Napoleon

by Adam Zamoyski

  The overblown accounts of the victory of Marengo had produced the wanted effect throughout the country, and he kept up the celebratory mood by staging a series of public ceremonies. On 14 July he held one to commemorate not the fall of the Bastille but the Fête de la Fédération held a year after that, on 14 July 1790. This had brought units of national guards from every corner of France to Paris to participate in an act of nationwide solidarity which involved swearing an oath of loyalty to the king and the nation before an ‘altar of the fatherland’. Bonaparte celebrated this tenth anniversary with a parade on the place de la Concorde (whence the statue of Liberty which had replaced that of Louis XV was discreetly removed). Captured flags were paraded and Bonaparte praised the bravery of generals and troops, likening them to the heroes of antiquity. Although there was no oath of loyalty to him, the message was clear as to whom France should place her trust in. He admitted to Roederer that it was a profound sense of insecurity, which his apparent popularity could not assuage, that made him seek to build up his image in the public imagination.30

  On 20 July he received news that Kléber had been assassinated in Cairo by a native on 14 June, the day of the battle of Marengo and the day Desaix had died. Bonaparte made much of both generals, and announced that he would erect a monument to them. On 22 September he used the celebration of the anniversary of the foundation of the Republic in 1792 to stage a ceremony in which the remains of one of France’s greatest generals, Marshal Turenne, were laid to rest under the dome of the Invalides. They had been rescued from the desecration of the Basilica of Saint-Denis and stored in an attic at the Jardin des Plantes, and subsequently in a convent converted to a museum, to which Bonaparte had traced them.

  The two ceremonies promoted the image of Bonaparte as a man prepared to acknowledge the merits of others, even to defer to them, but in doing so he arrogated a share of their fame and glory, which were thereby incorporated into his own legend. The ceremony at the Invalides was also notable for the speech made by Lucien, according to whom the new century would be the century of France, which was recovering a greatness she had not known since the days of Charlemagne. The reference to the first French emperor was no coincidence.31

  22

  Caesar

  ‘The state of France is greatly changed over the past year, a perfect tranquillity and general confidence have replaced civil war and despondency,’ a former nobleman wrote to his son who was in Egypt with the Army of the Orient in September 1800. ‘I do not know whether you realise how great is the enthusiasm of the French for the First Consul. We are as tranquil as under the ancien régime.’ That was something Bonaparte would have been glad to hear; he himself was far from tranquil.1

  On 7 September he answered the letter he had received from Louis XVIII six months earlier, thanking him for the flattering things he had written about him, but ruling out a restoration, as that could not be achieved without civil strife and bloodshed on a vast scale. He advised him to sacrifice his interests to those of France, and activated Talleyrand’s contacts with royalists and the Russian and Prussian governments, to investigate the possibility of obtaining from Louis the abdication of his rights and those of his dynasty to the throne of France (Warsaw, where Louis had moved after being expelled from Mittau (Jelgava) by Tsar Paul I, was under Prussian rule). The options held out to him ranged from a generous pension and a grand residence in Russia to some minor kingdom in Italy. But Louis replied in a letter to Bonaparte which he had published in the British press thanking him for recognising that he did have rights to the throne, and rejecting the offer of a pension. The snub produced no effect in France.2

  The royalist insurgents in the west had been defeated earlier that year. The British agent William Wickham, who had been coordinating espionage and plots against the French government from Switzerland, had been recalled to London. The royalist agency in Augsburg had been wound up due to lack of funds, and the British had ceased to finance the royalist émigré army under the prince de Condé, which gradually disintegrated.

