Defeated in Italy by Bonaparte and pushed back further by General Brune, and trounced in Germany by Moreau, Austria could not pursue the war any longer. The emperor had sent Cobenzl to Paris in the autumn of 1800 to prepare the ground, and on 9 February 1801, as soon as she was free to do so under the terms of her alliance with Britain, Austria made peace with France by the Treaty of Lunéville. News of its signature reached Paris on 12 February. The carnival was in full swing, and people reacted with joy.
The terms were less favourable to Austria than those of Campo Formio, as she lost some of the land she had then acquired in Italy. In addition, Austria recognised France’s incorporation of Piedmont and the existence of the Batavian, Helvetic and Cisalpine republics, the last expanded by the incorporation of Modena and the Legations. The former Habsburg fief of Tuscany was renamed the kingdom of Etruria, and was to be ruled by the Bourbon Duke of Parma (which had been incorporated into the Cisalpine Republic). By the terms of a treaty negotiated with Charles IV of Spain, the new King of Etruria married one of his daughters, and his kingdom became a French satellite. Austria was also obliged to admit France as a party in the process of rearrangement of the Holy Roman Empire, made necessary by the dispossession of the former rulers of states on the left bank of the Rhine, which had been incorporated into France.
The settlement was hard on Austria, but it was an even more severe blow to Britain, which lost her principal ally and proxy on the Continent. Worse still, by a separate treaty the kingdom of Naples ceded the island of Elba to France and closed its ports to British shipping, while further treaties with Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli enhanced France’s position in the Mediterranean. Malta and Egypt were still in French hands, and an agreement signed in February 1801 guaranteed France the support of the Spanish fleet.
The situation begged for a general settlement, to include all the powers involved since the outbreak of war in 1792, but that would not be easy to achieve, given the nature of the conflict; its roots reached into the second half of the eighteenth century, when traditional dynastic considerations were superseded by the need to keep up with rivals and seek security through a ‘balance of power’. If one state made a gain, others felt they must make an equivalent one, precipitating a Darwinian process in which stronger states grew at the expense of weaker ones. Recent wars and the partition of Poland had demonstrated that no frontier could be considered immovable and no throne permanent. The process was accompanied by the disintegration of old networks of alliance and restraining rivalries – Franco-Austrian control over the smaller states of Germany, the French-Swedish-Polish-Turkish barrier against both Russia and Austria, the Franco-Spanish family compact to check British ambitions in the colonies, the Anglo-Dutch equivalent, and so on. The situation was complicated by the spirit of the times: anachronistic structures such as the Holy Roman Empire and feudal monarchies came under fire from the intellectual forces unleashed by the Enlightenment and from nascent nationalism.
Two powers were growing faster than the rest. To the east, Russia had moved her frontiers 600 kilometres into Europe in the space of fifty years while advancing eastwards and reaching the Pacific Ocean. To the west, Britain was extending her overseas dominions. The only power to rival them was France, which alone could help Austria check Russia’s westward expansion and, with her Spanish ally, stand up to Britain’s drive for control of the seas.
The Revolution had curtailed French ambitions and its leaders had sent out pacific messages to all nations, but as their doctrines challenged the social order, they drew monarchs and ministers all over Europe together in its defence. In August 1791 the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II and King Frederick William II of Prussia issued a declaration after a meeting at Pillnitz in Saxony in support of the beleaguered Louis XVI. In France, this was received as a challenge, and led to the outbreak of war in 1792 and an invasion by Austria and Prussia aimed at restoring the ancien régime. The invaders were defeated and the French proceeded to ‘liberate’ the Austrian Netherlands (Belgium). The French Convention issued an Edict of Fraternity pledging to support all nations struggling for freedom from feudal oppression. Britain, along with Sardinia, the United Provinces, the Holy Roman Empire and Spain, joined the coalition against revolutionary France. The army of émigrés at Koblenz and popular risings in the Vendée and the south of France were financed, armed and supported with troops. While Britain did not have a standing army of any significance on hand, she paid others to fight on her behalf. But while both sides made much of the ideological crusades they were fighting, this thinly veiled what remained essentially opportunistic policies.
