Lefebvre Georges. Napoleon

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in the provinces no less than in Paris. In 1811 there were 360 of them in the

ordinary service. As far as the Conseil d’État was concerned, he cannot be

said to have made any radical changes in the nature of its composition;

indeed in 1813 he even appointed the former convention member

Zangiacomi (though not a regicide) and Cofﬁ nhal-Dunoyer, the brother of

Cofﬁ nhal.

He only got rid of a dozen councillors, and carried out two

dismissals – incidentally, for reasons that had nothing to do with the work

of the council. Nonetheless, one can clearly see the direction in which

things were moving; and there is no doubt what the outcome would have

been if the Empire had lasted. Moreover, the men of Brumaire were begin-

ning to feel at home: they were awarded the Legion of Honour, and took

their place among the new nobility; some of them even set up entails.

The recruitment of préfets underwent a much more perceptible change.

The Côte-d’Or, previously in the hands of a former member of the

Constituent Assembly, then in those of a tribune, subsequently passed to

Molé, and ﬁ nally in 1812 to the duc de Cossé-Brissac. Survivors of the

Revolution were few and far between – such men as Jeanbon, who continued

to be loyal to the past. In Marseille, Thibaudeau, inﬂ uenced by his wife and

out of prudence and vanity, became a promoter of the movement for reac-

tion. Such préfets were following their master’s example. To begin with, the

Conseils d’État contested particular items of expenditure, audited the

accounts and passed resolutions; but they lost heart when they found that

the credits they had refused were ofﬁ cially reinstated, supporting docu-

ments were withheld and their wishes scornfully disregarded. Purges were

made from time to time and when vacancies occurred. In 1809, in the

Bouches-du-Rhône, six out of seven nobles and ofﬁ cials were got rid of in

one sweep; in the Pas-de-Calais, the Artois nobility began to get an entry.

The same procedure took place for the councillors in the préfectures and sous-

préfectures . The evidence from the Côtes-du-Nord suggests that the revolu-

tionaries put up a better resistance in the west, where the Chouans offered

stubborn opposition. As for the municipalities, there continued to be the

problem of ﬁ nding capable men to ﬁ ll the places. It often proved impossible

to complete the councils or ensure their meeting; but a mayor at least was

necessary, and for this the préfets fell back upon the big proprietors, even if

they were hostile to the regime. The difﬁ culty was still greater for the minor

ofﬁ ces, such as secretaries and rural police; and the same was true in all

administrative departments. The people could not yet provide the material

for a lower middle class from which to draw ofﬁ cials well enough educated

* [J.-B. Cofﬁ nhal, prominent judge on the Revolutionary Tribunal, 1793–4.]

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to have a sense of professional integrity. Some préfets attempted to govern

directly through itinerant secretaries or inspectors – for example in the

Bas-Rhin, Pas-de-Calais and Meurthe; but they were obliged to extract their

salaries from the already heavily indebted communes . There can thus be no

illusions about the imperfections of local administration, which only time

could improve. But such as it was, it gave Napoleon what he wanted –

money, men and the preservation of order.

It is not easy to say how far centralisation was in practice carried out.

From Year XI onwards, the préfets were regretting that they were not allowed

more initiative, and pointing out that the necessity of corresponding with

each of the ministers meant that they often received contradictory orders;

and those they governed complained that constant reference to Paris delayed

decisive action. Some of them, all the same, made free use of their authority,

including summary arrests. For example, in the Doubs in 1805, de Bry put

through a forced loan. The emperor accused them of playing the despot – a

rather amusing touch – and the ministers sometimes expressed dissatisfac-

tion with them. ‘In general,’ wrote Montalivet in 1812, ‘the préfets say what

they like to me; but I see more clearly than ever that we do not know

anything about what is really going on.’ When Napoleon really wanted to

know where he stood or wished to ‘repair the machinery’, as the Committee

of Public Safety had tried to do, he would send down special commissioners,

as he did in 1812. Moreover, in the départements the central power was in

collision with the covert power of the important civil and military ﬁ gures,

whether they were natives of the district or no; especially the bishop, who

contrived – without defying the central power – to intervene in the choice

of persons and the details of administration. Taken as a whole, centralisation

may be said to have been more thoroughgoing than before 1789; but the

slowness of communications tended to safeguard the préfets ’ independence,

so that it varied in accordance with the distance, the circumstances and the

character of the men concerned. In proportion as the Consulate préfets disap-

peared and the country grew more peaceful, centralisation progressed.

