The War of Wars (57 page)

All of these were coherent reasons. Yet Napoleon was no fool: the title as he well knew was a throwback to the Roman Empire originally, and more recently to the Holy Roman Empire. It was generally attached to a ruler with much wider domains than his native country: and by becoming Emperor, Napoleon was signalling France’s preeminence among nations, with a great many vassal states. But the title signalled both an expansionary power and, in Napoleon’s case, a man determined to establish a dynasty as lasting as any that had sat on the French throne, though one rooted in the popular will rather than ordained by God. It was also an end to Napoleon’s republican pretensions. Abroad, the few remaining admirers of the French Revolution were heartbroken: Wordsworth, as we have seen, returned disillusioned to his native land; Fox’s eyes were opened; Beethoven in Vienna tore up the dedication of his Third Symphony to Napoleon; Simon Bolivar, a young man visiting Spain and France at the time, was horrified by the decision.

It also marked an inner change within Napoleon’s own volatile and explosive personality. Napoleon had all his life been a combination of the practical man of action and the egomaniac dreamer. In Egypt the latter trait had won and had led him to disaster. The practical man had then reasserted himself and had seized power in France. Now again he was exhibiting a self-belief that was to prove his undoing: for as an Emperor he had to continue to maintain France’s paramountcy in Europe.

He could argue that he was doing no more than emulate the Emperor Joseph of Austria; but the latter was the heir to an ancient title, carried on now by the fiction of the Holy Roman throne and ruling over a vast and varied collection of peoples. Napoleon could not have signalled more clearly his intention to do likewise, to add to France’s dominions under his control. To those that had plotted against him in France, he was responding that he was no mere general, no mere military dictator, but the aspiring ruler of all Europe, endorsed by popular plebiscite, and legitimized by force of arms not just in France but outside. That he was no longer ‘freeing’ the countries he conquered in the name of progressive revolutionary ideals did not matter: progress was synonymous with France’s national interest and his own
rule. He was not just the foremost citizen of France but of the world. Both he and France were now committed to incorporating new territories into the empire.

His immediate
folie de grandeur
displayed itself most clearly with the decision to insist that the Pope come to Paris for the coronation. This, Napoleon argued, would secure the support of all Catholics as well as impress foreign countries with his legitimacy. In fact it was merely a supreme vanity, designed to impress the world with his special status.

Napoleon meticulously organized his own coronation, choosing the eagle as the emblem of France, adopting a sixth-century Gallic motif as his own, equipping himself with a sword which was supposedly that of Charlemagne, and designing a crown of gold laurel. On 2 December 1804, Napoleon walked with his brother Joseph into Notre Dame. ‘Joseph, if only our father could see us,’ said Napoleon to his brother.

The Pope said mass and at the appropriate moment anointed Napoleon in the style of a French monarch. Then Napoleon crowned himself so, as he said, to avoid a dispute between the Pope and the Archbishop of Rheims, who traditionally crowned the monarch. The real reason was to establish the supremacy of state represented by Napoleon, over the church; the archbishop would surely have given way to the Pope, who would not normally have stirred from Rome for the occasion.

Napoleon then crowned Josephine Empress. To the last moment she feared she would not be given this accolade. After the Pope had discreetly withdrawn, Napoleon intoned the coronation oath: ‘I swear to uphold the integrity of the Republic’s territory, to respect and impose the laws of the Concordat and religious freedom, to respect and impose the respect of equal rights, political and civil liberties, the irrevocability of the sale of national property, to raise no duty and to establish no tax except through the law, to uphold the institution of the Legion of Honour, to rule only in the interests of the happiness and glory of the French people.’

Napoleon immediately afterwards insisted that he had not changed. Mostly he poked fun at those intimates who called him ‘Sire’ or ‘Your Majesty’. Yet he was quick to put into place the full flummery of an imperial court, exceeding that of even Louis XIV in its pretension. In
the front rank was his own family – as quarrelsome a group of competing nepotists as was to be found anywhere. Josephine, the Empress, was universally despised by the Bonaparte clan, and Napoleon’s sisters deeply resented having to bear her train. Letizia had been furious to be given the patronizing and inadequate title of ‘
Madame Mère de son Majesté l’Empereur
’ and refused to attend the coronation altogether.

