‘This new dignity bestowed on the most insolent of all the usurpers who have ever mounted the world stage has accumulated and consummated our shame and our misfortunes,’ the Austrian official and British agent Friedrich von Gentz wrote to the British minister in Berlin, Francis James Jackson, on 22 August 1804. ‘The ease and indeed the joy with which this impudent procedure has been received and applauded at every court marks the extent of the world’s decadence.’ Frederick William of Prussia did indeed write a letter of congratulation to Napoleon which was nothing if not cordial. The other states of Europe were more or less grudging, but all except Britain, Russia and Sweden recognised Bonaparte’s elevation. Francis II, whose title of Holy Roman Emperor had grown meaningless with the dissolution of that political unit, proclaimed himself emperor of Austria as Francis I, citing as precedents the Russian monarchy and the elevation of ‘the new sovereign of France’. He had sought Napoleon’s approval first.1
Reactions in France were mixed. Scorn was poured on the enterprise by the people of the street in Paris, who were strangers to reverence. During the performance of a play about Peter the Great at the Théâtre-Français on 19 May the words ‘emperor’ and ‘empire’ were hissed by the audience. But there were no disturbances, and according to a police report of 25 May the workers of Paris ‘were making much of their right to vote [in the plebiscite held to sanction it] for the hereditary empire’ and turning up at the Préfecture in large numbers to do so.2
Many in the army felt their past glories and the epic days of marching barefoot and beating the Austrians on empty stomachs would be submerged in the new pomp. General Rapp disliked the ceremonial, resented the growing number of nobles in Napoleon’s entourage, and regretted his former familiarity with the great man, as did Lannes.3
‘As for me,’ wrote another veteran of Italy and Egypt, ‘while regretting the austere yet noble trappings of the Consulship, which suited me better than the pomp of the Empire, along with my old comrades of the Pyrenees, of Arcole, Rivoli and the Pyramids I sincerely welcomed this great political event.’ In an official address, General Davout assured Napoleon that the troops under his command saw in his elevation ‘not so much an honour for you as a guarantee of future happiness for us’. In a private letter to his friend Murat, General Belliard, then stationed in Brussels, noted that his men were ‘on the whole pleased with the new form of Government and the idea of heredity’.4
It was unfortunate that the trial of Moreau, Cadoudal and the other conspirators opened only ten days after the proclamation of the empire. Pichegru did not feature, as he had been found strangled in his cell with his neckcloth. The official verdict was suicide, but many did not believe it. Moreau still elicited sympathy, and people were not convinced of his culpability; he defended himself ably and was acquitted. Napoleon put pressure on the judges and a retrial found him guilty. Sentence was passed on 10 June. Cadoudal and nineteen of his fellow conspirators were condemned to death, Moreau and others to two years in prison.5
That morning Josephine had brought the parents of the marquis de Rivière and Prince Jules de Polignac to the Tuileries, where they pleaded with the emperor. The mother of Polignac fainted and fell at his feet. Napoleon pardoned the two young men, along with two more nobles for whom his sisters had interceded. In doing so, he sent out a message to royalist nobles that they, unlike the Bourbons, did have a future in the new empire. Not so Moreau, whom he had hoped to see condemned to death so he could pardon him. As it was, Moreau could appeal against the verdict, which would lead to another trial, so Bonaparte quickly commuted the sentence to banishment from France, and sent him to America. The episode had stirred powerful emotions. ‘The animosity and outbursts of rage against the government were as violent and as widespread as any that I saw in the days leading up to the Revolution,’ noted Roederer. But they did not affect the general acquiescence in the change of regime.6
Miot de Melito was surprised at the degree to which people found the idea of hereditary succession reassuring. ‘It was not as if any surge of affection for the first consul inclined public opinion to favour this new increase in grandeur for him and his family – he had never been less popular – but the need for peace and stability was so pressing, the future so alarming, the fear of terrorism so great, the return of the Bourbons, who had so much to avenge, so fearsome, that people eagerly grasped anything they could to elude these dangers against which they could see no other means of defence.’ Many assumed that Napoleon would, having first dealt with the impediment of Josephine by repudiating her, marry into the network of European royalty, to reinforce his legitimacy and guarantee France membership of the club. Some talked of the sister of the elector of Bavaria, which would have made Bonaparte the brother-in-law of Tsar Alexander.7
