Citizen Emperor

by Philip Dwyer

  123. Eugène Hatin, Histoire politique et littéraire de la presse en France, 8 vols (Paris, 1859–61), vii. pp. 546–56.

  124. See Petiteau, Les Français et l’Empire, pp. 76–7.

  125. Burrows, French Exile Journalism, pp. 181–3; Semmel, Napoleon and the British, pp. 44–6. The term ‘despot’ was widely used in the years preceding the French Revolution, often against the king, and was one of the most important ideas leading to constitutional change in 1789. Yet there is little research into the political use of the term in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

  126. Robert Gildea, The Past in French History (New Haven, 1994), p. 64.

  127. Emile Le Gallo, ‘Un témoignage de Bonaparte sur Robespierre en 1797’, Annales Révolutionnaires, 14 (1922), 60–5. See Casanova, Napoléon et la pensée de son temps, pp. 158–73, for an analysis of this document.

  128. Bluche, Le Bonapartisme, p. 90; Aurélien Lignereux, Histoire de la France contemporaine, vol. i: L’Empire des Français (1799–1815) (Paris, 2012), pp. 85–6.

  129. The comparison is often made, as in John Lukacs, The Hitler of History (New York, 1998), pp. 240–51. See R. S. Alexander, Napoleon (London, 2001), pp. 90–116; Steven Englund, ‘Napoleon and Hitler’, Journal of the Historical Society, 6 (2006), 151–69; and Michael Rowe, ‘Napoleon’s France: A Forerunner of Europe’s Twentieth-Century Dictators’, in Claus-Christian Szejnmann (ed.), Rethinking History, Dictatorship and War: New Approaches and Interpretations (London, 2009), pp. 87–106.

  130. Godel, ‘L’Eglise selon Napoléon’, 838.

  131. See Vida Azimi, Les premiers sénateurs français: Consulat et Premier Empire, 1800–1814 (Paris, 2000), pp. 155–6.

  132. Pierre Rosanvallon, Le sacre du citoyen: histoire du suffrage universel en France (Paris, 1992), p. 197.

  133. See, for example, his letter to the government of Genoa in Corr. iii. n. 1933 (16 June 1797).

  134. For the following see Bluche, Le Bonapartisme, p. 29; F. G. Healey, Rousseau et Napoléon (Geneva, 1957), pp. 77–9.

  13: ‘The Devil’s Business’

  1. Louis de Fontanes, Oeuvres de M. de Fontanes, 2 vols (Paris, 1839), i. p. 341 (2 November 1808); Lanzac de Laborie, Paris sous Napoléon, iii. p. 126.

  2. This idea is more fully elaborated in Philip Dwyer, ‘Napoleon and the Drive for Glory: Reflections on the Making of French Foreign Policy’, in Dwyer (ed.), Napoleon and Europe, pp. 118–35.

  3. On Napoleon’s relations with the pope see Henri Welschinger, Le pape et l’empereur, 1804–1815 (Paris, 1905), pp. 1–45; E. E. Y. Hales, Napoleon and the Pope: The Story of Napoleon and Pius VII (London, 1962); Margaret M. O’Dwyer, The Papacy in the Age of Napoleon and the Restoration: Pius VII, 1800–1823 (Lanham, Md, 1985), pp. 83–124; Melchior-Bonnet, Napoléon et le Pape; Robin Anderson, Pope Pius VII, 1800–1823: His Life, Reign and Struggle with Napoleon in the Aftermath of the French Revolution (Rockford, Ill., 2001); Boudon, Histoire du Consulat et de l’Empire, pp. 342–58; Lentz, Nouvelle histoire du Premier Empire, i. pp. 349–70, 482–500; ii. pp. 106–34.

  4. Corr. xi. n. 9655, and xii. n. 9805 (7 January, 13 February 1806).

  5. Cited in Melchior-Bonnet, Napoléon et le Pape, p. 89.

  6. Joseph Othenin Bernard de Cléron, comte d’Haussonville, L’Eglise romaine et le Premier Empire, 1800–1814, 5 vols (Paris, 1868–9), ii. pp. 305–9; John Tracy Ellis, Cardinal Consalvi and Anglo-Papal Relations, 1814–1824 (Washington, DC, 1942), pp. 15–17; Robinson, Cardinal Consalvi, pp. 81–5.

