Citizen Emperor (4 page)

A normal politician would have been content with majority support in the Tribunate and the press, but not Bonaparte. He had none of the skills traditionally associated with modern political leaders – parliamentary manoeuvring, a talent for oratory, a willingness to work behind the scenes – and was less than patient with the minority opposition. In the context of war abroad, and the social and political divisions brought about by the Revolution, there was no tolerance for politicians who did not rally. Bonaparte counter-attacked. Newspapers favourable to the government were used to print articles condemning the chambers and went so far as to suggest that the troublemakers be dismissed.
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Not all the newspapers, however, were in favour of either Bonaparte or the new regime. On the contrary. That problem was easily solved. Two months after Brumaire, on 17 January 1800, a decree was published that suppressed sixty of the seventy-three Paris newspapers.
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The motive given – some of them were ‘instruments in the hands of the enemies of the Republic’
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– was not an exaggeration; forty of the suppressed newspapers passed for royalist, but the republican press was also eliminated, with the exception of the
Moniteur universel
, which became the official organ of the state. Over the next few months, a further three newspapers disappeared. Between 1800 and 1804, two more papers would be silenced. By the end of 1811, only four newspapers would be left in Paris with a run of around 34,000 copies, their content strictly controlled. In the provinces, the number would be reduced to one newspaper per department, a measure that led to the creation of a good number of newspapers in departments that did not have them.
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The suppression of newspapers in France was little short of spectacular, another kind of coup, except that instead of getting rid of the journalists, the regime got rid of the newspapers they wrote for.
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The press was to present a uniform façade so that anything that might contradict the image propagated by the authorities, such as resistance to conscription and news of suicides, was eliminated from its columns. It is easy to interpret this attack on the press as an attack on freedom of speech, but it elicited little or no public protest, which leads one to suggest that either the public was indifferent or it approved of the measure. In part, this was a return to the system employed by
ancien régime
governments to control the press and public opinion. The monarchy had a monopoly over political news, and newspapers had to pay to get access to it. Moreover, there was never more than one newspaper in each major town. But the desire to restrict press freedom was also a reaction to the excesses experienced during the Revolution when anything and everything had been permitted, from the incitement to massacre in 1792 to rabid populist newspapers such as
L’Ami du peuple
(The Friend of the People) and
Le
Père Duchesne
(The Father Duchesne), in which sentences were punctuated with the word
foutre
(an approximation of the English word ‘fuck’).
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This freedom, moderates believed, had been in part responsible for the radicalization of the Revolution and had enabled factions to flourish. That is the reason why the press suffered a number of restrictions after the fall of Robespierre when forty-odd newspapers were banned.
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Total freedom of the press was again introduced after the fall of Robespierre, but within a short time the Directory found itself assailed by an orgy of invective from neo-Jacobin as well as royalist newspapers. Bonaparte’s decision to shut down so many newspapers was about controlling the flow of information, but it was also about national reconciliation as touted by the Brumairians. Journalists, contemporaries believed, had usurped the role of the elected authorities, had sustained the factionalism that had riven French society and had become inimical to ‘public order’.
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Newspapers then did not serve the same purpose as we have come to expect of the press today. Eighteenth-century French newspapers were outlets of particular political viewpoints.
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The press as an instrument of radical politics, something contemporaries were all too familiar with from the Revolution, inspired fear and was therefore considered dangerous.
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Bonaparte was unwilling to see a repeat of the revolutionary years and believed that freedom of the press would lead to a proliferation of both Jacobin and royalist views.
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The Consulate was above all about restoring order. To do that, the control of the press was considered essential to put an end to the political upheavals that had plagued France.

Press censorship in Napoleonic France was less harsh than in the three absolutist eastern European powers – Austria, Prussia and Russia – although by no means as liberal as in Britain. True, there was now far more censorship than there had been in pre-revolutionary France, but Bonaparte’s measures were the continuation of a trend; censorship had become increasingly more rigorous in France towards the end of the century, and he had inherited from the Directory censorship laws empowering the police to suppress newspapers. However, despite what some historians have asserted, the press under Napoleon was not entirely docile.
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Between 1800 and 1804, Bonaparte used the tensions between different newspapers to his advantage.
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An opposition journalism existed and persisted throughout the Consulate and into the Empire.
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Debate was certainly restricted, and authors might have been unable to find a publisher for their work when they touched on issues the government preferred to avoid, but opposition pamphlets and songs continued to circulate in Paris.
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The Vessel of State Arrives in Port