The marquis de Bouillé, an émigré who had returned during the peace of Amiens, was so struck by how strong and proud France had grown that he felt justified in switching his allegiance from the Bourbons to the man who had achieved this. Being a monarchist at heart, he believed Napoleon had a right to the throne. The ageing Cardinal Maury, a devoted adherent of the Bourbons, congratulated Napoleon on his accession. ‘I am French,’ he wrote. ‘I wish to remain so always. I have constantly and loudly maintained that the government of France must be from every aspect essentially monarchical.’8
Most of the hierarchy welcomed anything that could consolidate the rule of the man who had restored France to the Church. The Imperial Catechism treated him as the representative of God on earth, and the clergy would celebrate his victories, read out his Bulletins from the pulpit and condemn desertion from the army as a sin. Bishops referred to him as ‘a Hero preordained by Providence’, an ‘instrument of Divine mercy’, ‘another Moses’, and even in one case described his return from Egypt as being ordained by God.9
‘It was a unique moment in our history!’ wrote the twenty-four-year-old hussar officer Philippe-Paul de Ségur, an aristocrat who had defied his family to join up, and only reluctantly accepted Bonaparte’s offer of the prestigious post of aide-de-camp. He had wept when he heard of the death of Enghien, and condemned Napoleon. Yet he was swept along by enthusiasm for the enterprise of restoring France to greatness. ‘We were living in a state of exaltation as though in a world of miracles. On that day of 18 May in particular, what enthusiasm, what splendour, what power!’10
‘Today at last one can say that the Happiness of France is made forever!’ ran a letter addressed to Napoleon by a group of soldiers of all ranks on 19 June 1804. ‘Today the resounding Glory which envelops this Great Nation has been made imperishable […] Your glory is immense: the Universe is barely great enough to contain it and posterity would find it difficult to believe the real deeds of your illustrious career if faithful history had not graven them.’ Contemporary observers and historians of the times alike agree that these overblown addresses were not mere flattery or the docile mantras of a populace manipulated by Napoleonic propaganda, but the genuine expression of collective exaltation. Many believed he was so favoured by the gods that the sun always came out when he held a parade or some other outdoor ceremony.11
In 1807 the philosopher Claude-Henri de Saint-Simon would write that while there had been geniuses of action such as Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Caesar, Charlemagne and Mohammed on the one hand, and geniuses of the mind such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Bacon and Descartes on the other, Napoleon was a miraculous conflation of both. This extraordinary combination of creativity with action and power meant that he made things happen, things that others could only dream of. He was the ultimate creator, a kind of human God. Seven years of propaganda had built up a sense of his superhuman nature and of his being the darling of fortune, providence, fate or the gods. Paintings such as that by Gros of him visiting the plague victims in Jaffa, in which he is seen touching them while his aides cover their faces with kerchiefs, conveyed a subliminal message of his divine untouchability. And, as he pointed out himself, even the name ‘Napoleon’, unheard-of as it was, added to the mystique.12
Ironically, that mystique would be undermined by his attempts to institutionalise what had existed hitherto in the realms of the imagination. As Cambacérès had predicted, Napoleon was now at odds with himself. But the son of the parvenu noble Carlo Maria had been captivated by another mystique – a Romantic vision of a chivalric past. The constitution was amended by the addition of 142 clauses, and the words ‘nation’ and ‘people’ disappeared; Napoleon was emperor ‘by the Grace of God and the constitutions of the Republic’. He was to be succeeded by his male heirs, natural or adopted, and failing that by Joseph or Louis. A point was made of guaranteeing the possession of property acquired during the revolutionary period. The Senate, which became the dominant body, was swelled by the addition of the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris and grandees of the ancien régime. Its members received grants of land with a significant income, so as to create a new senatorial aristocracy grounded in the regions but connected to Paris, turning it into a kind of étatiste version of the British House of Lords.
