The Caesar of Paris

by Susan Jaques

  In January 1804, Paris police uncovered an assassination plot against the first consul, supposedly hatched by the Bourbons. After killing two officers, royalist Georges Cadoudal was tried, convicted, and guillotined along with eleven accomplices. General Jean-Charles Pichegru was found strangled with his cravat in his jail cell; either an assassination or a suicide. Suspicion also fell on the Duke of Enghien, son of the last prince of Condé. In mid-March, Napoleon ordered the duke kidnapped in the Prussian territory of Baden. A week later, after a quick trial for treason, the thirty-one-year-old was executed at Vincennes. When Lucien Bonaparte learned of Enghien’s fate, he told his wife, “with the gesture of a togaed senator who braved Tiberius: Alexandrine, let us go away, he [Napoleon] has tasted blood.”23

  That spring, Napoleon used the alleged royalist conspiracy, along with France’s resumed conflict with Britain, to justify the reinstatement of a hereditary monarchy with himself as emperor. In a move that recalled Rome’s Praetorian Guard, Napoleon warned his co-consuls Charles-François LeBrun and Jean-Jacques-Régis de Cambacérès that if the government didn’t take immediate action, the army might take matters into its own hands and proclaim him emperor.24

  The Senate capitulated. On May 18, a sénatus-consulte proclaiming Napoleon and Joséphine Emperor and Empress of the French was approved (with three votes against and two abstentions). Taken from the senatus consultum, Latin for “decree of the senate,” the term harkened back to opinions issued by the Roman Senate. Under the Consulate and Empire, it carried the authority of law. According to Philip Dwyer, the creation of the First French Empire was not only the result of Napoleon’s personal ambition. Moderate conservatives in France’s political and military elite and a segment of the French public favored a return to a monarchical form of government.25

  Later that day at Saint-Cloud, the first consul was officially pronounced Napoleon I, Emperor of the French to a twenty-one-gun salute. Cambacérès became Arch Chancellor of the Empire. Reviving France’s highest military rank of marshal, abolished with the Bourbon monarchy, he promoted sixteen of his generals to Marshal of the Empire.

  During the banquet that evening, Joseph and Louis Bonaparte and their male descendants were announced as Napoleon’s heirs in the event that he did not have a son. Napoleon made his brothers princes of the Empire; their wives Julie Clary and Hortense de Beauharnais were named princesses. In addition to their titles, Joseph and Louis were each given an annual salary of one million francs a year plus one-third of a million francs for expenses.

  Lucien, who played an instrumental role in his brother’s coup d’état, was left out of the succession plan, as was the youngest sibling, Jérôme. Instead of a political marriage to Spanish Infanta Maria Luisa, widow of the king of Etruria, Lucien had secretly married Alexandrine Jouberthon over his brother’s objections, causing a final rift and his move to Rome. Jérôme was also passed over for marrying wealthy Baltimorean Elizabeth Patterson. Unlike Lucien, Jérôme would ultimately cave to his brother. In 1807, he abandoned his pregnant wife and married German princess Catharina von Württemberg, becoming prince of Westphalia.

  Napoleon seemed to be channeling Julius Caesar and his adoptive son Octavian when he formally adopted his stepson, Eugène de Beauharnais two years later. With the adoption, Joséphine’s son, the Viceroy of Italy, moved ahead of Napoleon’s brothers in the line of succession.26

  The May 1804 succession announcement infuriated Napoleon’s sisters. According to Claire de Rémusat, Joséphine’s lady-in-waiting, Elisa and Caroline Bonaparte were “dumbfounded by this distinction between themselves and their sisters-in-law.”27 To placate his sisters, Napoleon made each of them princesses and imperial highnesses. As the wife of Rome’s Prince Camillo Borghese, his sister Pauline was already a princess.

  The austere family matriarch Letizia Bonaparte, in Rome for the proclamation, was no easier to deal with. Engaged at fourteen to lawyer Carlo Maria Buonaparte, Letizia Bonaparte was widowed with eight children by age thirty-four. After their father’s death in 1784, Joseph assumed the role of family head for his four brothers and three sisters. But it was fifteen-year-old Napoleon who took over, demanding an audience to secure the family’s pension in Paris.