  Yet the question of who was to rule France was not one that could be easily settled, any more than other issues raised by the Revolution, and Bonaparte realised it. During a visit to Joseph’s country house at Mortefontaine in August, he went over to the park of Ermenonville to see the tomb of Rousseau, now empty, in its picturesque setting on an island in the lake. ‘It would have been better for the peace of France if that man had never existed,’ he said to the owner, Stanislas de Girardin. ‘Why do you say that, citizen consul?’ asked the other. ‘He paved the way for the French Revolution,’ replied Bonaparte. Girardin pointed out that Bonaparte had only gained by that, to which the consul replied, ‘History will tell whether it would not have been better for the peace of the world if neither Rousseau nor I had been born!’3

  The younger brother of Louis XVIII, the comte d’Artois, now based in London, continued to foster plots through agents in France, supported by the British government. The first was in the spring of 1800, when Hyde de Neuville and Georges Cadoudal had planned to kidnap and assassinate Bonaparte while General Pichegru, who had escaped from Guyana, prepared to subvert elements of the army and march on the capital. Fouché had got wind of the plot, but proceeded slowly, hoping to find out more and, by giving the conspirators time, to catch as many as possible in the act. Lucien, who as minister of the interior had his own intelligence networks, became aware of what was going on and saw an opportunity of denouncing Fouché, whom he loathed, as a co-conspirator. Fouché was not to be caught unawares and arrested the ringleaders, revealing the plot to Bonaparte on 4 May, just before his departure for Italy. There would be more than thirty plots to kill him over the next decade, most of them by royalists.4

  Bonaparte regarded the Jacobins as a greater threat than the royalists, as they had more supporters in the army. He contrived to keep these as far from the capital as possible: Augereau was in the Netherlands, Brune in Italy, Joubert had been sent to Milan as ambassador to the Cisalpine Republic. Potentially more dangerous than any of them was Moreau, who allowed himself to be courted by all parties – Jacobins, royalists and ideologues – and, by making the right noises, playing the honest soldier concerned only for the good of his country and remaining all things to all men. The officers in his entourage enhanced the image of him as a guileless patriot and a brilliant commander, and at his headquarters Bonaparte was seen as a self-seeking usurper.5

  Fouché foiled a number of attempts on the life of Bonaparte, most notably one to kill him at the Opéra. The plotters included Joseph Aréna, a Corsican Jacobin whose brother Barthélémy had allegedly tried to stab Bonaparte during the scuffle in the Orangery at Brumaire, and Joseph Ceracchi, a sculptor and pupil of Canova. They were seized red-handed at the Opéra on 10 November, but were not brought to trial. Bonaparte believed in hushing up most attempts on his life, as news of them would only dent the image of his immense popularity and put in question the stability of his regime. In some cases the culprits were locked up for a few weeks or months and then let out. In this case, they were executed.6

  He paid little attention to his own safety. ‘He realised the impossibility of foreseeing an attempt on his person,’ according to one senior policeman. ‘To fear everything struck him as a weakness unworthy of his nature, to be guarded everywhere a folly.’ He gave the impression of being remarkably detached. ‘Well, see to it, it’s your job,’ he would say when informed of a threat to his life. ‘It is up to the police to take measures, I haven’t the time.’7

  He really did not have the time. From the moment he returned from Italy he adopted a punishing work schedule, holding a meeting with his fellow consuls nearly every day and sessions of the Council of State several times a week through the whole of July, in the course of which he only managed one visit to Malmaison and one to Mortefontaine. In August there were only three days on which he did not have a meeting with the consuls, in September only one. He managed three days at Malmaison and one at Mortefontaine in the course of
August. That month saw the achievement of one of his principal obejctives and the initiation of a number of others.

  For one who disliked ‘men of business’ as much as he did, Bonaparte was remarkably interested in money; having reflected on the causes of the Revolution, he appreciated its importance for the security of the state. His views on economics were unsophisticated. Like everyone else in France, he had seen the dire consequences of paper currency inflation. His personal experience contributed to a fear of penury, and he liked to have cash in hand. He did not understand or like the idea of well-balanced debt and government credit, which he saw as no more than betting on a favourable outcome. He liked specie and wanted to amass as much of it as possible.