The new constitution surrounded the throne with offices copied from the French monarchy and the Holy Roman Empire. On 18 May Napoleon’s brother Joseph became grand elector, Louis took the ancient title of Connétable, Cambacérès was named arch-chancellor, Lebrun arch-treasurer, Murat grand admiral. The following day fourteen generals were given the title of marshal of the empire, among them dissidents whom Napoleon wished to flatter such as Masséna, Augereau and Bernadotte. Talleyrand became grand chamberlain, Fesch grand almoner, Duroc grand marshal of the palace, Berthier grand huntsman, and so on. There was confusion as people struggled to remember how to address the bearers of these new charges, whether as Monseigneur, Votre Grandeur or Altesse Sérénissime, and their number did not cease to grow. An imperial maison was created, modelled on the former Maison du Roi, the official structure of the royal court. Napoleon had a maison civile, consisting of ninety-four officials, and a leaner maison militaire, to make up his court on campaign. Josephine had her own maison of twenty-seven officials, as well as twenty-nine dames du palais (Marie-Antoinette had twelve) and her own stables, a total of ninety-three people, including her grooms. Distinctive uniforms and liveries were designed, and a strict etiquette was established, as Napoleon believed that he must create greater distance between himself and other mortals in order to place his authority on a higher plane. The rules were published on 13 July, but people were still confused. Grand Chamberlain Talleyrand, who on being released from holy orders by the Pope was forced by Napoleon to marry his mistress, a lady of shady past, was firmly told that he could not bring his ‘whore’ to the Tuileries. The eminently sensible and tactful marshal of the palace Duroc was frequently called upon to deal with such delicate matters.13
The Legion of Honour, which had grown to a membership of some 6,000, was transformed into an order of chivalry which was to be a pillar of the throne. On 11 July it acquired insignia in the shape of a five-branched cross and was graded in five ranks: chevalier, officier, commandeur, grand officier and grand’croix. As well as attributing prestige, inclusion in the Legion brought remuneration and perks such as free education of daughters at a new school in Saint-Denis. On Sunday, 15 July, after a solemn mass at Notre Dame, Napoleon proceeded to the Invalides, where, under the dome where his remains now lie, he handed out the crosses to and took the oath of the first to have been honoured. ‘What I felt at that moment made me understand how a hundred thousand men went to their deaths to deserve it,’ recorded the returned émigré General Thiard on receiving his.14
Symbols and festivals associated with the Revolution, such as the commemoration of the execution of Louis XVI on 21 January, were phased out; the commemoration of the fall of the Bastille on 14 July was replaced by a national holiday on Napoleon’s birthday, 15 August, under the name of la Saint Napoléon – though there had never been any saint of that name. The Marseillaise was superseded by the bland Veillons au salut de l’Empire. Many wise heads were bowed over the problem of what insignia should distinguish the new state and dynasty; the lacklustre coat of arms awarded to Carlo Maria would not do. Lebrun suggested going back to the Bourbon fleur-de-lys, but was overruled. Among the proposals put forward were a resting lion, the cock of the Gauls, an owl, an elephant, an eagle and an ear of wheat. The cock was a favourite, but Napoleon would not have it. ‘The cock is a farmyard animal, it is too weak,’ he protested. The eagle was too closely associated with other royal houses, such as the Russian, Prussian and Austrian, but Napoleon was keen. He hesitated between that and the lion, but the association with ancient Rome prevailed, and the eagle became the emblem of the French Empire. It was Cambacérès who came up with the bee, a symbol of industry and community, as that of the dynasty.15
Napoleon had insisted that the change of regime be sanctioned, like the others, by a plebiscite to obtain the endorsement of the nation. The question related only to the hereditary nature of the monarchy, not to Napoleon’s elevation. The turnout was less than that for the previous one, around 35 per cent. The results were 3,572,329 for and 2,569 against. There was some vote-rigging, with possibly as many as half a million ‘yes’ votes being added, and it is also probable that many voted out of indifference or fear. But as far as Napoleon was concerned, it proved he held his position from the people. Having obtained their endorsement, he wanted to sanctify the new state of affairs with an act of God, by means of a religious coronation.16
He believed that this would crown his policy of fusion, by bringing Church and state together, and grounding his throne in tradition, lending his rule added legitimacy. He meant to outdo the Bourbons. The founder of the first French dynasty, Pepin the Short, elected king by the Franks in 751, had been crowned by the Pope, as had his son Charlemagne and grandson Louis the Pious. Napoleon had sounded out Pius VII before his elevation, and the Pope was prepared to overcome his distaste in the hope of obtaining in return for his presence some concessions on the terms of the organic articles that Napoleon had foisted on the Concordat at the last moment.
Napoleon considered holding the coronation away from Paris, whose populace he regarded with a mixture of fear and contempt, and whose educated classes he disliked for their irreverence and open-mindedness. He considered Aix-la-Chapelle, associated with Charlemagne, and Lyon, which he saw as the model modern industrial city. If it did have to be Paris, he favoured the Invalides over Notre Dame. Discussion of such details continued up to the last moment.
