DECLARATION OF THE EMPIRE[29]
[Footnote 29: See in particular the memoirs of Miot de
Melito, Pasquier, Segur, Thiebault, Marmont, Lafayette,
Savary, Remusat, Rapp, Thibaudeau, and Bourrienne; the
Souvenirs of Macdonald and Chaptal; and the Lettres inedites.
Also, De Bausset: Cour de Napoleon; Masson: Josephine,
Imperatrice et Reine; Aulard: Revolution Francaise; Remacle:
Relations secretes des agents de Louis XVIII a Paris sous le
Consulat.]
Bonaparte's Principles -- His Comprehension of French Conditions
-- Meaning of Enghien's Murder -- The Dynasties of Europe -- The
Possibilities of Hereditary Power -- The New France -- Desire for
a Dynasty -- Suggestions of Monarchy -- The Empire Proposed --
The New Constitution -- Imperial State -- The New Nobility --
Device of the Empire -- The New Court -- The Plebiscite.
Step by step, laboriously and painfully, by guile and prudence, in the
exercise of consummate genius as soldier and politician, Napoleon
Bonaparte had now climbed to the pinnacle of revolutionary power.
Insubordinate as a subaltern under a worn-out system, he found for his
soaring ambition no fitting sphere in the country of his birth, the
only fatherland he ever knew; and in that limited field he was both
ineffectual as an agitator and unsuccessful as a revolutionary. But
with keen insight he studied and apprehended the greater movement as
it developed in France. Standing ever at the parting of the ways, and
indifferent to principle, he carefully considered each path, and
finally chose the one which seemed likeliest to guide his footsteps
toward the goal of his ambition. Fertile in resources, he strove
always to construct a double plan, and in the failure of one
expedient passed easily to another. His career had been marked by many
blunders, and he had often been brought to a stand on the verge of
some abyss which threatened failure and ruin; yet, like the driver of
a midnight train, he kept the headlight of caution trimmed and
burning. Careless of the dangers abounding behind the walls of
revolutionary darkness which hedged his track, he ever paused before
those immediately confronting him, and sometimes retreated far to find
a hazardless circuit. Brumaire was almost the only occasion of his
larger life on which, unwary, he had come in full career upon an open
chasm. Fate being propitious, he was saved. Lucien, with presence of
mind, opened the throttle, and, by releasing the pent-up enthusiasm of
the soldiers at the critical instant, safely drove the machine across
a toppling bridge.
Sobered for the moment by contemplating a past danger which had
threatened annihilation, and by the crowding responsibilities of the
future, the First Consul put into practical operation many important
revolutionary ideals. But in this process he took full advantage of
the state of French society to make himself indispensable to the
continuance of French life on its new path. By the parade of civil
liberty and a restored social order he so minimized the constitutional
side of his government as to erect it into a virtual tyranny. The
self-styled commonwealth, with a chief magistrate claiming to hold his
office as a public trust, was quite ready to be launched as a liberal
empire under a ruler who in reality held the highest power as a
possession.
[Sidenote: 1804]
The murder of the Duc d'Enghien was virtually a notification of this
fact to all the dynasties of Europe as well as to the French nation.