With the government in place, Bonaparte and his conspirators now had to convince the French people they were legitimate, and in the process come up with some sort of programme. This was slowly formulated over the coming weeks and months, but in the initial stages a number of texts were produced that vaguely define the political concepts with which Bonaparte (and his colleagues) wanted to be associated. The first is a proclamation to the French people announcing the Consular regime on 15 December 1799 – order, justice, stability, force and above all moderation were some of the key words emphasized in the text, in which it was clearly stated that ‘the Revolution is fixed on the principles with which it began. It is finished.’
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That word ‘Consular’ was meant to assure the political elite, well versed in ancient history, that the Republic would continue and would be consolidated vaguely following a Roman model.
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Everything that emanated from Paris from that time on deliberately promoted the image of a unifying government. At the same time, the regime disseminated an image of a Directorial France left in ruin, its roads and ports in a poor state, law and order a shambles, and public confidence in the institutions of government destroyed. One pamphlet that caused quite a stir when it appeared was written by the editor of one of Bonaparte’s Italian newspapers, Marc-Antoine Jullien (although published anonymously). It took the form of a dialogue between two people identified as ‘A’ and ‘B’, the latter immediately recognized as Bonaparte. Jullien lays the groundwork by lamenting the deplorable state of affairs in France before Bonaparte came on the scene:

There was no national representation, no government, no constitution. Our conquests lost, our laurels tarnished, peace impossible except on dishonourable terms, our armies destroyed, the French name reviled by both enemies and allies, the republic fallen into the utmost debasement and misery, the aims of the revolution miscarried, the fruits of our labours, sacrifices and victories annihilated, the dregs of faction agitating and disputing with foreigners over the shreds of our country – that is what struck the observer.
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And that is only the beginning of a long list of complaints, many of them either false or grossly exaggerated, perpetuated in the press of the day.
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The point was to show just how bad things were so that Bonaparte looked as though he had dragged France from the edge of the abyss. It is a theme commonly found in some paintings, often using allegories, depicting Brumaire in the months and years after the coup.

In Antoine-François Callet’s
Tableau allégorique du 18 Brumaire
(Allegorical painting of 18 Brumaire), for example, the forces of light drive away the forces of darkness.
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At the bottom of the painting, one can see a boat that is meant to be, according to the description in the catalogue of the Salon for that year, ‘the vessel of State’ arriving in port. This was a reference to the plebiscite of February 1800, which legitimated Brumaire (see below). On board the vessel one can see a number of the best-known pieces of art pillaged from Italy – the Horses of St Mark, the
Laocoön
, the
Apollo of Belvedere
, the
Transfiguration
by Raphael – next to which are piles of enemy flags. France is represented by a woman holding an olive branch and supported by fifteen
Renommées
(figures of Renown) that represent the armies of the Republic. Especially prominent is a figure in Egyptian headdress standing in for the Army of Egypt (which Bonaparte had commanded in 1798–9). One art historian has suggested that these two combined figures represent Bonaparte. It is possible; peace and the army are together, so to speak. One should not forget that on the eve of Brumaire – an allusion to which can be seen in the sign of Sagittarius depicted in the sky – Bonaparte declared, ‘I alone am the representative of the people.’ In other words, Bonaparte and the people are one, and the government, embodied in the Hercules-like figure in the foreground holding a
fasces
– representing the departments of France – resting on a rock, is below France/Bonaparte. Beneath the foot of Hercules/the government are the enemies of peace and order, including a leopard symbolizing Great Britain. The people and democracy are thus portrayed in an inferior position to Bonaparte.
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Antoine-Francois Callet,
Tableau allégorique du 18 Brumaire an VIII ou La France sauvée
(Allegorical painting of 18 Brumaire year VIII or France is saved), 1800. The painting was executed in the weeks following Brumaire, and then presented in a larger format at the Salon of 1801.

Given the effort the new regime put into convincing people that France had been on the brink of collapse, it is hardly surprising that it became the dominant interpretation. ‘Those who have not lived through the epoch of which I speak’, wrote the Duc de Broglie many years later of the period before Brumaire, ‘can form no idea of the profound misery into which France fell. We were plunging back under full sail into the abyss of the Terror without a gleam of consolation or hope.’
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People came to assume that Bonaparte alone had pulled France out of the morass into which the Revolution and especially the Directory had plunged the country.

‘The End of our Suffering’

Article 95 of the new Constitution indicated that a plebiscite would take place, in keeping with the practice adopted by the revolutionaries in 1793 and again in 1795. Bonaparte insisted on implementing the measure, against the advice of Sieyès, and justified his decision by citing the pre-revolutionary philosopher Rousseau: any law that was not ratified by the people was null and void. The plebiscite was a genuine attempt to consult the people, but it was also a political strategy to cut the ground from under the feet of the opposition.
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