His physical environment had to be adapted. The area between the Tuileries and the old Louvre was being progressively cleared and turned into a monumental open space. Works began in the palace to accommodate his court, including a large chapel in which all its members would be expected to hear mass every Sunday. Saint-Cloud was also adapted, likewise acquiring a chapel large enough to accommodate not just the court but also a choir and orchestra, which Paisiello would conduct. The old royal palace of Fontainebleau, which had been turned into a military prison, was now restored so as to be able to receive the emperor and the court.17
If Paris was to be the seat of the new French Empire, the new Rome, it must reflect its glory and be turned into the most beautiful city in the world, as Napoleon had dreamed aboard the Orient on the way to Egypt. He had methodically bought up and demolished crumbling medieval hovels to create wide streets and prospects, with proper paving, guttering and lighting. Since coming to power he had had fifty-six fountains repaired and fifteen new ones built; hospitals had been refurbished, hospices for the terminally ill and shelters for the indigent had been built. New cemeteries had been established outside the city. Two new bridges had been started and the Seine’s banks were being cleared. A powerful impulse had been given to the arts, particularly painting and sculpture, with the biannual Salon showing works by David, Gros, Girodet, Fabre, Ingres, Isabey, Prudhon and others. The various museums, principally the Louvre, were a wonder the world had never seen before. Paris had also become the capital of music, with a conservatoire staffed by 115 teachers, three opera houses, and most of the prized composers of the day. There were also seventeen theatres, and despite censorship, literary life continued. The sciences flourished under the directorship of the Institute and the active encouragement of the state. Radiating out of the capital, utilities such as roads and bridges were being built. Since Paris was to be the centre of its universe, the telegraph, a system devised in the 1790s on the basis of a chain of wooden structures with moving arms which relayed messages by semaphore, was extended to carry news fast from the west coast, from the south, from Germany and Italy – and from Boulogne, where a giant one had been built to send signals across to the Army of England once it had landed.18
On 18 July, two months after becoming emperor, Napoleon left for Boulogne. Arriving at one o’clock the following afternoon, he immediately mounted up and rode about inspecting troops, harbour and ships, then insisted on sailing out on one of them, and after being fired on by the blockading Royal Navy, returned to port. He was keen to see the transport barges in action, so the following day he gave orders for some to put to sea. Admiral Bruix pointed out that the wind was shifting, making it dangerous. Napoleon insisted and rode off, but Bruix did not carry out the order. On his return, Napoleon was so angry he raised his riding crop as if to strike Bruix, whereupon the admiral put his hand to his sword. Napoleon lowered his arm, but dismissed him and commanded his second to order the operation to commence. The wind did shift, and the vessels were thrown onto the rocks. Napoleon directed the rescue operations through the night, and evidently found the experience exhilarating after months of ceremonial in Paris. ‘It was a grand sight: cannon firing warning shots, beacons lighting up the coast, the sea roaring with fury; the whole night spent anxiously anticipating whether we would save these poor wretches or see them perish!’ he wrote to Josephine. ‘At five o’clock in the morning the light came up, all was saved and I went to bed with the sensation of having lived through a romantic and epic dream.’ His Ossianic dream had cost seven ships and twenty-nine lives.19
He was in fighting spirit. To Cambacérès he reported that the army and the naval units were in good shape. To Chaptal’s successor as minister of the interior Jean-Baptiste Champagny he gave instructions for the Institute to study the American inventor Robert Fulton’s plans for steamships and submarines. To Brune in Constantinople he wrote that he had 120,000 men and 3,000 barges and armed galleys ‘only waiting for a favourable wind to carry the imperial eagle to the Tower of London’. When Marshal Soult told him that it was impossible to embark the whole army in under three days, he snapped back, ‘Impossible, sir! I do not know that word, it is not French, remove it from your vocabulary!’20
Napoleon spent the next six weeks with the Army of England. Although a pavilion had been erected for him in the camp, he took up quarters in a small château at Pont-de-Briques just outside Boulogne. The main camp, on the heights above the city, had been established over a year earlier, and the men had made themselves at home, with ‘very fine stone living quarters along regular lines to accommodate their officers, the administration, workshops, etc.’, according to the commander of the 26th Light Infantry, even building cafés and laying out gardens. This and the other encampments, strung out along the coast from Étaples to Ostend, contained around 150,000 men. There were a further two corps, one under Marmont in Holland and the other at Brest under Augereau, which brought the total number of troops facing Britain close to 200,000.21
They were to cross in a variety of craft, mostly flat-bottomed barges powered by sail, some supplemented by oars. Each vessel was to carry its complement of infantry, cavalry and artillery, so that the loss of one would merely diminish the strength of a corps without disabling it. Much thought had gone into their design: cannonballs making up the ballast were covered in sand on which horses could stand attached to posts, arms were stored in the deck above the men’s hammocks, gun carriages were suspended over the water fore and aft, while the gun barrels were mounted on deck so as to be able to fire. As it required five tides to get all the vessels out of harbour (which meant three days with ideal weather conditions and no interference by the Royal Navy), they were unlikely to be of much use. Yet over those six weeks Napoleon gave every sign of meaning to go ahead with the enterprise. He thought up an elaborate naval manoeuvre based on sending two fleets out to the Caribbean in order to draw off the Royal Navy, and then bringing all available ships into the Channel to shepherd the barges across. He was confident that once he had reached England he would sweep away any military defences he encountered and be in London within a couple of days. In that he was probably right, but given that the Royal Navy would by then have gathered in the Channel, he would have been completely cut off.