Napoleon’s amiable but incompetent older brother Joseph caused him little trouble, and his marriage to Bernadotte’s sister-in-law gave Napoleon a valuable link with a potentially troublesome military Jacobin challenger.

Lucien, his younger brother, however, was a greater problem. Good-looking, eloquent and a natural politician, Lucien was intensely disliked by Napoleon, although he shared Napoleon’s political interests. After his bravura performance in helping to stage Napoleon’s military coup, he was rewarded with the powerful ministry of the interior but then embarrassed Napoleon by comparing him to Cromwell and was sent off as ambassador to Spain.

Later he returned to Paris as a businessman. Napoleon wanted him to marry the widowed Queen of Etruria; instead Lucien married a businessman’s widow, Madame Alexandrine Joubertoun, in secret. Napoleon furiously attacked his young brother for marrying a ‘whore’. ‘At least my whore is pretty,’ was the rejoinder, for which Napoleon never forgave him. Lucien was supported by Letizia and went off in a sulk, accusing Napoleon of having slept with his stepdaughter Hortense who had married Louis, Napoleon’s next brother.

Louis was an idler, a neurotic, a dreamer and a homosexual; the marriage was forced upon both parties by Napoleon and Josephine. There was speculation that Napoleon had indeed fathered Hortense’s son, because his own wife Josephine could bear no children, as a means of producing an heir from a surrogate mother; Napoleon was certainly distraught when tragedy struck and the five-year-old boy died. But Napoleon personally got on well with Louis, who posed no challenge to him.

Jerome, the youngest sibling, was good-looking but spoilt, boastful and disagreeable; he enraged Napoleon by marrying a beauty in
America after deserting the ship he was serving on. However Napoleon was later to admire his pretty wife.

Napoleon’s sisters were hardly easier personalities. They demanded the right to be called princess, as his brother’s wives were, and Napoleon relented. The plain but intelligent Caroline was intensely ambitious and cold. She had married General Joachim Murat, one of Napoleon’s oldest lieutenants, the beefy, dashing, courageous cavalry commander who had been beside him at the massacre in rue St Raul, and then served with him in Italy and Egypt as well as acting as his principal lieutenant during the military coup. He was good-looking, curly-haired, blue-eyed and thick-lipped, the most romantic-looking of Napoleon’s generals. Of humble origins – he was an innkeeper’s son – he was the hero of his countrymen and very attractive to women. Murat, reflecting Caroline’s views, detested Josephine and had reported to Napoleon the evidence of her infidelity.

Brave and attractive though he was, Murat was also stupid and Caroline had incomparably the better brain, often turning him against his old friend, her brother, whom she understood better than he did. After the successful Marengo campaign, Napoleon had rewarded Murat by making him head of the elite Army of Observation and the commander-in-chief in Italy, where he settled down to looting on a grand scale. He and Caroline ruled in great splendour in Milan and both enjoyed countless affairs.

Elisa, the second sister, was the intellectual of the family, but so ugly as to be almost deformed. She ran a fashionable salon from her home in Paris, which was frequented by the vicious revolutionary painter, David, and a circle of literary women. Her husband, a Corsican soldier, was more or less estranged from her.

The favourite of Napoleon’s sisters was Pauline, who was not just stunningly beautiful and sexually irresistible, but a nymphomaniac. At seventeen she had married a pompous young general, Emmanuel Leclerc, who had stood alongside Napoleon at Toulon. She was vague, somewhat neurotic and given to laughing for no reason: and she adored men. At a tender age she had been the lover of three much older generals at once – including Moreau. Another of them was General MacDonald. In 1801 Napoleon suddenly appointed Leclerc
commander-in-chief of an expedition to the large Caribbean island of St Domingue, which was divided between Haiti and Santo Domingo. Many believed the intention was to remove Pauline from Paris, where her love life was scandalizing society. She was said to have taken part in an orgy with five men before departing, and taken three lovers with her aboard ship.

This was the ‘imperial family’ that Napoleon installed at the pinnacle of French society – a Corsican clan which had suddenly ascended to supreme power, and behaved with the inner jealousies and abandon of those suddenly elevated to status and wealth. Beneath them were Napoleon’s ministers, of which Talleyrand and Fouché, bitter rivals, were the most prominent.

