Citizen Emperor

by Philip Dwyer

  102. Petiteau, Les Français et l’Empire, pp. 183–4.

  103. See, for example, Louis Dubroca, Discours en actions de grâces à l’Eternel pour la fête de la naissance de S.M. le roi de Rome (Paris, 1811); La Naissance du roi de Rome. Dithyrambe en prose poétique, par M.N.M. veuve de Rome, membre de l’académie des arcades de Rome (Paris, 1811).

  104. Pierre Lefranc, ‘Fêtes et réjouissances dans la Vienne à l’occasion de la naissance du roi de Rome’, Revue de l’Institut Napoléon, 145 (1985), 59–66; Louis J. Thomas, ‘Montpellier et le roi de Rome’, Revue des études napoléoniennes, 3 (1913), 346–66.

  105. Gotteri (ed.), La police secrète, ii. p. 389 (14 May 1811).

  106. Boudon, Le roi Jérôme, pp. 356–7; Branda, Napoléon et ses hommes, pp. 384–5.

  107. Florence Vidal, Caroline Bonaparte: soeur de Napoléon Ier (Paris, 2006), pp. 124–5.

  108. Florence Vidal, Elisa Bonaparte: soeur de Napoléon Ier (Paris, 2004), pp. 188–9.

  109. Cf. Leferme-Falguières, Les courtisans, pp. 95–104.

  110. Savary, Mémoires, v. p. 149.

  111. Comeau de Charry, Souvenirs des guerres, p. 440.

  112. Corr. xiv. n. 11800 (12 February 1807).

  113. Examples can be found in Corr. xi. nos. 9541, 9546 (3 and 5 December 1805).

  114. Corr. xi. n. 3932 (18 October 1805).

  115. On this point see Lynn Hunt, The Family Romance of the French Revolution (Berkeley, 1992), pp. 17–52; Hughes, ‘Vive la République, Vive l’Empereur!’, pp. 60–3. There is an interesting discussion of the ‘patriarchal family’ and its political implications in Darrin M. McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (New York, 2001), pp. 133–8.

  116. See, for example, Georges Bangofsky, ‘Les étapes de Georges Bangofsky, officier lorrain. Extraits de son journal de campagnes (1797–1815)’, Mémoires de l’Académie de Stanislas, ii (1905), 320; Chevalier, Souvenirs, p. 99, refers to Napoleon as ‘un père de famille au milieu de ses enfants’.

  117. Corr. x. n. 8705 (9 May 1805); xii. n. 9912 (2 March 1806); xv. n. 12543 (23 April 1807); xx. n. 16540 (9 June 1810); xxii. nos. 17579, 17832 (6 April, 17 June 1811); Lecestre (ed.), Lettres inédites, i. pp. 289–90 (6 March 1809).

  118. Moniteur universel, 8 fructidor an XII (26 August 1804); Robinaux, Journal de route, pp. 17–18.

  119. Petiteau, Les Français et l’Empire, p. 86.

  120. Hughes, ‘Vive la République, Vive l’Empereur!’, pp. 206, 207.

  121. Agathon-Jean-François, baron Fain, Manuscrit de mil huit cent-quatorze, trouvé dans les voitures impériales prises à Waterloo, contenant l’histoire des six derniers mois du règne de Napoléon (Paris, 1824), pp. 21–3.

  122. Cited in Ida Tarbell, Napoleon’s Addresses: Selections from the Proclamations, Speeches and Correspondence of Napoleon Bonaparte (Boston, 1897), pp. 127–30. By the time he reached Elba in exile Napoleon had completely assumed the role. On landing he is supposed to have said to the people gathered to welcome him, ‘I hope that you appreciate my preference for this island, and that you will love me as obedient children [enfants soumis]; if so, you will always find me in a mood to treat you with a father’s care’ (Friedrich Ludwig Truchsess, Graf von Waldbourg, Nouvelle relation de l’itinéraire de Napoléon, de Fontainebleau à l’Île d’Elbe (Paris, 1815), p. 52).

  123. Schnapper and Sérullaz (eds), Jacques-Louis David, pp. 474–7; Johnson, Jacques-Louis David, pp. 216, 218–20; Porterfield and Siegfried, Staging Empire, p. 17.