It seems extraordinary that Napoleon should have spent millions of francs on an enterprise he did not mean to carry out, yet everything points to that being the case. He had been actively engaged in the preparations, making frequent visits to Boulogne for over a year, but it was only in July and August 1804 that he busied himself with it most ostentatiously, telling all and sundry that he would be in London in a matter of days. By then he knew that Austria was in negotiations with Britain and Russia, which had massed a large army on its western frontier and was putting pressure on Prussia to join a new coalition against him. He could not possibly in such circumstances take the bulk of his forces off to England, leaving France and Italy exposed. He said as much in a letter to Champagny on 3 August.22
Many in Napoleon’s entourage, beginning with Cambacérès, believed the exercise was a bluff aimed at draining British resources, which it did to a large extent, and drawing attention away from his real plans. Variants of this opinion can be found among the military and even foreign diplomats in Paris. But it is likely that there were moments when he did consider invading. His exasperation at the repeated attempts on his life and work, such as the recent conspiracy, may have acted as a spur to striking at what he saw as their source in Britain.23
Another spur to try a risky throw of the dice might have been the almost supernatural wave of success he was riding. According to Marmont, he was dreaming of achieving ever grander things. ‘One has to live up to one’s destiny,’ Napoleon told one of Josephine’s ladies-in-waiting. ‘He who has been chosen by destiny cannot refuse.’ He was so preoccupied with how he would go down in posterity that he had come to see his life as epic. It was as if the image he had so carefully been fashioning over the past years had begun to direct his behaviour. To Admiral Decrès he complained that he had reached a dead end where glory was concerned, as the modern world was too prosaic for truly transcendental acts. ‘Take Alexander [the Great]: having conquered Asia and announced that he was the son of Jupiter, […] the whole of the East believed him.’ Yet if he, Napoleon, were to announce that he was the son of God, every fishwife in Paris would laugh at him, he told the astonished admiral.24
He was in fine spirits, riding up and down the coast, inspecting troops, weapons and equipment, chatting with officers and men, putting them through their paces and basking in the reflected glory. On 16 August he held a ceremony in which he handed out decorations of the Legion of Honour. The massed troops looked magnificent, flags fluttered in the sea breeze and bands played martial airs. Against a backdrop of war trophies, surrounded by his men, Napoleon distributed the insignia to the brave. ‘No, never, in none of his grandest ceremonies was he so majestic!’ in the words of an army physician. ‘It was Caesar with his legions.’ According to Miot de Melito, Napoleon told his brother Joseph that he believed he had been ‘called to change the face of the world’. ‘Perhaps some notions of predestination have affected my thoughts,’ he admitted, ‘but I do not reject them; I even believe in them, and that confidence provides the means of success.’25
‘My health is excellent,’ Caesar wrote to Josephine on 20 August. ‘I am longing to see you, to tell you all about my feelings for you and to cover you in kisses. A bachelor’s life is a mean one, and nothing like having a good, beautiful and tender wife.’ He would soon be joining her at Aix-la-Chapelle, where she was taking the waters. ‘As it is possible that I might arrive at night, let the lovers beware,’ he wrote jestingly on 25 August, assuring her that he had been too busy for any philandering and dropping suggestive hints.26
On 1 September he was in Brussels, from where he set off on a breathless tour of inspection of the left bank of the Rhine. On 2 September, at Aix-la-Chapelle, he received news from Paris that the Russian chargé d’affaires, Oubril, had asked for passports and left, which forecast a state of war, yet Napoleon carried on as if nothing had happened. With Josephine he attended a Te Deum in the cathedral and was shown the relics of Charlemagne. On the evening of 9 September he reportedly suffered something that looked like an epileptic fit. But two days later he was on his way to Cologne, from where he went to Koblenz and on to Mainz, where he received a number of minor German rulers who came to pay their respects. Having finished inspecting French defences along the Rhine, he was back at Saint-Cloud on 12 October.