At the beginning of 1793 Georges Danton had put forward the idea that France had ‘natural’ frontiers designated by the Channel, the Atlantic, the Pyrenees, the Mediterranean, the Alps and the Rhine, which meant the annexation of large areas that had not lain within the borders of 1789. While ‘liberating’ oppressed sister nations, the French Republic shamelessly relieved them of their riches. Austria saw the possibility of reinforcing its grip on Italy and of helping itself, along with Russia and Prussia, to what remained of Poland. Russia acquired a longed-for naval base in the Mediterranean by occupying the Ionian islands. Britain seized France’s colonies and those of her Dutch allies. Prussia was not averse to taking the British royal family’s fief of Hanover.
Although it was through war that he had achieved power, Bonaparte knew that only peace could ensure his survival. His first success came on 3 October 1800, with the signature at Mortefontaine of a treaty with the United States brokered by Joseph. It took place in the presence of Lafayette, who had fought alongside George Washington, and was celebrated with a banquet followed by theatricals and fireworks. (A prolonged downpour marred the proceedings by turning the gardens into a sea of mud and delaying the building of the stage, providing time for the workers to join the artificers in helping themselves to the wine meant for the banquet, which did not begin until midnight, to the accompaniment of an erratic firework display.1)
The next step had been peace with Austria, then Naples, followed by the signature of new treaties with Spain and Portugal, negotiated by Lucien. That left Britain and Russia. Since Britain refused to enter into negotiations, Bonaparte sought to apply pressure by isolating her, which could best be done through alliance with Russia, which resented Britain’s command of the oceans and felt threatened by her colonial reach in Asia.
The tsar, Paul I, had grown disenchanted with his partners in the coalition and withdrawn his troops. Increasingly resentful of the Royal Navy’s high-handed searching and confiscation of neutral vessels, he combined with Sweden, Denmark and Prussia in setting up the League of Neutrals, which denied British ships access to the Baltic. Using the opportunity provided by the presence in France of Russian troops taken prisoner in Switzerland in 1799, Bonaparte opened negotiations and suggested a similar league in the Mediterranean. ‘It is in the interests of all the powers of the Mediterranean, as well as those of the Black Sea, that Egypt remain in French hands,’ he wrote to Paul on 26 February 1801. ‘The Suez Canal, which would connect the Indian seas with the Mediterranean, has already been drawn; the work is simple and requires little time, and it would yield incalculable benefits to Russian commerce.’ He urged the tsar to pressure the Porte to allow the French occupation of Egypt to continue.2
Bonaparte also pointed out that their two countries had no quarrel and many common interests, and that only British perfidy had turned them against each other. He even raised the possibility of joint action to despoil the Ottoman Empire, and, knowing that Paul had assumed the role of protector of the Order of St John, he threw in a present for the tsar – the sword of Grand Master Jean de la Valette, taken after his capture of Malta on the way to Egypt. It was a gesture bound to appeal to the impetuous tsar, with his chivalric fantasies. Paul despised the French on account of the Revolution, but he was fascinated by Bonaparte, and he sent two envoys to Paris.3
At the beginning of March Paul ordered the British ambassador, Lord Whitworth, to leave St Petersburg. Before his departure Whitworth encouraged and gave funds to a group of noblemen who were conspiring against the tsar, and on the night of 23 March 1801 Paul was assassinated in his bedroom. Bonaparte had no doubt as to who was behind the act. On 2 April the Royal Navy bombarded Copenhagen and the Armed Neutrality rapidly unwound, the new tsar, Alexander I, making peace with Britain in June.
Britain was nevertheless isolated, internationally unpopular, and threatened with unrest at home. The Armed Neutrality had interrupted grain shipments, leading to a rise in the price of wheat and a number of ‘bread or blood’ riots. The crisis over the Act of Union with Ireland precipitated Pitt’s resignation on 16 February 1801. He was succeeded by Henry Addington, whose foreign secretary Lord Hawkesbury began talks in London with the French envoy Louis Otto.
