Lefebvre Georges. Napoleon

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the pacification of france and europe (1799–1802) 124

chance. ‘There is not one among them who does not fancy himself as

deserving as I,’ Bonaparte would say. They all put themselves forward as repub-

licans, but their civism was open to great doubt. They spoke of dividing France

into separate commands; had they succeeded, they would have soon fought

among themselves and the country would have fallen into a state of anarchy.

Given the fact of military dictatorship, a single dictator was the only logical

possibility, and the French nation, on this score too, endorsed Bonaparte.

Foremost among the generals hostile to Bonaparte were Moreau and

Bernadotte. Moreau was deﬁ nitely on bad terms with his rival. His wife and

mother-in-law even urged him to break off all social contact with Bonaparte;

the Moniteur , for its part, insinuated that Moreau had been malfeasant in

Germany. But he was even more indecisive in civilian matters than in mili-

tary life. Bernadotte, on the other hand, was more energetic, and as

commander of the western forces at Rennes, he would have been in a posi-

tion to issue a manifesto. Actually, in spite of his blustering ways, he was

much too concerned for his own interests not to have carefully weighed the

risk involved in such an act. As minister of war, he had missed his chance to

seize power in the summer of Year VII, and circumstances now were much

less favourable. Before he would compromise himself, he insisted that the

Senate take the ﬁ rst steps. In Paris, from March to June, numerous secret

conspiratorial meetings were held, and certain civilians were sounded out,

including Fouché. Meanwhile, three ofﬁ cers were arrested on 7 May, one of

whom was General Donnadieu. On 20 May General Simon, Bernadotte’s

chief of staff, secretly despatched two inﬂ ammatory proclamations to the

army, attacking Bonaparte. These fell into the hands of Dubois, the prefect of

police in Paris, who rejoiced at having caught his minister napping. Fouché

then arrested General Simon and his accomplices in the ‘libel plot’. Bonaparte

hushed the matter up for he did not want it said that the army was against

him. The ofﬁ cers in question were kept in prison without trial; the Eighty-

second Regiment of the line was shipped out to San Domingo and remained

there permanently; and the generals Richepanse and Decaen were sent to

the colonies – Lannes to Lisbon, and Brune to Constantinople. General

Lahorie was retired and General Lecourbe was put on half-pay. Bernadotte

continued to be spared out of consideration for his wife Désirée Clary,

Bonaparte’s former ﬁ ancée whom he had abandoned for Josephine, but he

nevertheless lost his post. Nothing ever did more to heighten Bonaparte’s

so-called anti-militarism, which was only a distrust of his former comrades.

This wariness dated from his famous declaration to the Conseil d’État on

4 May 1802, when he said, ‘Pre-eminence lies incontestably with the civilian

authority.’ And on this occasion, he regarded himself as such. Politicians

125bonaparte consul for life

who found themselves compromised were advised by Fouché to take cover.

Madame de Staël left Paris for her château at Coppet in Switzerland, and

when, in 1803, she attempted to return, Bonaparte ordered her expulsion

from France.

Bonaparte’s misgivings could not have been too serious, for in no way did

they slow down the course of events. The Peace of Amiens, signed on

25 March 1802, acted like a signal. In less than two months, from 8 April to

19 May, the regime underwent a complete change: the Republic was trans-

formed into a monarchy, the counter-revolution was ofﬁ cially won over, and

the power of the notables was increased. On 18 Germinal, Year X (8 April

1802), the law comprising the Concordat and the Organic Articles was passed

by the Corps Législatif. Ten days later the performance of a Te Deum at Notre-

Dame celebrated the reconciliation of the Revolution with the Roman Church.

This was followed on 6 Floréal (26 April) by a senatus consultum (actually

prepared two weeks earlier in a special council) granting amnesty to emigres

provided they returned to France before 1 Vendémiaire, Year XI (23 September

1802), and agreed to swear ﬁ delity to the Constitution. Only the most

compromised émigrés, a number not exceeding one thousand, were to be

denied amnesty. On 11 Floréal (1 May) a law reorganising the system of

public education authorised the establishment of lycées . It was hoped that a

distribution of grants would promote the growth of a body of civil servants

and of the professional classes in a direction favourable to the government.