  7. Corr. xv. n. 13093 (31 August 1807).

  8. Corr. xvi. n. 13441 (10 January 1808).

  9. Corr. xvi. n. 13536 (7 February 1808).

  10. Ellis, ‘Religion According to Napoleon’, p. 248.

  11. Cited in Melchior-Bonnet, Napoléon et le Pape, pp. 101 and 102.

  12. Lentz, Nouvelle histoire du Premier Empire, i. 370; Ellis, ‘Religion According to Napoleon’, pp. 248–9.

  13. On this annexation of the Roman states see Lentz, Nouvelle histoire du Premier Empire, i. pp. 526–34.

  14. Claude-François André d’Arbelles, Tableau historique de la politique de la cour de Rome, depuis l’origine de sa puissance temporelle jusqu’à nos jours (Paris, 1810).

  15. For an overview of this complex problem see Esdaile, Napoleon’s Wars, pp. 301–45; Charles Esdaile, The Peninsular War: A New History (London, 2003), pp. 1–36.

  16. This is the view of Schroeder, Transformation of European Politics, pp. xi, 230, 284, 393; and Paul W. Schroeder, ‘Napoleon’s Foreign Policy: A Criminal Enterprise’, Journal of Military History, 54 (1990), 147–61.

  17. Shuvalov to Alexander (15 May 1811), in Sbornik, xxi. p. 416.

  18. Eli F. Heckscher, The Continental System: An Economic Interpretation (Oxford, 1922), pp. 92–4. Historians who have recently reiterated this point include Tulard, Napoléon ou le mythe du sauveur, pp. 205–6; David Gates, The Spanish Ulcer: A History of the Peninsular War (London, 1986), p. 6; Schroeder, Transformation of European Politics, pp. 307–10; Jean-Noël Brégeon, Napoléon et la guerre d’Espagne: 1808–1814 (Paris, 2006), pp. 69–71; Michael V. Leggiere, The Fall of Napoleon, vol. i: The Allied Invasion of France, 1813–1814 (New York, 2007), p. 2. There is necessarily a debate, as with all things Napoleonic, about whether the desire to defeat Britain led to the implementation of the blockade or whether the blockade led to the expansion of the Empire. A concise résumé of the debate can be found in Schroeder, Transformation of European Politics, pp. 307–9, along with the assertion that the Continental System was really part of a contest to see which of the three great powers – Britain, France or Russia – would dominate Europe.

  19. Heckscher, The Continental System, pp. 78, 86, 95; Geoffrey Ellis, Napoleon’s Continental Blockade: The Case of Alsace (Oxford, 1981), pp. 110–48; Lentz, Nouvelle histoire du Premier Empire, i. p. 257.

  20. Schroeder, The Transformation of Europe, p. 224; Nicole Gotteri, Napoléon et le Portugal (Paris, 2004), pp. 115–19.

  21. The Directory had considered a number of plans to conquer Portugal between 1796 and 1799 (Gotteri, Napoléon et le Portugal, pp. 59–60).

  22. Corr. xv. n. 12928 (19 July 1807); Schroeder, Transformation of Europe, pp. 338–9; Gotteri, Napoléon et le Portugal, pp. 137–8.

  23. Sorel, L’Europe et la Révolution française, vii. p. 217.

  24. John Charles Chasteen, Americanos: Latin America’s Struggle for Independence (Oxford, 2008), p. 42.

  25. According to Esdaile, Napoleon’s Wars, pp. 319–20, 328.

  26. Corr. xvi. nos. 13181, 13287 and 13300 (25 September, 23 and 27 October 1807).

  27. Corr. xvi. n. 13257 (16 October 1807). Junot was ordered into Spain before a Franco-Spanish accord had been reached.

  28. Thiébault, Mémoires, iv. p. 139.

  29. Gates, The Spanish Ulcer, p. 8.

  30. Rory Muir, Britain and the Defeat of Napoleon, 1807–1815 (New Haven, 1996), pp. 29–30. It was the first time that a European monarch had visited a colony; he was to stay in Rio de Janeiro for the next thirteen years. On the Portuguese court in Rio see Kirsten Schultz, Tropical Versailles: Empire, Monarchy, and the Portuguese Royal Court in Rio de Janeiro, 1808–1821 (London, 2001).

  31. Natalie Petiteau, ‘Les justifications impériales de l’intervention en Espagne’, in Gérard Dufour and Elisabel Larriba (eds), L’Espagne en 1808: régénération ou révolution? (Aix-en-Provence, 2009), p. 12.

