With
his own elaborate imperial court, with his family ensconced on thrones
across the continent, and with his overthrow of several historic republics,
Napoleon brought Europe to a pinnacle of monarchism, argues Philip Mansel.
Argument: The 1789 Revolution made European
monarchs more conservative (ie a backlash - more censorship, more repression,
more discipline, order, rules and laws and a return to courtly grandeur).
The period after 1789 has been so often labelled an age of revolution
that its character as an apogee (culmination) of monarchy has been ignored.
Yet, unlike those of 1830 and 1848, the revolution of 1789 inspired
more revulsion than imitation. From Naples to St Petersburg rulers previously
interested in reforms reverted to conservatism. The Habsburg monarchy,
under Joseph II, became a citadel of censorship and repression: in 1798
a Viennese crowd attacked the house of the first ambassador from the
French Republic simply for flying the Tricolour. England was swept by
Loyalist movements convinced of the truth of Thomas Rowlandson’s
famous cartoon of 1792. The Contrast, which depicted ‘British
Liberty’ above the caption ‘National Prosperity and Happiness’,
in contrast to the figure of ‘French Liberty’ representing
National and Private Ruin’ and ‘Misery’.
Russia provides the clearest example of the increase in authoritarian
monarchy. An emphasis on discipline and order replaced Catherine’s
efforts to promote local initiative and participation. In 1796-97, in
the first year of Paul I’s reign, according to one of his secretaries,
he issued 48,000 orders, rules and laws. The new Tsar also initiated
the return to grandeur which was a feature of nineteenth-century courts,
after the fashion for such royal retreats as the Hermitage, the Trianon
and Joseph II’s pavilion in the Augarten. On May 4th, 1797, the
imperial ambassador Count Cobenzl wrote that Paul I had multiplied:
…so far as it has been possible the occasions for grand etiquette
and representation on the throne. It is unbelievable to what degree
Paul I loves great ceremonies, the importance which he attaches to them
and the time which he employs for them.
No mere brushing of the lips, but full formal kissing of the imperial
hand, was demanded from his officials. The central moment of his day,
whatever the temperature, was the guard parade. It was at once an endurance
test, the chief ceremony of state and a means by which Paul I exerted
direct control over his officers and his empire. During his reign three
regiments and his own 2,400 ‘Gatchina troops’ were added
to the Imperial Guard. According to his biographer Roderick McGrew,
Paul ‘pointed society, with the state in the vanguard, towards
a severely hierarchical and essentially militarised mode of organisation’.
Argument: Bonaparte aligned himself with
this conservatism with his monarchical costumes (1800-2), a dynasty
(1804), and finally a nobility (1808).
When Bonaparte seized power in 1799, while much of Europe had been conquered
by the armies of the French Republic, the powers united against it in
the Second Coalition were more monarchical and conservative than before.
Earlier than is generally thought, the First Consul Bonaparte aligned
himself with this with his monarchical costumes (1800-2), a dynasty
(1804), and finally a nobility (1808).
Evidence 1.
By January 3rd, 1800, the Garde des Consuls,
created in November 1799, numbered 2,089 – more
than Louis XVI’s Garde Constitionelle of 1792. From the beginning
it was an elitist unit with taller men, more splendid uniforms, and
privileges of pay and rank over line units.
Evidence
2.
On February 10th, 1800, escorted by his guard,
Bonaparte moved in the Tuileries palace. He soon established
what the architect Pierre Fontaine called ‘the magnificence due
to his rank’. The weekly, later monthly, reviews which Bonaparte
held in the Tuileries courtyard, riding a white horse which had once
belonged to Louis XVI, inspired widespread admiration, not least from
Paul I. An Austrian later called such a review ‘the finest military
spectacle it is possible to see’. In the autumn of 1800,
as he withdrew from the Second Coalition, Paul I suggested that Bonaparte
make the throne of France hereditary in his family. The Hofburg, rather
than Versailles, was the model for the regular receptions which Bonaparte
began to hold in the Tuileries, and after the autumn of 1802 at St Cloud.
Evidence 3:
Rank at the French court was based on service
to the state rather than noble birth, and was revealed by space not
time; by which room an officer or official could enter in the state
apartments, rather than what time a courtier could enter the king’s
bedroom. Officers down to the rank of captain
were admitted into the fourth room before the Salle des Consuls, field
officers into the third, generals into the second, ambassadors into
the first. The English traveller, J.G. Lemaistre, who attended
one of these receptions, wrote on March 7th, 1802: ‘persons
used to courts all agree that the audience of the First Consul is one
of the most splendid things of the kind in Europe’.