Then, on 29 Floréal (19 May), a law created the Legion of Honour. It was to

consist of ﬁ fteen ‘cohorts’, each numbering 350 legionaries appointed by

Bonaparte from among the notables, both civil and military. A grant of two

hundred thousand francs to each ‘cohort’, defrayed out of the biens nationaux ,

held the promise of salaries, lodgings and convalescent homes for legionaries

who in turn swore ‘to dedicate themselves to the service of the Republic’, ‘to

combat . . . all attempts at restoring the feudal order’ and ‘to unite . . . in the

preservation of liberty and equality’. The Legion of Honour was indeed a

host of meritorious citizens, and not a national decoration, as its members

were not even given a distinctive medal at this time. Finally, between 8 and

14 May, the rule of Bonaparte was transformed into the Life Consulate.

Although the capitulation of the Senate and the purge of the Tribunate

robbed the Brumairian bourgeoisie of all hope, a certain amount of resistance

continued to make itself felt. The Legion of Honour was harshly criticised in

the Conseil d’État, and the law by which it was created passed in the Corps

Législatif by a vote of only 166 to 110. As for the Constitution, Bonaparte

succeeded in overthrowing it, but only by means of successive violations of

his own authority and with the collaboration of the monarchist-minded

the pacification of france and europe (1799–1802) 126

members of his entourage – Cambacérès, Roederer, Talleyrand and Lucien. On

6 May the Treaty of Amiens was sent to the Senate, and that body was asked to

determine what token of the ‘nation’s gratitude’ could most ﬁ ttingly be

bestowed upon the First Consul; but on 8 May, when a senator proposed

consulship for life, the assembly contented itself by passing a resolution that

‘Napoleon Bonaparte’ be re-elected for an additional period of ten years. This,

incidentally, marked the ﬁ rst appearance of Bonaparte’s famous ﬁ rst name in

ofﬁ cial documents.

The attempt to circumvent the constitution having proved a failure,

Bonaparte, acting upon the advice of Cambacérès, picked up the thread

again by replying, on 9 May, that he would accept the Senate’s generous

offer ‘if the will of the people’ directed him to do so. A special council then

drafted two questions which were to be submitted to the French people for

a vote. Framed by Roederer, the resolution proposed, in addition to the Life

Consulate, that Bonaparte be granted the right to designate his own successor.

Although there was nothing to justify such a procedure legally, the Conseil

d’État, to which the matter was referred, passed the resolution; Fouché did

not attend the session, and ﬁ ve or six councillors absented themselves.

Presented with the draft referendum, Bonaparte cautiously struck out

Roederer’s provision for the succession. The Tribunate and Corps Législatif,

having no power to intervene in the revision of the constitution, approved

the plebiscite on the Life Consulate. The Senate, thus pushed aside, ironically

saw itself charged with the task of counting the popular vote which, as in

Year VIII, was cast publicly. On 14 Thermidor (2 August) the Senate

proclaimed Bonaparte Consul for Life.

Without wasting any time, Bonaparte dictated a new constitution which

was approved by the Conseil d’État and the Senate, without discussion, on

4 August. One of its articles empowered the First Consul to present for the

Senate’s approval his choice of a candidate for the succession. This could be

done by testament, or for that matter, at any time. In the event that the

Senate did not agree, Bonaparte could name two other candidates, seriatim , of

whom the third only could not be rejected. Bonaparte had thus arrogated to

himself a right which he had declined to ask from the people. The difﬁ cul-

ties initially inherent in choosing a likely successor have often been cited as

an explanation for this tortuous course of events. As long as Bonaparte

remained childless, Joseph and Lucien quarrelled over the succession as if,

Lucien remarked, it had been ‘their own late father’s inheritance’. To have

favoured a Brumairian would have incurred the bitter resentment of others.

The problem might have found its solution in Charles, son of Louis Bonaparte

and Hortense de Beauharnais. Napoleon had in fact contemplated the

127bonaparte consul for life

possibility of eventually adopting a nephew from that marriage; but Charles

was not born until 10 October. It would therefore seem that, notwith-

standing his subjection of the press and the assemblies, Bonaparte saw

danger in submitting to a plebiscite a proposal altogether too monarchical.

