by Philip Dwyer
In the Catholic calendar, 15 August was the Feast of the Assumption. Under the Empire, however, the Virgin Mary was conveniently forgotten and effectively replaced by a St Napoleon invented to fit the regime’s agenda. Napoleon’s birthday became a sort of ‘personal canonization by decree’.7 A number of dates were toyed with, including Easter and Corpus Christi, both of which were rejected by Napoleon; even he was not so conceited as to want to associate himself directly with Christ.
Antoine-Francois Callet, Allégorie à la victoire d’Austerlitz, 2 décembre 1805 (Allegory of the victory of Austerlitz, 2 December 1805), 1806. A series of twelve paintings was commissioned to decorate the gallery of the Diane Palace at the Tuileries. One of the most interesting is this allegorical painting by Callet in which Napoleon is represented as the god Mars driving before him the two imperial eagles of Russia and Austria.
It was (and is) customary in France to celebrate the feast day of one’s namesake, but Napoleon’s feast day became a pretext to celebrate the birth of Napoleon,8 almost as though it would have been improper simply to declare his birthday a national day of celebration.9 Nevertheless, the introduction of a new saint and a new feast day did not occur overnight. The Feast of St Napoleon was first mentioned in the Almanach national de la France (National almanac) in 1802, details of which were published the following year.10 In the literature of the day, Bonaparte was referred to as the Pacificateur des Nations (Peacemaker of nations) and as the Régénérateur de la France (Regenerator of France), as the person around whom everyone could rally, the person able to stifle discord, themes that had been touted even before his ascension to power in 1799.11 The festivities celebrating his nomination as Consul for life were held on 15 August.12 The feast day was mentioned again at the camp of Boulogne when Napoleon was handing out Legions of Honour (16 August 1804). In 1805, the canons of Nice asked Napoleon for permission to dedicate an altar to a (non-existent) St Napoleon.13 All of this seems to have been designed to prepare public opinion leading up to the first official celebration of the feast day in 1806.
Once again, the prefects were enlisted to make sure that everyone understood exactly what was expected of them. Letters were sent to the mayors of the towns and villages throughout France instructing them that this was the occasion to ‘express their appreciation and gratitude’, and to ‘take all appropriate measures to give this festival the greatest solemnity’.14 It was meant to celebrate ‘the memory of our internal regeneration’, and to encourage local communities to celebrate the state and the head of state. It was then as much an exercise in state building as it was an exercise in the cult of the personality.15 The creation of a feast day of St Napoleon combined the religious obedience of Napoleon’s subjects with his own heroic cult.
Anonymous, Saint Napoléon Officier romain, Martyr (St Napoleon, Roman officer, martyr), no date. One of the few iconographic pieces from the Empire depicting St Napoleon. On the left-hand side is a frame containing an image of the martyr in prison.
The Feast of St Napoleon was celebrated every year till the end of the regime, and always followed the same pattern – a religious ceremony at Notre Dame, public games, bunting, illuminations. The celebrations were low-key; the most outlandish public display occurred during the inaugural official celebration in Paris when an illuminated star nine metres in diameter was hoisted from the towers of Notre Dame, but even that was tame by the standards of the day.16 This modesty is possibly why they do not appear to have generated much enthusiasm,17 and why the day was usually set aside for laying the first stones of public works and monuments.18 Plays, poems and pamphlets – homages to Napoleon – all lent weight to the idea that this was a national feast day to honour the man responsible for dragging France back from the political abyss that was the Revolution.19 ‘The season of tears is past,’ declared one pamphlet, ‘the Angels, protectors of this nation, have made a clear sky shine over it; they have dissipated, for ever, those horrible clouds that contained death within them; they have turned off the thunder, closed the tombs, and have delivered peace and happiness to France.’20 It would not be the last time that an author drew a parallel between the heavens and Napoleon, but this does not mean to say that it had much of an impact on the imaginations of those who were called on to celebrate it. On the contrary, the invention of a St Napoleon exasperated rather than pleased Catholics in the Empire outside France, and its substitution for the Assumption was to prove a two-edged sword. When relations between the imperial state and the Church were good – and they were for a short while – then things played in Napoleon’s favour. When relations turned sour, priests often used the occasion if not to preach against Napoleon, then to preach instead about the Virgin Mary.21 In Belgium and in Italy, some clergy sidelined the new festival and continued discreetly to celebrate the Assumption.22 It was a risky business; priests who openly flouted imperial edicts could be arrested and could have their churches closed.
