by Philip Dwyer
Napoleon was put on the spot, and he now had to find a title for his mother. After consulting with the experts and looking at books on protocol and etiquette, no easy thing since this was setting a precedent, Letizia was given the title ‘Madame’. However, during the ancien régime ‘Madame’ had been a title used to designate the daughters of the king. In case Napoleon one day had a daughter, therefore, the words, ‘mother of His Majesty the Emperor’ were tacked on to the end of ‘Madame’. It was, admittedly, a little long and was never really used; Napoleon always referred to her as ‘Madame’. The title ‘Madame Mère’ (Madam Mother) that eventually came into use was never official.144 Nor was it something that pleased Letizia very much. In fact, she was mortified by its spectacular lack of brilliance, and was not afraid to let her son know how displeased she was. But then she was a hard woman to please at the best of times; even a monthly pension of 25,000 francs did not put a smile on her disgruntled countenance.
A constitutional monarchy of sorts, even if it did contain the germ of an autocratic system, had at last been reached; the Revolution had been consolidated; the counter-revolution had been dealt a hefty blow not only through the founding of the Empire, but particularly through an accord with the Catholic Church; a certain number of revolutionary principles had been put into practice such as equality before the law and freedom of religion; the sale of nationalized Church lands (biens nationaux) had been guaranteed; and a new legal system codifying and consolidating the gains of the Revolution had been introduced.145 Napoleon was thus seen as the person most responsible for steering the ‘vessel of the Republic’ into safe harbour, ‘sheltered from all storms’.146 The democratic experiment that had been the Revolution had reached its limits; it was time to replace the political anarchy that had reigned over the last ten years with a durable authority.147 That authority should reside in one person, with enough force to bring about a ‘social pact’ and to consolidate the country’s institutions on solid foundations.148 ‘It is the product of his genius, and at the same time a just reward for his work.’149 What other system, one pamphleteer asked, offered such stability and such hope?150 The Empire was therefore proposed as a more efficient alternative to both monarchy and democracy, and Napoleon presented as a vehicle of hope, a force that would create a better world.151
Dix-huit Brumaire (18 Brumaire). Frontispiece to Louis Dubroca, Les quatre fondateurs des dynasties françaises, ou Histoire de l’établissement de la monarchie française, par Clovis . . . Pépin et Hugues Capet; et . . . Napoléon-le-Grand . . . (The four founders of the French dynasties, or The history of the establishment of the French monarchy), Paris, 1806. Note the broken tablets at the bottom of the frame representing the three previous dynasties – Merovingian, Carolingian and Capetian. The message is simple but clear: Napoleon, the successor to these dynasties, is helping France get back on its feet.
It was not the fall of Robespierre in 1795 that brought the Revolution to an end, nor did it end in 1799 with the coup of Brumaire, even if one of the first things Bonaparte did was to declare it over. Nor did it end in 1802 with the Peace of Amiens. The Revolution came to an end in 1804 with the proclamation of the Empire, and more powerfully and symbolically, in December of that year during the coronation ceremony at the Cathedral of Notre Dame. At that moment, when Napoleon crowned himself emperor, the political principles of 1789 were finally realized.152
* Gideon means ‘destroyer’ or ‘mighty warrior’.
* Hair à la Titus had different meanings at different periods of the Revolution. In the aftermath of the Terror, it was a very short and uneven cut, echoing the cropped hair of victims of the guillotine. It later took on softer tones, and was modelled on classical busts of the Emperor Titus.
* Interestingly, the acute accent was immediately added so that the name became Frenchified into ‘Napoléon’. Napoleon, however, never wrote his name with an accent, and he was never referred to in public as ‘Napoleon’ before that date, but always simply as ‘Bonaparte’.
