The cue having been thus dextrously given, appeals and petitions for hereditary rule began to pour in from all parts of France. The grand work of the reorganization of France certainly furnished a solid claim on the nation's gratitude. The recent promulgation of the Civil Code and the revival of material prosperity redounded to Napoleon's glory; and with equal truth and wit he could claim the diadem as a fit reward for having revived many interests while none had been displaced. Such a remark and such an exploit proclaim the born ruler of men. But the Senate overstepped all bounds of decency when it thus addressed him: "You are founding a new era: but you ought to make it last for ever: splendour is nothing without duration." The Greeks who fawned on Persian satraps did not more unman themselves than these pensioned sycophants, who had lived through the days of 1789 but knew them not. This fulsome adulation would be unworthy of notice did it not convey the most signal proof of the danger which republics incur when men lose sight of the higher aims of life and wallow among its sordid interests.[[306]]
[pg.467] After the severe drilling of the last four years, the Chambers voted nearly unanimously in favour of a Napoleonic dynasty. The Corps Législatif was not in session, and it was not convoked. The Senate, after hearing Fouché's unmistakable hints, named a commission of its members to report on hereditary rule, and then waited on events. These were decided mainly in private meetings of the Council of State, where the proposal met with some opposition from Cambacérès, Merlin, and Thibaudeau. But of what avail are private remonstrances when in open session opponents are dumb and supporters vie in adulation? In the Tribunate, on April 23rd, an obscure member named Curée proposed the adoption of the hereditary principle. One man alone dared openly to combat the proposal, the great Carnot; and the opposition of Curée to Carnot might have recalled to the minds of those abject champions of popular liberty the verse that glitters amidst the literary rubbish of the Roman Empire:
"Victrix causa deis placuit, sed victa Catoni."
The Tribunate named a commission to report; it was favourable to the Bonapartes. The Senate voted in the same sense, three Senators alone, among them Grégoire, Bishop of Blois, voting against it. Sieyès and Lanjuinais were absent; but the well-salaried lord of the manor of Crosne must have read with amused contempt the resolution of this body, which he had designed to be the guardian of the republican constitution:
"The French have conquered liberty: they wish to preserve their conquest: they wish for repose after victory. They will owe this glorious repose to the hereditary rule of a single man, who, raised above all, is to defend public liberty, maintain equality, and lower his fasces before the sovereignty of the people that proclaims him."
[pg.468] In this way did France reduce to practice the dogma of Rousseau with regard to the occasional and temporary need of a dictator.[[307]]
When the commonalty are so obsequious, any title can be taken by the one necessary man. Napoleon at first affected to doubt whether the title of Stadtholder would not be more seemly than that of Emperor; and in one of the many conferences held on this topic, Miot de Melito advocated the retention of the term Consul for its grand republican simplicity. But it was soon seen that the term Emperor was the only one which satisfied Napoleon's ambition and French love of splendour. Accordingly a senatus consultum of May 18th, 1804, formally decreed to him the title of Emperor of the French. As for his former colleagues, Cambacérès and Lebrun, they were stultified with the titles of Arch-chancellor and Arch-treasurer of the Empire: his brother Joseph received the title of Grand Elector, borrowed from the Holy Roman Empire, and oddly applied to an hereditary empire where the chief had been appointed: Louis was dubbed Constable: two other grand dignities, those of Arch-chancellor of State and High Admiral, were not as yet filled, but were reserved for Napoleon's relatives by marriage, Eugène Beauharnais and Murat. These six grand dignitaries of the new Empire were to be irresponsible and irremovable, and, along with the Emperor, they formed the Grand Council of the Empire.
On lesser individuals the rays of the imperial diadem cast a fainter glow. Napoleon's uncle, Cardinal Fesch, became Grand Almoner; Berthier, Grand Master of the Hounds; Talleyrand, Grand Chamberlain; Duroc, Grand Marshal of the Palace; and Caulaincourt, Master of the Horse, the acceptance of which title seemed to the world to convict him of full complicity in the schemes for the murder of the Duc d'Enghien. For the rest, the Emperor's mother was to be styled Madame Mère; his sisters became Imperial Highnesses, with their several establishments of ladies-in-waiting; and Paris fluttered[pg.469] with excitement at each successive step upwards of expectant nobles, regicides, generals, and stockjobbers towards the central galaxy of the Corsican family, which, ten years before, had subsisted on the alms of the Republic one and indivisible.
It remained to gain over the army. The means used were profuse, in proportion as the task was arduous. The following generals were distinguished as Marshals of the Empire (May 19th): Berthier, Murat, Masséna, Augereau, Lannes, Jourdan, Ney, Soult, Brune, Davoust, Bessières, Moncey, Mortier, and Bernadotte; two marshal's bâtons were held in reserve as a reward for future service, and four aged generals, Lefebvre, Serrurier, Pérignon, and Kellerman (the hero of Valmy), received the title of honorary marshals. In one of his conversations with Roederer, the Emperor frankly avowed his reasons for showering these honours on his military chiefs; it was in order to assure the imperial dignity to himself; for how could they object to this, when they themselves received honours so lofty?[[308]] The confession affords a curious instance of Napoleon's unbounded trust in the most elementary, not to say the meanest, motives of human conduct. Suitable rewards were bestowed on officers of the second rank. But it was at once remarked that determined and outspoken republicans like Suchet, Gouvion St. Cyr, and Macdonald, whose talents and exploits far outstripped those of many of the marshals, were excluded from their ranks. St. Cyr was at Taranto, and Macdonald, after an enforced diplomatic mission to Copenhagen, was received on his recall with much coolness.[[309]] Other generals who had given umbrage at the Tuileries were more effectively broken in by a term of diplomatic banishment. Lannes at Lisbon and Brune[pg.470] at Constantinople learnt a little diplomacy and some complaisance to the head of the State, and were taken back to Napoleon's favour. Bernadotte, though ever suspected of Jacobinism and feared for the forceful ambition that sprang from the blending of Gascon and Moorish blood in his veins, was now also treated with the consideration due to one who had married Joseph Bonaparte's sister-in-law: he received at Napoleon's hands the house in Paris which had formerly belonged to Moreau: the exile's estate of Grosbois, near Paris, went to reward the ever faithful Berthier. Augereau, half cured of his Jacobinism by the disfavour of the Directory, was now drilling a small French force and Irish volunteers at Brest. But the Grand Army, which comprised the pick of the French forces, was intrusted to the command of men on whom Napoleon could absolutely rely, Davoust, Soult, and Ney; and, in that splendid force, hatred of England and pride in Napoleon's prowess now overwhelmed all political considerations.
These arrangements attest the marvellous foresight and care which Napoleon brought to bear on all affairs: even if the discontented generals and troops had protested against the adoption of the Empire and the prosecution of Moreau, they must have been easily overpowered. In some places, as at Metz, the troops and populace fretted against the Empire and its pretentious pomp; but the action of the commanders soon restored order. And thus it came to pass that even the soldiery that still cherished the Republic raised not a musket while the Empire was founded, and Moreau was accused of high treason.