Coming to terms was made no easier by the role played in the wars by propaganda. British public opinion was moulded by the rhetoric of Edmund Burke, a raucous press and a flood of scurrilous cartoons, all of which demonised the French Revolution as a disgraceful, bloodthirsty breakdown of civilisation. Its key figures were represented as degenerate, vicious and ridiculous, and ‘Boney’ came in for the most vile, if often amusing, treatment. The French response was to represent the toiling masses of Britain as the slaves of the monster Pitt and the oligarchy of lords ruling the country. They were accused of wanting to dominate the world and behaving like, in Talleyrand’s words, ‘vampires of the sea’ who needed to be ‘exterminated’ in the interest of ‘civilisation and the liberty of nations’. The rhetoric on both sides incited hatred, and Nelson instructed his men that ‘no delicacy can be observed’ when making raids on the French coast. British treatment of French prisoners of war shocked Bonaparte. ‘Is it possible that the nation of Newton and Locke has so far forgotten its standards?’ he wrote to Talleyrand.4
The negotiations were complicated by the two countries still being engaged in military operations against each other, with minor stand-offs in various colonial outposts, continual clashes at sea, and a major confrontation in Egypt; Bonaparte was doing everything he could to supply and support his forces there. A British force had landed on the Red Sea coast, and on 1 March another 15,000 British troops landed at Alexandria. But Kléber had been succeeded by General Menou, who unlike his predecessor did believe that Egypt could be held. He had married an Egyptian woman and converted to Islam, taking the name Abdullah, which earned him some popularity with the locals, as did a number of sensitive improvements in the administration of the country. He managed to hold off the British force which had landed at Alexandria in an inconclusive battle, but was hemmed in there while General Belliard was besieged in Cairo. On 31 August 1801 Menou capitulated, ending France’s Egyptian venture.
This helped bring matters to a head, since the British cabinet had not wished to sign a peace with the French in Egypt, and there was now some urgency in London to conclude. Britain’s ally Portugal had been forced by the Treaty of Badajoz on 6 June to give up the province of Olivenza to Spain, to cede part of her colony in Guyana to France, and to close her ports to British shipping. France had reached agreement with Russia, and a treaty would be signed in Paris on 8 October, further isolating Britain. Preliminaries of peace were signed in London on 1 October, and Lord Cornwallis was delegated to France to negotiate the treaty.
He was greeted at the Tuileries on 10 November with a splendid reception followed by a banquet for 200 people. The sixty-two-year-old Englishman, who had been in public service all his life, fighting in America and governing in India and Ireland, made a favourable impression on the first consul. He then went to Amiens, where he would flesh out the details with Joseph Bonaparte. Cornwallis thought Joseph ‘a very sensible, modest and gentlemanlike man’, and the negotiations assumed a cordial tone. In recognition of his military past, Bonaparte placed a regiment at Cornwallis’s disposal so he could distract himself by making it parade and manoeuvre.5
Bonaparte sent his brother detailed instructions, providing him with arguments to use against the British, but Joseph was confident that with ‘patience and firmness’ he would be able to stand up to and wear down his opponent. He argued that the British ‘have in previous treaties always triumphed over what they like to call French petulance’ with their chief weapon, which he identified as ‘imperturbability and inertia’, and by keeping calm himself he would disarm his opposite number. The negotiations were complicated by Bonaparte, who had a habit of upping his demands on a matter just as it had been settled. He also introduced new ones, such as access to the Newfoundland fisheries and expansion of the French enclaves in India. Cornwallis stood firm on many of these points, but his superiors were impatient to conclude, as the country was exhausted and desperate for peace after nearly a decade of war during which the lower classes of the population had suffered serious hardship.6
Bonaparte would not allow considerations of foreign policy to distract him from his principal task of rebuilding the French state, and hardly a day passed during the first eight months of 1801 without a session of the Council of State or of the three consuls, dealing with everything from the legal system to the repair of roads, and including the reorganisation of the government itself, with the creation of a new Ministry of the Treasury. When the price of bread had risen because of shortages, causing discontent and even riots in the spring, he reacted not just with characteristic speed and decisiveness, purchasing large quantities of flour in order to produce subsidised bread, he also put in place a mechanism whereby such events could be anticipated and crises avoided in the future.
