The other members took no interest in the idea of the Bee, and after some discursive talk the Council fell back on the Committee’s original suggestion of the historic Gallic Cock. The general voice favoured the adoption of the Cock, and they unanimously voted for it.
That, however, would not do for Napoleon. He sharply refused once more to hear of the Cock in any circumstances. He had for some minutes sat silent, listening to the discussion until the vote was taken. On that he rose and banned the Cock absolutely and finally.
“The Cock is quite too weak a creature,” he exclaimed. “A thing like that cannot possibly be the cognisance of an Empire such as France. You must make your choice between the Eagle, the Elephant, and the Lion!”
The Eagle, however, did not commend itself to the Council. That emblem, it was pointed out by several members, had been already adopted by other European nations. For France, such being the case, the Eagle would not be sufficiently distinctive. The German Empire had the Eagle for its cognisance. So had Austria. So had Prussia. So had Poland even—the White Eagle of the Jagellons. The Council was plainly not attracted by the Eagle.
Lebrun, the other ex-Consul, Arch-Treasurer of the Empire, now put in a word again for the Fleur-de-Lis. It had been, he said, the national emblem of France under all the previous dynasties. The Fleur-de-Lis, declared Lebrun, was the real historic emblem of France, and he proposed that it should be adopted for the Empire.
Nobody, though, supported him, one member, Councillor Regnaud, condemning the idea of the Fleur-de-Lis as utterly out of date. “The nation,” added Regnaud, with a sneer, “will neither go back to the cult of the Lilies nor to the religion of Rome!”
“YOU MUST CHOOSE THE LION!”
At that point Napoleon lost patience. Interposing to close the discussion, he curtly bade the Council to cease from wasting time. They must decide on the Lion for the Imperial Emblem. His preference was for the figure of a Lion, lying over the map of France, with one paw stretched out across the Rhine: “Il faut prendre un Lion, s’étendu sur la carte de France, la patte prête à dépasser le Rhin.” Napoleon proposed in addition, by way of motto, beneath the Lion-figure, these defiant words: “Malheur à qui me cherche!”
No more was said on the subject after that. The Council submitted forthwith to Napoleon’s dictation, and, as it would appear, without taking any formal vote, passed to the remaining business of the day: the inscription on the new coinage and certain amendments to the Criminal Code.
But even then, as it befell, the decision as to the national emblem was not conclusive. Napoleon changed his mind about the Lion shortly after the Council had broken up. The Lion as the designated cognisance of the French Empire did not last twenty-four hours. Napoleon himself, on the report of the Council meeting being presented for his signature, definitely rejected the Lion. He cancelled his own proposition with a stroke of his pen. With his own hand the Emperor struck out the words “Lion couchant,” with the reference to the map of France and the Rhine, writing over the erasure, “Un Aigle éploye”—an Eagle with extended wings. So Napoleon independently settled the matter.