Their behavior was conclusive evidence that they understood it as
such. Death was the fate destined not merely for the intestine and
personal enemies of the First Citizen, but for the foreign foe, prince
or peasant, who should conspire against him whom the French delighted
to honor. Had the continental powers been ready for war, it is quite
possible that they would have made the execution of a Bourbon, and he
the most popular of his line, the ground of immediate action. But they
were far from ready. When a few days later the "Moniteur" made known
the high probability of what is now a certainty, that Drake and Smith,
British diplomatic agents in central Europe, were compromised
hopelessly in the conspiracy to kill the chief magistrate of France,
the bitterness of all classes, even the aristocracy, in France was
assuaged. Great Britain could do nothing officially except to knit up
a coalition and strengthen her forces. The Elector of Bavaria
dismissed Drake, the British envoy at his court, as a base
conspirator; the Duke of Wuertemberg congratulated Bonaparte on his
escape from assassins; the Holy Roman Emperor at Vienna kept silence
while his ministers expressed sympathy for France; the King of Prussia
and Alexander of Russia exchanged letters of reciprocal regard and
awaited the British subventions to complete their armaments: but they
gave no offense in any official way. The Pope exhibited his grief
without restraint, but uttered no remonstrance, and the court of
Naples was of course indifferent. There was a general putting on of
mourning garb in the high circles of Europe; Louis XVIII sent back his
decoration of the Golden Fleece to Madrid because Bonaparte had
received and retained its insignia, and the dethroned Gustavus of
Sweden returned to Frederick William the badges of the Red Eagle for a
similar reason. Pretenders may indulge their sensibilities as
hard-working kings dare not. It is entirely possible that Bonaparte
believed himself, and a dynasty proceeding from his loins, to be the
best, if not the only, conservators of the new France; that he
conceived of a purely French empire which should be the depository for
that land of all that had been gained by the Revolution; and that he
believed he could overcome the inertia of the tremendous speed with
which he had entered upon his career of single rule. But it is not
probable; for no one knew the French better, appreciating as he did
their patriotism and their passion for leadership among nations. It
was because the Bourbons had failed to represent these qualities that
reconstructed France despised the Bourbons; it was because the new
France saw their incarnation in Bonaparte that it had assisted him to
climb. He must have known very well that, having mounted so high, he
would be compelled to mount still higher.
He also understood the dynastic exclusiveness of Europe. In a sense
the houses of Hanover, of Hohenzollern, and of Savoy were parvenus in
the councils of royalty; yet they were ancient princely stocks, and
their accession to supreme power had not shocked popular feeling; the
dubious and blood-stained title of the Czar did not diminish his
influence, for his succession was not more irregular than that of many
of his predecessors on the semi-oriental Russian throne. But to
substitute for the Bourbons, the oldest divine-right dynasty of
Europe, and in the enlightened West, a citizen king of low descent,
who based his claims on popular suffrage, was to hurl defiance at a
system than which to millions of minds none other was conceivable. To
reach the goal fighting was not a voluntary choice, but an absolute
necessity; for the French must be left in no doubt but that their
popular sovereign was quite as able to assert his peerage among kings
as any one of royal lineage and ecclesiastical unction would be.
These were the conditions under which the bark of liberal empire was
to set sail. It does not seem possible that any pilot could have saved
her amid such typhoons as she must encounter. Bonaparte was more
likely to succeed than any other, and for years his craft was taut and
saucy; but she had no friendly harbors in which to refit, she rode out
one storm only to enter another more violent, and at last even the
supernal powers of the great captain failed him. Even at the outset
the omens were not as propitious as they appeared to be, since the
defiance contained in Enghien's murder was better understood abroad
than at home. For the moment the mistake, which in the long run was an
element in Napoleon's undoing, appeared of little importance. The
French public began almost immediately to discuss whether the consular
power should not be made hereditary, and, within a week after its
occurrence, relegated the "Enghien affair" to apparent oblivion.
For this there were numerous reasons. The discontent in the army
virtually disappeared with Moreau's disgrace, and for long thereafter
both generals and men were entirely docile. The Bourbons returned to
their conspiracies, but so ineffectively that neither the cabinets of
Europe nor the French people felt any active interest. Royalism in
France was thus temporarily crushed. The France of 1803 was the new
France. Her church had been reconstructed; her army was devoted to
Bonaparte as the man of the nation; her revolution had been partly
pruned and partly warped into the forms of a personal government, her
laws revised and codified, her old orders of chivalry replaced by a
new one, her financial administration purified and strengthened, her
educational system renovated, her social and family life given new
direction by the stringent regulation of testamentary disposition, her
government centralized--in short, the whole structure, from foundation
to turret, had been repaired, restored, strengthened, and given its
modern form.
The people, composed of successive alluvia of immigrants and
conquerors since the days of Julius Caesar, had been thoroughly unified
by the spirit of the French Revolution. They were convinced that the
gains of the Revolution would be better secured by making hereditary
the power of a house which must represent the principles of that
event. All but a few sincerely believed that patriotism for the new
France was in large measure only another name and form for devotion to
the man who presided at its birth and claimed to be its progenitor.