  One of the first things he did on coming to power was to charge Gaudin with reorganising the collection of tax. The next was to address the problem of the Republic’s huge debt, which hindered attempts to balance the budget. Gaudin called in a friend, Nicolas Mollien, the son of a wealthy weaver of Rouen, who had started out as a barrister and who, in the course of a clandestine sojourn in England under the Directory, indulged a long-standing interest in economics. Brought down to Malmaison by Gaudin, in the course of a two-hour session in the presence of Cambacérès and Lebrun, he explained to a bewildered Bonaparte the workings of the stock market and the principle of a sinking fund, suggesting the creation of one as an agency for managing government debt. Mollien was not convinced that the first consul fully understood the concept, but Bonaparte was never slow to grasp a good idea, and Mollien was duly appointed director of the Caisse d’amortissement, the sinking fund.8

  In a bold move, Bonaparte decreed on 11 August that interest on government bonds would henceforth be paid in specie rather than paper money. The effect was immediate; government bonds doubled in value. The ‘men of business’ were now firmly behind him, and the return of public confidence in the state finances stimulated economic activity and paved the way for the introduction of the silver franc in March 1803 (it would remain stable until 1914).9

  Another measure initiated that August was the codification of the multifarious laws in existence. France had been waiting for over a century for this, and in 1790 the revolutionary National Assembly addressed the matter. A committee under Cambacérès came up with a project for a Civil Code consisting of 719 articles. This was discussed, amended, resubmitted and rejected by the Convention in 1794. Cambacérès produced a third draft, of 1,104 articles, in June 1796, but only a few were promulgated and the commission was dissolved.

  Shortly after his return to Paris, on 12 August 1800, Bonaparte appointed a commission consisting of Jean-Étienne Portalis, François-Denis Tronchet, Jacques de Maleville and Félix-Julien Bigot de Préameneu to draw up a Civil Code of Laws. Its leading light was Portalis, a brilliant lawyer and a friend of Cambacérès. He was fifty-four, Bigot only a year younger, Maleville nearly sixty and Tronchet seventy-four. They were products of the ancien régime (Maleville was a ci-devant marquis) and had all been active during the Revolution. They brought a wealth of experience and a heavy dose of pragmatism to the task, and produced a draft which was passed for comment to the judges of the highest courts before being presented to the Council of State in January 1801, less than six months after their nomination.

  Over the next year the Council of State would devote more than a hundred sessions to it, at least fifty-seven of them presided over by Bonaparte, who stamped his own views and personality on the final version. This was a marriage of Roman and common law, incorporating much of the legislative legacy of the kingdom of France but deeply marked by the spirit of the Revolution. It was in some ways more than a code of laws. As Portalis stressed in his introduction, it was a kind of rulebook for a new society, secular and modern. Bonaparte’s contribution was considerable, and is particularly evident in the Code’s stress on property as the basis of social organisation, and even more so in the domestic sphere.

  His background is detectable in the Code’s assumption of the family as the basis of society and of the manner in which it should function. His personal experience is detectable in the clauses governing marital relations and the rights of women. According to the Code, the husband had a duty to provide for and protect the wife, but she must obey him in everything, and could not perform any legal action without his authorisation. The husband could divorce an adulterous wife, but the opposite was only possible if he moved his mistress into the family home. A woman convicted of adultery was obliged to spend between three months and two years in a house of correction. The minutes of the meetings reveal Bonaparte’s input, which is marked by his disenchantment with women caused by Josephine’s infidelities and profligacy. ‘Women need to be contained,’ he declared, explaining that they were naturally more flighty than men when it came to sex, and liable to spend their husband’s money like water. ‘The husband must have the absolute power and right to say to his wife: Madame, you will not go out, you will not go to the theatre, you will not see such and such a person.’ At the same time, he was sensitive on matters such as divorce, making it easier for couples living in unhappy marriages. He also sought to elevate adoption into a secular sacrament, granting it solemnity.10