Although he knew Russia was by now well advanced in preparations for war and Austria was also arming, and Naples only waiting for a chance to strike, Napoleon showed no sign of concern. He spent the next weeks alternating between Paris and Saint-Cloud, hunting there or at Versailles or in the Bois de Boulogne, while maintaining his intent to invade England, chivvying troops and crews to practise embarking and landing. On 27 September he had written to Berthier that ‘the invasion of Ireland has been decided’, to be led by Augereau with 18,000 men supported by Marmont with another 25,000, while the rest of the army crossed the Channel to Kent. The operation was to begin on 20 October. Yet he now shifted his attention to preparations for his coronation – even taking the trouble to have his wet-nurse, Camilla Carbon Ilari, brought from Corsica to see Paris, detailing Méneval to look after her.27
His elevation had raised questions about the part his family were to play in the imperial structure. While they had for the most part been of little assistance to him, and felt no duty of obedience, they had all developed bloated ideas of their own worth, and exorbitant pretensions – Joseph actually believed that as the eldest brother he had a better claim to the throne. He was proving such a nuisance that Napoleon gave him a regiment to command and sent him off to Boulogne. But a more permanent solution was needed, and as Napoleon could hardly be president of the Republic of Italy as well as emperor of the French, he decided to turn that into a kingdom, and offered its throne to Joseph. Preliminary soundings in Vienna suggested such an arrangement might be acceptable. Joseph agreed, but kept laying down conditions, mostly concerning what he considered to be his right to succeed to the French throne.28
Having been persuaded by Josephine that he was infertile, Napoleon had fixed on his step-grandson Napoléon-Charles, the two-year-old child of Louis and Hortense. He had a special fondness for Louis, whom he had largely brought up, and adored Hortense. But Louis had turned into a neurotic hypochondriac (among his bizarre ‘cures’ was bathing in tripe). His relationship with Napoleon was fraught, as Hortense explains: ‘Brought up by him, perhaps too strictly, he conserved a kind of fear of him which robbed him of the strength to contradict him openly, as a result of which he had developed a habit of quiet defiance which hindered him in the expression of his wishes.’ Matters were made no easier by the rumour circulating that Hortense’s son was Napoleon’s; he treated him as though he were his, sitting on the floor to play with him. Louis resented this, and did everything to thwart Napoleon’s plans. So did Napoleon’s other siblings. One evening when he was playing with Napoléon-Charles, who was sitting on his knee, Napoleon addressed him, saying, ‘I advise you, my poor child, if you wish to live, never to accept any food offered by your cousins.’ Not surprisingly, Louis and Hortense protested against their son being designated as the heir apparent. But Napoleon had decided that if he failed to produce a legitimate heir himself, the succession would pass through Joseph (who had only daughters) and then through Louis.29
Letizia was given a court of her own, with an ancien-régime duke as chamberlain and Louis XVI’s erstwhile first page as equerry. After much historical research, she was given the title of ‘Madame, mère de sa Majesté l’Empereur’, generally abbreviated to ‘Madame Mère’. She took the money Napoleon gave her, but was uncooperative, siding with her favourite Lucien against him. He had meant Lucien to marry the recently widowed queen of Etruria, but Lucien had secretly married another widow, by whom he had a son. Napoleon refused to recognise the marriage and tried to get him to divorce, but Lucien stood firm. He took his wife and his art collection off to Rome, where he was joined by Letizia.
