23.1.7: Napoleon’s Government

The Consulate

Napoleon’s new government was composed of three parliamentary assemblies: the Council of State (Conseil d’État), which drafted bills; the Tribunate, which could not vote on the bills but debated them; and the Legislative Assembly (Corps législatif), which could not discuss the bills, but whose members voted on them after reviewing the Tribunate’s debate record. The Conservative Senate (Sénat conservateur) was a governmental body equal to the three aforementioned legislative assemblies. However, the Senate was more of an executive body as it verified the draft bills and directly advised the First Consul on their implications. Popular suffrage was retained but mutilated by the lists of the so-called notables. This term referred to prominent and more affluent men: landholders, merchants, scholars, professionals, clergymen, and officials. The people in each district chose a slate of notables by popular vote. The First Consul, Tribunate, and Corps législatif each nominated one Senatorial candidate to the rest of the Senate, which chose one candidate from among the three.

The executive power was vested in three Consuls, but all actual power was held by the First Consul, Bonaparte. Napoleon vetoed Sieyès’ original idea of having a single Grand Elector as supreme executive and Head of State. Sieyès had intended to reserve this important position for himself but by vetoing the proposal, Napoleon helped reinforce the authority of the consuls. However, Napoleon never intended to be part of an equal triumvirate. As the years progressed, he moved to consolidate his own power as First Consul, and leave the two other consuls, Jean Jacques Régis de Cambacérès and Charles-François Lebrun, duc de Plaisance, as well as the Assemblies, weak and subservient.

Further Centralization of Power

In 1802, Napoleon became the First Consul for Life and two years later he was elected as Emperor of the French. His coronation took place in December 1804. Two separate crowns were brought for the ceremony: a golden laurel wreath recalling the Roman Empire and a replica of Charlemagne’s crown. Napoleon entered the ceremony wearing the laurel wreath and kept it on his head throughout the proceedings. For the official coronation, he raised the Charlemagne crown over his own head in a symbolic gesture, but never placed it on top because he was already wearing the golden wreath. Instead he placed the crown on Josephine’s head. Napoleon was also crowned King of Italy with the Iron Crown of Lombardy at the Cathedral of Milan in 1805. He created 18 Marshals of the Empire from among his top generals to secure the allegiance of the army.

As Napoleon increased his power, he borrowed many techniques of the Ancien Régime in his new form of one-man government. Like the old monarchy, he re-introduced plenipotentiaries, over-centralized, strictly utilitarian administrative and bureaucratic methods, and a policy of subservient pedantic scholasticism towards the nation’s universities. He constructed or consolidated the funds necessary for national institutions, local governments, a judiciary system, organs of finance, banking, codes, and traditions of a conscientious, well-disciplined labor force.

Napoleon was largely able to quell dissent within government by expelling his more vocal critics, such as Benjamin Constant and Madame de Staël. However, he was also able to look beyond partisan and ideological divisions if he recognized exceptional skills and talents that could support his vision of France. The most illustrative example of this approach is his relationship with Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, a laicized bishop, politician, and diplomat whose career spanned the regimes of Louis XVI, the years of the French Revolution, Napoleon, Louis XVIII, and Louis-Philippe. Napoleon found him extremely useful and appointed Talleyrand to be his chief diplomat during the years when French military victories brought one European state after another under French hegemony. Most of the time, Talleyrand worked for peace so as to consolidate France’s gains. He succeeded in obtaining peace with Austria through the 1801 Treaty of Luneville and with Britain in the 1802 Treaty of Amiens. He could not prevent the renewal of war in 1803, but by 1805 opposed his emperor’s renewed wars against Austria, Prussia, and Russia. He resigned as foreign minister in 1807, but retained the trust of Napoleon and conspired to undermine the emperor’s plans through secret dealings with Tsar Alexander of Russia and Austrian minister Metternich. Talleyrand sought a negotiated secure peace so as to perpetuate the gains of the French revolution. Napoleon rejected peace and when he fell in 1814, Talleyrand took charge of the Bourbon restoration based on the principle of legitimacy.