‘He is the One God Created’
Napoleon went a step further, using religion to lay the basis for what would become a personal cult. In 1806, he decided to introduce an imperial catechism, which was meant to render religious instruction uniform throughout the Empire, and which children were required to recite at Sunday schools from May 1806; it was never approved by the pope. Napoleon rewrote parts of the old catechism, and included the following remarkable clauses:
Q. – Are there not particular reasons that should attach us more strongly to Napoleon I, our Emperor?
A. – Yes, for he is the one God created in difficult circumstances in order to re-establish public worship and the holy religion of our fathers, and in order to become its protector. He has restored and preserved public order, by his profound and active wisdom; he defends the State by his powerful arm; he has become the anointed of the Lord, by the consecration he received from the Sovereign Pontiff, head of the universal Church.
Q. – What should we think of those who fail in their duty towards our Emperor?
A. – According to the apostle, St Paul, they would be resisting the order established by God Himself, and would render themselves worthy of eternal damnation.23
The Imperial Catechism was an attempt by Napoleon to define a subject’s duties by placing himself within the tradition of European monarchs anointed by God. As such, it represents a radical shift away from the secular nature of the French polity towards a more traditional notion of rule by divine right. Those who now failed in their duty towards Napoleon would find themselves facing ‘eternal damnation’.
However, not all Catholics were going to heed these imperatives. There was a good deal of passive resistance to the adoption of the Catechism both among the Church hierarchy and among the faithful.24 In Belgium, in the annexed Rhine departments and in Italy, its introduction in 1806 met with strong resistance, to the point where it had to be abandoned.25 Over time, a number of ‘Catechisms’ sprang up in reaction to the Imperial Catechism. In Spain, for example, a Catecismo civil (Citizens’ catechism) was published in 1808, distributed in hundreds of thousands of copies, and translated into almost every European language.26 Not long afterwards, the Prussian poet and playwright Heinrich von Kleist wrote a strongly anti-Napoleonic Katechismus der Deutschen (Germans’ catechism).27
Q. – Where do I find it, this Germany of which you speak, and where does it lie?
A. – Here, my father. – Do not confuse me.
Q. – Where?
A. – On the map.
Q. – Yes, on the map! – This map is from the year 1805. – Don’t you know what happened in the year 1805 when the Treaty of Pressburg was concluded?
A. – After the treaty, Napoleon, the Corsican Emperor, laid waste to it through an act of violence.
Q. – Well? And yet it exists all the same?
The Bonapartes in Europe
At the end of December 1805, while Napoleon was in Munich awaiting the ratification of peace with Austria, he sent a missive to Joseph that was clearly meant as an order. He intended
, he informed his brother, to take over the Kingdom of Naples and Joseph was being named commander-in-chief of the Army of Naples. On receiving the letter, Joseph had forty-eight hours to leave Paris for Rome.28 He himself could not be there in person, Napoleon wrote, because affairs in Paris would keep him occupied. The directive surprised Joseph; there was a good deal of conjecture in Paris at the time about whether his departure for Italy was to be seen as a disgrace or a promotion.29 Certainly, there were rumours that he was going to be crowned king – this was about the time Napoleon was negotiating with Holland to have Louis installed as its king – but given that he had refused the Italian throne, the Neapolitan throne would have had little attraction for Joseph. For the moment it was a military posting; Joseph was promoted to the rank of general for the occasion and given the unusual title of ‘Lieutenant of the Emperor’.30 Joseph was meant to win his kingdom at the head of an army.