The reorganisation of justice was doggedly pursued. There were soon

complaints of the people who had been chosen somewhat at random in Year

VIII. Napoleon took steps to improve the methods of recruiting. In Year XII

he established the law schools, and in 1808 judges who would hear cases in

a consultative capacity. From 1807 onwards he thought it possible to under-

take a purge, which was handed over by a senatus consultum to a special

commission. Of the 194 magistrates denounced, 170 were proposed for

dismissal; and in actual fact, the decree of 24 March 1808 deprived sixty-

eight of ofﬁ ce and accepted the resignation of ninety-four. At the same time

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the codiﬁ cation of the law was nearing completion. The code for civil proce-

dure was ﬁ nished in 1806; the commercial code in 1807; the criminal code

in 1808; the penal code in 1810. The rural code, which had also been drawn

up, was not promulgated. The spirit of 1789 did not altogether disappear

from it. The Conseil d’État preserved unimpaired the social work of the

Revolution. It was at pains to separate the administrative from the judicial

machinery, took care to assure the judges’ independence and obstinately

defended the jury system. But, in parallel with these provisions, the prop-

erty and authority of the middle classes could reckon on its support provided

they did not trespass on the authority of the state, which was regarded as in

the general public interest. Whether revolutionaries or men of the ancien

régime , all its members would unhesitatingly sacriﬁ ce their principles out of

class interest or political opportunism. Necessity knows no law, said Portalis;

there is no theory that must not give way to necessity, Berlier conﬁ rmed.

These traits were already apparent in the Civil Code; and subsequent codes

were to mark the reaction even more clearly.

The ﬁ rst two codes are very close to Colbert’s ordinances. The second in

particular did not prove well adapted to the conditions of economic progress,

for example as regards insurance and companies; at least, although contin-

uing to subordinate the limited liability company to the extent of author-

ising only those under a collective name or in limited partnership, it made

the concession that the responsibility of the shareholders should be restricted

to their holdings. Previously, the law had been doubtful on this point, some

judgements obliging them to support the company with the whole of their

possessions. But there was nothing as striking as the discussion relating to

promissory notes. Well aware that the expansion of the economy depended

on that of credit, and so on the trustworthiness of the banks, some were in

favour of treating the single private individual, in any case of protest, like

the businessman, and so making him liable to bodily constraint. But Molé

spoke up loudly for the opposing view, pointing out that such conduct was

a departure from common law, entailing the sacriﬁ ce of personal liberty in

favour of business interests and bankers, who were a selﬁ sh minority – as

had happened in England. France, he maintained, should no doubt foster

trade, but above all remain essentially agricultural. The opposition party

went on to point out that if the methods of trade and ﬁ nance were to be

adopted, citizens would be inclined to entrust their savings to these agencies

and invest them in life interests, giving pride of place to personal estate,

which is always unstable. It would mean the end of the great families and

classes, and would undermine the monarchy – considerations that were

well calculated to appeal to Napoleon, particularly at that period. But his

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broad intelligence won the day, and he came down in favour of a compro-

mise: it was decided that the private person should be treated as a busi-

nessman if he had subscribed his share as a result of commercial transactions.

The last two codes in particular marked an important date. They came into

force in 1810, when the law of 28 April once more refashioned the judiciary

organisation, giving it the form that it still preserves, though it gave the

mayor – except in the cantonal capital – powers of simple police which he

has since then lost. This law regulated the manner and conditions for nomi-

nating judges, as well as their discipline; and the occasion served as an

opportunity to carry out a fresh purge: the Paris court of appeal lost eight

councillors out of thirty-one. These changes do not seem to have been

inspired by political motives; but nonetheless, the composition of the staff

moved in the same direction as in the other cases. At Besançon, for example,

two presidents and ﬁ ve councillors from the former parlement became

members of the court. All the same, the revolutionaries kept their power

more successfully here because – apart from the purges – they were appointed

to their posts for life.