  Now believing she should have a title equal to those of her children, Letizia was unhappy with her son’s decision to call her “Madame Mère” of his Majesty the Emperor and not “The Imperial Mother.”28 With a visceral dislike for Joséphine and displeasure with Napoleon’s treatment of Lucien and Jérôme, Letizia would boycott the upcoming coronation.

  To plan the coronation, Napoleon assembled a Council Commission composed of several members of his Council of State. They were responsible for organizing all aspects of the December ceremony—from the guest list and imperial emblems to decorations and costumes. Napoleon, a micromanager, involved himself in the event’s smallest details. On June 12, the Commission met at Saint-Cloud to discuss an emblem for the new Empire to replace the Republic’s Phrygian cap and Roman lictor’s axe and fasces.

  Each commissioner promoted his favorite animal, presenting arguments and scientific references to the emperor. Early in the meeting, Napoleon nixed the rooster as a “barnyard creature.” “The rooster has no strength,” he declared. “It cannot be the image of an empire such as France. It’s necessary to choose between the eagle, the elephant, or the lion.”29

  Interior minister and commission chair Emmanuel Crétet suggested the elephant, a symbolic animal associated with Alexander the Great and Hannibal. It was also the symbol of the Danish order of the Elephant created in the fifteenth century. But Crétet’s proposed motto for the Empire, “by mass and spirit” was rejected by Napoleon (four years later, Danish king Frederic VI awarded Napoleon the prestigious Danish order). The lion was a popular choice, despite being part of the British royal family’s escutcheon. Louis XII had incorporated a beehive into his coat of arms; Cambacérès suggested a swarm of bees as the nation’s emblem, representing a great republic with a single, all-powerful leader. In the end, the lion won the majority of votes.

  The memory of Rome and Rome-inspired empires proved irresistible to Napoleon. Ignoring the commission’s recommendation, Napoleon chose the eagle with outstretched wings as France’s imperial emblem. A July decree specified that the Empire’s seal and arms should be “azure with an antique-style eagle in gold bearing a thunderbolt in its claws, also gold.” As its battle-standard, the French military adopted the eagle of the Roman legions above the Republican tricolor. Napoleon was called “the Eagle”—symbol of his empire and army.30

  The powerful bird had captivated ancient cultures, including the ancient Chinese, Egyptians, Aztecs, and Babylonians.31 By choosing the eagle, Napoleon clearly connected the First Empire to Rome and himself to Jupiter, king of the Olympian gods.32 Associated since the earliest antiquity with military victory, the eagle, bird of Jupiter, was the symbol of imperial Rome. According to legend, Romulus spotted an eagle on the Aventine Hill and considering it a good omen, had the large bird of prey precede the Roman army instead of a standard.33

  In his detailed chapter on birds, Pliny the Elder tells us that the eagle is thought to be the only bird never killed by lightning. According to Pliny, Consul Gaius Marius designated the eagle the exclusive military standard of the Roman legion, replacing the wolf, ox with a man’s head, horse, and boar (around 104 B.C.E.). Silver or bronze eagles with outstretched wings were attached to staffs and carried into battle. During Rome’s imperial period, an eagle would be released at the consecration of an emperor—believed to carry the deified ruler’s spirit to heaven.

  The eagle continued to be used as imperial symbol after Rome’s adoption of Christianity. Mentioned in the Old Testament in relation to Adam, Elijah, and David, the eagle would become associated with Christ’s ascension. During the reign of Emperor Isaac I Komnenos, the imperial emblem was changed to a double-headed eagle to represent East and West. The Byzantine Empire continued to use the two-headed eagle, represen
ting the secular and spiritual power of its emperors. After the fall of the Byzantine Empire, Russian rulers instated the title of tsar for Caesar, along with the imperial symbol of the double-headed eagle.

  The Holy Roman Empire also made the eagle its heraldic animal. A gold eagle on an azure background appeared on Charlemagne’s arms and on top of his palace at Aachen.34 The Habsburgs, who controlled this title from the sixteenth century, adopted the double-headed eagle with an escutcheon showing their coats of arms.35

  Besides the imperial symbol, Napoleon needed a personal emblem. The fleur-de-lys had been adopted by Clovis I, France’s first Christian king who moved the capital to Paris and united the Frankish tribes. But the lily, like other symbols of the deposed Bourbons, had been purged during the Revolution. Napoleon’s commissioners began a search for another historical reference. They found it in an unexpected place.