  124. Burke, The Fabrication of Louis XIV, pp. 199–200.

  125. Christopher M. S. Johns, Antonio Canova and the Politics of Patronage in Revolutionary and Napoleonic Europe (Berkeley, 1998), p. 104.

  126. Cited in Johnson, Jacques-Louis David, p. 219.

  127. Harold T. Parker, ‘Napoleon I, Daily Round’, in Owen Connelly (ed.), Historical Dictionary of Napoleonic France, 1799–1815 (Westport, Conn., 1985), pp. 357–8.

  128. Le Publiciste, 26 nivôse an VIII (16 January 1800).

  129. Chaptal, Mes souvenirs sur Napoléon, p. 328.

  130. Roederer, Mémoires, p. 187.

  131. Ségur, Histoire et mémoires, iii. p. 476; Fain, Mémoires, p. 286.

  132. Paul de Kock, Mémoires de Ch.-Paul de Kock, écrits par lui-même (Paris, 1873), pp. 66–7.

  133. Michel Porret, ‘Introduction’, in Baron de Montesquieu, Réflexions sur la Monarchie Universelle en Europe (Geneva, 2000), p. 14. A fuller explanation can be found in Philip Dwyer, ‘Napoleon and the Universal Monarchy’, History, 95 (2010), 293–307.

  134. Morkov to Alexander (1/13 December 1802), Sbornik, lxx. p. 585.

  135. Vorontsov to Morkov (29 May/10 June 1803), in Sbornik, lxxvii. p. 190; Zawadzki, ‘Czartoryski and Napoleonic France’, 252; Hinsley, Power and the Pursuit of Peace, pp. 153–85.

  136. Both examples cited in Simms, The Impact of Napoleon, p. 97.

  137. Cited in Simms, The Impact of Napoleon, p. 272.

  138. Zawadzki, ‘Czartoryski and Napoleonic France’, 246.

  139. Zawadzki, ‘Czartoryski and Napoleonic France’, 263, 265.

  140. Zawadzki, ‘Czartoryski and Napoleonic France’, 274.

  141. Caulaincourt, Memoirs, ii. p. 257.

  142. Castellane, Journal, i. p. 165. René Bourgeois, Tableau de la campagne de Moscou en 1812 (Paris, 1814), p. 2, initially believed that the army was destined to support the Russians against Turkey or was destined for India rather than an invasion of Russia. See also Puybusque, Lettres sur la guerre de Russie, pp. 11–12 (28 May 1812); Castellane, Journal, i. p. 165 (5 October 1812); Pierre-Paul Denniée, Itinéraire de l’empereur Napoléon pendant la campagne de 1812 (Paris, 1842), p. 11; Fantin des Odoards, Journal, pp. 321–2; Adrien Bourgogne, Mémoires du sergent Bourgogne (Paris, 1898, reprinted 1992), p. 357 n. 8; Eugène Labaume, Relation circonstanciée de la campagne de Russie (Paris, 1814), p. 223; Arthur Chuquet (ed.), 1812: la Guerre de Russie: notes et documents (Paris, 1912), p. 8.

  143. Ratchinski, Napoléon et Alexandre, pp. 73–4, 291–6. The only other person to argue that Napoleon intended to crown himself in Moscow – in this instance, ‘Emperor of the West’ – is Alfred Sudre, Petites causes et grands effets. Le secret de 1812 (Paris, 1887). Ratchinski bases his assertion on the memoranda by Louis Alexandre Andrault, comte de Langeron, found in the Archives des Affaires Etrangères. There is, however, little or nothing to support this claim. It is more likely that they were Russian ornaments and the insignia of the Russian crown that Napoleon had looted from the Kremlin, which he was taking back to France as trophies (Caulaincourt, Memoirs, i. p. 314 n. 1; Roguet, Mémoires militaires, iv. p. 497).

  144. Miot de Melito, Mémoires, i. p. 307.

  145. Corr., ix. n. 7832 (2 July 1804).

  146. Fouché, Mémoires, i. p. 354, and ii. p. 114, wrote that ‘The idea of destroying the power of England, the sole obstacle to universal monarchy, became his [Napoleon’s] fixed obsession.’

  147. Fouché, Mémoires, ii. p. 114.

  148. Cited in Dunan, Napoléon et l’Allemagne, p. 409.

  149. Dominique Dufour, baron de Pradt, Histoire de l’ambassade dans le Grand Duché deVarsovie en 1812 (Paris, 1815), pp. 1, 16–17, 22–4, quotation p. 24.