He had returned from Egypt with a pulmonary inflammation, and was still afflicted with scabies contracted at Toulon. A succession of doctors had failed to alleviate his condition, which was aggravated by his punishing work schedule, not to mention the exertions of the Marengo campaign. His lifestyle, with its irregular eating and sleeping hours and frequent overnight travel by jolting carriage, cannot have helped. By the end of June 1801 he was so ill some thought him moribund. It was then that he engaged the services of Jean-Nicolas Corvisart, an eminent physician with an empirical and holistic approach to medicine. Soon after, Josephine was delighted to note that his spots were clearing up. By means of poultices and other natural expedients, Corvisart cured Bonaparte of his ills, so much so that over the next months his appearance would be transformed, his complexion losing its sallow sickliness and his face its hollow look.7
Partly on account of his health, Bonaparte had spent most of the summer of 1801 at Malmaison. Thanks to Josephine, the house had acquired neo-classical interiors filled with furniture by Jacob and vases of Sèvres porcelain. She had transformed the gardens, filling them with roses and rare plants, and landscaping the park in the English manner. She also collected animals in a menagerie, which would with time contain a kangaroo and an orangutan, while llamas and gazelles roamed the park. It was characteristic of Bonaparte that while he kept quibbling with the architect Fontaine over the expense of every bit of work he carried out there, he had installed as librarian his erstwhile French master the ageing Abbé Dupuis, and as gatekeeper with a generous pension the man who had been the concierge at Brienne.8
Although he worked just as hard there as in Paris, holding meetings of the consuls and the Council of State, interviewing ministers and generals, and sometimes staying up at night dictating to Bourrienne, after dinner, which was usually at six o’clock, Bonaparte would take his leisure in a way that he never could in the Tuileries. There were several guest rooms, and there was usually a house party. They would put on amateur theatricals, stroll in the garden or play children’s games, with Bonaparte taking off his coat and rushing around to catch or get away from others like a schoolboy – and often cheating. He was amused to discover that the gazelles liked snuff, and would regularly treat them to some. Glancing out of the window during his toilette one morning, he noticed some swans on the ornamental canal and told Roustam to bring his guns. He then started shooting at them, laughing like a child. When a horrified Josephine rushed in and snatched the guns away from him, he said, ‘I was just having some fun.’9
At Malmaison he was approachable, relaxed and affable. ‘I was expecting to find him brusque and uneven of temper,’ recalled Joseph’s secretary Claude-François Méneval, ‘instead of which I found him patient, indulgent, easy in his manner, not remotely demanding, of a gaiety which was often boisterous and provocative, sometimes of a charming bonhomie, though this familiarity on his part did not encourage reciprocity.’ It did not discourage the painter Isabey, who, seeing Bonaparte leaning over to inspect a flower one day, leapfrogged him.10
Bonaparte was now regularly having affairs – with Giuseppina Grassini earlier that year, then with Mollien’s wife, then Adèle Duchâtel, the wife of one of his functionaries, not to mention the odd conquest among others of his entourage. Josephine was jealous, and made her servants and ladies patrol the corridors in the Tuileries. With her husband’s elevation and the talk of who might succeed him, she felt threatened by her thirty-seven years and her inability to produce an heir. She had consulted Corvisart, and that summer went to take the waters at Plombières in the hope of enhancing her fertility, accompanied by Letizia. Bonaparte himself did not attach much importance to the lack of an heir, and showed no signs of dissatisfaction with his marriage. ‘You should love Bonaparte very much,’ Josephine wrote to her mother on 18 October. ‘He is making your daughter very happy; he is kind, amiable, he is in every way a charming man, and he loves your Yéyette.’11
He had for years treated his younger brother Louis as more of a son than a sibling, and noticing this, Josephine had determined that he should marry her daughter Hortense. She was eighteen, pretty and endowed with her mother’s charm (and bad teeth), and Bonaparte had immediately taken to her. She would keep him company when Josephine was away taking the waters, and a deep friendship developed between them. He had adopted her along with her brother Eugène, and if she were to marry Louis their son would be as good as his grandson.