Beneath them Napoleon created a whole new imperial ‘nobility’ which was largely drawn from the ranks of his low-born army. These were made marshals, and given huge incomes. In May 1804 Napoleon appointed eighteen marshals (in later years he appointed as many again). They included his closest military cronies: Murat, inevitably, the ever-loyal chief of staff Berthier, Lannes, Masséna and Augereau. To these were added able commanders not personally loyal to him, including Jourdan, Soult, Ney and the thirty-four-year-old Davout, already a brilliant soldier. It was a superb stratagem which bought off those most likely to pose a challenge to his rule. Such men were later rewarded with grand titles. Massena became Duke of Rivoli and Prince of Essling. Ney became Duke of Elchirgen and Prince of Moskva. Only two of Napoleon’s closest cronies, Junot and Suchet, were at this stage left out.

Below this inner circle of ‘aristocracy’, Napoleon created no fewer than twenty-three dukes, (swollen to thirty-one by the end of the reign), 193 counts (450), 648 barons (1,500) and 117 knights (1,500). Napoleon said with breath-taking hypocrisy: ‘The institution of a national nobility is not contrary to the idea of equality, and is necessary to the maintenance of social order.’ It was a colossal system of honours, spoils and patronage designed to ensure loyalty to the upstart Empire. His senior 800 generals were awarded some 16 million francs in subsidies.

The French Revolution had turned full circle. A man who still professed himself to be a republican had created an upper class based on
cronyism and military power that far surpassed that of Louis XVI. What was even more remarkable was that Napoleon was still a comparatively young man of thirty-five and possessed by no means the most distinguished record in the French army. His first campaign in Italy had been brilliant but small-scale, his second in Egypt had been disastrous after two initial one-sided victories, and he had only narrowly won the middle-sized battle of Marengo.

Napoleon’s greatest military achievement to date had been in a putsch. Yet within four years he had established himself as Emperor, created a dynasty, a new aristocracy and a formidably centralized and overwhelmingly powerful system of control, which would have been totalitarian had he possessed twentieth-century means of mass manipulation. He had set himself up as a great military leader only to himself and to a few of his cronies, yet he laid claim to be the greatest man in Europe and to be the pinnacle of his entire country’s social structure. He regarded himself as master of Europe – with Britain having bowed to his peace terms, with Austria accepting subordinate status, with Prussia an ally and Russia cowed.

Yet beneath the strutting, chest-puffing vanity, was he in fact a realist, a man with whom Britain could live at peace? Addington certainly thought so when he concluded the Treaty of Amiens in 1802. In an astonishingly short space of time, however, the British were to change their opinion. Who was to blame? On the face of it, the British, who by the spring of 1803 seemed intent on renewing hostilities. A surprising number of scholars share this view. Yet the year of phoney peace deserves close examination – as do Napoleon’s own motives.

Napoleon in 1803, shortly before the conspiracy that was to provide the pretext for his assuming the imperial mantle, viewed the world with a characteristic mixture of ambition, confidence and insecurity. His greatest enemy, Britain, had just made peace on humiliating terms. To the French leader this seemed a great victory: the British were apparently exhausted by war and were fearful of having to fight alone against the French. The victory against Nelson at Boulogne confirmed the view of France’s new ruler that he now had his adversary beaten, even that their fabled sea-power was now held in check.

Looking to the east, France had regained control of most of the
Italian peninsula. Looking to the north, Russia, the most dangerous power fifteen years before, no longer posed an immediate threat, while Austria, repeatedly though not decisively defeated, was intent on peace. Prussia, once a threat, was governed by the indecisive Frederick William who had not made up his mind whether France or Russia posed the greater threat. (He was to change his mind six times between 1803 and 1806.) France, therefore, was the undisputed master of the continent.

In some respects this was frustrating. France had control of the Low Countries (although under the treaty France had proceeded to dismember Holland), its borders were secure on the Pyrenees, up to the Rhine and across the Alps. There was nowhere else to go. This presented problems; for France’s army required territory it could live off. France alone could not sustain it, and the army was the backbone of Napoleon’s power. He hardly had the option of reducing it to normal levels.