Citizen Emperor

by Philip Dwyer

  If the peace and stability Bonaparte was able to impose on France and Europe were rewarded with the Consulate for life, the attempt to kill him in 1804 was the excuse to introduce a type of monarchy. It was then that he thought, once again, of consolidating his power around a more imposing title that would render his person inviolable.99 Up to then, he had dealt with the problem of naming a successor by telling people what they wanted to hear. He would tell staunch republicans, like Thibaudeau, that the Revolution had put an end to the concept of hereditary succession once and for all. Then he would tell Fouché, ‘People in Paris believe I am going to make myself emperor. I am not going to do anything of the sort. For the last three years enough great things have been done under the title consul. We have to keep it. I do not believe that we need a new name for a new empire.’100 At most, Bonaparte claimed, he would accept the title of ‘Grand Consul’. On another occasion though, he is supposed to have told Fouché that opposition to putting a crown on his head would be very weak.101 He was obviously caught in a bind and did not want to think particularly either about his own death or about naming a successor with all the political problems which that would entail. Things came to a head, however, with the Cadoudel assassination plot. Part of the reasoning was that since all the assassination attempts were directed against his person, if a hereditary successor were designated, then the survival of the government and of the system put in place would not be jeopardized if he were to disappear.

  Thus heredity, and the Empire that came with it, was about constructing a durable political system, rather than a sop to Bonaparte’s vanity and ambition, one that placed France on an equal footing with every other court in Europe.102 In one outburst against his brother Joseph leading up to the coronation, he is supposed to have exclaimed, ‘Does he believe that I have brought about these changes for me? That I value the titles he seems to disdain?’103 He argued that he was adopting the imperial title only so that he would now be on a par with the sovereigns of Europe. That was pretext. One cannot help but feel that behind the practical reason was a deep, obsessive need not only to be recognized by his peers, but also to dominate them.

  If we take our gaze away from Bonaparte for a moment and look at what some in the French political elite were urging, we get a very different picture to the one often presented by historians when they talk about the founding of the Empire. A clue is to be found in a letter written by Talleyrand to Napoleon in July 1804, a short while after the proclamation of the Empire. ‘Your Majesty knows, and I have pleasure in repeating it, that weary, disgusted by the political systems that have aroused the passion and caused the misfortune of the French over the last ten years, it is only by you and for you that I hold with the institutions you have founded.’104

  Two elements are at play here: Talleyrand had confidence in the man and in the institutions that he had helped put in place after ten years of political unrest and was, therefore, willing to hitch his star to Napoleon’s. But Talleyrand also believed that a hereditary, constitutional monarchy was the political system that held the most promise for stability.105 Or at least this was the line adopted by those who supported the Empire, and which was faithfully repeated long after it had disappeared.106 By taking part in Brumaire, by encouraging a shift away from radical political structures to ultimately conservative and, one could argue, counter-revolutionary political structures, the supporters of empire were in some respects representative of the reconciliation finally taking place between the Revolution and the ancien régime.

  Most European powers were prepared to recognize Napoleon and his new title. The exceptions were Britain, at war with France (Pitt was re-elected prime minister on 10 May 1804), Sweden and Russia, about to enter another coalition.107 Alexander’s minister for foreign affairs, Adam Czartoryski, believed the Empire gave the Revolution a façade of legitimacy. He feared, therefore, that it marked not the end of the Revolution but its ominous continuation by other means.108 This view was typical of conservatives of the day. The German publicist Friedrich von Gentz, for example, working for the Austrian Chancellery, also believed that to recognize Napoleon was to ‘sanction the Revolution and all its doctrines’.109 Russia consequently attempted to persuade the other powers that the title would ‘serve as a pretext for [Napoleon’s] unbounded ambition to extend his domination still further’.110

  It succeeded with some, such as the Porte (the government of the Ottoman Empire), but not others. In Vienna, Napoleon’s adoption of the imperial title was disliked and posed particular problems for Francis as titular head of the Holy Roman Empire.111 The Austrians were alarmed, with good reason, that Napoleon was re-establishing the Empire of Charlemagne – in part because so much was made of Charlemagne in France at the time112 – and that he would extend his influence over the Holy Roman Empire.113 Vienna was fearful that George III would feel obliged to proclaim himself ‘Emperor of Great Britain’ or that the Tsar would insist on parity with Austria. Nevertheless, the Austrian chancellor argued that the re-establishment of monarchical government, which is how he referred to the Empire, was ‘necessary for the tranquillity of all governments’.114 The main reason, however, why Austria decided to recognize the French Empire was in order not to offend Napoleon and thereby risk war; it also wanted to maintain diplomatic parity with France.115 That is why Cobenzl recommended that Austria, at the same time, adopt its own imperial title.116

  This was a question of prestige. If the Holy Roman Empire collapsed, then Francis would be left with lesser-sounding titles – King of Bohemia and Hungary, and Grand Duke of Austria. Till then, the Austrian ‘Roman Emperor’ had enjoyed precedence over every other European monarch, including the Russian Tsar, largely because he supposedly represented a direct line to the ancient Roman emperors. He was therefore at the head of the only ‘genuinely imperial’ state in Europe, against which all others had to define themselves.117 By brushing aside the Holy Roman Empire, Napoleon had also brushed to one side the title and the claim, and at the same time assumed the western imperial mantle. Francis, therefore, agreed to recognize Napoleon’s title in return for Napoleon’s recognizing Francis as ‘Emperor of Austria’.118