Consequently, he took by force what he had not dared solicit. It has also

been argued that the men of the Revolution, who had linked its destiny to

that of Bonaparte and who looked upon him as the only man capable of

defending the natural frontiers, found themselves logically obliged to make

him a monarch in order to obtain the stability to which they aspired. But, as

Thibaudeau foresaw only too well, the Life Consulate and the hereditary

succession were no more than illusory guarantees. Bonaparte’s rule – essen-

tially a military dictatorship founded on victories – had no real need of

these measures as long as he remained triumphant on the ﬁ eld of battle. As

Bonaparte himself remarked, ‘What meaning would these senatus consulta have

if ever the Coalition powers entered Paris?’ And once dead, who would care

about his will? Had the testament of Louis XIV ever been respected? France,

which revered him, and the Brumairians, who were his prisoners, yielded

to his demands. Neither the glory that comes from being the nation incar-

nate and the foremost of its citizens would gratify Bonaparte, who alone

conceived the desire to become king, without even deceiving himself about

the ephemeral nature of his improvised greatness.

Still, it must be noted that the republican bourgeoisie, while a party to his

demands, continued to remind him discreetly of the pact made in Brumaire.

Roederer himself, among others, had spoken of important bodies repre-

senting the predominant social interests which would be linked to the

government and given constitutional guarantees; no doubt this meant

granting the assemblies, and especially the Senate, some real control. These

republicans also pointed out that the executive power was now strong

enough to restore to the citizenry a certain degree of liberty. Chabot de

l’Allier made a timid allusion to this necessity when he presented Bonaparte

with the law on the plebiscite (it was the same Chabot who had moved in

the Tribunate to reward the First Consul on behalf of the nation): ‘The great-

ness and muniﬁ cence of Bonaparte’s conceptions will not let him depart

from the liberal principles which made the Revolution and established the

Republic. His devotion is too great ever to permit him to blemish with abuses

of power the immense glory which he has already acquired.’ The Idéologue

Camille Jordan expressed his thoughts more plainly in The True Meaning of the

Plebiscite for the Life Consulate , a pamphlet which was promptly conﬁ scated.

The master would not forgive. Fouché fell into disgrace on 26 Fructidor

(13 September), and his ministry was reattached to the Department of

the pacification of france and europe (1799–1802) 128

Justice. Roederer was eventually deprived of both the presidency of his

section in the Conseil d’État and of his direction over matters of public

education. For the time being, Bonaparte emphasised the necessity for dicta-

torship: in England, the opposition had a place in the constitutional order; in

France, it was to become the province of the counter-revolutionaries and the

Jacobins. Now that he had restored to the former their civil rights, Bonaparte

could fairly remind the republicans that a return to elections would not

necessarily beneﬁ t them. ‘Government must remain in the hands of the men

of the Revolution; that is the only thing they have.’ Bonaparte’s collaborators

did not contest this, but they pointed out that it had been their understanding

that they would be sharing the business of government with him.

The senatus consultum of 16 Thermidor, also known as the Constitution of

Year X, reduced the extent of their participation instead. The First Consul

invested himself with the power to make treaties and grant pardons, with

the exclusive right to designate candidates to the Senate, the Court of

Cassation, the ofﬁ ce of second and third consul, and to select justices of the

peace from among candidates proposed by the electors. Above all, he

reserved the right to deﬁ ne or interpret the constitution by organic senatus

consulta . This would later permit the establishment of the Empire to proceed

without any of the difﬁ culties which had been incurred in the creation of

the Life Consulate. He also assumed the right to suspend the constitution,

dissolve the Tribunate and Corps Législatif, and annul decisions of the courts

by regular senatus consulta . Drafted by a privy council which he created and

whose members he appointed before each sitting, these senatus consulta

provided him with the sole power to initiate legislation. The Senate, invested

with this exorbitant authority, was appropriately reconstituted. Although its

members continued to be co-opted, the First Consul was given the right to

present candidates for seats created by the Constitution of Year VIII and the

right to appoint forty additional senators directly. Presently, on 14 Nivôse,

Year XI (4 January 1803), Bonaparte secured their appointment. At the same

time, he created a sénatorerie in each of the administrative districts of France,

which were themselves based on the territorial jurisdiction of a Court of

Appeal. These sénatoreries were endowed with national lands and seigniorial

residences which Bonaparte bestowed upon the more compliant senators as

a bonus to their existing salaries. Finally, the new constitution authorised

senators to hold, in addition to their seats, ministerial positions and various

high government posts. The powers of the other assemblies, on the other

hand, were reduced. The Corps Législatif lost the right to hold regular

sessions and to elect its own president. The Tribunate was reduced to ﬁ fty

members, and a provision that condemned it to silence was incorporated in

129bonaparte consul for life

the constitution. The Conseil d’État yielded its precedence to the Senate, and

saw itself rivalled by the Privy Council. Although Bonaparte did not cease to

submit new laws in the Conseil d’État, he could now dispense with it and

legislate by senatus consulta .