  The Code Civil des Français, as it was called, would not become law until 21 March 1804, and would be known as the Code Napoléon. Bonaparte was immensely proud of it. ‘Proud as he was of his military glory, he was no less so of his legislative talents,’ according to Cambacérès. ‘Nothing moved him more than the praise frequently bestowed on the merits of a code of which he liked to see himself as the creator.’ He was neither its creator nor even its editor, but he was the catalyst, and without him it would not have come into existence.11

  That was true of almost everything that was achieved during his consulship. In the Council of State he had gathered together the most brilliant minds and the greatest experts in the country, and he drove them like slaves. As one of them put it, ‘one had to be made of iron’ to work with him. In the course of 1800 alone, the Council of State dealt with 911 separate measures (in 1804 it would be 3,365). Over a period of not much more than five years it would create the entire framework of the state and, in its auditeurs, the young men who sat behind the councillors taking minutes and notes, a new administrative class to run it. It was not unusual for Bonaparte to keep them at it for eight or ten hours with only a fifteen-minute break for lunch. ‘Come, come, citizens, wake up,’ he would exclaim if he saw them flagging after midnight, ‘it is only two o’clock, and we must earn the money which the people of France give us.’12

  He would prepare himself before every session by reading up on the relevant subject. Taking his place at the head of a long table at which the councillors were seated he would open the discussion, which he expected to be conducted without deference to him. ‘Gentlemen, it is not to be of my opinion but to hear yours that I have summoned you,’ he would say if he noticed a trace of complaisance. ‘The Council was made up of people of very diverse opinions, and everyone freely supported his,’ recalled Thibaudeau. ‘The majority view did not prevail. Far from bending to that, the First Consul would encourage the minority.’ He would listen to them attentively, toying with his snuffbox, opening and shutting the lid, occasionally taking a pinch, most of which fell on the white facings of his uniform, and, without looking passing the snuffbox to an aide waiting behind his chair, who would hand him another. To help himself think, he would produce a pen-knife from his pocket and belabour the arm of his chair with it (this was regularly replaced by a cabinetmaker). He asked questions, demanded more precision, and sometimes applied the rules of mathematics to the process of arriving at a conclusion. He encouraged them to contradict and correct him, saying, ‘We are amongst ourselves here, we are en famille.’ Once a conclusion had been reached, however, he would close the discussion and quickly pass on to the next matter.13

  His input was considerable. ‘What he did not know he seemed to anticipate and divine,’ according to one. ‘He had a prodigious facility to learn,
judge, discuss, and to retain without confusing an infinite number of things.’ His extraordinary memory, combined with an ability to pinpoint the key idea, stimulated colleagues who were more learned, wiser and more expert but needed to be pinned down, and in the words of Mathieu Molé, ‘the most learned and most experienced legal minds would come out confounded by the sagacity of the First Consul and the illuminating insights he introduced into the discussion’. Roederer confirms that at the end of every session they would part feeling wiser. ‘Under his governance, a rather extraordinary thing happened to those who worked with him,’ he wrote. ‘Mediocrities found they had talent, and men of talent felt their mediocrity, so much did he inspire the one and unsettle the other. People hitherto thought to be incapable became useful, men who had been considered brilliant were confounded …’ Even Lucien, who gave his brother little credit, admitted to being impressed by his brilliance when he first saw him in action at a session of the Council.14

  His capacity for work was extraordinary. He would on occasion preside over a Council from ten o’clock at night until five in the morning, then retire to have a bath, after which he would get back to work. ‘An hour in a bath is worth four hours’ sleep,’ he used to say. His work schedule outside the meetings of the consular council and the Council of State was equally punishing. He would sometimes wake up at one or four o’clock in the morning, summon his unfortunate secretary and, dressed in a white dressing gown with a scarf wrapped about his head, start dictating. He hardly ever wrote himself, mainly because his writing could not keep up with his thought process, but also because neither he nor anyone else could read it. He might take a break for some ice cream or sorbet, and sometimes for something more substantial, then resume where he had left off.15