  In 1653, a crew excavating in Tournai (today’s Belgium) near the Church of Saint Brice accidentally discovered a royal tomb, identified by the gold ring inscribed with the name and title of Childeric I, father of Clovis I. When Childeric died in 481, he was buried with hundreds of gold and silver coins, a pair of gold buckles, gold and cloisonné jewelry, and a golden bull’s head. Beside a horse skeleton were the remains of an ornate harness studded with three hundred gold fluerons adorned with red garnets. The “scratching” under each garnet was a signature of Merovingian cloisonné.

  Because Tournai was part of the Austrian Netherlands, the tomb’s contents were presented to Habsburg archduke Leopold Wilhelm in Brussels. In an illustrated report, the archduke’s physician Jean-Jacques Chifflet concluded that the gold and garnet fluerons represented bees, and were a symbol of the Frankish kings. Alternatively, the buried fleurons may have been cicadas or crickets, symbols of death and resurrection for the Merovingians.36 In 1656, the royal burial objects were moved from Brussels to the Austrian treasury in Vienna. Nine years later, Austrian Emperor Leopold gave the treasure to France’s Louis XIV. Underwhelmed, the Sun King consigned them to the Cabinet of Antiquities in his Bibliothèque Royale (the postrevolutionary Bibliothèque Nationale).

  To Napoleon, the industrious, productive bee was an admirable insect, appropriate for his imperial emblem. By adopting Childeric’s bee, Napoleon linked his new dynasty with France’s ancient Merovingian dynasty—itself a bridge between the Roman Empire and the Carolingian era. The bee was incorporated into Napoleon’s coat of arms and the arms of the Princes-Grand-Dignitaries, or the High Officers of the Empire. Embroidered bees decorated Napoleon’s clothes and his residences. Bees were woven into carpets, wall hangings, and upholstery fabrics for the imperial residences, and appeared on furniture, ceramics, and wallpaper.

  Percier and Fontaine combined bees and eagles with other ancient motifs—Jupiter’s oak leaf, Minerva’s olive tree, the laurel wreath, palm of Victory, knight’s helmet, and a trophy of weapons. As Odile Nouvel-Kammerer writes, the emblems and motifs were repeated wherever Napoleon exercised power, forming “the framework for a symbolic language that was new and at the same time understood by everyone, since it took its legitimacy from the heritage of ancient Rome, the mother of civilization and a model of political unity.”37

  On July 14, 1804, Napoleon and Joséphine traveled to the Soldiers’ Church at Hôtel des Invalides for the first investiture of the Legion of Honor. The original badge design, attributed to Jacques-Louis David, was specified by decree:

  “The decoration of the Légion d’Honneur will consist of a five-pointed star, with each point doubled. The center of the star, surrounded by an oak and laurel wreath, shall present, on one side, the head of the Emperor, with this legend: ‘Napoléon, Emp. des Français’ (Napoleon Emperor of the French) and, on the other, the French eagle holding a thunder bolt, with this legend: ‘Honneur et Patrie’ (Honor and Fatherland). The decoration will be in white enamel. It will be in gold for ‘Grands-Officiers,’ ‘Commandants,’ and ‘Officiers,’ and in silver for Legionaires; it shall be worn from one of the buttonholes on the jacket and attached to a red moiré ribbon.”38

  For the investiture, Joséphine wore a pale pink tulle dress with gold and silver stars. Based on Roman tradition, she adorned her hair à la Ceres, Roman goddess of the harvest, with diamond ears of wheat. This symbol of fertility was one of many Roman motifs borrowed in Empire style jewelry. As Melanie Sallois writes, based on the tradition of imperial Rome, Napoleon imposed the diadem, symbol of sovereignty and power, for Joséphine and women of his court. Under Joséphine’s influence, Empire jewels borrowed antique motifs like wheat ears, lyres, thyrses, palmettes, and honeysuckle.39

  Wearing the new five-pointed star and his guard’s simple mounted grenadier uniform, Napoleon awarded the first insignia of the Legion of Honor. Among the recipients were Jacques-Louis David and Dominique-Vivant Denon; newly promoted marshals Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, Nicolas Oudinot, Jacques MacDonald, and Auguste de Marmont; Napoleon’s uncle Cardinal Fesch, Cambacérès, Talleyrand, mathematicians Monge and Pierre-Simon Laplace, naturalist Georges Cuvier, balloonist Joseph-Michel Montgolfier, composer Étienne Méhul, writer Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, poet Fontanes, wounded veterans, and the grenadier Jean-Roch Coignet.