The Kingdom of Naples was ruled by King Ferdinand IV, married to Maria Carolina, daughter of the Empress Maria Theresa.31 She hated the French for what they had done to her younger sister, Marie-Antoinette, and vowed to crush anything that smacked of revolution. Tensions between the French Republic and the Neapolitan House of Bourbon, in other words, went back some way. While Napoleon was engaged in campaigning against Austria and Russia, Ferdinand reluctantly signed a treaty in which he agreed to remain neutral. That promise was fleeting. Under the influence of his prime minister, the English-born Sir John Acton, and no doubt with a little prodding from Maria Carolina, Ferdinand allowed an Anglo-Russian expeditionary force to land in the Bay of Naples in November 1805.32 As a result of what Napoleon considered a betrayal, he decided to intervene. This was not, it should be underlined, the first time the French had tried to control the kingdom. In 1799, the Neapolitan Bourbons were chased from their home and a short-lived (from January to June of that year) Parthenopean Republic was set up that, if it was not under French control, was entirely dependent on a French armed presence for its existence.33 The Republic was overthrown by a counter-revolution and those who had supported it were brutally murdered.
Napoleon used the breach of neutrality as an excuse to invade and conquer.34 Contemporaries like Nelson had predicted it years before; Napoleon had been thinking about such an invasion for some time; northern and central Italy were already firmly under French control; by occupying Naples he would have the whole peninsula. The advantages that would ensue were enormous: he would be able to eliminate Naples as a centre of French émigré activity; and he would be able to exclude the British from Italy and use the ports to help rebuild his navy. Besides, he had not entirely given up on his plans to dominate the Mediterranean and to invade Egypt again. There was the illusion too that Naples was rich since it was one of the largest cities in Europe with a population of over 550,000 people. In reality, it was socially and economically backward. It has been calculated, for example, that there were more than 100,000 ecclesiastics living in the kingdom, approximately one for every fifty inhabitants.35
Francois Pascal Simon, Baron Gerard, Portrait de Joseph Bonaparte, roi d’Espagne (Joseph Bonaparte, King of Spain), after 1808.
The temptation, then, to drag Naples into the modern era and to unlock its wealth was too great. Days before Napoleon informed Joseph that he was being sent to Naples, even before French troops had marched south, he issued a proclamation from Vienna’s Schönbrunn Palace declaring that the ‘dynasty of Naples has ceased to reign’.36 The expedition to Naples, with Joseph nominally in charge, was meant to oust the Bourbons and replace them with a prince of his own House. ‘You,’ he told Joseph, ‘if that suits; another if it does not at all suit.’37 Napoleon, in other words, does not seem to have cared whether Joseph took up the offer or not. Joseph accepted. We do not know why; there is nothing in his letters or memoirs that indicate what he was thinking, and his biographers are surprisingly silent on this point. We can assume that discussions of a kind went on behind the scenes between the two brothers, especially around the sticking point that decided Joseph to renounce the throne of Italy in 1805, namely, his right to the French succession. But there are no records of those negotiations. It is possible that Napoleon simply confronted Joseph with an ultimatum: accept the Neapolitan throne or lose everything.38 At the end of March 1806, Napoleon conferred on him the title of ‘King of Naples and Sicily’; he retained the French title ‘Grand Elector’ and his rights of succession.39 It was a watershed moment in the creation of a ‘Grand Empire’, a phrase that was used for the first time in Joseph’s succession.40
Joseph was not the only member of the Bonaparte family to benefit from the creation of the Empire. In May 1806, rumours were flying around Paris and Amsterdam that Louis would be made King of Holland. This did indeed occur the following month, but not without intense and public political discussions in Holland about the transformation of the two-centuries-old Republic into a monarchy, a good deal more intense than what had occurred in France in 1804.41 If Napoleon offered Louis the Dutch throne it was in part because no other member of his family could fill the post. Lucien was out of favour and would not re-enter the family fold; Jérôme was only twenty-one years of age, too young and too inexperienced to take up a position of such responsibility; Joseph was already ensconced in Italy, as was Napoleon’s stepson, Eugène. The only male member of the family not yet to have an important post, Murat, was soon to become Grand Duke of Cleves and Berg, but he could hardly take precedence over Napoleon’s brother. Louis too hesitated before accepting the position, but he gave way in the end to Napoleon’s insistence, not however without a public humiliation.