Caroline Murat was in a rage at not having been given a title she regarded as due to her, and vented it on Hortense, whose children were princes while hers were not. She made such a scene, bursting into tears at table, that Napoleon relented and made her a princess. When Pauline realised that she was not going to be made one too, she stormed over to see her brother and screamed so much she actually fainted. Napoleon complied.30
The youngest brother, Jérôme, was arrogant, vain and fatuous. He was destined by Napoleon for the navy, but was a reluctant sailor, enjoying only the pleasures of life in port. He did eventually learn his craft and take command of a brig, in which he sailed to the West Indies. He was stranded there by the end of the peace of Amiens, and aimed to return by way of the United States. In Baltimore he fell in love with Elizabeth Patterson, the daughter of a local merchant, and married. He had no right to do so, as French law required parental consent up to the age of twenty-five, and when he heard of it, Napoleon refused to recognise the union. He ordered him back to France, alone, as soon as possible, but Jérôme would not be parted from his wife. ‘Inform your master,’ she wrote to the French consul in Lisbon, where they landed, ‘that Madame Bonaparte is ambitious and claims her rights as a member of the imperial family.’31
As the coronation drew near, his siblings made a concerted effort to make Napoleon divorce Josephine. That the new etiquette demanded they curtsey and bow before her was bad enough, but the idea of her being crowned was too much. Matters came to a head in an unholy row on 17 November at Saint-Cloud as the final arrangements were discussed; when they were told they would have to carry her train, his sisters mutinied. Napoleon lost his temper, threatening to strip them of all their honours if they did not behave and treat his wife with the respect due to her.32
‘My wife is a good woman who has never done them any harm,’ he said to Roederer. ‘She’s perfectly happy to play the empress, to have her diamonds, her fine dresses and the other consolations of her age! I never loved her blindly. If I made her empress it was out of a sense of justice. I am above all a just man. If I had been thrown into prison rather than mounting the throne, she would have shared my misfortune. It is only right that she should have a part in my greatness.’ He had stopped nagging her about her spending on clothes and handing money out to friends in need, which was probably uncontrollable: even though she had a yearly clear-out, distributing discarded clothing to friends and servants, a surviving inventory of her wardrobe lists forty-nine grand court dresses, 676 dresses, sixty cashmere shawls, 496 other shawls, 498 blouses, 413 pairs of stockings, 1,132 pairs of gloves, more than a thousand heron feathers, and 785 pairs of shoes. He must have realised it was a compulsive disorder. According to Hortense, he was by then so exasperated by his siblings’ attacks on Josephine that he asked her whether she would mind if he were to sire a child by another woman and pretend it was hers. He even consulted Corvisart on how this could be carried out, but the doctor refused to have anything to do with it.33
Other arrangements may have cost him less annoyance, but no less time and effort. Historians rummaged through records of early French coronations, noting symbols and traditions. Some, such as the vigil of prayer, were deemed too religious; others, like the ceremonial robing, might diminish the new emperor. The actual crowning could not be done by the Pope, as that would have implied Napoleon held his power from him. For similar reasons the pontiff would not be borne into the cathedral on the sedia, and would have to be in place by the time the emperor arrived. The question of what his throne should look like, and the design of the coronation coach and robes, were the subject of protracted discussion, as they had to be based on precedent but must not resemble anything pertaining to the previous dynasty. The result – a bizarre mishmash of the Graeco-Roman, the Merovingian and the Carolingian, with a dash of Henri IV – beggars description.34
Napoleon had hoped to hold the coronation on 18 Brumaire, the anniversary of his seizure of power, but the Pope was not to be hurried, and the date was eventually set for 2 December. On 25 November Napoleon was at Fontainebleau and about to go hunting when news reached him that the Pope’s coach was approaching. He mounted his horse and rode out to meet him, dressed as he was in his hunting clothes. When he sighted the Pope’s travelling coach, he dismounted and walked over to greet the pontiff, who alighted. Shortly after, the imperial carriage drove up and took them the rest of the way to the palace. They spent three nights there, and on 28 November drove into Paris together. The Pope was installed in the Pavillon de Flore of the Tuileries, and as soon as word of his arrival spread, crowds of the faithful gathered outside. When he appeared at the window they knelt and held out long-concealed rosaries and images for him to bless. Napoleon rushed over to share the aura by appearing alongside him on the balcony.
There was a last-minute hitch when Josephine let slip to the Pope that she and Napoleon had never married in church. The coronation ceremony could not go ahead unless they were wed in the eyes of God, so that evening, much to Napoleon’s discomfort, Fesch conducted a secret religious marriage in the Tuileries.