Another major change was the abolition of the Listes de Notabilité , which the

Senate had only just published in March. Bonaparte’s pretext was the difﬁ -

culties which had been encountered in drawing them up, while in fact he

felt that they allowed too great a latitude of choice to the assemblies. No

doubt he also wished to please the notables by restoring to each départe-

ment its own body of representatives. He therefore instituted a system of

electoral colleges to take the place of the Listes de Notabilité . At its base, the

cantonal assembly, composed of all citizens in the canton, presented candi-

dates for the ofﬁ ce of justice of the peace and for seats on the municipal

councils. It also nominated the members of the district and departmental

colleges from among the six hundred most highly taxed citizens, so that the

tax rolls ﬁ nally appeared. The district colleges nominated two candidates for

each vacancy in the Tribunate and Corps Législatif; the colleges of the dépar-

tements nominated two candidates for each vacancy in the Corps Législatif

and Senate. The assemblies were thus made regionally representative. Since

the colleges were obliged to choose at least one of the two candidates

outside their own ranks, they were not completely oligarchical. The First

Consul exercised a powerful inﬂ uence on these colleges since he not only

appointed their presidents but could add ten members to the district college,

twenty to the departmental college, and he authorised public functionaries

to take part in their proceedings.

Given the fact that the members of the assemblies were chosen for life

terms, and that vacancies were not ﬁ lled until an assembly fell below a third

of its original number, elections were reduced to a minimum. Moreover,

until Year XII, notables who had recently been chosen to the communal lists

alone made up the cantonal assemblies, and the colleges which they in turn

constituted continued to function without change until the end of the

Empire. The monopoly of the notables was thus conﬁ rmed and even

strengthened. Hearken to Lucien as he lectured to the college of the départe-

ment of Seine on 24 March 1803: ‘The principles of our new electoral

law . . . are no longer founded on chimerical concepts but on the very basis

of society, property, which arouses in us a desire to preserve public order.

Today, the electoral privilege has by gradual and temperate means become

the exclusive prerogative of the most enlightened and civic-minded class of

our society.’ But in reality, it was to Bonaparte that this class would hence-

forth owe its place.

the pacification of france and europe (1799–1802) 130

BONAPARTE’S SOCIAL POLICY

The major enactments of Year X were not just limited to the extension of

Bonaparte’s personal power; they also foreshadowed the social schemes

which were taking shape in his mind. Speaking before the Conseil d’État,

Bonaparte lashed out against the individualistic society which had been

born out of the French Revolution. He characterised it as so many ‘grains of

sand’, and he stressed the necessity ‘to erect some pillars of granite upon the

soil of France’, so as to ‘give the French people a sense of civic direction’.

Plainly stated, Bonaparte wanted to create clusters of interests attached to

the regime, who, in return for advantages and honours, were expected to

secure the loyalty of the populace by virtue of their inﬂ uence upon the

wage-earning classes. This was tantamount to a revival of the kind of inter-

mediate or corporate bodies that had been prevalent under the ancien régime ,

with the added safeguard that they should no longer be able to oppose the

state or degenerate into oligarchies. Bonaparte cleverly pointed out that this

would directly beneﬁ t the bourgeoisie. He argued that ‘while we lack unity’,

the aristocracy was a block bonded by blood, class prejudice and ecclesias-

tical hierarchy, and that the Legion of Honour would serve ‘to bring together

the partisans of the Revolution’. The creation of these social bodies, however,

would be left to him and to him alone; the penal code even went so far as

to subject all organisations numbering more than twenty persons to his

authority. So it was perfectly clear to everyone that his power would grow.