Bonaparte both employed ‘all the requisites of show, parade, form
and etiquette’, and received ‘flattery and cringing attention’.
Evidence 4.
Bonaparte’s costume, as well as
his guard and his receptions, revealed his monarchical ambitions.
Heavily embroidered official uniforms were created in December
1799 for the consuls and ministers, and in May 1800 for prefects and
senators. At a reception in the Tuileries after
Bonaparte’s review of the guard in March 1802, J.G. Lemaistre
admired his ‘grand costume of scarlet velvet richly embroidered
with gold’ and ‘the handsome uniforms and commanding
figures of the soldiery… the consular guards are the handsomest
men I ever saw, scarcely any are less than six feet high’.
He also wrote of foreign visitors, ‘everyone not in uniform is
in the full dress of the old court’.
For Bonaparte’s court was already in some ways more old-fashioned
than the other courts. ‘The full dress of the old court’,
which was imposed at receptions for foreigners and Frenchmen without
official positions, was more common in 1802 than it would be after 1814
under the Restoration. Foreigners bought their court dress in
Paris, since elsewhere on the Continent it had, with a few exceptions,
been abandoned. In 1800, in a gesture revealing desire at once
for trade, splendour and peace, the city of Lyon had presented the First
Consul with a cherry velvet babit a la francaise, embroidered with olive
branches in gold and silver thread. Bonaparte wore this costume
in preference to his official First Consul’s uniform at the Te
Deum for the signature of the Concordat with the pope at Notre Dame
on April 18th, 1802, and subsequently on the other state occasions.
He later devised a special lace and and velvet court costume
for himself, the petit costume de l’Empereur, such as
no other monarch possessed. Costume was an instrument
of power. When a group of men dared visit the Second Consul
Cambaceres, future Archichancelier de l'Empire, in black tail coats,
he asked: 'Are you in mourning? I would like to express my sympathy
for the loss you have suffered'.
Evidence 5:
* The proclamation of the empire in May 1804,
* the establishment of the households of the Emperor, the Empress and
the Imperial Family in July, 1804
* the coronation by the pope in December 1804,
were confirmations of an existing monarchical reality.
From the start members of the old nobility - Segur, Talley-rand, Rohan,
La Rochefoucauld – were among the court officials, as they had
been among the first government officials nominated in 1800.
Controversy: Heir to the Revolution
or what?
Napoleon never wavered on such gains of
the Revolution as equality before the law, religious toleration, the
confiscation and sale of ecclesiastical property, and careers open to
talents (although between 1805 and 1814 the proportion of non-nobles
in court office fell by half). However, at the same time as he extended
French territory by force of arms, Napoleon extended the principle of
monarchy by imperial decree.
For example:
1. He personally organised the destruction of the last city
states in Europe.
Already in 1797, after a thousand years, Venetian independence had been
abolished on his orders;
2. Genoa also lost its independence for ever in 1805,
when the Ligurian Republic was annexed to the French Empire.
3. In 1805, when Napoleon crowned himself king in Milan
cathedral, the Italian Republic became the Kingdom of Italy with its
own viceroy, Eugene de Beauharnais, its own court and nobility.
4. One of the best surviving examples of a Napoleonic
palace interior can be seen in Venice, in what is now the Museo Correr
on the Piazza San Marco; from 1807 to 1814 it served as one of Napoleon's
palaces as King of Italy.
5. In 1805 another ancient urban republic, Dubrovnik,
which had recently experienced a commercial renaissance, was also abolished
and annexed to the Kingdom of Italy.
6. The same year the Republic of Lucca – a free
city since the twelfth century became a principality under Napoleon's
brother-in-law Felix Baciocchi, who was crowned in pomp in Lucca cathedral
on July 14th, 1805.
7. In 1806, acting as self-appointed overlord of Europe,
Napoleon transformed the Batavian Republic, one of the bastions of European
bourgeois life, into the Kingdom of Holland, under his brother Louis-Napoleon.
8. Despite murmurs from the citizens, the great symbol
of seventeenth-century urban prosperity and independence, the Town Hall
of Amsterdam, became a Royal Palace, as it still is; one of the buildings
attractions was that the square in front could contain 5,000 soldiers
to subdue any potential popular disturbance.