  32. Gabriel H. Lovett, Napoleon and the Birth of Modern Spain, 2 vols (New York, 1965), i. pp. 8–17, 23–6, 90; Hilt, The Troubled Trinity, pp. 12–18.

  33. Alexandre Tratchevsky, ‘L’Espagne à l’époque de la Révolution française’, Revue historique, 31 (1886), 9.

  34. Jacques Chastenet, Manuel Godoy et l’Espagne de Goya (Paris, 1961), p. 50; Elizabeth Vassall, Lady Holland, The Spanish Journal of Elizabeth, Lady Holland (London, 1910), p. 74; Lovett, Napoleon and the Birth of Modern Spain, i. p. 6.

  35. AN AFIV 1680 (1), Philippe de Tournon to Napoleon
, 20 December 1807; Philippe Loupès, ‘De Badajoz à Bayonne, l’irrésistible ascension de Manuel Godoy revisitée’, in Josette Pontet, Napoléon, Bayonne et l’Espagne: actes du colloque (Paris, 2011), pp. 95–103. On Godoy’s ascent see Hilt, The Troubled Trinity, pp. 6–9, 22–34.

  36. The description is from his own mother, in Hilt, The Troubled Trinity, p. 137.

  37. José M. Portillo Valdés, ‘Imperial Spain’, in Broers, Hicks and Guimerá (eds), The Napoleonic Empire and the New European Political Culture, pp. 287–8.

  38. Hilt, The Troubled Trinity, pp. 179–96; Brégeon, Napoléon et la guerre d’Espagne, p. 87.

  39. André Fugier, Napoléon et l’Espagne, 1799–1808, 2 vols (Paris, 1930), ii. pp. 150–4; Hilt, The Troubled Trinity, pp. 166–70; Brégeon, Napoléon et la guerre d’Espagne, pp. 68–9.

  40. Hilt, The Troubled Trinity, pp. 210–26.

  41. An argument put forward by Emilio La Parra López, ‘Méfiance entre les alliés: les relations Napoléon–Godoy (1801–1807)’, Annales historiques de la Révolution française, 336 (2004), 31–5.

  42. Richard Hocquellet, Résistance et révolution durant l’occupation napoléonienne en Espagne, 1808–1812 (Paris, 2001), pp. 24–5.

  43. Lecestre (ed.), Lettres inédites, i. p. 184 (26 April 1808).

  44. Tulard, Murat, p. 118. On the events that lead up to and follow the riot of Aranjuez see Hocquellet, Résistance et révolution, pp. 26–41; Esdaile, The Peninsular War, pp. 32–4; Brégeon, Napoléon et la guerre d’Espagne, pp. 90–2.

  45. Corr. xvii. nos. 13711 and 13712 (1 April 1808); Tulard, Murat, p. 120.

  46. Hocquellet, Résistance et révolution, pp. 30–1.

  47. Tulard, Napoléon ou le mythe du sauveur, p. 335.

  48. Esdaile, Napoleon’s Wars, p. 332.

  49. Corr. xvi. n. 13443 (10 January 1808).

  50. Edouard Driault, Napoléon et l’Europe, iii. p. 250.

  51. Napoleon to Lucien (4 December 1807), cited in Haegele, Napoléon et Joseph Bonaparte, pp. 298–9 (from AN 381 AP 1, dossier 1, cahier 1).

  52. Albert Du Casse, ‘Documents inédits relative au premier Empire. Napoléon et le roi Louis’, Revue historique, 12 (January–February 1880), 92–3.

  53. Corr. xvii. n. 13763 (18 April 1808).

  54. Corr. xvii. n. 13844 (10 May 1808).

  55. Girardin, Mémoires, journal et souvenirs, i. pp. 68–70.

  56. Haegele, Napoléon et Joseph Bonaparte, pp. 309–12.

  57. Haegele, Napoléon et Joseph Bonaparte, pp. 336–7.

  58. Gates, The Spanish Ulcer, p. 9.

  59. Chastenet, Manuel Godoy, pp. 172–3. Similar flattering remarks were sent back to Napoleon by Philippe de Tournon, who was dispatched to the Peninsula to study public opinion, as well as to spy on the military installations inside Madrid: ‘Spain is in a crisis [and] it awaits its fate from the Emperor, it looks upon Him as its only support and considers Him to be the protector of the Prince of Asturia, who is his only hope’ (AN AFIV 1680 (1), 20 December 1807). See also Hilt, The Troubled Trinity, pp. 170–3; Lentz, Savary, pp. 115–16.