  150. Cited in Fournier, Napoleon, ii. p. 148.

  151. J. Christopher Herold, The Mind of Napoleon: A Selection from his Written and Spoken Words (New York, 1955), p. 257.

  152. Las Cases, Mémorial, i. p. 139.

  153. Emil Dard, Dans l’entourage de l’Empereur (Paris, 1940), pp. 111–23, here p. 114.

  154. Miot de Melito, Mémoires, iii. p. 241.

  155. Ségur, Histoire et mémoires, iv. p. 74.

  156. As does Etienne François, ‘Das napoleonische Hegemonialsystem auf dem Kontinent’, in Klinger, Hahn and Schmidt (eds), Das Jahr 1806, pp. 73–83.

  157. As does Schroeder, Transformation of European Politics, pp. xi, 230, 284, 393; and Schroeder, ‘Napoleon’s For
eign Policy’, 147–61.

  17: ‘A Very Stormy Year’

  1. Barante, Souvenirs, i. pp. 331–2.

  2. Lecestre (ed.), Lettres inédites, i. pp. 374–6 (November 1809); Félix Rocquain, Napoléon Ier et le roi Louis, d’après les documents conservés aux Archives nationales (Paris, 1875), pp. lxxxi–lxxxii, 131–2, 222.

  3. Rocquain, Napoleon I et le roi Louis, pp. 322–6.

  4. Du Casse, ‘Napoléon et le roi Louis’, 354–79; Owen Connelly, Napoleon’s Satellite Kingdoms (New York, 1965), p. 127; Schama, Patriots and Liberators, pp. 609–10.

  5. Du Casse, Mémoires du roi Joseph, vii. p. 311 (8 August 1810).

  6. Tulard, Murat, pp. 156–61, 167–73.

  7. Corr. xxi. n. 16754 (4 August 1810). Murat was not, for example, given permission to send ambassadors to Vienna or Petersburg.

  8. Corr. xxi. n. 16806 (18 August 1810).

  9. Mémoires et correspondance du roi Jérôme, iv. p. 439; Melchior-Bonnet, Jérôme Bonaparte, p. 174; Boudon, Le roi Jérôme, pp. 347–9.

  10. Masson, Napoléon et sa famille, vi. pp. 83–4.

  11. Corr. xxi. n. 17111 (7 November 1810).

  12. Although only those who were born in France or of a French father were considered French. See Patrick Weil, Qu’est-ce qu’un Français?: histoire de la nationalité française depuis la Révolution (Paris, 2002), pp. 26–42. There was, therefore, no automatic French citizenship for members of the Empire.

  13. Harold T. Parker, ‘Why Did Napoleon Invade Russia? A Study in Motivation and the Interrelations of Personality and Social Structure’, Journal of Military History, 54 (1990), 142.

  14. Scott, Birth of a Great Power System, 332; Woolf, Napoleon’s Integration of Europe, p. 27. Historians once believed that a federation was Napoleon’s original intention, hence the creation of satellite kingdoms. For example, Oscar Browning, ‘Hugh Elliot at Naples, 1803–1806’, English Historical Review, 4 (1889), 218, believed that Napoleon’s intention was to form a ‘confederation of the Latin races’ to oppose the northern European powers. It was a notion first conceived by Rutger Jan Schimmelpennick, head of the Dutch government, in February 1806 (Annie Jourdan, ‘La Hollande en tant qu’“objet de désir” et le roi Louis, fondateur d’une monarchie nationale’, in Jourdan (ed.), Louis Bonaparte, pp. 10 and 435 n. 7).

  15. Marie-Louise Biver, ‘Rome, second capitale de l’Empire’, Revue de l’Institut Napoléon, 109 (1968), 145–54.

  16. On this point see Hans H. Kohn, The Prelude to Nation-States: The French and German Experience, 1789–1815 (Princeton, 1967), pp. 102–5.