For some time past the phrase "French empire" had been used by orators
and writers to designate the majesty of its institutions. As early as
May, 1802, the Austrian ambassador heard the First Consul spoken of as
"Emperor of the Gauls," and in March, 1803, an English gentleman in
Paris recorded the same expression in his journal. There was,
therefore, neither shock nor surprise anywhere in the nation when on
March twenty-seventh, 1804, the senate presented to the First Consul
an address proposing in the name of the people that he should take
measures "to keep for the sons what he had made for the fathers." This
was the moment, presumably, of Bonaparte's greatest unpopularity--not
a week after the execution of the Duc d'Enghien; while yet the
blundering trial of Moreau was incomplete, and his friends were
representing their hero as the victim of Bonaparte's hate; before
Georges had been condemned, and while Pichegru was yet alive. Yet all
expected the event, most desired it, partly for the reason given by
the senate, partly for the dramatic effect, partly because they wanted
neither the Bourbons nor the Terror again. The senate was now known as
the tool of the First Consul; Fouche was second to none of his
colleagues in power and he thirsted for a renewal of favor, imperial
if that was the desired label. In spite of changes, the tribunate
still retained the national respect: it was desirable that the formal
initiative should come from this body. During the weeks which elapsed
between the address of the senate and the end of April, Bonaparte had
made certain that neither Austria nor Prussia would oppose, and that
army and people were willing. Indeed the fate of Moreau had, as the
officers all felt, cast a limelight on the chances of insubordination,
and had illuminated into a dazzling brilliance the possibilities of
complaisance. The efforts of historians to prove that France did not
want the empire are all failures. Every new contemporary document
which sees the light of day contains more or less to prove the
contrary. The French of any intelligence understood the Roman meaning
of empire and indeed it was easily comprehensible. They had had long
experience of the interests of all in the charge of an oligarchy; that
type of democracy had brought them to the verge of ruin since nowhere
could responsibility be fixed or penalties be inflicted. But the
interests of all in the charge of one supernal man was a conception so
plain as to be almost tangible, and to a nation distracted by
revolution, most attractive. It was an imperial democracy which they
desired, which they got, and which for a time retained its character.
On the twenty-fifth, therefore, the First Consul seized once more the
shield of the Revolution, and told the senate that he had heard with
interest their plan "to insure the triumph of equality and public
liberty," and would be glad to know their thoughts without reserve. "I
should like on July fourteenth of this year to say to the French
people: 'Fifteen years ago by a spontaneous movement you ran to arms,
you secured liberty, equality, glory. To-day these chiefest treasures
of the nation, assured beyond a doubt, are sheltered from
every storm; they are preserved for you and your children.'"
On April thirtieth, a member of the tribunate who had been richly
bribed brought in a complete project. In the interval a committee had
inquired what title the future incumbent of the new hereditary office
would like to have--consul, stadholder, or emperor. His prudent choice
fell on the last. The word has acquired a new significance in our age;
but then it still had the old Roman meaning. It propitiated the
professional pride which had taken the place of republicanism in the
army, and while plainly abolishing radical democracy, it also bade
defiance to absolute royalism. Accordingly, the tribunes voted that
Napoleon Bonaparte be intrusted with the government of France as
emperor, and that the imperial power be declared hereditary. There was
only one man who dared to interpose his negative vote--Napoleon's
earliest protector, the veteran republican Carnot. He admitted that
there was already a temporary dictator, and that the republican
constitutions of the country had been unstable, but he thought that
with peace would come wisdom and permanency, as in the United States.
Bonaparte was a man of virtue and talent, to be sure, but what about
his descendants? Commodus was the son of Marcus Aurelius. Whatever
might be the splendor of a man's services, there were bounds to public
gratitude, and these bounds had been reached; to overstep them would
destroy the liberty which the First Consul had helped to restore. But
if the nation desired what he conscientiously opposed, he would retire
to private life, and unqualifiedly obey its will.
The legislative body was quickly summoned to a special meeting, and,
according to the constitution, made the resolutions law by its
approval. As soon as decency would permit, a new constitution was laid
before the council of state, discussed under Bonaparte's direction,
and sent down to the senate for consideration. On May eighteenth the
paper was adopted in that body with four dissenting voices, including
that of the Abbe Sieyes, who hated all charters not of his own making.
On the same day the decree of the senate constituting the Empire was
carried to the First Consul at St. Cloud, where it was duly approved
by him, and was formally promulgated. It was found that the difficulty
concerning heredity had been evaded by giving to Napoleon, but to none
of his successors, the right of adoption; and should there be neither
a natural nor an adoptive heir, by settling the succession first in
the family of Joseph, then in that of Louis, both of whom were
declared to be imperial princes. All chance was thus removed for the
return of a dynasty likely to disturb the existing conditions of
property.
