Citizen Emperor

by Philip Dwyer

  In a remarkable declaration that contains equal doses of vanity and hubris, he claimed that the ‘prosperity of France shall be secured against the caprices of fate and the uncertainties of the future’, by his efforts and those of government officials. While he did not take all the credit for restoring France, its people had nevertheless summoned him to ‘restore universal justice, order and equality’.27 ‘I am from this moment on a level with other sovereigns, for ultimately they are, like me, rulers for their lifetime only. They and their Ministers will have more respect for me now. The power of a man who turns all the business of Europe round his fingers should not be, or seem to be, based on a precarious foundation.’28 This argument, that Bonaparte was now on a par with other European heads of state, would be invoked again as a justification during the weeks leading up to the Empire, but it is one that says much more about Bonaparte than about European political conditions. Nothing had prevented the monarchs of Europe from having diplomatic relations with France before the Consulship for life. This was a question not of France being treated as an equal, but rather of Bonaparte’s self-esteem, or lack of it.

  Two weeks later, on 15 August, which also happened to be Bonaparte’s birthday, the Consulship for life was marked by a reception at the Tuileries for various members of the legislative bodies and foreign ambassadors, followed by a concert given by 300 instrumentalists playing the music of Cherubini, Méhul and Rameau. In the afternoon a Te Deum was celebrated at Notre Dame, as well as in all the other churches in Paris. That evening, a nine-metre star was erected high above one of the towers of Notre Dame, in the centre of which was depicted the sign of the Zodiac under which Bonaparte was born – Leo. The façade of the Hôtel de Ville was illuminated in much the same way as it had been during festivities under the ancien régime. A firework display with over 12,000 rockets was set off – although the crowds were apparently unimpressed – and a thirteen-metre-high statue of Peace was erected on the Pont Neuf, placed on a globe of the world, so that the whole was thirty-two metres high.29 It was meant to bear witness to the gratitude of the nation. The street celebrations lasted till one in the morning.

  From this time on, Bonaparte used to say that his power was founded on the imagination of the French people – that is, that it was founded not on a realistic assessment of his achievements, but rather on an idealized version.30 Members of his entourage disputed that interpretation, but there was nevertheless an increasing belief that Bonaparte was vital to the proper functioning of the state. Everything was being brought back to that one question – the indispensability of the First Consul. It led to a debate, of sorts, around the desirability of the establishment of heredity.31 Depending on the source, we can read that Bonaparte was either for or against the idea of hereditary power, which is to say that his attitude was ambivalent to say the least. If in August 1802 he was reported as having said, ‘heredity alone can prevent the counter-revolution’,32 he rejected the idea during a meeting of the Council of State: ‘Heredity is absurd, not in the sense that it does not ensure the stability of the state, but because it is impossible in France . . . How can one reconcile the heredity of the first magistrate with the first principle of sovereignty of the people?’33

  Bonaparte’s thinking may have evolved to reflect a change in popular attitudes, a move away from republican virtue towards monarchical principles. Not only were his intimate advisers already urging Bonaparte to re-establish some form of monarchy, but so too were some of his royalist opponents, persuaded that ‘once the monarchy had been re-established in France, they would only have to drive away the parvenu monarch, or, if he could not be overthrown, to await his death in order to give back to its former owners the throne he had raised up’.34 They were not, as things turned out, far off the mark, since constitutional monarchy was the type of government the revolutionaries of 1789 had wanted to implement. People were now starting to talk about it once more.

