Citizen Emperor (28 page)

Contemporaries were well aware then that a political transition was taking place. It fuelled talk about the possibility of bringing back some sort of monarchy. That does not mean the transition was seamless. Opinions were divided, with certain former revolutionaries against Bonaparte increasing his power any further,
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while others were keen to see his position enhanced. According to the Marquis de Lucchesini, two factions formed over this issue. On the one hand were what he called the ‘Constitutionals’, in favour of any measures that supported a restoration of monarchical structures.
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The Constitutionals were purposefully seeking to cement the Brumaire settlement with a hereditary succession, and they led a campaign in the press between March and June 1802 in that vein.
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As we have seen, they had tried to slip the question of heredity into the plebiscite over the Consulship for life, without Bonaparte’s knowledge.
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On the other hand were what Lucchesini dubbed the ‘Conventionals’, who considered the move towards a Consulate for life a violation of the agreement that had been concluded among the Brumairians.
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The idea of a return to monarchical forms was repulsive to them. Fouché boasted to foreign diplomats in Paris that if Bonaparte tried to have himself crowned, he would be stabbed to death before the day was out.
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A struggle then had been taking place in Bonaparte’s entourage over the future political direction of the country. By the beginning of 1804, the proponents of a monarchical system had become the dominant faction and they had succeeded in getting Bonaparte to come around to the idea. It is erroneous to think he was pushing for an empire out of bald ambition; there were a considerable number of influential people in his entourage who thought along similar lines, namely, that a type of constitutional hereditary monarchy was the best political system available. Bonaparte, nevertheless, wanted the matter discussed with absolute candour in the Council of State – he even absented himself from the deliberations to make them feel at ease – as long it did not become a public debate.

Michel Regnaud de Saint-Jean d’Angély took the initiative to propose that the Council move towards a hereditary dynasty. He argued that it was ‘the only means of preserving France from the rifts associated with the changes and the election of the first magistrate’.
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But when another member of the Council, Antoine-François de Fourcroy, proposed that they go on record to approve the principle of a hereditary empire, silence followed. It was broken by Théophile Berlier, a regicide and committed republican, who expressed his reservations about sacrificing that for which so many had died – the Republic. Berlier had also opposed the Consulate for life, and was not about to give ground on this issue.
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The debate that followed, and it appears to have been vigorous since it lasted over four sessions, was about whether, at a time when things seemed to be going so well, such a change was necessary. In the end, twenty members voted in favour of hereditary rule while seven voted to postpone the transformation.
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When those seven members refused to sign the address to Bonaparte on the grounds that they could not sign something that had been against their wishes, the First Consul insisted that individual opinions were to be submitted and signed by each councillor of state. He was worried that if the dissenters signed a separate counter-address, it might somehow become public knowledge.
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Anything less than a unanimous façade at this stage would be an embarrassment. In other words, by inviting each councillor of state to write down his objections the opposition was fobbed off.
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This is what happened; nothing came of their opposition and no sanctions were imposed against the seven members who had expressed reservations; they played by Bonaparte’s rules and kept their views in-house.

The question was also debated in the Tribunate. Speeches from the Tribunate were often printed in the
Moniteur
. Dissenting voices here, therefore, were likely to be heard in public. Admittedly, the more difficult tribunes had been purged in 1802, but there was still enough life left in the institution to cause a potential upset. Here the motion was put that Bonaparte ‘be named Emperor and in that quality charged with the government of the Republic’.
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An obscure tribune by the name of Jean François Curée, a former Jacobin, member of the Convention and a regicide to boot, but one who had supported Brumaire, was given the opportunity to introduce the proposition (the result of weeks of manoeuvring). On 28 April, he gave a long speech to his colleagues in which he posed the question whether the First Consul should be declared emperor and whether the imperial dignity – imperiality as it was called at the time
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– should be declared hereditary in his family. Curée argued for a new dynasty that would act as a barrier against a return of ‘factions and of that house that we proscribed in 1792’ – that is, the House of Bourbon.
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The argument repeated by almost all of the tribunes who followed was that France’s political stability could be founded only on the institution of hereditary power. The insistence with which tribune after tribune got up and argued in favour of the principles of 1789 as the rationale for a return to monarchical forms ought to give pause for reflection.

The vast majority of those who spoke expressed their gratitude towards Bonaparte. Only five or six members of the Tribunate (out of forty-nine present) expressed their opposition. Nevertheless, there was one prominent voice of dissent – Lazare Carnot. He had been named to the Tribunate in March 1802, and had stubbornly opposed the slow decline of the principle of elective government. He got up and made a number of critical observations. He pointed to the United States as an example of a working republic.
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He declared that he would not vote for the re-establishment of the monarchy, but he watered down his oppositional stance by stating that if the Empire were adopted by the French people, he would adhere to it. Carnot’s association with the Committee of Public Safety and with the Directory took a lot of shine from his moral aura, however. Besides, given the number of tribunes who scrambled to undo his message by extolling the virtues of Bonaparte, it probably did not make much of an impact.