  17. Labaume, Relation circonstanciée, p. 13.

  18. Vandal, Napoléon et Alexandre, i. pp. 1–57. The phrase is cited in Scott, Birth of a Great Power System, p. 346.

  19. Tolstoy to Rumiantsev (7/19 November 1807), in Sbornik, lxxxix. pp. 225–26.

  20. Sorel, L’Europe et la Révolution française, vii. pp. 306–7.

  21. Martin, Romantics, Reformers, Reactionaries, p. 49; Grimsted, The Foreign Ministers of Alexander I, pp. 151–82.

  22. On the Polish question during this period see Abel Mansuy, Jérôme Napoléon et la Pologne en 1812 (Paris, 1931), pp. 247–93; Zawadzki, ‘Russia and the Polish Question’, 34–5; Adams, Napoleon and Russia, pp. 232–6, 253–7.

  23. Caulaincourt to Champagny, in Grand Duc Nicolaï Mikhaïlovitch (ed.), Les relations de la Russie et de la France d’après les rapports des ambassadeurs d’Alexandre et de Napoléon 1808–1812, 6 vols (St Petersburg, 1905–8), iv. n. 410 (26 February 1810).

  24. Corr. xx. n. 16181 (1 July 1810).

  25. Adams, Napoleon and Russia, pp. 235, 236.

  26. For the following see Léonce Pingaud, Bernadotte, Napoléon et les Bourbons (1797–1844) (Paris, 1901), pp. 93–110; Favier, Bernadotte, pp. 176–83; Cherrier, ‘Un itinéraire politique original’, 87–90; Jean-François Berdah, ‘The Triumph of Neutrality: Bernadotte and European Geopolitics (1810–1844)’, Nordic Historical Review/Revue d’Histoire Nordique, 6–7 (2008), esp. 32–9.

  27. Marzagalli, Les boulevards de la fraude, pp. 169–70.

  28. Lentz, Nouvelle histoire du Premier Empire, ii. p. 218.

  29. Kraehe, Metternich’s German Policy, i. pp. 128–30; Sergei Nikolaivich Iskjul’, ‘Rußland und die Oldenburger Krise 1810–11’, Oldenburger Jahrbuch, 85 (1985), 89–110.

  30. Tatistcheff, Alexandre Ier et Napoléon, pp. 137–8; Rey, Alexandre Ier, pp. 266–8.

  31. Adams, Napoleon and Russia, pp. 258–9.

  32. Chernysheva to Alexander (21 April 1811), in Sbornik, xxi. p. 62.

  33. Friedrich Timme, ‘Die geheime Mission des Flügeladjutanten von Wrangel (1812)’,Forschungen zur brandenburgischen und preußischen Geschichte, 21 (1908), 199–213; Hans A. Schmitt, ‘1812: Stein, Alexander I and the Crusade against Napoleon’, Journal of Modern History, 31 (1959), 327.

  34. Rey, Alexandre Ier, pp. 269, 271. He abandoned this position in the spring of 1811.

  35. Martin, Romantics, Reformers, Reactionaries, p. 46.

  36. Martin, Romantics, Reformers, Reactionaries, pp. 42–3.

  37. Corr. xxi. n. 17514 (24 March 1811).

  38. Shuvalov to Alexander (15 May 1811), in Sbornik, xxi. pp. 414, 416.

  39. Chernysheva to Alexander (1810, and 17 June 1811), in Sbornik, xxi. pp. 21, 72.

  40. Caulaincourt, Memoirs, i. pp. 153–4.

  41. Corr. xxii. n. 17579 (6 April 1811).

  42. Cited in Zamoyski, 1812, p. 77.

  43. Metternich, Mémoires, ii. p. 499.

  44. Caulaincourt, Memoirs, i. pp. 96–115.

  45. Vandal, Napoléon et Alexandre, iii. pp. 163–91.

  46. Including Cambacérès, Mémoires inédites, ii. pp. 392–3. It was perhaps the first and only time that the arch-chancellor proffered an opinion on military matters. Zamoyski, 1812, p. 92; Adams, Napoleon and Russia, p. 267.