A witness tells of a curious family scene that took place at Saint-Cloud on 6 June 1806, the day after the official ceremony proclaiming Louis king.42 Louis’ son, Napoleon Charles, nicknamed the Petit-Chou (little darling), who would die the following year of croup, had learnt a fable that he performed before Napoleon and his guests seated at table for lunch. The fable in question was Aesop’s ‘The Frogs Who Desired a King’. Napoleon thought the story was hilarious, and in doing so revealed a great deal about what he really thought of his brother. Frogs were traditionally used to caricature the Dutch, but in this fable they demanded a king of Jupiter, who sent them instead a piece of wood. When they complained, he sent them a crane, which proceeded to eat them all. The allusion was clear, at least to Napoleon: the Dutch were stupid and they were about to get a king who would do his bidding. As for Louis, Napoleon did not appear to set much store by him. ‘Everyone knows’, he wrote shortly before annexing Holland in 1810, ‘that without me, you are nothing.’43
Charles Howard Hodges, Louis Napoleon, King of Holland from 1808–1810, 1809.
Louis had traits in common with his elder brother – he was rather a dreamer, a bit melancholic and maladroit – but he was by no means as dynamic. He had a reputation for being lazy (not entirely deserved), was a hypochondriac and had a love of sumptuousness that he shared with some of his other siblings (but not Napoleon). Napoleon had a sincere fondness for him, while Louis admired, even imitated, Napoleon in just about everything he did, including his physique (much like Napoleon, Louis was becoming flabby and overweight). For a while, Louis attempted to maintain his brother’s work rhythm – getting up at five in the morning, holding audiences from seven to nine, Council of State from nine to twelve and so on – but he had to abandon that schedule after a year as his health deteriorated. Louis, in other words, took to heart his functions as King of Holland and worked (sometimes) selflessly for his new subjects, attempting to fit in with the Dutch as much as possible, trying to win them over after a cool reception on his arrival in 1806. He had a tough job of it, not least because he was in a sort of constitutional limbo, having been declared king while the Dutch republican constitution was left largely unchanged, and also because of the demands placed on him by his brother.44 Napoleon tried to control Louis’ life in much the same way that he tried to control the lives of all his siblings as well as those in his close entourage. It was on
ly once he became king that Louis began to stand up for himself, to grow into his role, to take on his brother, to argue with him, even to reply to his letters in a sarcastic tone. This newfound independence irritated Napoleon greatly and from that moment things began to sour.
When Napoleon rebuked his brothers and sisters, which was often, he did not generally hold back. ‘I am angry,’ he would write, or ‘you understand nothing about the administration’ or again, ‘You are going about this like a scatterbrain [un étourdi].’45 Within a short time of Joseph’s arriving in Naples, Napoleon was already accusing him of being too soft, insisting on more vigour in his dealings with the people of Naples, and suggesting that he was a ‘do-nothing king’ (roi fainéant), an evident and not particularly flattering allusion to the Merovingian kings of the Middle Ages.46 The same tone can be seen in his letters to Louis, whom he dubbed a ‘prefect king’ (roi préfet).47 One of the first pieces of advice Napoleon offered his brother was not to be kind. ‘A prince who in the first year of his reign is considered to be kind, is a prince who is mocked in his second year.’48 Even when his siblings did carry out his orders to the letter, Napoleon’s reactions were often ungracious.