Citizen Emperor (29 page)

The notion of empire was part and parcel of the French elite’s intellectual and cultural baggage, although the connotations associated with the word were very different from the meaning it later assumed when the French dominated the Continent.
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Nor was the idea of empire incompatible with the idea of a republic. On the contrary, unlike a monarchy, which was associated with divine right, an empire was acquired by merit.
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And yet it was a vague enough term for Napoleon and his supporters to use in the creation of a new political model.
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It is perhaps one of the reasons why ‘empire’ was chosen over ‘monarchy’: it helped draw a clear distinction between the new regime and that of the Bourbons.
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The concept of empire should not, however, be confused with that of hereditary monarchy; they are two distinct notions (although this is invariably overlooked in accounts of the transformation of the French Republic in which ‘empire’ and ‘hereditary monarchy’ become synonymous). What Napoleon and the political elite instituted in May 1804 was in effect a constitutional monarchy, which is what conservative and moderate political thinkers had wanted since the beginning of the Revolution in 1789. ‘The time has come’, Duvidal de Montferrier proclaimed in the Tribunate, ‘to leave the sea of dreams and to approach the empire of reality . . . The crown of Charlemagne is the just heritage for one who has known how to imitate him.’
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If the peace and stability Bonaparte was able to impose on France and Europe were rewarded with the Consulate for life, the attempt to kill him in 1804 was the excuse to introduce a type of monarchy. It was then that he thought, once again, of consolidating his power around a more imposing title that would render his person inviolable.
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Up to then, he had dealt with the problem of naming a successor by telling people what they wanted to hear. He would tell staunch republicans, like Thibaudeau, that the Revolution had put an end to the concept of hereditary succession once and for all. Then he would tell Fouché, ‘People in Paris believe I am going to make myself emperor. I am not going to do anything of the sort. For the last three years enough great things have been done under the title consul. We have to keep it. I do not believe that
we need a new name for a new empire
.’
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At most, Bonaparte claimed, he would accept the title of ‘Grand Consul’. On another occasion though, he is supposed to have told Fouché that opposition to putting a crown on his head would be very weak.
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He was obviously caught in a bind and did not want to think particularly either about his own death or about naming a successor with all the political problems which that would entail. Things came to a head, however, with the Cadoudel assassination plot. Part of the reasoning was that since all the assassination attempts were directed against his person, if a hereditary successor were designated, then the survival of the government and of the system put in place would not be jeopardized if he were to disappear.

Thus heredity, and the Empire that came with it, was about constructing a durable political system, rather than a sop to Bonaparte’s vanity and ambition, one that placed France on an equal footing with every other court in Europe.
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In one outburst against his brother Joseph leading up to the coronation, he is supposed to have exclaimed, ‘Does he believe that I have brought about these changes for me? That I value the titles he seems to disdain?’
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He argued that he was adopting the imperial title only so that he would now be on a par with the sovereigns of Europe. That was pretext. One cannot help but feel that behind the practical reason was a deep, obsessive need not only to be recognized by his peers, but also to dominate them.

If we take our gaze away from Bonaparte for a moment and look at what some in the French political elite were urging, we get a very different picture to the one often presented by historians when they talk about the founding of the Empire. A clue is to be found in a letter written by Talleyrand to Napoleon in July 1804, a short while after the proclamation of the Empire. ‘Your Majesty knows, and I have pleasure in repeating it, that weary, disgusted by the political systems that have aroused the passion and caused the misfortune of the French over the last ten years, it is only by you and for you that I hold with the institutions you have founded.’
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Two elements are at play here: Talleyrand had confidence in the man and in the institutions that he had helped put in place after ten years of political unrest and was, therefore, willing to hitch his star to Napoleon’s. But Talleyrand also believed that a hereditary, constitutional monarchy was the political system that held the most promise for stability.
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Or at least this was the line adopted by those who supported the Empire, and which was faithfully repeated long after it had disappeared.
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By taking part in Brumaire, by encouraging a shift away from radical political structures to ultimately conservative and, one could argue, counter-revolutionary political structures, the supporters of empire were in some respects representative of the reconciliation finally taking place between the Revolution and the
ancien régime
.

Most European powers were prepared to recognize Napoleon and his new title. The exceptions were Britain, at war with France (Pitt was re-elected prime minister on 10 May 1804), Sweden and Russia, about to enter another coalition.
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Alexander’s minister for foreign affairs, Adam Czartoryski, believed the Empire gave the Revolution a façade of legitimacy. He feared, therefore, that it marked not the end of the Revolution but its ominous continuation by other means.
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This view was typical of conservatives of the day. The German publicist Friedrich von Gentz, for example, working for the Austrian Chancellery, also believed that to recognize Napoleon was to ‘sanction the Revolution and all its doctrines’.
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Russia consequently attempted to persuade the other powers that the title would ‘serve as a pretext for [Napoleon’s] unbounded ambition to extend his domination still further’.
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It succeeded with some, such as the Porte (the government of the Ottoman Empire), but not others. In Vienna, Napoleon’s adoption of the imperial title was disliked and posed particular problems for Francis as titular head of the Holy Roman Empire.
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The Austrians were alarmed, with good reason, that Napoleon was re-establishing the Empire of Charlemagne – in part because so much was made of Charlemagne in France at the time
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– and that he would extend his influence over the Holy Roman Empire.
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Vienna was fearful that George III would feel obliged to proclaim himself ‘Emperor of Great Britain’ or that the Tsar would insist on parity with Austria. Nevertheless, the Austrian chancellor argued that the re-establishment of monarchical government, which is how he referred to the Empire, was ‘necessary for the tranquillity of all governments’.
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The main reason, however, why Austria decided to recognize the French Empire was in order not to offend Napoleon and thereby risk war; it also wanted to maintain diplomatic parity with France.
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That is why Cobenzl recommended that Austria, at the same time, adopt its own imperial title.
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This was a question of prestige. If the Holy Roman Empire collapsed, then Francis would be left with lesser-sounding titles – King of Bohemia and Hungary, and Grand Duke of Austria. Till then, the Austrian ‘Roman Emperor’ had enjoyed precedence over every other European monarch, including the Russian Tsar, largely because he supposedly represented a direct line to the ancient Roman emperors. He was therefore at the head of the only ‘genuinely imperial’ state in Europe, against which all others had to define themselves.
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By brushing aside the Holy Roman Empire, Napoleon had also brushed to one side the title and the claim, and at the same time assumed the western imperial mantle. Francis, therefore, agreed to recognize Napoleon’s title in return for Napoleon’s recognizing Francis as ‘Emperor of Austria’.
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A Troublesome Family