8
‘The First Throne of the Universe’
The Trial of General Moreau
Ten days after the proclamation of the Empire, on 28 May 1804, the trial of Moreau and Cadoudal, along with forty-five others accused of plotting to kill Napoleon, opened at ten in the morning. Pichegru was not present: he had been found dead in his cell. A black silk cravat and a little baton were found around his neck; he had garrotted himself.1 Napoleon immediately ordered a public inquest. There is no evidence that Pichegru was murdered, or that Napoleon could even have benefited from his murder, but that did not stop some from believing his death had been ordered by the Emperor.2
The terrain had been prepared by the publication of a number of pamphlets, as well as articles in the press. One anonymous pamphlet portrayed Cadoudal in a less than flattering light, as someone who had accepted money and support from England, and who had pursued a ‘system of assassination’ against those who had thrown their support behind the Consulate.3 In addition, a list of ‘brigands’ charged by Britain with the task of assassinating Napoleon was posted on walls throughout France, Moreau’s name at the top.4 Moreau’s interrogation and the proceedings of the trial were also published in an attempt to convince the public of his guilt, but to no avail.5 The strategy backfired on Napoleon, in part because of Moreau’s reputation. Moreau and his supporters also used the press in an attempt to clear his name.6 As we have seen, the general’s innocence was not as clear-cut after the arrest of Pichegru and the execution of Enghien. The regime attempted to associate his name with the royalists, while putting him on trial with people like Pichegru made him appear guilty by association. Despite their best efforts, however, the Emperor’s men did not succeed in tarnishing Moreau’s name.
That is why the trial caused a stir in fashionable circles. The trial of celebrities always seems to find an echo in a populace avid for scandal. Moreau’s friends gathered at the Palais de Justice in the hope of turning the crowd against the regime.7 A considerable number of Moreau’s supporters congregated outside the court, unable to get in. The court itself was packed with military men. Long gone were the days, however, when the crowds of Paris could determine the course of national politics; impressive security measures had been taken to make sure nothing of the sort would happen. Six thousand troops were stationed in and around the court to keep order. Just to make sure the odds were on the government’s side, a senatus consultum did away with the jury the defendants would normally have been allowed. The possibility of an acquittal was not being risked. The president of the panel of judges (there were ten in all), a man by the name of Hémart, who had earned a reputation during the Terror, was ordered by the prefect of police, Réal, to find the accused guilty and to sentence them to death.8 Things nevertheless did not go terribly well for the prosecution: portraits of the accused were sold outside the Palais de Justice; Cadoudal passionately defended his cause; while public opinion in general seems to have been with Moreau. Mme de Staël, Mme Récamier, numerous officers, even the gendarmes meant to guard him displayed a marked sympathy for the general. At theatres throughout Paris, every time there was an allusion to the conflict between Napoleon and Moreau, the public demonstrated its preference for Moreau.9 One diplomat reported that the ‘army and its generals spoke against the Emperor with a freedom that makes one fear anything’.10
At four o’clock in the morning of 10 June, the verdict was read out in an overcrowded room. Moreau got off lightly – two years in prison – but even this was considered harsh by those present. In the brouhaha that followed, the room was evacuated, the convicted man taken back to the Temple, and the area around the Palais de Justice cleared by the troops. There had been no riot, just a few republicans expressing their discontent. Twenty other defendants were not as lucky as Moreau; they were condemned to death, including the Marquis de Rivière, Armand de Polignac and Cadoudal (although eight were pardoned).11 Three carts each containing four prisoners and four priests were conducted from th
e Conciergerie to the Place de Grève, in front of the Hôtel de Ville, where in a scene reminiscent of the days of the Terror the condemned men were executed in front of a large crowd. Windows along the way had been rented out so that people could get a better look at what had become an unusual sight. Cadoudal was offered a pardon but he rejected it and preferred to go to his death with the men who had followed him, arguing with the others at the foot of the scaffold about who was to go first. Cadoudal won. Legend has it that shortly before his execution he said, ‘We wanted a king, we have made an emperor.’12
The retraction of evidence during the trial by two witnesses, who now claimed never to have seen Pichegru and Moreau together, Cadoudal’s silence and the death of Pichegru combined to ‘save’ Moreau. Napoleon in person intervened, writing to Cambacérès asking him to intercede and to get the judges to review their initial finding.13 The Emperor is supposed to have said to Bourrienne after hearing the verdict, ‘They asserted that he was guilty and here they are treating him like a pickpocket! What am I supposed to do with him now?’14 He was perhaps that much more exasperated by the verdict since it went against the orders he had given the judges. Nevertheless, when the wife of Moreau asked permission for her husband to be allowed to leave for America, Napoleon assented. Moreau returned to Europe in 1813 in the service of the Tsar, only to be killed on the battlefield of Dresden by a cannon ball that struck his right leg, went through the horse he was riding and then shattered his left leg. He died after days of terrible suffering.