  A Troublesome Family

  The reaction of the sovereign heads of Europe to the proclamation of the Empire was the least of Napoleon’s problems. He had a much more difficult task dealing with his family and relatives. The family was a permanent centre of criticism, cabals and intrigues that he quite rightly perceived as a danger, but it was one which, given the structure of Corsican family ties, he would never overcome. He seemed to delight in stirring it up and in pitting one member against another. The family, on the other hand, believed it had every right to share in the benefits of Napoleon’s power, regardless of how little its members had contributed to his success.

  Let us deal with the brothers first. Relations between Napoleon and Joseph had been difficult ever since Joseph declined the presidency of the Italian Republic in 1802, on the pretext that the Republic would be too dependent on France.119 Relations were made worse by the resumption of war with Britain (Joseph was against the war), by his involvement in the marriage of Lucien with Alexandrine Jouberthon (about which more below), and more particularly by the question of the succession. On 2 April 1804, Bonaparte had a meeting with his elder brother. He told Joseph that he planned to adopt the son of Louis and Hortense with the aim of making him his heir. It was a rude shock to Joseph who had obviously given no thought to Napoleon fathering or adopting a son.120 It was also a clumsy manoeuvre on the part of Bonaparte since he had not consulted with either Louis or Hortense on the matter. Joseph immediately ran to Louis, warned him of Bonaparte’s intentions and persuaded him to oppose the adoption.

  It cannot have been too hard a task; Louis was not terribly well disposed towards his brother after being obliged to marry Josephine’s daughter, Hortense, in January 1802. It was a misjudged attempt on the part of Josephine to cement relations between the two families. The marriage was disastrous, but produc
ed children. One of them was Napoleon-Charles, but Louis was hardly going to allow Napoleon to adopt him, the more so since rumour had it that Napoleon-Charles was Napoleon’s biological son (there are no grounds for believing this to be the case).121 If Louis was furious, Joseph was also beside himself at the suggestion – he is supposed to have said that it would be better for his family and France if his brother were dead122 – and he also attacked Bonaparte for suggesting a hereditary system that would, as he saw it, exclude him and his children from any future succession. He urged Napoleon to leave Josephine for what he called ‘political reasons’.123 Tension between the two brothers became so bad that Napoleon decided to send Joseph to the camp of Boulogne, ‘so that he could have his part of the glory’.124

  If relations with Joseph were tense, relations with Lucien were brought to breaking point. Lucien, we know, was the hothead of the family, an uncontrollable free spirit who could not tolerate, even less than Napoleon could, any form of constraint.125 As minister of the interior, he had jurisdiction over the theatres. It is possible that he took advantage of his position to ‘seduce’ a number of actresses. Rumour was that it was not safe for a young woman to enter his office.126 In the summer of 1802, Lucien met a divorcée by the name of Alexandrine Jouberthon, considered a remarkable beauty. In May 1803, they were secretly married in a religious ceremony, the same day that Alexandrine gave birth to a baby boy (they would go on to have ten children). Bonaparte did not know of this, although rumours of their marriage had been circulating in the months leading up to it. Bonaparte had been thinking of arranging some sort of political alliance with his brother through marriage with Marie-Louise, Queen of Etruria, who had only recently become a widow herself. When Bonaparte brought up the subject at a family dinner a few days after the marriage, Lucien made light of it. But after Bonaparte had left he confessed to Joseph that he was already married. Joseph, although he did not say so then, thought it was one of the greatest calamities that could have happened. In a conversation at Mortefontaine in the presence of Miot de Mélito, he is said to have exclaimed, ‘In truth, it seems that fate blinds us and wants, through our own faults, to return France to its former masters.’127 Bonaparte was told eventually, but he considered the marriage null and void. He sent Joseph, Murat and Cambacérès to talk with Lucien, but no amount of negotiating could make Lucien change his mind or persuade him to agree not to let his new wife carry the Bonaparte name.128 When Lucien consequently refused to divorce her, he was stripped of his senatorial rank and removed from the line of succession, and he had no input into the foundation of the Empire. He moved to Rome with his wife. In 1810, when Napoleon annexed the Papal States, Lucien decided to leave Europe once and for all, and set sail for the United States. The British intercepted his vessel and Lucien was taken to England where he spent the rest of the war as a prisoner – at Thorngrove in Worcestershire – until the collapse of the Empire in 1814.

