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 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 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.
The record of the French revolutionary generals is in the main a gloomy one. If in 1795 it had been prophesied that all those generals who bore the tricolour to victory would vanish or bow their heads before a Corsican, the prophet would speedily have closed his croakings for ever. Yet the reality was even worse. Marceau and Hoche died in the Rhineland: Kléber and Desaix fell on the same day, by assassination and in battle: Richepanse, Leclerc, and many other brave officers rotted away in San Domingo: Pichegru died a violent death in prison: Carnot was retiring into voluntary exile: Masséna and Macdonald were vegetating in inglorious ease: others were fast descending to the rank of flunkeys; and Moreau was on his trial for high treason.
Even the populace, dazzled with glitter and drunk with sensations, suffered some qualms at seeing the victor of Hohenlinden placed in the dock; and the grief of the scanty survivors of the Army of the Rhine portended trouble if the forms of justice were too much strained. Trial by jury had been recently dispensed with in cases that concerned the life of Napoleon. Consequently the prisoner, along with Georges and his confederates, could be safely arraigned before judges in open court; and in that respect the trial contrasted with the midnight court-martial of Vincennes. Yet in no State trial have judges been subjected to more official pressure for the purpose of assuring a conviction.[310] The cross examination of numerous witnesses proved that Moreau had persistently refused his help to the plot; and the utmost that could be urged against him was that he desired Napoleon's overthrow, had three interviews with Pichegru, and did not reveal the plot to the authorities. That is to say, he was guilty of passively conniving at the success of a plot which a "good citizen" ought to have denounced.
For these reasons the judges sentenced him to two years' imprisonment. This judgment excessively annoyed Napoleon, who desired to use his imperial prerogative of pardon on Moreau's life, not on a mere term of imprisonment; and with a show of clemency that veiled a hidden irritation, he now released him provided that he retired to the United States.[311] To that land of free men the victor of Hohenlinden retired with a dignity which almost threw a veil over his past incapacity and folly; and, for the present at least, men could say that the end of his political career was nobler than Pompey's, while Napoleon's conduct towards his rival lacked the clemency which graced the triumph of Cæsar.
As for the actual conspirators, twenty of them were sentenced to death on June 10th, among them being the elder of the two Polignacs, the Marquis de Rivière, and Georges Cadoudal. Urgent efforts were made on behalf of the nobles by Josephine and "Madame Mère"; and Napoleon grudgingly commuted their sentence to imprisonment. But the plebeian, Georges Cadoudal, suffered death for the cause that had enlisted all the fierce energies of his youth and manhood. With him perished the bravest of Bretons and the last man of action of the royalists. Thenceforth Napoleon was not troubled by Bourbon plotters; and doubtless the skill with which his agents had nursed this silly plot and sought to entangle all waverers did far more than the strokes of the guillotine to procure his future immunity. Men trembled before a union of immeasurable power with unfathomable craft such as recalled the days of the Emperor Tiberius.
Indeed, Napoleon might now almost say that his chief foes were the members of his own household. The question of hereditary succession had already reawakened and intensified all the fierce passions of the Emperor's relatives. Josephine saw in it the fatal eclipse of a divorce sweeping towards the dazzling field of her new life, and Napoleon is known to have thrice almost decided on this step. She no longer had any hopes of bearing a child; and she is reported by the compiler of the Fouché "Memoirs" to have clutched at that absurd device, a supposititious child, which Fouché had taken care to ridicule in advance. Whatever be the truth of this rumour, she certainly used all her powers over Napoleon and over her daughter Hortense, the spouse of Louis Bonaparte, to have their son recognized as first in the line of direct succession. But this proposal, which shelved both Joseph and Louis, was not only hotly resented by the eldest brother, who claimed to be successor designate, it also aroused the flames of jealousy in Louis himself. It was notorious that he suspected Napoleon of an incestuous passion for Hortense, of which his fondness for the little Charles Napoleon was maliciously urged as proof; and the proposal, when made with trembling eagerness by Josephine, was hurled back by Louis with brutal violence. To the clamour of Louis and Joseph the Emperor and Josephine seemed reluctantly to yield.