But now there was a further increase of repression. The standing magis-

tracy ( parquet ) was at this time given its deﬁ nitive organisation. Instruction

was made a matter of complete secrecy. The magistrat de sûreté disappeared, and

the business of accusation became centralised in the hands of public pros-

ecutors, advocates general and examining magistrates. The préfet regained the

power to appoint juries to try cases; and when the grand jury was suppressed,

its functions passed to one of the courts of appeal. The special tribunals were

retained under the title of ‘ordinary special courts’, but they were now

manned entirely by soldiers. Provision was also made for ‘extraordinary

special courts’ where the jury had been suspended, or for combating certain

crimes; and the same year saw the appearance of the ‘special customs courts’.

Moreover, the Senate could by virtue of the constitution quash a jury’s

verdict as detrimental to the safety of the state. For example, in 1813 it

brought the mayor of Antwerp before a special court on the charge of

indulging in contraband, a charge of which he had been acquitted in

the assize court. As for the penal code, while not restoring torture, it

re-established branding, the iron collar, the loss of a hand for parricide and

the loss of all civil rights.

In spite of the strengthening of penal justice, the Empire did not rely

solely upon this, any more than the Consulate had done: it placed more reli-

ance upon administrative repression, that is to say, on the police. Under the

minister – ﬁ rst Fouché, then in 1810 Savary – there were councillors of state

in charge of the arrondissements ; then, from 1808 onwards, directors-general

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in Turin, Florence, Rome and Amsterdam. Centralisation was not pushed to

an extreme: the préfets , who were not solely dependent on Fouché, kept their

own powers. Councillors and directors corresponded direct with the

emperor, and so did Dubois, the prefect of police, who was replaced by

Pasquier in 1811.

The gendarmerie had its own chiefs, and was in competition with them.

They claimed, as the préfet of the Loire-Inférieure observed in 1808, ‘to be

armed magistrates, with the duty of keeping an eye on all civilian ofﬁ cials’.

In the emperor’s view, the ideal system would have been to keep an up-to-

date ﬁ le of all persons who had any inﬂ uence whatsoever. Fouché had

already compiled a comprehensive list of the Chouans ; Napoleon wanted to

draw up ‘personal and moral statistics’ for the whole Empire. His knowledge

was extensive, but did not cover everything; and the préfets , who would have

been in the best position to give him information about people’s private

lives, usually preserved their discretion. Secret informers and Lavalette’s

postal censorship remained the chief means of information.

The police were all the more feared because they themselves sanctioned

enquiry by means of arbitrary detention, for which mental asylums were

used in addition to the prisons. The poet Desorgues, who had taken the

liberty of perpetrating a famous epigram in 1804 (‘Yes – Napoleon is

great – a great chameleon’), and Faure, a medical student of Saint-Louis,

who had cried out on 5 December 1804, when the eagles were distributed,

‘Death or freedom!’ were both conﬁ ned as lunatics. Nobody felt safe; and

the provision merchant Lassalle, whose deals had been interfered with by

the emperor, was in addition imprisoned without trial. And even release did

not end the matter: a large number of individuals were told where they

must live and kept under supervision. Finally, on 3 March 1810, a decree

reintroduced the state prisons, in which internment could be decreed in

camera by the grand juge , the minister of justice and the minister of police,

though in practice he was rarely consulted. In Napoleon’s eyes, administra-

tive detention was not only calculated to stiﬂ e opposition, but also to elim-

inate offences under common law where the jury allowed themselves to be

intimidated, or legal proof was lacking. It was, however, convenient to use

the expression ‘prisoners of state’ so as to present the public with ‘a terri-

fying image’, while not being under any illusions about the abuses deriving

from a police who were under no control. The gendarmes were held in such

fear that ‘it would be difﬁ cult to collect evidence against them’, as the préfet

of the Loire-Inférieure remarked, although he accused them of fraud, extor-

tion and even assassination. Even the préfets were swayed by the importuni-

ties of inﬂ uential persons. In 1808, for example, the camp-commandant

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Despinoy de Saint-Luc was arrested in the Somme district, on the ordre verbal

of the mayor, who owed him money. The decree of 1810 therefore directed

that prisons should be annually inspected. But they were not all examined,

and the emperor only looked at some of the reports. In 1811 he released

145 individuals out of the 810 mentioned; in 1812 twenty-nine out of 314.