The name Talleyrand has become a byword for crafty, cynical diplomacy. Talleyrand polarizes scholarly opinion. Some regard him as one of the most versatile, skilled, and influential diplomats in European history, and some believe that he was a traitor, betraying the Ancien Régime, the French Revolution, Napoleon, and the Restoration.

The services of talented politicians were so important to Napoleon that he was able to force his collaborators to work above their own political differences and personal animosities. Arguably the second most important person in his government, Joseph Fouché, was Talleyrand’s opponent, yet the two served together under Napoleon. Fouché was careful to temper Napoleon’s more arbitrary actions, which at times won him the gratitude even of the royalists. Fouché was thought to have saved the Jacobins from the vengeance of the Consulate and Bonaparte decided to rid himself of a man who had too much power to be desirable as a subordinate. On the proclamation of Bonaparte as First Consul for life (1802), Fouché was deprived of his office of minister of police. After the proclamation of the First French Empire, Fouché again became head of the re-constituted ministry of police (1804) and later of Internal Affairs, with activities as important as those carried out under the Consulate. His police agents were ubiquitous and the terror that Napoleon and Fouché inspired partly accounts for the absence of conspiracies after 1804. The two remained distrustful of each other and by the end of Napoleon’s rule, Fouché, seeing the fall of the emperor to be imminent, took measures to expedite it and secure his own interests.

Napoleon’s France

In strengthening the machinery of state, Napoleon created the elite order of the Légion d’honneur (The Legion of Honor –  a substitute for the old royalist decorations and orders of chivalry, to encourage civilian and military achievements), signed the Concordat, and restored indirect taxes, an act seen as a betrayal of the Revolution. He centralized power in Paris, with all the provinces governed by all-powerful prefects he selected. They were more powerful than royal intendants of the Ancien Régime and had a long-term impact on minimizing regional differences and shifting all decisions to Paris. The French taxation system had collapsed in the 1780s, one of the key factors leading to the Revolution. Napoleon instituted a modern, efficient tax system that guaranteed a steady flow of revenues and made long-term financing possible. He also reformed the army, most notably the system of conscription created in the 1790s, which enabled every young man, regardless of his economic or social background, to serve in the army. Consequently, the army expanded rapidly. Before the Revolution, the aristocracy formed the officer corps. Now promotion was by merit and achievement— it was assumed that every private could reach the ranks of the officer.

Of permanent importance was the Napoleonic Code created by eminent jurists under Napoleon’s supervision. Praised for its Gallic clarity, it spread rapidly throughout Europe and the world, marking the end of feudalism where it took effect. The Code recognized the principles of civil liberty, equality before the law, and the secular character of the state. It discarded the old right of primogeniture (where only the eldest son inherited) and required that inheritances be divided equally among all the children. The court system was standardized and all judges were appointed by the national government in Paris

Napoleon also resolved most of the outstanding problems resulting from the complex history of religious tensions and conflicts in France. He moved the clergy and large numbers of devout Catholics from hostility to the government to support for him after the Catholic system was reestablished by the Concordat of 1801 (signed with Pope Pius VII) that allowed the Church return to normal operations. The church lands were not restored, but the Jesuits were allowed to return and the bitter fights between the government and the Church ended. Protestant, Jews, and atheists were tolerated.

Attributions

• Napoleon’s Government
  • “Concordat.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concordat. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “Napoleon.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Maurice_de_Talleyrand-P%C3%A9rigord. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “Napoleonic Code.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleonic_Code. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “French Consulate.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Consulate. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “Joseph Fouché.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Fouch%C3%A9. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “History of France.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_France. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “Legion of Honour.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legion_of_Honour. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “Joseph_Fouché.png.” https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Joseph_Fouch%C3%A9.png. Wikimedia Commons Public domain.
  • “800px-Talleyrand_01.jpg.” https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Talleyrand_01.jpg. Wikimedia Commons Public domain.