  47. Broglie, Souvenirs, i. pp. 246–7; Mansel, Court of France, p. 86; Kale, French Salons, p. 94.

  48. Fantin des Odoards, Journal, p. 293.

  49. Shuvalov to Alexander (15 May 1811), in Sbornik, xxi. p. 418.

  50. Caulaincourt, Memoirs, i. p. 119.

  51. Beugnot, Mémoires, i. p. 486.

  52. Lentz, Nouvelle histoire du Premier Empire, ii. p. 133.

  53. Corr. xxiii. n. 18710 (21 May 1812).

  54. Melchior-Bonnet, Napoléon et le Pape, pp. 297, 298–302.

  55. Hales, Napoleon and the Pope, pp. 163–4; Ellis, ‘Religion According to Napoleon’, pp. 249–50.

  56. Corr. xxiii. n. 18447 (19 January 1812).

  57. Barton, Bernadotte and Napoleon, pp. 265–74; Höjer, Bernadotte, i. p. 601; Favier, Bernadotte, pp. 206–7.

  58. Kraehe, Metternich’s German Policy, i. pp. 136–9.

  59. Kraehe, Metternich’s German Policy, i. pp. 142–3.

  60. L. Narocnickij, ‘Österreich zwischen Frankreich und Russland 1813’, in Anna M. Drabek, Walter Leitsch and Richard G. Plaschka (eds), Russland und Österreich zur Zeit der Napoleonischen Kriege (Vienna, 1989), pp. 22–3, 24.

  61. Schroeder, Transformation of European Politics, pp. 448–9; Adams, Napoleon and Russia, p. 272.

  62. See, for example, Gotteri (ed.), La police secrète, ii. p. 345 (25 April 1811); José Olcina, L’opinion publique en Belgique entre 1812 et 1814: les Belges face à l’écroulement de l’Empire (Brussels, 2010), p. 43.

  63. See, for example, Poumiès de la Siboutie, Souvenirs, pp. 96–7; Hortense, Mémoires, ii. p. 147.

  64. Chandler, Campaigns of Napoleon, p. 734.

  65. Gaston Lavalley, Napoléon et la disette de 1812: à propos d’une émeute aux halles de Caen (Paris, 1896), pp. 27–8; Lignereux, L’Empire des Français, pp. 96–7.

  66. Caulaincourt, Memoirs, i. p. 171; Charles Corbet, A l’ère des nationalismes: l’opinion française face à l’inconnue russe (1799–1894) (Paris, 1967), pp. 63–73.

  67. Corr. xiv. n. 11722 (29 January 1807).

  68. Edward Daniel Clarke, Travels in V
arious Countries of Europe, Asia and Africa, 11 vols (4th edn, London, 1810–23), i. pp. 46–7. It was translated by the Comte d’Hauterive into Voyages en Russie, en Tartarie et en Turquie (Paris, 1812). See also Jean-Benoît Schérer, Anecdotes intéressantes et secrètes de la cour de Russie, tirées de ses archives . . .publiées par un voyageur qui a séjourné treize ans en Russie, 6 vols (London and Paris, 1792, 2nd edn 1806).

  69. See, for example, the article by V.D.M., ‘Recherche et observations générales sur les prisonniers de guerres russes’, La Revue philosophique, littéraire et politique (1 April 1807), 6–13; and Joux, La Providence et Napoléon, pp. 183, 211.

  70. Gratien Gilbert Joseph Damaze de Raymond, Tableau historique, géographique, militaire et moral de l’empire de Russie, 2 vols (Paris, 1812), i. pp. 273–4. See also Patricia Sorel, ‘La campagne de Russie dans la presse quotidienne française et l’almanach du Messager Boiteux’, in Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink and Jean-Yves Mollier (eds), Presse et événement: journaux, gazettes, almanachs (XVIIIe–XIXe siècles) (Bern, Berlin and Brussels, 2000), pp. 161–2. On French attitudes towards Russians in general see Corbet, A l’ère des nationalismes, pp. 77–81; Galina Kabakova, ‘Mangeur de chandelles: l’image du cosaque au XIXe siècle’, in Katia Dmitrieva and Michel Espagne (eds), Transferts culturels triangulaires France–Allemagne–Russie (Paris, 1996), pp. 207–30; Ezequiel Adamovsky, Euro-Orientalism: Liberal Ideology and the Image of Russia in France (c. 1740–1880) (Oxford and New York, 2006), pp. 90–3.

  71. Charles-Louis Lesur, Des progrès de la puissance russe: depuis son origine jusqu’au commencement du XIXe siècle (Paris, 1812). On Peter the Great’s ‘Testament’ see Raymond T. McNalley, ‘The Origins of Russophobia in France: 1812–1830’, American Slavic and East European Review, 17 (1958), 173–4.

  72. Iver B. Neumann, Uses of the Other: ‘The East’ in European Identity Formation (Minneapolis, 1999), p. 90.