By 1814 it was estimated that there were 2,500 of these prisoners. As for the

senatorial commission entrusted with the protection of individual freedom,

it did not even ask for a list of those in detention, and only intervened when

petitioned. In 1804 it managed to get forty-four people set free out of the

116 petitioners; but Fouché’s passive resistance soon discouraged its efforts.

In short, France from 1800 to 1814 lived under a regime where the law

could condemn on suspicion; but Napoleon took good care not to apply the

system too rigorously, realising that a reign of terror would only be toler-

ated if it was conﬁ ned to a small number of victims, and that this would in

no way detract from its success.

Speakers and writers were particularly liable to attract attention. The

Institute, which had relied so much upon Napoleon, did not escape his

scrutiny either. As early as 1803 the classes in moral and political science

had disappeared; in 1805, when Lalande had suppressed Maréchal’s

Dictionnaire des athées , the emperor denounced him as ‘in his second childhood’

and forbade him to publish anything at all. Again, when annoyed by the

speech of welcome which Chateaubriand found he was not allowed to

deliver, Napoleon threatened to suppress the class in language and literature,

formerly belonging to the French Academy, calling it ‘an undesirable

club’. There were police informers in every salon, one of whom was the

academician Esménard. As far as the lawyers were concerned, Napoleon

positively hated them. ‘They stir up trouble and are the authors of crime and

treason . . . I should like to cut out the tongues of barristers who use them

against the government.’ In 1804 he had obliged them to apply to the courts

for registration in the list of authorised barristers, and he did not give

them back the right to a president and a disciplinary commission until

14 December 1810; and even then, they were only allowed to bring candi-

dates before the public prosecutor, the court itself retaining the right to

inﬂ ict penalties on them.

His hatred of ‘the printed word’ was almost as vehement, by the very fact

that ‘it appeals to public opinion instead of to authority’. ‘You must print

very little,’ he wrote to Eugène, ‘the less, the better.’ From 1805 onwards

newspapers had to submit their accounts to the police and hand over up to

a third of their proﬁ ts to pay those who were given authority to keep an eye

on them. In 1807 an article by Chateaubriand caused the Mercure to be

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suppressed; in 1810 it was decided that each département should only have

one paper, and more than a hundred disappeared; in October Savary reduced

the Paris press to four gazettes, the Moniteur Officiel being one of them. In

February 1811 a paper formerly called Les Débats and now renamed the Journal

de l’Empire , was taken out of the hands of the Bertin brothers, who were

suspected of having relations with the English, and split up into shares, a

third going to the police; and in September the Journal de Paris and the Gazette

de France suffered the same fate. In order to control the publication of books,

new restrictions had been placed upon the printers in 1805, compelling

them to have a personal licence that could be revoked, and to take an oath

of loyalty; and the police would seize their productions whenever they

thought ﬁ t. Fouché added to his Press Ofﬁ ce a consultative ofﬁ ce comprising

Lemontey, Lacretelle and Esménard.

An ofﬁ cial censorship would have been better than arbitrary police action;