‘The Most Perfect of Men’
Once Napoleon had eagerly accepted the idea of hereditary power, representatives of the state and the army were mobilized to show their support. General Nicolas Jean-de-Dieu Soult, commander of two large military camps at Montreuil and Saint-Omer, was asked to provide information about how the army would react to the idea of Napoleon’s becoming hereditary ruler.15 On 10 April, only weeks before the official proclamation, Soult wrote a letter to Napoleon indicating that the army ‘desired and demanded that you be proclaimed Emperor of the Gauls’ and that heredity be established in his family.16
It was shortly after this that the official petitions in favour of heredity were supported by declarations from the army. This aspect of the public relations campaign appears to have been orchestrated by the minister for war, Berthier, who first ordered that a report written by the minister of justice, Claude-Ambroise Régnier, on the Cadoudal–Pichegru plot be read to the troops,17 but it is also possible that Napoleon’s brothers, Joseph and Lucien, were behind the initiative.18 Many commanders understood what was expected of them. This was a top-down process. We know, for example, that some commanders circulated model petitions to their troops,19 and that a number of the top military brass petitioned Napoleon to adopt the ‘title of Emperor that Charlemagne carried’. ‘Does it not belong by right to the man who reminds us of it as a legislator and warrior?’20 Some historians have interpreted these expressions as an attempt to intimidate the legislature.21 However, there is nothing to suggest that the army as an institution was behaving any differently from other institutions in its demand for an emperor.
A similar process took place in the administration, much of it orchestrated by Fouché.22 In March and April 1804, in the wake of the Cadoudal–Pichegru plot, dozens of letters from individual prefects, judges, mayors, towns and electoral colleges were published in the Moniteur. Most of these petitions lamented the dangers facing the First Consul, confounded the good of the nation with his personal wellbeing, and offered him their thanks, support and sometimes love.23 They expressed solidarity with Bonaparte, often portrayed him as ‘saviour’ and hero, but most of all expressed a desire to exact vengeance on those held responsible for the assassination attempt – that is, the British. ‘Do they ignore the fact’, wrote the sub-prefect of the department of the Aisne, ‘that heaven protects our patrie and that the vastness of faithful citizens forms an impenetrable rampart around the First Consul against the attacks of perfidy?’24 In a letter to Bonaparte from François Louis Marguet, who described himself as a ‘simple citizen’ from Besançon, the outrage against ‘perfidious England’ is palpable. He declared that Bonaparte’s death ‘would be a public calamity. The fatal day that takes you from the French people will be the last day of their liberty and their happiness.’25 This particular aspect of the petitions can be seen as an attempt on the part of the Consular regime to garner support for the coming war with Britain and, indirectly, to consolidate Bonaparte’s personal hold on power. The rhetoric used was based on two sentiments: overwhelming enthusiasm for Bonaparte and for the apparent gains that had been made in French society since his coming to power; and fear of losing those gains if he were to disappear.26
At first there was no mention of heredity or empire in any of the petitions from the country’s most important institutions.27 The only time the word ‘empire’ was mentioned, in a petition from the president of the electoral college of Sésia in Italy, was a general reference to the ‘vast empire’ that Bonaparte governed.28 One can find, however, a vague reference in the petition from the department of the Roër to Bonaparte receiving, in the country of Charlemagne, ‘the just tribute of love, respect and recognition’ which was his due, and which points to the possibility of a higher office. But that is the extent of it. Not until Jean-François Curée gave the lead in the Tribunate, his speech being published in the Moniteur on 1 May, demanding that Bonaparte be named emperor, was the process officially set in motion.29 This was the first time that someone in an official capacity had openly spoken out in favour of the title. Shortly after that, petitions started to appear demanding that heredity and the executive power be united. As we now know, the prompting for Curée’s declaration came from Bonaparte himself, but that does not diminish the fact that from this time on the floodgates were opened and that what followed cannot be discounted as a propaganda coup organized by a few behind the scenes.
