The coup
Arrived in the capital, the general spoke with Talleyrand, an experienced politician and a fine connoisseur of the forces involved.
Coup of 18 Brumaire.
The diagram of the coup d'etat of 18 Brumaire (November 9, 1799) provides for the following operations:Bonaparte will have the command in chief of the army for the maintenance of order in Paris and in the assemblies. It is planned to move the assemblies to Saint-Cloud under the pretext of a Jacobin danger. Indeed, since 1789, the assemblies have always been under threat from the Parisian population.
Most of the events took place on 19 Brumaire in Saint-Cloud. The revisionists had considered a collective resignation of the five directors, but the assemblies are late because this idea is not unanimous; Bonaparte grew impatient and decided to intervene.
He makes a clumsy speech before the Council of Five Hundred, a speech very badly perceived by the deputies who accuse him of wanting to establish a dictatorship. Bonaparte was then forced to leave the assembly. But he quickly takes the situation in hand with the help of his brother Lucien who chairs the five hundred. Lucien avoids Napoleon being questioned by the deputies who want to vote to outlaw Bonaparte. Lucien delays the vote and fetches Murat who comes with the troops and puts order in the assemblies, saying that some deputies wanted to stab Bonaparte to justify an intervention by the army.
Representations of deputies coming out of the windows and wanting to stab Napoleon are widespread. Bonaparte was in fact the strong man in the situation, who turned a parliamentary coup into a military coup.
But Bonaparte remained attached to legal forms and on the evening of the 19 Brumaire, the deputies remain in Saint-Cloud to vote on the decision to appoint two commissions to prepare a new constitution. There is then a desire to support the regime on the vote of the representatives of the people.
On 20 Brumaire the three Consuls were appointed:Bonaparte, Sieyès and Ducos. This is the beginning of the Consulate. Roger Ducos is all for Bonaparte, while Sieyès does not intend to resign himself to giving up power to Bonaparte alone. He intends to play a role in the government of the Consulate. To thwart his cumbersome colleague, Bonaparte, multiplying his provocations, kept Sieyès' enemies in the ministerial portfolios by offering external relations to Talleyrand and that of the police to Fouché.
The work of drafting the Constitution was officially entrusted to two legislative commissions made up of deputies from the Five Hundred and the Elders. But in fact, it is Sieyès who will propose a project. On examination, the project will prove to be too complex, even unrealistic. Indeed, it provides for the establishment of a democratic system based on a strong legislative power represented by three chambers. The executive will be reduced to a purely honorary life magistrate and two consuls with limited functions.
Bonaparte takes advantage of the weaknesses of this plan to impose his own project and get rid of his cumbersome rival. From December 4 to 13, 1799, he thus brought together the two commissions in his office to draft the text of the new constitution.
The Constitution of Year VIII was adopted by a select committee on December 13, 1799. It was partly inspired by Sieyès' project, but incorporated the political ideas of Napoleon Bonaparte, particularly concerning executive power. Sieyès, himself, will be responsible for appointing the three consuls of the republic:Bonaparte as first consul, then Cambacérès and Lebrun, as 2nd and 3rd consuls of the Republic. Sieyès, meanwhile, will be relegated to the post of President of the Senate.
The Constitution
The Constitution of the year VIII came into force on December 25, 1799. Bonaparte established the Constitution under democratic appearances, but organized an autocratic power, all the evolutions of the regime will only accentuate the autocratic nature of the power.
The legislative power is divided into three assemblies (tricamerism):
the Tribunate discusses the laws without passing them
the Legislative Body (or "Corps of Mutes") passes or rejects laws
the Senate is responsible for verifying that the law conforms to the constitution.
The preparation of the law belongs to the executive, through the Council of State, responsible for drafting the legislative texts.
The power works in an authoritarian way, the processes of semi-direct democracy (somewhat fictitious) are carefully organized and controlled. The consul himself corrects the results if they are not satisfactory. The Consulate is a form of enlightened despotism.
From Consul to Emperor
The First Consul crossing the Alps at the Grand-Saint-Bernard pass by Jacques-Louis David
The First Consul crossing the Alps at the Grand-Saint-Bernard pass by Jacques-Louis David
In 1800, Bonaparte attacked and defeated Austria once again. Defeated at Marengo by Napoleon and at Hohenlinden by Moreau, the Austrians had to sign the Treaty of Lunéville on February 9, 1801, which led the British to sign the Peace of Amiens on March 25, 1802 (4 germinal year X, countersigned two days later late). If his power was fragile in the aftermath of Brumaire, the victory of Marengo and its aftermath strongly consolidated Bonaparte's situation.
On December 24, 1800, an “infernal machine” (bomb) was waiting for him on Rue Saint-Nicaise. The First Consul's coachman galloped past. The bomb exploded too late and only the windows of the vehicle were blown out. On the spot, however, it was carnage. There were 22 dead and a hundred injured. Fouché, then Minister of Police, succeeded in proving that the attack was the work of the royalists, while Bonaparte was convinced that he was dealing with the Jacobins. The execution of the Duke of Enghien will be a consequence.
In 1802, Bonaparte requested that the ashes of Maréchal de Turenne be transferred to the Invalides. He was indeed a fervent admirer of Turenne, whose surprise attack strategy he successfully resumed (Battle of Turckheim, 1675) in his campaigns from 1805 to 1812. Subsequently, intoxicated by his victories, engaging with temerity in Russia with the Grande Armée, he will forget that any campaign requires a thorough and collective study of the terrain and the psychology of the enemy.
The same year, Bonaparte reestablished slavery in the colonies. This recovery was to restart a failing economy in the colonies of the West Indies.
It was not until 1848 that the final abolition of slavery was enacted.
Bonaparte sold Louisiana, a huge territory in North America, to the United States in 1802.
He sent a 34,000 strong army to Santo Domingo under the command of General Leclerc to restore the authority of France. After some successes, notably the capture of Toussaint Louverture (who died at Fort de Joux, Doubs, on April 7, 1803), his army was partly wiped out by an epidemic of yellow fever.
After Bonaparte extended his influence over Switzerland, which set up the current decentralized institutions, and over Germany, a dispute over Malta served as a pretext for the British to declare war on France again in 1803, and to support the royalist opposition to Bonaparte. He reacts:the idea of an invasion of the United Kingdom is emerging, and to bring the royalists to reason, who, perhaps, are plotting in the shadows, the First Consul has the Duke of Enghien, Prince Bourbon. The execution, which took place in Vincennes after a sham trial, did not arouse any other protests than those of the United Kingdom, Russia and Austria, limiting themselves to a few timid reproaches. This, however, is the act that establishes Napoleon's reputation as "Robespierre on horseback" (in Saint Helena, Napoleon will assume this act, despite the very likely involvement of Talleyrand). After this pledge given to the Republicans, insofar as the First Consul reiterates the crime of the regicides, he crowns himself Emperor on December 2, 1804.
Strictly speaking, the Empire was born at the request of the Senate. Steven Englund agrees with the opinion that it was initially a question of protecting the Republic. The Consulate defeated, order would have collapsed with him. Emperor, he became an institution, sealing the durability of republican values. He could die:the inheritance of the title was supposed to protect the country from upheaval and the loss of revolutionary gains (with, in the first place, equality, far ahead of freedom). This is how the imperial coins bear, without hypocrisy, the mention "Napoleon Emperor - French Republic".
Only then will this "republican" Empire, protecting the revolutionary achievements, become "imperialist".