Napoleon made Consul for life, 1802; and Emperor, 1804.
Bonaparte was able gradually to modify the constitution so that his power became more and more absolute. In 1802 he was appointed Consul for life and given the right to name his successor. Even this did not satisfy his insatiable ambition, which demanded that his actual power should be clothed with all the attributes and surroundings appropriate to an hereditary ruler. In May, 1804, he was accordingly given the title of Emperor, and (in December) crowned, as the successor of Charlemagne, with great pomp in the cathedral of Notre Dame. He at once proceeded to establish a new nobility to take the place of that abolished by the first National Assembly in 1790.
Napoleon's censorship of the press.
From this time on he became increasingly tyrannical and hostile to criticism. At the very beginning of his administration he had suppressed a great part of the numerous political newspapers and forbidden the establishment of new ones. As emperor he showed himself still more exacting. His police furnished the news to the papers and carefully omitted all that might offend their suspicious master. He ordered the journals to "put in quarantine all news that might be disadvantageous or disagreeable to France." His ideal was to suppress all newspapers but one, which should be used for official purposes.
Napoleon
Napoleon on the necessity of war for France.
246. A great majority of the French undoubtedly longed for peace, but Napoleon's position made war a personal necessity for him. No one saw this more clearly than he. "If," he said to his Council of State in the summer of 1802, "the European states intend ever to renew the war, the sooner it comes the better. Every day the remembrance of their defeats grows dimmer and at the same time the prestige of our victories pales.... France needs glorious deeds, and hence war. She must be the first among the states, or she is lost. I shall put up with peace as long as our neighbors can maintain it, but I shall regard it as an advantage if they force me to take up my arms again before they are rusted.... In our position I shall look on each conclusion of peace as simply a short armistice, and I regard myself as destined during my term of office to fight almost without intermission."
Napoleon dreams of becoming emperor of Europe.
On another occasion, in 1804, Napoleon said, "There will be no rest in Europe until it is under a single chief—an emperor who shall have kings for officers, who shall distribute kingdoms to his lieutenants, and shall make this one king of Italy, that one of Bavaria; this one ruler of Switzerland, that one governor of Holland, each having an office of honor in the imperial household." This was the ideal that he now found himself in a situation to carry out with marvelous exactness.