  After the ceremony, Napoleon left Paris for a three-month tour. By mid-August, he arrived at a military camp in Boulogne. The major Roman port for trade and communication with England, Boulogne had later been occupied by England numerous times over the centuries. Now it was a staging area for Napoleon’s troops and navy as they prepared an invasion of Great Britain.

  The fragile Peace of Amiens was broken. Instead of turning the strategic island of Malta over to the Order of Malta as agreed, the British stayed. In 1803, concerned that France would lose Louisiana to England, Napoleon sold the vast territory gained from Spain to the United States. Napoleon planned to use the fifteen million dollars to finance an invasion of England.

  On August 16, before an estimated one hundred thousand officers and soldiers, Napoleon conferred Legion of Honor badges on two thousand members of his Army of England. To add further drama to the event, Denon installed symbolic props on the stage. From the National Library in Paris by way of the Abbey of St. Denis came a small bronze throne of the seventh-century Merovingian king Dagobert who had unified the Franks. His ancient throne, inspired by a Roman campaign stool, stood against a backdrop of medieval armor and enemy flags.40

  Denon invited along history painter Philippe-Auguste Hennequin to memorialize the seven-hour event with a monumental canvas. “Scarcely was the general seated in the bronze chair that they had carried from the library to the camp when the sky cleared up, the clouds divided and let a ray of light escape that fell on the trophy behind the emperor and distinguished the flags of all the nations conquered by the French army,” the painter recalled.41

  To shore up support, Napoleon left Boulogne for a series of state visits to Ostend, Arras, Mons, Brussels, Rheinberg, Cologne, Coblenz, Mainz, Kaiserslautern, Trier, Luxembourg, and Stenay. But it was a stop in Aachen that became a defining moment for the emperor-to-be.

  PART THREE

  IMPERIUM

  “I am not the successor of Louis XIV but of Charlemagne.”

  —Napoleon Bonaparte

  ONE

  CAROLUS MAGNUS

  The collapse of the Roman Empire in 400 C.E. plunged Western Europe into chaos. Four centuries later, Charlemagne, king of the Franks, set about recreating that lost empire. From his accession in 770 to his death in 814, Charlemagne doubled his real estate through nearly constant warfare. His conquests were brutal. According to the Franconian annals, Charlemagne ordered the execution of 4,500 Saxons at Verden in 782. Even his own tutor, Alcuin of York, criticized the violence and forced baptisms.

  The itinerant warrior-king ruled from many cities, but his favorite was Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle in French). Strategically located on several hundred acres in the Rhine Valley near today’s Belgium (then Northern France), the palace complex became Charlemagne’s political
power base, the center of a religious and intellectual renaissance, and the seat of medieval Christendom. Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire, now had a serious rival for the title “New Rome.”

  Charlemagne’s choice of Aachen, a former Roman military outpost, may have been influenced by its forested hunting grounds and curative hot springs that helped relieve his rheumatism. According to Einhard, the king’s companion and biographer, “Charles enjoyed the exhalations from natural warm springs, and often practiced swimming, in which he was such an adept that none could surpass him; and hence it was that he built his palace at Aix-la-Chapelle, and lived there constantly during his later years until his death.”1

  Six feet tall, fair-haired, with a high squeaky voice, Charlemagne enjoyed life with five wives and several concubines. Einhard describes him as a caring father of at least eighteen children, half of whom predeceased him. “He was so careful of the training of his sons and daughters,” wrote Einhard, “that he never took his meals without them when he was at home, and never made a journey without them.”2

  To govern his vast realm, Charlemagne introduced administrative reforms and established a network of territorial units run by kings, prefects, and marquises. Scholars from across Europe came to Aachen to teach Charlemagne and his children grammar, rhetoric and dialectics, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. Though Charlemagne learned to write late in his life, he was fluent in Latin and understood Greek. Scribes copied the king’s collection of classical texts; his palace scriptorium produced exquisitely decorated manuscripts. Through Charlemagne’s friendship with Persian king Harun al-Rashid, envoys from Bagdad brought scientific knowledge and gifts to the capital, including an astronomical clock and a white elephant.