9. Meanwhile, King Louis-Napoleon introduced court
costumes for the first time into the Netherlands: 'the intention seems
to be to compensate them for never having worn embroidery' in this country'
wrote Stanislas de Girardin, a chamberlain of Napoleon.
10. In 1806, Napoleon transformed another great commercial
city, Frankfurt, self-governing since the twelfth century, into the
capital of a Grand Duchy under the last Archbishop Elector of Mainz,
whom Napoleon had appointed Prince Primate of the Confederation of the
Rhine. His heir was Eugene de Beauhamais, so that the expected second
son of Napoleon I could become King of Italy.
11. The same year, again acting as self-appointed
overlord of Europe, the Emperor of the French elevated his allies, the
rulers of Bavaria, Wurttemberg and Saxony, to the rank of King, and
the rulers of Baden and Hesse-Darmstadt to that of Grand Duke.
12. Absorbing free cities, and independent ecclesiastical
and noble territories, these monarchs enjoyed more power during and
after the Napoleonic era than they had under the Holy Roman Empire.
13. Further extensions of monarchy occurred when the
Septinsular republic (if the Ionian islands, established by the Second
Coalition in 1799, was annexed to the French Empire in 1807, as were
the free cities of Hamburg, Liibeck and Bremen in 1810.
Argument: he used foreign conquests to
help bolster monarchy at home (key figures were given noble titles).
Foreign conquests not only helped Napoleon extend monarchy in Europe
but also helped him strengthen monarchy within his empire. Both the
territorial titles of the noblesse d'empire created in 1808, and the
domains and revenues assigned with them, were based on locations outside
France.
Evidence 1:
Hugues Maret, the Emperor's trusted Ministre secretaire d'Etat, for
example, became Duke of Bassano in northern Italy, while
Evidence 2:
Joseph Fouche, Minister of Police, became Duke of Otranto in the Kingdom
of Naples.
Evidence 3:
In 1810, Napoleon married the Archduchess Marie Louise, the last of
the nine marriages - to the Houses of Bavaria (twice), Baden, Wurttemberg,
Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, Salm-Salm, von der Leyen and Arenberg - by
which he connected members of his family, his marshals or their relations,
with dynastic Europe.
Controversy: How much of a 'monarchy'
do you see in France?
The imperial household,
rather than the Senate, the Corps Legislatif and the Conseil d'Etat,
became the power-centre of the state,
the Etiquette du Palais imperial a clearer guide to the power structure
than the written constitution.
The Emperor's lever and coucher (ie getting
up and going to bed) became critical moments, as Louis
XVIs had been, used by ambitious courtiers, such as the chamberlain
Stanislas de Girardin (who was ultimately successful), to restate their
candidacy for a prefecture. In 1810 dukes obtained the entrée
to the throne-room, while presidents of sections in the Council of State
lost it. Count Regnault de Saint Jean d'Angely, Secretary of State of
the Imperial Family, wrote to Cardinal Fesch on October 4th, 1810;
...the ministers and grand officers of the Empire are also part of the
Household of the emperor...This practice is consistent with the practice
of the former French monarchy and the current practice of the other
courts of Europe.
Evidence 1:
By September 1813 so many chamberlains were serving as officers in the
army or prefects in the departements that not enough were available
for duty at court.
Evidence 2:
In addition the Emperor used his ADCs to check and control the power
and patronage of the Minister of War.
Evidence 3:
Ultra-monarchical etiquette was used to assert the Emperor's superiority
over the Senate, the Corps Legislatif and the city of Paris - even,
to the Representatives' fury, during the Hundred Days.
Evidence 4:
Echoing many Parisians, Madame de Boigne wrote of Napoleon that she
had never seen a monarch treat the public so cavalierly - by his failure
to salute or bow to his subjects. Stendhal, who often attended court
between 1810 and 1814 as 'inspector of the furniture and buildings of
the crown', wrote in 1818 of]
...this court devoured with ambition [whose] pestilential
air... totally corrupted Napoleon, and exalted his armour propre
to the state of a disease... he was on the point of making Europe
one vast monarchy.
Evidence 5:
Indeed by 1812, Napoleon owned forty-four palaces,
from Rome to Amsterdam, more than any other monarch;
Evidence 6:
when the restoration begun in 1808 had been completed, he was also planning
to use Versailles, which he inspected several times.