This incipient assumption of Bonaparte’s heritage by the Beauharnais clan was not the least of the sources of discord between him and his siblings, who insisted on maintaining a degree of independence while riding on his success. Joseph, who had amassed immense wealth over the past few years and set himself up as a grandee, hosting house parties and hunts at Mortefontaine, maintained close links with many of those who voiced their opposition to Bonaparte and blocked his plans in the Tribunate. He was also, for family reasons, close to Bernadotte, whom Bonaparte despised and would long ago have destroyed had he not been married to Désirée Clary. Joseph considered himself the intellectual equal of his brother and, influenced by liberals such as Benjamin Constant and Germaine de Staël, often argued with him.
Lucien had returned from his posting as ambassador in Madrid vastly enriched, having won the favours of the queen of Spain and exacted bribes at every step in the negotiation of treaties with Spain and Portugal – along with twenty paintings from the Retiro collections (to add to his already impressive 300, including works by Rembrandt, Raphael, Michelangelo, Poussin, Caracci, Rubens, Titian and Leonardo), a sack of diamonds and a large quantity of cash (a portion of which he invested in London) – and he brought back a Spanish marqueza whom he installed in his Paris mansion and the château at Le Plessis he now acquired. Unlike Joseph’s, his house parties there were anything but sophisticated, with childish games being played and guests subjected to apple-pie beds and itching powder. That did not stop him taking a high tone with Bonaparte, denouncing him as a tyrant and encouraging others in opposition to him.12
The tyrant still governed through institutions, and these were made up of people with ideas of their own. His inability to see things from the perspective of others meant that he could not discuss or persuade, only dismiss their views as ‘metaphysical nonsense’ and see criticism as opposition. In his view, expressed in a discussion of the plays of Corneille, the public good, which he described as ‘the reason of State’, was a higher aim which not only justified but demanded behaviour which in any other circumstance might be criminal. Corneille had understood this, and were he alive, Bonaparte declared, he would make him his first minister. Convinced of the rightness of the mission he had embarked on, and intolerant of those who could not see it, he was not inclined to waste time trying to persuade them.13
This came as a shock to early supporters such as Germaine de Staël, who had expected her salon to become the ideological powerhouse of the new regime. She had encouraged Benjamin Constant to provide constructive opposition on the English model in the Tribunate, but his criticism of the legislation presented to it enraged Bonaparte, who pointed out that since none of those sitting in the various assemblies had been elected they had no legitimacy, while he, whose assumption of power had been endorsed by the plebiscite on the constitution, was the elect of the nation. When Joseph tried to patch things up between him and the inconvenient bluestocking, Bonaparte merely told him to ask her what her price was for submitting. ‘I do not know how to show benevolence to my enemies,’ he snapped at Talleyrand when he suggested a more emollient approach. ‘Weakness has never led anywhere. One can only govern with strength.’14
To Lafayette, he said that the people were ‘fed up’ with liberty. He had a point – the ideologues chattering away in their assemblies and salons were out of touch with the majority of the population. This was glaringly obvious when it came to Bonaparte’s intention of reinstating the Catholic Church. The ideologues saw it as a betrayal of the Revolution, which had banished religious ‘prejudice’ and all the flummery that went with it. They tried to persuade him to abandon the idea, but he was adamant; when Volney tried to change his mind, their exchange flared into an argument in the course of which Bonaparte allegedly kicked the eminent philosophe.15
Talleyrand’s negotiations with Spina were not going well. The principal stumbling blocks were the Pope’s insistence that Catholicism be declared the religion of state, the return of or compensation for confiscated Church property, and the resignation of all existing bishops. To these he added a demand for the return of the province of the Legations. Bonaparte’s response was to bully Spina, flying into one of his feigned rages, threatening to occupy the entirety of the Papal States, to found a national Church in France, and even to become a Protestant if he did not sign an agreement within five days.16
The Pope replaced Spina with the more intelligent and skilful Cardinal Ercole Consalvi. Bonaparte welcomed him with great pomp at an audience for which he encouraged him to wear ‘the most cardinalesque costume possible’, but began bullying him too, setting an unreal ultimatum of five days. After much horse-trading, agreement was reached, and the Concordat (as it was named, after a twelfth-century precedent) was to be signed on 13 July 1801. At the last minute the Abbé Bernier warned Consalvi that Bonaparte had made some alterations, and the text he would be presented with was not the one agreed. When Consalvi declined to put his signature to it, a furious Bonaparte dictated yet another version, which Consalvi also rejected. Bonaparte threatened to act like Henry VIII of England, but he had met his match in Consalvi, who was not to be bullied. The Concordat was eventually signed at midnight on 15 July.17
Catholicism was recognised as the religion of the majority of the French. A new network of dioceses was created. The first consul would choose the bishops, who would then be invested by the Pope. Church property would not be returned, but the French state would pay for the upkeep of churches and salaries to priests, who would swear an oath of loyalty, effectively becoming its functionaries.