  The Consulship for life was important not only for how Bonaparte was perceived by the people of France but also for how the state was now perceived.35 Bonaparte increasingly came to embody the head of the Church in France, the executive and the head of the army. He was thus breaking with the revolutionary tradition by combining the military and the government in his person, which put him at a distinct advantage over any other European head of state, a position the world had not seen since Frederick the Great. Alexander I of Russia (successor of Paul I, who had been assassinated in March 1801) and Frederick William III of Prussia may have been nominally head of their respective armies, but they left the effective command to competent generals. Not so Bonaparte. France’s army was also his army. He not only appeared at its head, he not only shared the hardships of the troops on the ground, but he was also personally responsible for both victory and defeat. ‘Bonaparte’, reflected the novelist, essayist and opponent Germaine de Staël, ‘ably took hold of the enthusiasm of the French for military glory, and associated their self-love with his victories as well as his defeats. He gradually took the place of the Revolution in everyone’s mind, and attached to his name alone all the national sentiment that had raised France in the eyes of foreigners.’36

  The state was increasingly embodied in Bonaparte’s person. It was one way in which the state was given sense and meaning in the aftermath of ten years of revolutionary upheaval. However, this meant that any opposition to the regime centred on his person as well. He thus became, from the time he assumed power, the unique object of all the conspiracies directed against the state.37 As his power increased, so too did the number of his enemies, most of whom were persuaded that it was simply a question of striking a blow against one man for the whole edifice to come tumbling down.38 The knives were being sharpened in the shadows.

  Pots of Butter and Malcontent Republicans

  The combination of the Concordat and the Consulship for life was bound to exasperate republicans. A good deal of that exasperation came from the army. A police report showed the extent to which its upper echelons were angry at what they considered to be Bonaparte’s flouting of republican principles, afraid that it would somehow lead to a restoration of the monarchy.39 And there were a lot of generals and superior officers in Paris with little or nothing to do. At the beginning of the Consulate, between 6,000 and 7,000 officers were sidelined or were put on half-pay while the army was either purged or reorganized to fit Bonaparte’s vision.40 These officers complained loudly of their treatment and vented their anger and frustration on the person whom they held responsible for their plight.41 They went around causing trouble, or at least speaking their minds, which to Bonaparte meant the same thing, getting involved in factional politics, speaking out against reconciliation with the Church and publicly insulting members of the government.42

  Bonaparte had been aware from the start that the army would oppose negotiations with the Catholic Church, but he knew that he had to press ahead regardless.43 The people needed religion, and the government had to control that religion.44 For the moment, republican opposition within the army was limited to a series of rather ineffectual public gestures reminiscent of badly behaved adolescents. There was no attempt at a concerted political opposition.45 Oppositional elements within the military and administration did not know how to express their discontent, or were so cut off from mainstream society that they were unable to do so. Republican exasperation with Bonaparte seems to have reached a peak in 1802.46 Certain generals, out of political conviction or personal enmity towards the First Consul, began conspiring against him. Their opposition has sometimes been referred to rather melodramatically as the ‘Generals’ Plot’, but it was never really more than a half-baked conspiracy among a group of high-ranking officers, Jacobins, that posed no real threat to either the regime or Bonaparte’s life.47 They did little more than vent their feelings against Bonaparte. Meetings were supposed to have been held in Paris, at Rueil, in which a plan was sketched out that would have divided France into twelve provinces, each led by a general. Paris was to go to Bonapar
te. Masséna was supposed to bring him a declaration outlining the decision – he appears to have become the centre of attraction for some of these officers – but he refused, and that was the end of it.48 Indeed, most of the republican military opposition to Bonaparte, while it may have been pervasive in some sections of the army, was uncoordinated and dispersed. Throughout the Consulate and the Empire, the police now and then arrested individuals, but none of them ever posed a serious threat to the regime.49

  One of the more notorious conspiracies involved the production and distribution of pamphlets denouncing Bonaparte as a tyrant. Rennes was the centre of the ‘conspiracy’ where Bernadotte’s chief of staff and close friend General Edouard François Simon was charged with printing and distributing anti-government leaflets that were meant to prepare the army for a coup. Two leaflets were printed,50 and were supposed to be distributed throughout the country in stoneware pots used in the manufacture of butter. One of them, Appel aux armées françaises par leurs camarades (A call to the French armies by their comrades), declared, ‘Soldiers, you no longer have a fatherland, the Republic no longer exists and your glory is tarnished. Your name has faded and is without honour. A tyrant has seized power, and who is that tyrant? Bonaparte!’51 Thousands of copies were distributed. Some of them eventually fell into the hands of the local authorities, who traced them back to Bernadotte’s entourage. It was so swiftly nipped in the bud – Fouché contacted the prefects who then inspected the post office in their localities – that the public never heard about the so-called ‘Conspiracy of Pamphlets’ (conspiration des libelles).52