Evidence 7:
As one of his secretaries Baron Meneval wrote, he saw himself
as 'the pillar of royalty in Europe'. On January 18th, 1813,
he wrote to his brother Jerome that his enemies, by appealing to popular
feeling, represented 'upheavals and revolutions... pernicious doctrines.’
He expected fellow European monarchs to
link their fortunes with his.
In Napoleon's opinion his fellow monarchs were traitors to 'their own
cause' when in 1813 they began to desert the French Empire, or in 1814
refused to accept his territorial terms for peace. However, like the
Kaiser in 1914, he over-estimated their commitment to authoritarian
monarchy. Most monarchs admired Napoleon's genius, his skill at taming
the Revolution, the excellence of his guard and army, the splendour
of his court and palaces. They were ready to imitate Napoleonic models
in those domains and to travel long distances to pay him court at Erfurt
in 1808, Paris in 1809 and Dresden in 1812. In 1811 Metternich, a particular
admirer of Napoleonic autocracy, thought of using French troops to suppress
the Hungarian constitution. In 1813 both the King of Prussia and the
Emperor of Austria dreaded war and hesitated to appeal to popular nationalism.
Argument: European monarchs may have admired
Napoleon's autocracy and monarchical style but forces at work within
European society encouraged the monarchs to stand firm against Napoleon
because they feared his expansionism.
Most monarchs feared Napoleonic expansion more than they admired
Napoleonic autocracy. Moreover, there was a monarchical alternative
to Napoleon 1. In Vienna, Saint Petersburg and London there flourished
what Count S. Uvarov, future minister of education in Russia, but long
resident in Vienna, called 'that sort of open conspiracy... that great
war machine... the secret alliance of European opinion against the France
of the time'. He was referring to networks of dedicated opponents of
French expansion, united by feelings of European solidarity. They included
the great writer Madame de Stael; Baron von Stein the Prussian reformer;
Baron von Armfelt, a confidante of Alexander 1; Count Pozzo di Borgo,
one of his ADCs and the oldest and most implacable enemy of Napoleon
since their youth on the island of Corsica; General Moreau, Napoleon's
rival of 1800-04; and in Austrian service the great publicist, later
called 'the Secretary of Europe', Friedrich von Gentz. They
helped push Austria to attack the Napoleonic Empire in 1809, the Tsar
to maintain resistance in 1812, and Bernadotte to join,
that year, what Madame de Stael called 'the European cause.'
Some of these enemies of Napoleon had personal connections with the
Bourbon émigré government which, from 1798 if not before,
both the British and Russian governments had kept as a reserve card
in their plans for redrawing the map of Europe. As Pitt had told the
House of Commons in 1800, the British government considered: 'the Restoration
of the French monarchy... as a most desirable object because I think
it would afford the strongest and best security to this country and
to Europe' - although it was never a sine qua non of peace.
European monarchs chose to favour the
return of the Bourbons simply because the Bourbons at least offered
to stick within their borders.
The reappearance of the Bourbon dynasty on the European stage owed less
to respect for its dynastic rights than to its commitment to France's
traditional frontiers. This renunciation of territorial expansion, first
evident at the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, was maintained throughout
the reign of Louis XVI (Vergennes wrote to Louis XVI in 1777, ‘France
as it is now constituted should far more fear than desire additional
territory') and was repeatedly asserted in Louis XVIII's proclamations
and letters. Even Napoleon, who continued to insist on retaining Antwerp
and the 'natural frontiers', called a return to the 'old frontiers'
'inseparable from the re-establishment of the Bourbons'. This
was the principal reason why Britain supported the Bourbons with money,
asylum for Louis XVIII after 1807, assistance In distributing his proclamations
in Prance and active encouragement for his nephew the Due d'Angouleme
behind British lines in south-west France in March 1814.
Like both Catherine II and Paul I, Tsar Alexander I remained more sympathetic
to the Bourbon cause than is generally believed. His court, like the
Swedish, went into mourning for the Bourbon prince, the Duc d'Enghien,
executed on Napoleon's orders in 1804, and refused to recognise Napoleon's
imperial title until 1807. Although opposed to fighting a war for the
sole object of the restoration of the King of France, in 1805 he considered
the restoration of a Bourbon with a constitution 'highly desirable'.