The Council of State voiced reservations about the agreement, and there was vociferous opposition in the Tribunate, the Legislative Body and the Senate, which demonstratively coopted the former Abbé Grégoire, a revolutionary firebrand who denounced it. Reactions in the army were even more violent. Ever the opportunist, Bonaparte exploited the uproar to pressure Rome into accepting a number of changes, couched in ‘organic articles’ which altered the nature of the agreement in his favour.
As the opening of the second session of the assemblies approached in the autumn of 1801, it became clear that malcontents of every hue were preparing to unite in opposition to Bonaparte’s increasingly autocratic rule. They were outraged that in a treaty with Russia the word ‘subject’ had featured with respect to French citizens, and were determined to reject the Concordat. More distressing for Bonaparte was the Tribunate’s critical reception of the projected Civil Code, which was close to his heart. To hear it picked apart piece by piece and criticised for being too old-fashioned and a betrayal of the Revolution was more than he could stand. He raged at the ‘dogs’ who had led the attack, likening them to lice infesting his clothes, and contemplated sending troops into the assembly. ‘Let nobody think I will let myself be treated like Louis XVI,’ he warned. ‘I am a soldier, a son of the Revolution, and I will not tolerate being insulted like a king.’18
Cambacérès persuaded him to avoid confrontation and allow the Legislative Body to reject the Code; he had thought of a way round the problem, which Bonaparte adopted. On 2 January 1802 he declared that he was withdrawing all projects, which effectively closed the session of the assemblies, since they had nothing to do. On the same day he went to the Senate and berated its members, particularly Sieyès, whom he accused of trying to turn him into the ineffectual ‘Great Elector’ of his dreams. Bonaparte was a hard man to stand up to in a situation such as this, and they obediently coopted a number of his supporters, giving him a majority.
The following day he attended the marriage of Louis to Hortense. They had both resisted the match vigorously, but had been forced into it by Bonaparte and Josephine, who had set their minds on it, each for reasons of their own: he because he saw Louis as his possible successor, or the one who would sire his successor, she because it should guarantee her position against the onslaughts of the Bonaparte clan. Neither realised how psychologically damaged Louis was, and that this would lead to problems in time. Bonaparte had little time for reflection, and at midnight on 8 January he left for Lyon, where he had serious business to attend to.
After its resurrection following Marengo, the Cisalpine Republic, enlarged by the Treaty of Lunéville with the addition of the Legations and Parma, had been administered on the French model by a provisional government under Francesco Melzi d’Eril. He nurtured hopes of eventually extending it to embrace all of northern Italy and turning it into a strong buffer state between France and Austria, possibly ruled by either Bonaparte’s brother Joseph or a Spanish Bourbon. But in the first instance he had to go to Lyon, along with 491 deputies, in order to have the constitution he had drawn up endorsed by Bonaparte and, he hoped, the republic’s name changed from Cisalpine to Italian.
The deputies, many of whom had brought their wives and families, had a terrible time getting to Lyon. They crossed the Alps in blizzards, were holed up for long periods in poky inns and cottages – princes, bishops and generals cheek-by-jowl with merchants and servants, all forced to eat the same meagre rations. One died along the way. They had finally reached Lyon on 11 December 1801, but their discomfort did not cease. Prince Serbelloni had brought his own cook, but most of them had to make do with local fare, which they found revolting, and nothing could lift the gloom of the winter mists as they waited for Bonaparte to arrive.