  Simon was arrested (and eventually released in June 1804), as were at least nineteen superior officers, who were discharged or exiled, including one of Moreau’s aides-de-camp.53 Consequently, Fouché interrogated Moreau, but the general laughed off the suggestion of any involvement, calling it a ‘conspiracy of pots of butter’ (conspiration des pots de beurre). Bernadotte was implicated in the affair, although it is unlikely that he was aware of what was going on. What could he hope to achieve from such an amateurish attempt at overthrowing Bonaparte?54 Bernadotte was, by all accounts, jealous of Bonaparte – he had opposed Brumaire, and had insisted that Bonaparte appear before a court martial and even that he be shot for having abandoned his army in Egypt – and had since frequently met with senators hostile to the First Consul, so it was easy for Bonaparte to assume he was involved in the plot.

  ‘An Aura of Fear’

  During the Consulship for life, Bonaparte eliminated everything that reminded people of the Revolution, right down to the manner in which people conducted themselves in his presence. Very quickly a change occurred in the way people dressed at the Tuileries. At the beginning of 1801, a member of the Tribunate, André-François Miot, Comte de Mélito, noted how trousers, sabres and cockades had already been replaced by silk stockings, shoe buckles, ceremonial swords and hats placed under the arm.55 Most people were unaccustomed to these new social norms, and there were apparently some interesting mixtures of dress that invited a certain amount of ridicule from those who knew better. Miot de Mélito cites the case of a man who turned up at the palace superbly dressed in a purple velvet frock coat, white stockings, a sword, and buckles on his shoes, but who combined it with a black cravat, considered a very serious breach of the dress code. The old aristocracy could not help but compare their own manners with those who did not know how to behave, or who could not perform simple tasks like walking on a waxed floor properly.56

  By introducing social forms that had been part and parcel of court life during the ancien régime, Bonaparte was at one and the same time asserting the regime’s social as well as political legitimacy. In doing so, he obliged the old aristocracy and the new elites to mix and to behave in the same manner. The politics of social fusion was central to the regime’s success. That was only one aspect. Etiquette was as much about how people perceived Bonaparte as about creating an artificial barrier between himself and his entourage, thereby conveying a sense of power.57 This was observed by a contemporary writer and social commentator, Louis-Sébastien Mercier: ‘Etiquette, a prince will say, is a puerile thing about which I would be the first to laugh, but it is the only bulwark that separates me from other men. Remove it, I am nothing more than a gentleman.’58 It was a method Bonaparte had employed in Italy, creating ‘an aura of fear’ (une auréole de crainte) around his person that prevented familiarity of any kind.59 Bonaparte’s court, in other words, is also revealing of the man. The fact that it was excessively formal, even by the standards of the day, lends weight to the idea that he strove to erect barriers between his intimate self and his surrounds. Access to Bonaparte, and later more so to Napoleon, was strictly controlled; precedence was introduced so that, depending on a person’s rank and function, he could enter only certain rooms in the Tuileries Palace.60 According to one British witness, the rooms leading to the First Consul’s personal apartments were each reserved. ‘On the days of the grand parade, the first room is destined for officers as low as the rank of captain, and persons admitted with tickets; the second, for field-officers; the third, for generals; and the fourth, for counsellors of state, and the diplomatic corps.’61 It would seem that fear equalled respect in Bonaparte’s mind.