  Jérôme faced a similar dilemma to his brother, but reacted very differently. On Christmas Eve 1803, he married an American woman, a rich shipowner’s daughter from Baltimore, Elizabeth Patterson.129 Jérôme was nineteen at the time, had left the naval vessel on which he was serving to take in the United States and had met and quickly married Elizabeth even though, according to French law, he was not legally of age (the Civil Code stated that in order to marry one had to be twenty-five or else have the permission of one’s parents). Like Lucien, Jérôme married without his brother’s knowledge. When he learnt of it through a dispatch from the French consul general in America, Bonaparte simply refused to recognize the marriage and obliged his mother to sign a statement in front of a notary declaring that she had not given her consent to the marriage (a little rich coming from a man who had married a woman the family disapproved of).130

  When Jérôme brought his wife back to Europe from the United States in April 1805 (they landed in Portugal), Napoleon ordered him to travel overland to Italy (through Spain and southern France), and insisted that Elizabeth not leave the ship. If they tried to head for Paris, he instructed Fouché to arrest Jérôme and to send packing Mlle Patterson, as he persisted in calling her, back to America.131 Jérôme left Elizabeth, pregnant, in Lisbon, no doubt convinced at this stage that he could persuade his brother to change his mind. He did not. Jérôme may have loved Elizabeth – he certainly wrote to her saying that he loved her as much as life itself132 – and he may have said that he would rather kill his own children than declare them illegitimate,133 but at some stage he gave in to his brother’s pressing demands. If he had been wilful as a youth, always refusing to toe the line, it now seems he was incapable of bucking his brother, at least on this issue. Napoleon was probably dangling before him the prospect of a kingdom if he did as he was told. It took all of ten days for Jérôme to change his mind.

  Napoleon was ‘generous’ in victory. ‘My brother,’ he wrote adopting an imperial tone, ‘there is no fault that sincere remorse cannot efface in my eyes.’134 He then promised a pension to Elizabeth of 60,000 francs a year. What that reveals of Jérôme’s character – a certain opportunism, a lack of resolve, an inability to live independently outside the family circle (unlike Louis) – is academic, but it does not say much. When faced with the choice between love and ambition, he was crass enough to choose ambition. One contemporary at least thought him the most proud, the most impolite, the most ignorant and the most ambitious young man he had ever encountered.135 Jérôme saw Elizabeth only one more time, in 1822 when they ran into each other in a museum in Florence. They did not stop to talk; Jérôme was with a new wife. The declarations one can find in his earlier letters to her – ‘you have a place in my affections which no power, no political expediency can take away’ – had been long forgotten.136

  At the dinner reserved for members of the family after the proclamation of the Empire, the marshal of the palace, Michel Duroc, arrived to inform everyone about the new protocols. Their brother would have to be referred to as ‘sire’. Joseph and Louis were accorded the title ‘prince’, while their respective wives – Julie and Hortense – were to be called ‘princess’. It is possible that Joseph at first refused the title, but he soon came round.137 Caroline, twenty-two years of age and now married to Murat, could not bring herself to call the daughter of a soap merchant (Julie, the wife of Joseph), as well as Josephine’s daughter, ‘princess’, especially since she herself would be officially known only as ‘Mme la Maréchal’. Elisa Bacciochi, five years older than her sister, described as ‘haughty, nervous, passionate, dissolute, devoured by the double hiccough of love and ambition’, felt the same way.138 Her title, since she was married to Colonel Bacciochi, would simply be ‘colonelle’. When Napoleon finally arrived for dinner, he could see they were visibly upset.139 Rather than placate them, he just rubbed it in their faces, deliberately addressing Julie and Hortense as ‘princess’ as often as he could. Caroline’s rage eventually transformed itself into tears; she had to gulp down large glasses of water in an effort to get a hold of herself, but tears kept coming back. During this ordeal, according to one witness, Napoleon ‘smiled rather maliciously’.140

  The next day, the three siblings – Napoleon, Caroline and Elisa – had a violent quarrel in Josephine’s salon, resorting now and then to their Corsican patois to insult each other. Caroline complained to Napoleon that he had condemned them to ‘obscurity, to scorn’, while others were being covered in honours and distinctions. It was probably on this occasion (or the preceding evening, we are not sure) that Napoleon replied, ‘Really, if one listened to my sisters, one would believe that I had robbed my family of the heritage of the late king, our father,’ an epigram repeated all over Paris it was thought so witty.141 By this stage, Caroline, to bring home her point, managed to faint right there on the floor, while Elisa let out piercing cries. Caroline seems to have known that a little histrionics went a long way with her brother. The very next day (20 May), an article appeared in the Moniteur announcing that Caroline, Elisa and Pauline were also be
ing given the title of ‘princess’. (It was at this time that Pauline, who was in Italy when she learnt of the title, changed her name from Paulette, as till then she had been commonly known.) To add to the burlesque, their husbands were not elevated to the rank, at least not yet.

  As for Letizia, in Rome, she decided that she would not attend the planned coronation. Part of her disapproved of the whole thing, possibly out of fear that her son was getting a little too big for his boots – she had nightmares about some fanatical republican assassinating him142 – but part of her seems to have been upset over the lack of distinctions and the lack of money coming her way. Napoleon’s uncle, Letizia’s half-brother Cardinal Fesch, wrote to him on the subject in July 1804.143 If the daughters had become Imperial Highnesses, was it appropriate that the mother of all these princes and princesses be considered a simple subject? Besides, her entourage were already unofficially referring to her as ‘Majesté’.