Throughout the years of peace with Napoleon after the Treaty of Tilsit
in 1807, the Russian government continued diplomatic contacts with,
and paid a subsidy to, Louis XVIII.
In a private audience in May 1813, Alexander I told the Comte de La
Ferronays, a representative of Louis XVIII, that he was prepared to
consider supporting a Restoration, once allied armies had crossed the
Rhine; 'Let us let circumstances do the
work. I know better than anyone, believe me, that the re-establishment
of legitimacy is the only base on which one can establish the peace
and tranquility of Europe'. To Louis XVIII he wrote
'we need patience, circumspection and the greatest secrecy’.
Pozzo di Borgo was one of several royalist ADCs of the Tsar at allied
headquarters from January to June 1814. In April, assisted by the growth
of anti-Napoleonic feeling in France, and the Tsar's secret inclination,
Pozzo insisted on the restoration of the Bourbons and Napoleon's abdication.
It may have been Pozzo who suggested Elba, an island he knew well, as
Napoleon's compensation.
As the Bourbons had found during their emigration, so Napoleon learnt
in 1814: territorial interests mattered more than blood connections
to what Marshal Bernadotte called 'the family of kings'.
So ultimately the 'family of kings' turned
against Napoleon.
Napoleon I had hoped to link the sense of solidarity of the monarchs
of Europe to the French Empire. Instead it had been turned against the
Empire in the European coalition of 1813-15, From Moscow to London,
consciously rivalling the monuments of the Napoleonic Empire, monarchs
built triumphal arches, temples of victory and war memorials celebrating
their victory over Napoleon. The picture by Peter Krafft of The Commander-in-Chief
Prince Schwarzenberg presenting to Emperor Franz I, Emperor Alexander
I and King Frederick William III captured French troops and standards
after the Battle of Leipzig, October 18th, 1813,
the Battle of the Nations which, more than Waterloo, marked
the end of the Napoleonic Empire, is the finest memorial
to 'Coalition Europe'. It was painted in 1817 for the
Military Invalids Hospital of Vienna as a dynastic, artistic, humanitarian
and European riposte to the similar picture by Baron Gerard, once on
the ceiling of the hall of the Council of State in the Tuileries: 'Count
Rapp presenting the banners of the defeated Russian Imperial Guard to
Napoleon I on the battlefield of Austerlitz, December 2nd, 1805'. Fewer
dead and wounded are depicted; three monarchs instead of one are shown;
and they are humbly dismounted rather than, like Napoleon, portrayed
on horseback.
After 1815 the monarchies of Europe owed relatively little, apart from
a reinforced sense of Francophobia, to the Napoleonic Empire and epoch.
The Napoleonic legend was a legend, not
a political reality. None of Napoleon's innumerable changes to the map
of Europe lasted, except for certain frontiers created
for some of his German allies. All Napoleonic
constitutions were abolished.
Rather than continuing the military autocratic style and regime of Napoleon,
many monarchs adopted liberal constitutions,
based on the 1814 charter of Louis XVIII. By 1821 such constitutions
had spread across half of the German Confederation; by 1848 to Spain,
Piedmont and Prussia. Napoleon's most
immediately important legacy was neither his guard, nor his court, nor
his nobility, the majority of whom rallied to his successors, nor even
perhaps the Code Napoleon, but his dynasty.
After 1815, the Bonapartes continued to
function as a dynasty. Indeed, because of the plebiscites
of 1804 and 1815 endorsing Napoleon I, they considered themselves, as
Joseph Bonaparte wrote to La Payette in 1830, more legitimate than the
Bourbons. The son of Napoleon's admirer Lady Holland found in Rome in
1828 that Jerome-Napoleon, former King of Westphalia, kept 'the best
mounted and most princely looking establishment' in the city, and 'will
not go out where he is not received as a king'. As they had done at
the Tuileries, in Rome the Bonapartes quarrelled over who had the right
to a royal armchair at Madume Mere's family dinners; in the end she
stopped giving them.
In addition to its internal French political programme of plebiscites
and strong government, the dynasty was committed, in Europe, to reversing
the two main legacies of the European coalition: the territorial settlement
of 1814-15 and the Congress system. This was one reason for Louis-Napoleon's
popularity and rise to power in 1848. It would be Napoleon III who,
by the wars into which he led the French Empire against Russia in 1854,
Austria in 1859 and Prussia in 1870, destroyed the alliance between
the monarchs of Europe which had overthrown his uncle.
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