After the declaration of the Empire, a number of these letters played on the same themes that we have already encountered among the political elite – that is, that France had been ‘lost’ since the convocation of the Estates General in 1789 because of ‘ambitious innovators’. In one letter, the commercial tribunal for the town of Soissons was convinced ‘by its own experience’ that a hereditary leader ‘can alone assure their [the French people’s] happiness in consolidating the power of the nation’.30 Some professed to having been ‘always for the government of one man’, but up until then that opinion had been fatal and they had not been able to do anything to win acceptance for the idea.31
Among ordinary citizens, one can find an open adherence to empire that cuts across socio-economic categories, and that took on emotional dimensions rarely discussed by historians.32 Once the Empire was declared, thousands of private individuals wrote to express support not so much for the idea of empire as for the idea of Napoleon – ‘the greatest of conquerors, the most perfect of men’ – as emperor.33 Some of these documents are collective petitions containing a brief letter of support and congratulations, followed by a list of signatures that may or may not have been entirely voluntary.34 Some are letters from individuals attempting to curry favour with the regime.35 The vast majority, however, are marked by an affective bond that appears to escape rationalization.
In a letter to Napoleon from a woman in Avignon named Carrié, for example, one can find the following sentence: ‘The supreme being has fulfilled my prayer, God who can do all grant that the good and perfect health of our Emperor, who is closer to a Divinity than a man, be everlasting.’ Napoleon was often compared to a divinity, as in this letter from the ‘woman Garnier’, from Ober-Ingelheim (near Mainz), who declared that ‘Your Majesty was in my eyes, and in those with tender hearts, a tutelary God actually your empire by the grace of God [sic].’36 In addition, dozens of poems, sometimes printed, often handwritten, are dedicated to Napoleon’s ascension.37 Much of this material traces the life of the Emperor in flattering terms as well as presaging his
rise to power. These documents of support for him were also a spontaneous political response to the predicament facing the French nation – the threat of war with Britain and the possibility of losing through assassination the man many now considered to be the Saviour of the Revolution.
Here too we find material that rejects the Revolution as a democratic experiment and supports, if not the idea of monarchy, then at least the notion of a strong executive centred on one man. ‘Fourteen centuries of monarchy,’ declares a pamphlet by General Jean Sarrazin, ‘even if often feebly administered, speak more eloquently in favour of the throne than fourteen years of misfortune and setbacks for the republican state.’38 General Henry, writing from Nantes, argued that he was ‘convinced by experience that under the Republic, the supreme power remained too long divided between the hands of many’, which had resulted in constant anarchy and disorder, and that the centralization of power was best suited to empire.39 The desire to see order restored was a constant; a surrogate to the tribunal of first instance at Versailles wrote that even if the Consulate was able to ‘dissipate the deep darkness of night’ certain souls remained troubled. ‘It is time’, he continued, ‘to revive the social order, [and it is time] that sovereign power is reunited in the hands of one man.’40 There is, moreover, a prevailing sentiment among many of these letters that Napoleon deserved the throne through his actions.41
There are so many letters – one of them includes a helpful remedy against poison42 – that it seems the movement towards empire revived monarchical tendencies that had lain dormant during the Republic. The sentiments expressed often fall within the logic of what might be called a monarchical reflex – that is, a resurgence of belief in the sacred nature of the monarchy, and not just any monarchy, but one founded in the person of Napoleon.43 This is not the same, however, as the notion of sacrality that existed in ancien régime France; it had now taken on a new form, founded on notions of individual destiny (Napoleon’s), as well as on the sovereignty of the people. Hence the constant references to ‘providence’ or the ‘hand of God’ having placed Napoleon on the throne or of having saved him from assassination attempts so that he could continue his work,44 or to the title ‘emperor’ as a reward for his services to the state (often with the assertion that he had saved France from ruin),45 or to the idea that France could be saved from domestic and foreign enemies only when hereditary power resided in one family.46 There are, moreover, references to Napoleon as father of the people,47 remarkably similar to the kinds of patriarchal discourse found prior to 1789. Consequently, one cannot but conclude that the letters embodied a set of beliefs and values that were profoundly rooted in the cultural practices of the day, notwithstanding the creation of a republic and the execution of the king in 1792.48 The person of Napoleon came to symbolize all that French politics and society had been striving for since 1789 – the embodiment of the ideals of the Revolution, as well as the principle of constitutional monarchy.