The ceremonial for the coronation was devised by Louis-Philippe de Ségur, grand master of ceremonies, assisted by the prefect of the palace, Auguste de Rémusat. The logistics were in the hands of the grand equerry General Armand de Caulaincourt, and the music was composed or selected by Paisiello and Lesueur. The cathedral of Notre Dame was decorated by Fontaine. To facilitate rehearsals, the painter Isabey drew floor plans of Notre Dame and painted a series of dolls to represent the principal figures. On 29 November he brought them to a delighted Napoleon, who began playing with them and then called over the major participants to rehearse their parts.
At eight o’clock on the icy morning of 2 December, while the capital resounded to the thunder of cannon and the pealing of bells, the legislative bodies arrived at Notre Dame and took their places. Two hours later the Pope arrived, in a gilded coach drawn by eight greys, preceded as custom demanded by a prelate mounted on an ass and bearing a processional crucifix. He took his seat and waited for nearly two hours in the freezing cathedral for Napoleon, who did not leave the Tuileries until eleven o’clock. He rode with Josephine in a gilded coach drawn by eight buckskin horses, escorted by several hundred cavalry with their bands blaring, followed by other members of his family and court in their carriages. The imperial couple and their attendants alighted at the archbishop’s palace, where they donned their ceremonial robes, Napoleon’s making him look even smaller than he was with its huge ermine cloak. He snapped furiously at his sisters when they staged a last-minute protest at having to carry Josephine’s train.35
By the time they entered the cathedral, to a bombastic fanfare, the Pope and most of those present were stiff with cold. To a twenty-year-old guardsman who had slipped in to watch, the ceremony was ‘everything that the most fertile imagination could conjure up in the way of beauty, grandeur and magic’. Captain Boulart, a fervent admirer of the emperor, thought it resembled a masquerade, ‘and Bonaparte as Commander of the army of Italy seemed to [him] greater than the Napoleon who was having himself anointed in order to reign by virtue of some pretended divine right’. He did not enjoy the ceremony, which he considered a load of ‘humbug’. Republicans raged and Christians were appalled by what they saw as a cynical manipulation of the faith for political ends, and the humiliation of the Pope. Paisiello’s music for the occasion echoed these contradictions: his usual light Neapolitan lyricism is in constant conflict with fanfares of brass and drums. Only Napoleon seemed sure of his purpose, though even he found it trying. The physician Joseph Bailly was seated quite close and had a good view of him. As he sat on the throne, with the crown on his head, clutching the orb in one hand and the sceptre in the other, Napoleon suddenly felt a sneeze coming on and made ‘a singular grimace’ as he attempted to quell it.36
‘There was, in this saturnalia, plenty to laugh at and to weep over, depending on one’s taste,’ remarked the royalist baron de Frénilly. The English caricaturists certainly had a feast. In France there were pamphlets critical of the ceremony, and scurrilous jokes and graffiti scrawled on walls opposite the Tuileries. Most of the population showed more curiosity than enthusiasm as they watched the gilded carriages and brilliant troops of cavalry clatter past, and made the most of the festivities and fireworks laid on for them that evening.37
There was to have been a grand parade the following day at which regiments were to be presented with eagle finials for their standards, but it was delayed by two days as a result of Josephine’s indisposition. On the evening of 4 December a relentless downpour soaked the painted canvas of the stand that had been prepared for the imperial couple and the dignitaries, whose seats were drenched. The following day, dressed in his carnivalesque coronation robes, Napoleon presided over a painful ceremony as his marshals distributed the eagles to the regiments, which paraded ‘covered in mud and drenched in the coldest rain’ with no crowd to watch them. Their clothes were soaked, their hats flopped over their faces, their plumes drooped. ‘We were up to our knees in mud,’ recalled one guardsman.38
For once, the sun had let Napoleon down. Superstitious as he was, he might have reflected on this. He had radically altered his relationship to the French nation, a relationship which had brought him to power and restored its sense of identity. The invitations to the coronation proclaimed that Napoleon had been accorded imperial status by ‘divine providence and the constitutions of the Empire’. When he received the members of the legislative bodies who had come to swear a new oath to him as emperor, in making a speech with more than his usual number of grammatical mistakes, he addressed them as ‘My people’ and his ‘faithful subjects’, which even his staunchest supporters did not consider themselves to be. In his pursuit of a national ‘fusion’ he had been sidetracked by the lure of aristocratic grandeur, which was leading him away from the republican spirit which had inspired and given him power. Far from reconciling French society as he had hoped, the implicit contradictions alienated republicans and royalists, agnostics and Christians, nobles and proletarians. And, as Cambacérès had foretold, they put him at odds with himself.