The French Revolution overthrew the monarchy, but struggled somewhat in deciding what to replace it with. They settled upon an assembly called the Directory, however by the end of the 18th Century, the Directory was a corrupt body, and unpopular. Some of the directors wanted an executive power to regulate the legislature.
Bonaparte as Tyrant
Napoleon was one of France’s generals, lately returned to a hero’s welcome from Egypt. He recommended himself highly as the kind of executive figure France needed. With Director Abbé Siyes, he overthrew the Directory and replaced it with a triumvirate, a rule of three, with Napoleon at its head. However, ever ambitious and wily, Napoleon edged out the other two, and replaced them with his allies. He formed and appointed a Senate of men he could rely on, and treated the constitution as something to make his rule easier, rather than more regulated.
Moreover, he restricted the number of newspapers and was not above imprisoning his outspoken opponents. When a Royalist plot was thwarted, Napoleon overrode due process in eliminating them.
His attitude to women was self-serving. He kept them at a serious legal disadvantage, in the interest of being able to easily divorce his own wife in case she failed to produce an heir. His own personal concerns reflected on the running of the state.
Napoleon and the People
Despite all this, a keystone of his power was the people: despite the fact that they were denied any serious participation in government, they overwhelmingly seemed to support him. Any screening or manipulating Napoleon performed on the public opinion polls was minimal. To them, he represented some stability after the Directory’s ineptitude. Despite the anti-absolutist ideals of the Revolution, France rallied to Bonaparte because he made them want him to rule them. He collaborated with the Papacy to make sure the French were satisfied with their religious freedoms, which were “the only kind of freedoms large numbers of Frenchmen had shown they cared about, under a clergy who were not obviously the tools of others.” (Sutherland 319) He also kept military officers out of government (which protected him from their ambitions) and allowed him to reduce the conscription rates, which endeared him to the “families of the young.”
Napoleon Bonaparte fashioned one of Early Modern history’s first and finest cults of personality. His interest was in personal power, but rather than gain it at gunpoint, he made the French actually want to have him as their ruler. He gave them stability and freedoms that they wanted on one hand, while taking away their actual political clout with the other. By these means, he rallied an empire around his person, and coaxed them, not forced them, to convey unto him the titles of Consul for Life, and finally of Emperor.
The Empire was not French. It was Napoleon’s.
Bibliography
Bonaparte, Napoleon, Napoleon on Napoleon: An Autobiography of the Emperor. Edited by Somerset de Chair, Villiers House, 1992
Sutherland, D.M.G., The French Revolution and Empire Blackwell Publishing.
Schom, Alan, Napoleon Bonaparte, HarperCollins 1997.
Rosner, Lisa and John Thiebault, A Short History of Europe: 1600-1815. M.E. Sharpe, Inc. 2000.