The assemblies constituted one such body, the Legion of Honour another,

the electoral colleges yet another. Added to these was the newly swollen

bureaucracy, graded according to a table of ranks. Drawing initially from the

ﬁ nancial middle class, Bonaparte created, by a decree of 19 Germinal, Year

XI (9 April 1803), a new set of ofﬁ cials: the auditeurs .

Sixteen were appointed

at ﬁ rst, but this was only a beginning. They were attached to the ministries

and to the Conseil d’État and were to form the nucleus of a high administra-

tion free from ties with the Revolution or the ancien régime . Judges occupied

a place of honour in this scheme. Being poorly paid, they were drawn

perforce exclusively from the well-to-do middle class. The Constitution of

Year X gave them a hierarchy and a discipline that was professional. Ofﬁ cials

* These auditeurs were groomed for positions as future state councillors, judges and other

high administrative ofﬁ cials. As such, they provided an administrative link between the min-

isters and the Conseil d’État on the one hand, and the assemblies on the other. They were

charged with presenting reports to the meetings of the sections of the Conseil d’État. They

were also allowed to attend sittings of the general assemblies, but were denied the right to

speak other than in answer to points requiring explication. TRANSLATOR .

131bonaparte consul for life

of the legal establishment were also organised into corporations: chambers

of solicitors ( avoués ) had existed since Year VIII; notaries ( notaires ) and public

auctioneers ( commissaires-priseurs ) had been associated since Year IX. Nor were

the businessmen forgotten: chambers of commerce and manufacture,

brokerage houses and the reappearance of commercial agents were not only

a response to technical needs but part of a deﬁ nite social plan. Had it been

left entirely to Bonaparte, one would surely have witnessed the rebirth of

guilds.

As Bonaparte conceived it, then, the social hierarchy was to be founded

on wealth. It could not have been otherwise, since he had seized power with

the sanction of the bourgeoisie. True, by making free education available to

all, the Idéologues had intended to introduce men of talent, as well as men of

fortune, into leading government positions. But wealth once acquired tends

naturally to reserve this privilege for itself. Moreover, Bonaparte shared the

distrust of the rich for ‘men of talent’ as long as they were poor, regarding

them as revolutionary tinder; and so it was generally agreed that they would

only be employed in technical positions, as in the time of the former aris-

tocracy and absolute monarchy. Whenever Bonaparte proclaimed himself

the representative of the Revolution, he always reduced that movement to

the abolition of privileges of which the rise of the propertied bourgeoisie

was a direct consequence. One only has to remove his personal despotism

to appreciate the fact that the social enactments of Year X laid the foundation

for the July Monarchy.

The Civil Code became the bible of the new society. On 12 August 1800

a committee of four legal experts – Tronchet, Portalis, Bigot de Préameneu

and Maleville – was appointed to prepare a draft of the Code Civil . The project

was completed in January 1801, but Bonaparte’s conﬂ ict with the assem-

blies led to the suspension of open debate on the laws until 1803. The

various articles were ﬁ nally promulgated as a single law on 21 March 1804,

under the title of the Civil Code of the French People, and only later became

known as the Code Napoléon. Bonaparte took personal part in the prepara-

tion of the Code, but only on those sections dealing with family law. He was

intent on strengthening the authority of the father and the husband in the

home, on depriving illegitimate children of their heritage unless they had

been legally recognised (in which case their share was to be reduced

anyway), and on retaining divorce, for his own reasons.

Like all of Bonaparte’s achievements, the Code was dual in character. On

the one hand, it conﬁ rmed the disappearance of the feudal aristocracy and

adopted the social principles of 1789: liberty of the individual, equality

before the law, secularisation of the state, freedom of conscience and

the pacification of france and europe (1799–1802) 132

freedom to choose one’s profession. This is why it swept through Europe as

the symbol of the Revolution, and heralded, wherever it was introduced, the

fundamental laws of modern society. Tarnished though this quality may have

become in our time, the failure to depict the Code in all of its original fresh-

ness would play false the history of the Napoleonic years, and it would

prevent us from ever grasping the full signiﬁ cance of the French hegemony.

