aulard, Paris sous le Consulat, iv. pp. 731, 732, 733 (21, 22 and 23 March 1804).

  47. Lentz, Grand Consulat, p. 550.

  48. Pasquier, Mémoires, i. p. 210; Welschinger, Le duc d’Enghien, pp. 337–83; Henri Welschinger, L’Europe et l’exécution du duc d’Enghien (Amiens, 1890).

  49. A point underlined by Sorel, L’Europe et la Révolution française, vi. p. 359; and Kagan, The End of the Old Order, p. 88.

  50. Adam Gielgud (ed.), Memoirs of Prince Adam Czartoryski and his Correspondence with Alexander I, 2 vols (London, 1888), ii. pp. 14–15; Charles Robert Vasilievitch de Nesselrode, Lettres et papiers du chancelier comte de Nesselrode, 1760–1850, 11 vols (Paris, 1908–12), ii. pp. 306–7; Dirk Van Hogendorp, Mémoires du général Dirk van Hogendorp, comte de l’Empire (The Hague, 1887), p. 153.

  51. Protocol, 5/17 April 1804, in Sbornik, lxxvii. pp. 547–63; Joseph de Maistre, Mémoires politiques et correspondance diplomatique de Joseph de Maistre (Paris, 1864), pp. 110–11; and Joseph de Maistre, Oeuvres complètes de J. de Maistre, 14 vols (Lyons, 1884–6), ix. pp. 156–7.

  52. W. H. Zawadzki, ‘Prince Adam Czartoryski and Napoleonic France, 1801–1805: A Study in Political Attitudes’, Historical Journal, 18 (1975), 262; Gielgud (ed.), Memoirs of Prince Adam Czartoryski, ii. pp. 16–34.

  53. Constantin de Grunwald, Alexandre Ier, le tsar mystique (Paris, 1955), p. 99.

  54. See the letter from Alexander to Friedrich Wilhelm in Paul Bailleu (ed.), Briefwechsel König Friedrich Wilhelm III. und der Königin Luise mit Kaiser Alexander I (Leipzig, 1900), pp. 46–7; Alexander M. Martin, Romantics, Reformers, Reactionaries: Russian Conservative Thought and Politics in the Reign of Alexander I (DeKalb, 1997), p. 42.

  55. Lombard to Hardenberg (8 May 1804), in Bailleu (ed.), Preußen und Frankreich, ii. pp. 261–2; Welschinger, L’Europe et l’exécution du duc d’Enghien, pp. 20–3.