It was the Senate, however, that had the power to sanction the transformation to Empire. It had, in any event, initiated the whole movement in the first place when it underlined the desirability of making Bonaparte’s achievements permanent in March 1804.
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It was more than ready then to endorse any proposals to implement a hereditary monarchy. How could it have been otherwise? Bonaparte had ‘bought’ the Senate shortly after the Consulate for life when he created special dignities called ‘senatories’. There were thirty-one in all, each covering an area of three or four departments. The nominated senator was to keep watch over this region with the obligation of touring it once a year. In exchange, he received a generous gift of property, and an added income of 20,000 livres per year.
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This does not explain why senators voted for the Empire, but it does allow us to understand the element of self-interest in all of this.

The Senate, nevertheless, voted in the belief that certain conditions would be met – the independence of the institutions of the state; the right to vote on taxation; the guarantee of property; individual freedom; freedom of the press; elections; the responsibility of ministers; and the inviolability of the Constitution – so that the ‘social pact’, as they called it, would remain intact.
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For many, it was a question of getting back to what the Revolution of 1789 had been all about before it started to go badly wrong. In some respects, so the argument went, the proclamation of a hereditary empire was simply returning to what the revolutionaries of 1789 had wanted all along – uniting ‘hereditary power to a representative government’.
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This is what the senators seemed to have opted for, a type of constitutional monarchy, a ‘third way’ between a republic and absolute monarchy. One senator pointed out that ‘the Senate, as a body, did nothing more than sanction measures which it had no means of opposing, even [with] the appearance of resistance’.
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Many historians have assumed as a result that the Senate was a weak institution that rubber-stamped Bonaparte’s unbridled ambition.

On 18 May 1804, Bernard-Germain de Lacépède appeared before the Senate to read the findings of a commission that had been established to review the Constitution in the light of a declaration of the Empire.
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In the debate that followed, the only dissenting voice to be heard was that of the Abbé Grégoire, who had moreover opposed the Consulate. When it came to a vote, the
senatus consultum
was overwhelmingly approved with three votes against and two abstentions. The
senatus consultum
suggested that Bonaparte be recognized, not as ‘Emperor of France’, which would have recalled the appellation of the French kings, but as ‘Emperor of the French’. This meant that Bonaparte’s rule extended to the people of France but that he did not own the territory.
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That same day, Bonaparte used his surname for the last time. From then on he would always sign his name ‘Napoleon’.
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The day the Empire was proclaimed, the Senate came as a body to Saint-Cloud to deliver the news of the proclamation. They were acting a little precipitately since the change in the Constitution had yet to be confirmed through a plebiscite, but everybody considered it a foregone conclusion. The setting of the scene in the official accounts of the period has the ring of a stage drama. Bonaparte is supposed to have declared: ‘You have judged the heredity of the supreme office necessary in order to shelter the French people from the plots of our enemies and the unrest that would arise from rival ambitions . . . I invite you then to share with me all your thoughts.’
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Cambacérès replied that they had come to offer the title ‘emperor’ to Bonaparte, ‘for the glory as well as the happiness of the Republic’.

For the first time, Bonaparte was addressed as ‘Sire’ and ‘Majesty’. It would take time for some of the revolutionaries, even if they supported the Empire, to get used to a term not heard in Paris for over ten years. After the ceremony, when Napoleon spoke to a number of those present, a few were able to address him as ‘Sire’ without any difficulty, whereas others stumbled over the right formula, commencing their sentences with ‘Citizen First Consul’ or ‘General’, before remembering that ‘Sire’ and ‘Majesty’ were now de rigueur.
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The new Emperor was to be surrounded with imperial dignitaries: Joseph was named grand elector; Cambacérès arch-chancellor of the Empire; Eugène arch-chancellor of state; Lebrun arch-treasurer; Louis
connétable
, or constable, a military distinction; and Murat grand admiral. One of the most notable nominations among the civil dignitaries was that of Talleyrand as grand chamberlain, who thereby eclipsed Duroc as marshal of the palace, Ségur as grand master of ceremonies and Caulaincourt as grand écuyer. In addition, eighteen marshals were named, although several of them, not least Bernadotte, had hardly been the most loyal of generals.

‘Sea of Dreams, Empire of Reality’

The title ‘emperor’ was more than a change of form; it carried a number of implications that had been rejected by the Revolution. The power of transmitting the title to an heir was given to Bonaparte by plebiscite, something the kings of France never enjoyed. The plebiscite was the basis of the legitimacy of Napoleon’s regime – supporters of the Empire could always argue that no other ‘nation has exercised so fully the right of sovereignty; never has it delegated more freely to a head of state the power to reign over it; never has a prince, in ascending the throne, rallied to him a suffrage that was more unanimous and more solemn’.
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Napoleon, nevertheless, had to convince the French public that the transition to Empire was not only fitting but also desirable. He ordered one of his propagandists, Joseph Fiévée, to conduct a campaign in the press emphasizing the advantages of a monarchy.
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The
Journal des Débats
, for example, underlined how much the previous monarchy had deserved to lose the throne – it had shown itself to be unworthy – all the while carefully pointing out that the institution was in itself perfectly desirable; it was the monarch who had been abandoned through an excess of weakness and incapacity.
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In short, the argument was that the Bourbons had lost the throne, and that the French people had deposed them because of their inability to rule.
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From there it follows that if one dynasty was incapable of ruling then, as had occurred throughout the history of France, it would be replaced by another, in the same way that Clovis and Charlemagne came to the throne.
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