and on 10 February 1810 the emperor ﬁ nally made up his mind to establish

it. He created a directorship of the press, entrusting it in the ﬁ rst place to

Portalis’s son, then to the former préfet Pommereul, as well as ‘imperial

censors’, one of whom was a theologian; but in the provinces, power

remained in the hands of the préfets . At the same time, ninety-seven out of the

157 Paris printing presses were shut down; and in the end booksellers also

had to be licensed and take the oath. As might have been foreseen, the

censorship used its authority to cover its tracks, and abused its powers at its

own sweet will. Not only did it prove absurdly Gallican, anglophobe and

suspicious, but extremely prudish and hostile to genres such as the histor-

ical novel. In December 1811 Napoleon showed his displeasure: the censor-

ship was to conﬁ ne its efforts to suppressing libels and ‘on other subjects

allow freedom of expression’. The lesson went home: in 1811 nearly twelve

per cent of manuscripts had been refused publication; in 1812 the propor-

tion sank to less than four per cent. Here too he showed more liberality than

his agents, which indeed was not difﬁ cult, and up to a certain point he

remained faithful to the best traditions of enlightened despotism. But the

administration remained nonetheless hostile to reading rooms and lending

libraries, and especially to pedlars. It realised the importance of almanacs

and popular coloured prints, and even school primers were not forgotten.

The Senate also possessed a commission for the protection of freedom, but

it achieved nothing. As for the theatres, where political parties easily clashed,

they too were not spared. In 1805 Napoleon asked Fouché’s opinion about

Mozart’s Don Giovanni ‘from the point of view of public morale’; and Brifaut,

who had written a play entitled Don Sanche , had to transform it into Ninus

d’Assyrie on account of the Spanish war.

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To sum up, it may be said that the imperial administration perfected the

work of the Consulate, and accentuated its arbitrary features. Nothing

remained of liberty but freedom of conscience, because intolerance at this

point would have been harmful to the state by depriving it of good servants.

Even so, it was not permissible to attack the recognised religions, to profess

atheism or adhere to the schismatic Petite Église. Frenchmen were not much

surprised by the Napoleonic despotism, just emerging as they were from

the ancien régime and the turmoil of revolution; moreover, they knew that

other countries were very much in the same boat. The original feature of

Napoleon’s despotism was its simplicity, and the nice adjustment of its

machinery; and this it owed to the Revolution, which by its destruction of

the chaotic institutions and privileges of the ancien régime had made it possible

to build anew.

FINANCES AND THE NATIONAL ECONOMY

Money provides the very sinews of war, and the example of Louis XVI had

proved that a crisis in the national ﬁ nances can be fatal to authority. Frederick

II, who served as a model for enlightened despots, had always been very

careful about ﬁ nance. He had given preference to indirect taxation as easier

to collect, providing a more regular yield and more popular with the ruling

classes. And Napoleon followed suit. From 1804 to 1812 he reduced taxa-

tion on land and personal estate, which had the advantage of making the

consent of the Corps Législatif a pure formality. Moreover, he carried out a

rational reassessment of the former class of property, and ﬁ nally in 1807

undertook a register of landed property, thus meeting one of the essential

requests made in the cahiers of 1789. He spent ﬁ fty-ﬁ ve million francs on it,

but never succeeded in completing it in more than ﬁ ve to six thousand

communes.

From the very start, Gaudin had suggested the re-establishment of the

duties on consumption; but they were so unpopular that Napoleon did not

dare take the risk before 1804. On 5 Ventôse, Year XII (25 February 1804),

there came into force the ‘combined duties’, which were put under the

management of Français de Nantes. The ﬁ rst tax to be instituted was one on

drinks, at a low rate, but nevertheless requiring inventories. Under the

authority of the state, the ‘cellar rats’ of the former excise department once

more came into action. The method of collection was modiﬁ ed and the rate

raised in 1806 and 1808. In 1806 an additional tax was imposed on salt

in compensation for the abolition of the transit duty on the roads. After an

increase on the tax on tobacco, a monopoly was ﬁ nally re-established in

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1810. In that year, the yield of the ‘combined duties’ seems to have been

considerably greater than that of the direct taxes, not to mention the customs.