  To carry through the introduction of a new etiquette, Bonaparte and his would-be courtiers, most of whom came from the provincial bourgeoisie and were utterly unaccustomed to the ways of pre-revolutionary aristocratic society, had to learn everything anew.62 They were obliged to rely on books, and on those who could remember what it had been like: old valets were interrogated, nobles who had lived at the courts of Louis XV and Louis XVI were consulted. There were of course few former members of the French court to consult; emigration had hit the noblesse de robe hardest. Two, however, were found: Mme de Montesson and Mme de Campan. Mme de Campan had been Marie-Antoinette’s femme de chambre and had run a finishing school for girls in Saint-Germain-en-Laye (both Caroline and Hortense had gone to school there), so she knew a thing or two about etiquette, as did Mme de Montesson, the wife of Louis Philippe, Duc d’Orléans (the father of Philippe-Egalité, whose son would become king in 1840), who had befriended Josephine during the Revolution.

  Josephine was to play an important role in this social legitimizing, holding informal breakfasts at the Tuileries and at Malmaison for between five and fifteen young women at a time, so that they could become acquainted with the customs of good society without feeling intimidated.63 Bonaparte wanted ancien régime court traditions to continue because they represented an exercise in the display of power, but he also, like the Bourbon monarchs before him, wanted to create a social centre of power that would become uncontested, and in the process marginalize all others. Naturally, not everyone was happy with the outcome. Certain officers complained that it was now difficult to get to see Bonaparte, and that monarchical forms had replaced military camaraderie.64

  A Republic in Uniform

  The introduction of etiquette was a gradual process but not an entirely successful one if some of the contemporary accounts are to be believed. The Tuileries was run with military precision, while the rules governing relations between people would eventually become excessively formal, to the point where conversation and friendships were stifled and boredom became the rule.65 People would nevertheless attend because to do so was to be at the centre of power. Etiquette was strictly regulated by Bonaparte, right down to the number of gun salutes or the duration of church-bell ringing during inspection tours. So too was the official hierarchy; it gave precedence to civilians over the military. However, in order to reinforce that precedence, and give all French officials, right down to the local mayor, an exterior symbol of their power, they were now required to wear a uniform – including high-school students.66 Indeed, every member of court from the highest to the lowest was now told what to wear and when to wear it. Bonaparte too wore civilian dress in the weeks and months after Brumaire, but on his return from Marengo he stopped wearing the Consular uniform
on a regular basis and started wearing the green and white uniform of a colonel of the Chasseurs à cheval, at least on weekdays.67 At weekends he would wear the blue and white uniform of a colonel of the Grenadiers à pied. It would appear that he rarely donned civilian dress after that – he did so during the signing of the Treaty of Amiens in March 1802 and at the Te Deum for the Concordat the following month for example. That was not the case for the rest of the court, the luxury of which soon became the object of much gossip and rumour.68 Bonaparte thus deliberately juxtaposed his simple dress with that of the elaborate dress found at court and among the high-ranking military.69 In this way, he became the link between the people and the court,70 dressing down even as he gave strict orders to everyone else to dress up. He was not the only French monarch to have used this controlling technique: Henry III and Henry IV had consciously and successfully done the same, while Bonaparte’s predecessor, Louis XVI, had also preferred simple dress to elaborate court costume. ‘The right to dress simply’, Bonaparte is supposed to have said, ‘does not belong to everyone.’71

  In the realm of diplomacy, too, there was a return to more formalized styles. The revolutionaries had made a conscious effort to break with ancien régime diplomatic norms, tainted by association with the aristocracy.72 Their approach had hardly been successful, and did a good deal to scandalize, shock and alienate the courts of Europe. Soon enough, political expediency triumphed over ideological commitments, and traditional diplomatic conventions were reintroduced during the Directory. Bonaparte, however, went a step further. In 1800, Pierre Bénézech, a former minister of the interior and member of the Council of Five Hundred, now a member of the Council of State, was given the job of receiving foreign ambassadors, and acted as a kind of master of the ceremonies. In November 1801, a key post was given to Bonaparte’s friend Michel Duroc – he was made governor of the Tuileries, with a colossal salary of 24,000 francs per year. From 1802 on, the First Consul started to hold audiences in a manner reminiscent of the former kings of France. It was important at the early stages of his reign, however, not to shock republicans and revolutionaries too much, which is why, as a sop to them, he used as many people as possible who had risen through the ranks during the Revolution.