He was preceded, on 28 December, by Talleyrand. The deputies assumed they would at last be able to take their seats in the former Jesuit college church which had been turned into an amphitheatre of green leather chairs. They were disappointed. The last thing Bonaparte wanted was an assembly. He had instructed Talleyrand to divide the deputies up into five groups which were to discuss the proposed constitution separately. Talleyrand and Murat, who as commander of French forces in Italy was also present, circulated among the deputies, softening them up with a mixture of emollience and menace that made one of them think of the reign of Tiberius.19
Bonaparte arrived on the evening of 11 January 1802. He was met outside the city by an honour guard of young Lyonnais gentlemen accoutred in splendid pale-blue uniforms and plumed headgear of their own invention. As he approached the city he was greeted by artillery salvoes and the cheers of troops lining the streets. Despite the intense cold (the river Saône was freezing over) and the falling snow, a dense crowd waited to catch a glimpse of him sitting beside Josephine in his carriage.
The Italian deputies waited patiently to be convoked. There were two banquets and two balls, graced by Josephine and rushed through by Bonaparte, and on 20 January they finally took their seats in plenary session. But their hopes of a hearing by the first consul were dashed. Talleyrand appeared, to announce that Bonaparte wished them to select thirty of their number whom they considered worthy of a place in the future government.
When the thirty had been chosen by ballot, they were instructed to meet in two days’ time, on 22 January, to elect a president of the Cisalpine Republic. Bonaparte had originally wanted Joseph to fill the post, but Joseph thought it beneath his dignity and realised that he would only be a placeman, so he refused. Bonaparte would not countenance any possibility of the new state drifting beyond his control, so he would have to fill the post himself.
When the votes of the thirty deputies were counted, three were blank, one was for Bonaparte, one for another Italian, and twenty-five for Melzi. Having been informed by Talleyrand that the first consul wanted the post for himself, Melzi declined it. A second vote produced another Italian, who also knew what was good for him, and the third an obscure Milanese deputy who was absent, and could therefore not refuse. As they filed off to announce their choice to Bonaparte, who had already been informed, Talleyrand warned them that he was in an evil mood, like a lion with a fever. There are three versions of what happened. According to one, he refused to receive them, another has it that he would not address a word to them, a third that he threw a stool at them.20
Talleyrand explained that they must try harder, and after two days of agonising, they agreed. On 25 January they recommended to the assembly that it elect Bonaparte. There was predictable uproar and speeches by patriots demanding an Italian president. A vote was taken by asking the deputies to stand, and although some witnesses recorded that only a third did rise, according to the official record Napoleon Bonaparte was chosen by universal acclamation.21
The following day at one o’clock he entered the church in which the deputies were assembled, followed by Talleyrand, Murat and the interior minister Chaptal. A podium had been erected for him, decorated with bronzes and bas-reliefs representing the Tiber and the Nile, surmounted by a canopy depicting a cloudless sky. He eschewed this for the humbler president’s chair, and addressed the assembly in his poor Italian. He told them that since the nascent state needed a strong hand and a wise head, and there was none among them with the requisite qualities, he graciously accepted their offer of the presidency. He was not put off by the barely polite applause, and proceeded to present the new constitution. ‘Let the constitution of the …’ he began, and paused. Various patriots shouted ‘Italian Republic!’ With a wink to Talleyrand, Bonaparte smiled at the assembly and said, ‘Very well, the Italian Republic!’ The applause was deafening. The constitution was then read out, and Bonaparte nominated Melzi vice-president.22
The following day he reviewed the troops that had returned from Egypt, and then left Lyon. He was back in Paris on 31 January, and resumed his work on emasculating the legislative bodies.
As the Tribunate and the Legislative replaced one-fifth of their members at the end of every session, twenty tribunes and sixty legislators now had to be appointed. Instead of allowing the assemblies to choose who went and who came in, as the constitution specified, Bonaparte contrived to make the Senate intervene and decide for them. As a result, in the spring of 1802 the most cantankerous members of both assemblies would be replaced by men prepared to do Bonaparte’s bidding. For good measure, Lucien, who despite his tendency to make trouble could be counted on to toe the line when necessary, was put back in the Tribunate to ensure its docility. In March, Bonaparte crowned his dominance with a triumph that silenced his critics.