There was active public discontent, and more than one disturbance. Property

owners, for their part, noted that the relief in direct taxation was no more

than apparent, for a share of state expenses had been transferred to local

ﬁ nance – for example, a proportion of the Church expenses, the property

the extra centimes were taken into account, the Côtes-du-Nord, which had

paid out 2,489,000 francs in Year IX, paid 3,423,000 in 1813. Moreover, in

order to make existence possible for the municipalities, the local tolls had to

be increased in number. Besides, there was much coming and going of

troops, who had to be billeted, and more than one of the préfets – Molé, for

example – reinstituted forced labour on the roads. Although Napoleon was

very economical, the situation – taken all round – was that he increased the

ﬁ nancial load on the French nation. Civil expenses did not ﬁ gure largely in

this increase. In the départements, the various services were so poorly

provided with money that there was little progress in the roads, schools and

public assistance. In the Côtes-du-Nord, much paperwork was necessary in

order to restrict the various plans, through shortage of funds. From 1807

onwards some thirty-seven million were allotted to public works; but not

many regions beneﬁ ted. The increase came chieﬂ y from the civil list, Church

dues, the national debt and above all the war, which still absorbed ﬁ fty to

sixty per cent of all receipts, if not more, in spite of the large contribution

made by the enemy.

If the treasury escaped the foregoing risks thanks to the reforms of 1806,

it was nonetheless never in a comfortable position through lack of borrowing

powers. This constituted the essential difference between English and French

ﬁ nance, even more than before 1789. The sinking fund was the only depart-

ment to succeed in issuing some millions of bonds. Although it managed to

ﬁ nd the interest, and although Napoleon bought some on behalf of the

Legion of Honour, senatorships and inalienable endowments that he

dispensed – to such an extent that in 1809 only thirty-three out of the ﬁ fty-

eight million were in private hands, and that the market was becoming

more and more restricted – the market rate remained low and the position

weak. And so various expedients were tried: there was an increase in

premiums; a little money was minted; and in 1807 and 1810 the war fund

provided eighty-four, and subsequently forty-ﬁ ve, million. But the favourite

method continued to be to assign the payment of contractors to particular

funds, and to make them wait for their proceeds to be realised, an old ancien

régime device that led to speculative interest rates and misappropriation; or to

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postpone auditing on the pretext of checking the ﬁ gures. From time to time

part of the arrears would be liquidated by distributing sinking-fund bonds

or interest-bearing securities – a disguised form of forced loan. Thus, in

1813 there was a million-franc issue to cover the balances dating from 1801

to 1808. By the end of the reign, the permanent debt had risen to sixty-

three million and the ﬂ oating debt, arising particularly from ecclesiastical

pensions, had reached ﬁ fty-seven million. In spite of all this, contractors

continued to hold great power because their advances were indispensable.

In the circumstances, Napoleon’s ﬁ nances seem to have been as successful

as could have been expected; but to all appearances, they were never in

balance. What harmed them particularly in the eyes of the public was that

no one knew (or ever will know) the true position, for the indeﬁ nite post-

ponement of payments due is the negation of a genuine budget. Moreover,

the public audit department, which had been reestablished in 1807, was not

given the right to examine the legality of expenditure. If the emperor was

unable to borrow, it was because investors remained distrustful after so

many bankruptcies, and because his policies did not inspire conﬁ dence in

anyone that his regime would last; but it was also because his ﬁ nancial

operations remained mysterious. Rather than put himself under the control

of the middle classes, Napoleon preferred to do without their help.

Besides, there was a better way open to him. Like Frederick II, who had

earmarked for himself the revenues from Silesia, and had reconstituted the

roi-sergent ’s war fund, Napoleon possessed cash resources under his sole

management, namely the civil list, the crown lands and his private estates.

He aimed at making certain of a freely disposable fund of at least one

hundred million, saying that with such resources a sovereign could be

prepared for all eventualities. Moreover, to avoid exhausting the peoples of

the Empire or stirring up unrest, he needed ﬁ nancial machinery in the

conquered territories as well if he was to avoid ﬁ nancing warfare from the

pockets of the Empire alone; and of such machinery he became the sole

master. On 28 October 1805 he set up the army fund, which levied war

contributions from Austria and Prussia. We learn from his receiver, La

Bouillerie, that it was supposed to have produced 743 million between

1805 and 1810, 311 million of which were used to supply his forces. On

30 January 1810 the emperor instituted the domaine extraordinaire , and put it

under the management of Defermon; and to him was handed over any

surplus from the army fund, as well as the lands and revenues the emperor

had reserved for himself in the vassal states, then estimated at two thousand

million, with an income between thirty and forty million. Napoleon used it

to control the circulation of money by buying investments or shares in the