But, on the other hand, the Code also conﬁ rmed the reaction against the

democratic accomplishments of the Republic. Conceived in the interest of

the bourgeoisie, it was concerned primarily with consecrating and sancti-

fying the rights of property which it regarded as a natural right, anterior to

society, absolute and belonging to the individual, and it gave the possessor

the title to ownership. Sections regulating contracts dealt almost exclusively

with property, with services being relegated to two articles. To a large degree,

the family itself was regarded in this light. Consequently, the scrupulously

detailed regulations governing the marriage contract made of it a moneyed

transaction, and behind the Code’s extensive interest in ﬁ liation lay the

question of inheritance.

The idea that the laws should promote the interest of the state, as under-

stood by Bonaparte and his jurists, was the other guideline employed in the

preparation of the Code. It was Bonaparte who, in a certain measure, limited

the rights of landed proprietors in matters of subsoil use and eminent

domain, and above all in their freedom of testamentary disposition. The

family was of great value to the state, for it constituted one of those social

entities which disciplined the behaviour of individuals. The patria potestas ,

which had been weakened by the Revolution, was thus restored once again:

a father could imprison his children for six months on the strength of his

word alone; he had complete control over their property; similarly, he could

administer his wife’s property and, joint ownership being part of the common

law, he could dispose of it as often as not. But, as with all groups, there was

always the possibility that the family might become too powerful as against

the state, and especially so since its cohesiveness was by nature very strong,

thus giving rise to the restoration of an independent aristocracy. For this

reason, the state placed the family under its tutelage: the testamentary powers

of the father were modiﬁ ed by re-establishing the principle of ‘legitimacy’,

and the question of inheritance was declared to be a matter of public interest

and was made subject to the regulation of law. Viewed in this light, the Code

was bitterly criticised by the former nobility and by a part of the bourgeoisie,

whose powers it limited in that it assured the division of patrimonies.

As regards those who possessed nothing, the Code kept silent except to

protect their personal freedom by prohibiting the lease or hire of services in

133bonaparte consul for life

perpetuity. Proclaiming the freedom of labour and the equality of citizens

before the law, it in fact abandoned the wage earner, as had been the wish of

the Constituent Assembly, to all of the hazards of economic competition, and

it treated labour as just another commodity. It repudiated the idea, conceived

in 1793, of recognising the citizen’s right to a livelihood. Since only the

employer was taken at his word in matters of wage disputes, the Code even

departed from the principle of juridical equality by discriminating against

wage earners. Moreover, the state used its police powers to enforce labour

discipline, because the Code could not offer sufﬁ cient protection to

employers: since the poor possessed nothing, they would have been

effectively immune to punitive law suits. The law of 22 Germinal, Year XI

(12 April 1803), renewed the ban on workers’ associations, and on the

following 1 December a decree obliged workers to carry a workbook supplied

by the local authorities, without which it was forbidden to employ them.

The Code, then, was the product of the evolution of French society in so

far as it created the bourgeoisie and carried it to power. When one considers

the Code in its detail, the imprint of history upon it becomes even more

apparent. The Napoleonic jurists drew largely from the works of Domat and

Pothier, both of whom had already embarked upon a rational codiﬁ cation,

the latter devoting himself to the written Roman Law of the Midi, the former

to customary law. By combining this legacy with the work of the Revolution

and weeding out the contradictions, they succeeded in making the Code a

compromise. Another manifestation of the Code’s historic character was its

extensive preoccupation with landed property, which was still the principal

form of wealth, whereas it neglected industrial wealth, business organisa-

tions and credit. In short, it cannot be said that the Code was a product of

theoreticians who wished to impose arbitrarily on a society an abstract set of

laws remote from living reality, and the criticisms levelled by Savigny and

other German jurists were completely unfounded. These critics were inspired

by aristocratic sentiments of which the Code was the very negation.

Bonaparte’s idea of public education was that it should be in keeping

with the established social order and the authoritarian nature of the regime:

it must, he said, ‘embrace the nation’ and be the ‘ﬁ rst concern of the govern-

ment’. The decree of 11 Floréal, Year X (1 May 1802), drafted by Fourcroy,

whose proposal was substituted for that of Chaptal (which was thought too

ambitious), left the elementary schools ( écoles populaires ) to the care of the

municipalities, just as under the ancien régime . Like Voltaire before him,

Bonaparte and a large number of the middle class believed that to educate

the poor was politically and socially inconvenient. Not so with regard to

secondary institutions of learning which were to educate future leaders.