  60. Even the otherwise toadying Tournon had changed his mind and could now see the potential difficulties of French involvement in Spain. See, for example, his report in Jacques Chastenet, Godoy, Master of Spain 1792–1808, trans. J. F. Huntington (London, 1953), p. 183.

  61. Las Cases, Mémorial, i. pp. 385–6, 569–70, 725–34.

  62. Hocquellet, Résistance et révolution, p. 35; Bell, Total War, p. 276.

  63. Cited in Robert Hughes, Goya (London, 2003), p. 265.

  64. Léon-François Hoffmann, Romantique Espagne: l’image de l’Espagne en France entre 1800 et 1850 (Paris, 1961), pp. 13–15. On Napoleon’s low opinion of Spain see Fugier, Napoléon et l’Espagne, ii. pp. 452–3.

  65. Gérard Dufour, ‘Pourquoi les espagnole prirent-ils les armes contre Napoléon?’, in Les Espagnols et Napoléon: actes du colloque international d’Aix-en-Provence (Aix-en-Provence, 1984), pp. 320–1; Nicole Gotteri, Napoléon: stratégie politique et moyens de gouvernement: essai (Paris, 2007), p. 136.

  66. Dominique Dufour, baron de Pradt, Mémoires historiques sur la révolution d’Espagne (Paris, 1816), p. 109.

  67. According to Pradt, Mémoires historiques, pp. 109–10.

  68. Tulard, Napoléon ou le mythe du sauveur, p. 340; Tulard, ‘Les responsabilités françaises dans la Guerre d’Espagne’, in Les Espagnols et Napoléon, pp. 3–4.

  69. Lentz, Nouvelle histoire du Premier Empire, iii. p. 701. Cambacérès, on the other hand, was against intervention in Spain, while Fouché is supposed to have warned Napoleon that conquest might not be all that easy (Cambacérès, Mémoires inédites, ii. pp. 211–12; Fouché, Mémoires, i. pp. 364–6). He was for that very reason marginalized from any further discussions on the subject (see Pasquier, Mémoires, i. pp. 328–30).

  70. Caulaincourt, Memoirs, ii. pp. 171, 185. .

  71. Corr. xvii. n. 13776 (24 April 1808).

  72. Esdaile, Napoleon’s Wars, pp. 333–5, 344; Charles Esdaile, ‘Deconstructing the French Wars: Napoleon as Anti-Strategist’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 31 (2008), 539–40; Esdaile, The Peninsular War, 24–36.

  73. According to Esdaile, Napoleon’s Wars, p. 335.

  74. Corr. xvi. nos. 13737 and 13738 (12 April 1808).

  75. Corr. xvi. n. 13540 (8 February 1800); Desmond Gregory, Sicily: The Insecure Base: A History of the British Occupation of Sicily, 1806–1815 (Rutherford, 1988), pp. 71–2; Gregory, Napoleon’s Italy, pp. 102, 103.

  76. The following figures are taken from Richard Glover, ‘The French Fleet, 1807–1814: Britain’s Problem; and Madison’s Opportunity’, Journal of Modern History, 39 (1967), 233–4.

  77. Thomas Munch-Petersen, Defying Napoleon: How Britain Bombarded Copenhagen and Seized the Danish Fleet in 1807 (London, 2007).

  78. Jorgensen, The Anglo-Swedish Alliance, pp. 34–40.

  79. Glover, ‘The French Fleet’, pp. 235–6, 238.

  80. Glover, ‘The French Fleet’, p. 235 n. 8.

  81. Lentz, Savary, pp. 193–200. Savary was also to smooth things over with Murat who was going to be passed over as King of Spain.

  82. Corr. xvii. n. 13750 (16 April 1808). On the meeting at Bayonne see Lovett, Napoleon and the Birth of Modern Spain, i. pp. 110–20; Edouard Ducéré, Napoléon à Bayonne: d’après les contemporains et des documents inédits (Paris, 1994), pp. 101–23.

  83. Ducéré, Napoléon à Bayonne, pp. 50–4.

  84. Avrillion, Mémoires, pp. 221, 225.

  85. Corr. xvii. n. 13772 (22 April 1808). For the following see Hilt, The Troubled Trinity, pp. 235–42; Jean-François Labourdette, ‘Le voyage de Ferdinand VII à Bayonne: la controverse entre Escoïquiz et Cevallos’, in Pontet, Napoléon, Bayonne et l’Espagne, pp. 119–24.