The reaction of the sovereign heads of Europe to the proclamation of the Empire was the least of Napoleon’s problems. He had a much more difficult task dealing with his family and relatives. The family was a permanent centre of criticism, cabals and intrigues that he quite rightly perceived as a danger, but it was one which, given the structure of Corsican family ties, he would never overcome. He seemed to delight in stirring it up and in pitting one member against another. The family, on the other hand, believed it had every right to share in the benefits of Napoleon’s power, regardless of how little its members had contributed to his success.

Let us deal with the brothers first. Relations between Napoleon and Joseph had been difficult ever since Joseph declined the presidency of the Italian Republic in 1802, on the pretext that the Republic would be too dependent on France.
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Relations were made worse by the resumption of war with Britain (Joseph was against the war), by his involvement in the marriage of Lucien with Alexandrine Jouberthon (about which more below), and more particularly by the question of the succession. On 2 April 1804, Bonaparte had a meeting with his elder brother. He told Joseph that he planned to adopt the son of Louis and Hortense with the aim of making him his heir. It was a rude shock to Joseph who had obviously given no thought to Napoleon fathering or adopting a son.
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It was also a clumsy manoeuvre on the part of Bonaparte since he had not consulted with either Louis or Hortense on the matter. Joseph immediately ran to Louis, warned him of Bonaparte’s intentions and persuaded him to oppose the adoption.

It cannot have been too hard a task; Louis was not terribly well disposed towards his brother after being obliged to marry Josephine’s daughter, Hortense, in January 1802. It was a misjudged attempt on the part of Josephine to cement relations between the two families. The marriage was disastrous, but produced children. One of them was Napoleon-Charles, but Louis was hardly going to allow Napoleon to adopt him, the more so since rumour had it that Napoleon-Charles was Napoleon’s biological son (there are no grounds for believing this to be the case).
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If Louis was furious, Joseph was also beside himself at the suggestion – he is supposed to have said that it would be better for his family and France if his brother were dead
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– and he also attacked Bonaparte for suggesting a hereditary system that would, as he saw it, exclude him and his children from any future succession. He urged Napoleon to leave Josephine for what he called ‘political reasons’.
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Tension between the two brothers became so bad that Napoleon decided to send Joseph to the camp of Boulogne, ‘so that he could have his part of the glory’.
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If relations with Joseph were tense, relations with Lucien were brought to breaking point. Lucien, we know, was the hothead of the family, an uncontrollable free spirit who could not tolerate, even less than Napoleon could, any form of constraint.
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As minister of the interior, he had jurisdiction over the theatres. It is possible that he took advantage of his position to ‘seduce’ a number of actresses. Rumour was that it was not safe for a young woman to enter his office.
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In the summer of 1802, Lucien met a divorcée by the name of Alexandrine Jouberthon, considered a remarkable beauty. In May 1803, they were secretly married in a religious ceremony, the same day that Alexandrine gave birth to a baby boy (they would go on to have ten children). Bonaparte did not know of this, although rumours of their marriage had been circulating in the months leading up to it. Bonaparte had been thinking of arranging some sort of political alliance with his brother through marriage with Marie-Louise, Queen of Etruria, who had only recently become a widow herself. When Bonaparte brought up the subject at a family dinner a few days after the marriage, Lucien made light of it. But after Bonaparte had left he confessed to Joseph that he was already married. Joseph, although he did not say so then, thought it was one of the greatest calamities that could have happened. In a conversation at Mortefontaine in the presence of Miot de Mélito, he is said to have exclaimed, ‘In truth, it seems that fate blinds us and wants, through our own faults, to return France to its former masters.’
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Bonaparte was told eventually, but he considered the marriage null and void. He sent Joseph, Murat and Cambacérès to talk with Lucien, but no amount of negotiating could make Lucien change his mind or persuade him to agree not to let his new wife carry the Bonaparte name.
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When Lucien consequently refused to divorce her, he was stripped of his senatorial rank and removed from the line of succession, and he had no input into the foundation of the Empire. He moved to Rome with his wife. In 1810, when Napoleon annexed the Papal States, Lucien decided to leave Europe once and for all, and set sail for the United States. The British intercepted his vessel and Lucien was taken to England where he spent the rest of the war as a prisoner – at Thorngrove in Worcestershire – until the collapse of the Empire in 1814.