The changes in the constitution were radical, and many of them were
not made public except as they were put into operation. The tribunate
was untouched; but the legislature was divided into three sections,
juristic, administrative, and financial. Its members regained a
partial liberty of speech, and might again discuss, but only with
closed doors, the measures laid before them. The senate became a house
of lords. Six great dignitaries, sixteen military grandees called
marshals, and a number of the highest administrative officials were
added to its numbers. Referring to the imperial state of the great
German whom the French style Charlemagne, the imperial officers of
Napoleon were designated, some by titles from Karling history, such as
the "Great Elector," the "Arch-chancellor of the Empire," the
"Arch-chancellor of State," the "Arch-treasurer"; others by ancient
French designations, such as the "Constable" and the "High Admiral."
These, with the imperial princes, were to be addressed as
"Monseigneur," or "Your Highness," either "imperial" or "most serene,"
as the case might be. The Emperor himself was to be addressed as "Your
Majesty" or "Sire." His civil list was twenty-five million francs; the
income of each "arch" dignitary was a third of a million. Cambaceres
was made Chancellor; Lebrun, Treasurer; Joseph Bonaparte was appointed
Elector, and Louis, Constable; Fouche was reappointed Minister of
Police; Talleyrand remained Minister of Foreign Affairs. The heraldic
device chosen for the seal of the Napoleonic dynasty was the favorite
symbol of the Holy Roman Empire, an eagle "au vol"--that is, on the
wing.
There was nothing original in the idea of all this tawdry state except
the institution of the marshals, which was altogether so. In
prosperity this military hierarchy was a bulwark to the Empire, but in
adversity it proved a serious element of weakness. The list was
shrewdly chosen to assure the good will of the army. Jourdan, who as
consular minister had successfully pacified Piedmont, was named as
having been the victor of Fleurus in 1794; his republicanism was thus
both recalled and finally quenched. Berthier was rewarded for his
skill as chief of staff; Massena for his daring at Rivoli, his victory
at Zurich, his endurance at Genoa. Augereau, another converted
democrat, was remembered for Castiglione; Brune was appointed for his
campaign in Holland against the Duke of York; Davout for his Egyptian
laurels; Lannes and Ney for their bravery in many actions; Murat as
the great cavalry commander; Bessieres as chief of the guards;
Bernadotte, Soult, Moncey, and Mortier for reasons of policy and for
their general reputation.
The "lion couchant" had been suggested as the heraldic device of the
new Empire, but Napoleon scorned it. In all his preparations he
carefully distinguished between the "State," which was of course
France with its natural boundaries, and the "Empire," which was
evidently something more; the resting lion might typify the former,
the soaring eagle was clearly a device for the other, which, like the
realm of Charles the Great, was to know no "natural" obstacles in its
extension.
The most immediate sign of the new order was a changed life at the
Tuileries. The palace was thronged no longer with powerful but
maladroit persons who did not know how to advance, bow, and recede,
and who could not wear their elegant clothes with dignity; nor with
others who, more refined in their training, smiled condescendingly at
the imperfect manners of the former. A thorough court was organized
with careful supervision and rigid etiquette. Soon everybody could
behave with sufficient grace and dignity. Fesch was the Grand Almoner;
Duroc was Grand Marshal of the Palace; Talleyrand, Grand Chamberlain;
Berthier, Master of the Hounds; and Caulaincourt, Master of the Horse.
Many of the returned emigrants filled minor places of imperial
dignity. The perfection of ceremonial was assured by the appointment,
to regulate all etiquette, of Segur, once minister of Louis XVI to
Russia. Everybody was expected to study the rules and be present at
numerous rehearsals. Mme. Campan, formerly a lady in waiting to Marie
Antoinette, was summoned to lend her assistance.
Finally the now traditional formality of seeking the popular approval
was not forgotten. To be sure, the question put was merely whether the
imperial succession should remain in the Emperor's family. The reply
was a thunderous yes; there being, out of three and a half million
votes all told, only two and a half thousand in the negative. It was a
sign of the times that among the latter were those of all but three of
the Paris lawyers.