  86. Cited in Lovett, Napoleon and the Birth of Modern Spain, i. pp. 114–15.

  87. Louis-François-Joseph Bausset, Mémoires anecdotiques sur l’intérieur du palais et sur quelques évènemens de l’Empire depuis 1805 jusqu’au 1er mai 1814 pour servir à l’histoire de Napoléon, 2 vols (Paris, 1828), i. p. 229.

  88. On this scene see Savary, Mémoires, ii. pp. 382–4.

  89. Lovett, Napoleon and the Birth of Modern Spain, i. p. 118; John Lawrence Tone, The Fatal Knot: The Guerrilla War in Navarre and the Defeat of Napoleon in Spain (Chapel Hill, 1994), p. 48.

  90. Lecestre (ed.), Lettres inédites, i. pp. 192–3 (9 May 1808); Waresquiel, Talleyrand, pp. 384–6.

  91. Jean-Claude Drouin, ‘L’image des Entrevues de Bayonne chez quelques témoins et historiens aux XIXe siècle: de Cevallos à Savine 1808–1908’, in Pontet, Napoléon, Bayonne et l’Espagne, pp. 144–52.

  92. Lecestre (ed.), Lettres inédites, i. pp. 188–9 (30 April 1808). Méneval, Mémoires, ii. p. 164, thinks that Napoleon was undecided before leaving Paris for Bayonne.

  93. Geoffroy de Grandmaison, L’Espagne et Napoléon, 3 vols (Paris, 1908–31), i. pp. iii-v; Gotteri, Napoléon, p. 135, for example.


  94. Suggests Jean-René Aymes, ‘Napoléon et Joseph Bonaparte sous le regards des Espagnols’, 1 (1998), 28.

  95. Corr. xvii. n. 13899 (16 May 1808).

  96. Bausset, Mémoires anecdotiques, i. pp. 232–3; Tone, The Fatal Knot, pp. 49–50; Jean-Marc Lafon, ‘Occupation, pacification et résistance en Andalousie’, Revue historique des armées, 210 (1998), 14; and Jean-Marc Lafon, ‘Del Dos de Mayo madrileño a los pontones de Cádiz: violencias francesas y españolas a principios de la Guerra de la Independencia’, in F. Acosta Ramírez and M. Ruiz Jiménez (eds), Baylen 1808–2008: Bailén: su impacto en la nueva Europa del XIX y su proyección futura (Jaén, 2009), pp. 105–28.

  97. John Lawrence Tone, ‘A Dangerous Amazon: Agustina Zaragoza and the Spanish Revolutionary War, 1808–1814’, European History Quarterly, 37 (2007), 552; and John Lawrence Tone, ‘Spanish Women in the Resistance to Napoleon’, in Victoria Lorée Enders and Pamela Beth (eds), Constructing Spanish Womanhood: Female Identity in Modern Spain (Albany, NY, 1999), pp. 259–82.

  98. For a brief overview see Hocquellet, Résistance et révolution, pp. 65–96; Tone, The Fatal Knot, pp. 51–7; Charles Esdaile, Peninsular Eyewitnesses: The Experience of War in Spain and Portugal 1808–1813 (Barnsley, 2008), pp. 1–44. The Spanish reaction to invasion was not ‘nationalist’, but rather a series of particularistic responses, closely linked to regional structures. For a more detailed study see Ronald Fraser, Napoleon’s Cursed War: Spanish Popular Resistance in the Peninsular War, 1808–1814 (London, 2008).

  99. Ordre du Jour, AN 1609 (2), Affaires d’Espagnes (2 May 1808); Lentz, Nouvelle histoire du Premier Empire, i. p. 401.

  100. Brégeon, Napoléon et la guerre d’Espagne, p. 98. Tone, The Fatal Knot, pp. 50 and 198 n. 23, places the figure at anywhere between 400 and 1,200.

  101. Philippe Gille, Mémoires d’un conscrit de 1808 (Paris, 1892), pp. 70–2; Bausset, Mémoires anecdotiques, i. pp. 234–6; François, Journal, pp. 558–61; Jean-Pierre Bois, Bugeaud (Paris, 1997), pp. 76–7.