The coup d'état of 18 Brumaire was a watershed. ‘The Revolution is ended' trumpeted proudly the proclamation accompanying the great Constitution of An VIII, which was to form the bedrock of the new regime right up to 1814. Whilst much ink has been spilt on the question as to whether the Revolution did in fact come to an end, it is clear that the regime founded after the coup d'état aimed to provide stability and above all national reconciliation, an attempt to bring both Royalists and Jacobins back into the political and national fold around a strong unified leadership that embodied government. As we know with hindsight, this bold military-backed move was a huge success and produced what Thierry Lentz has baptised the “Grand Consulat”, to match the “Grand Empire”.(1) However, with the change in polity Napoleon found the society around him unprepared for the appearance of strong single figure in power. He found himself at the top alone, without infrastructure other than military and to a certain extent cut off from the notables in society. So he looked to the past to create for himself a court and an etiquette befitting the leader of France's new consular era.
All change!
Whether or not people felt that the Revolution was over, there were changes afoot in the upper echelons of society, particularly in government. The changes were undertaken slowly but they were significant, especially in symbolic terms. What must have Bonaparte's contemporaries have thought when, a mere two months after the Brumaire coup, First Consul Bonaparte moved the seat of government from the symbolically anodyne Palace of Luxembourg, where the Directors had met, to the highly charged ‘realm of memory', the Tuileries Palace?(2) All of a sudden, on 30 Pluviôse, An VIII (19 February, 1800), the “citoyens” were presented with a grand ceremonial gesture during which, in a significant change with respect to the directorial regime, a grand cortege marked the passage from one palace to the other. Cambacérès, second consul, recounts in his memoirs how an immense crowd lined the route, and how for the procession “Bonaparte deployed the pomp of royalty, […] he was preceded by 150 musicians, two thousand guardsmen, gold and silver gleamed on the carriage, the horses decorations and on the guardsmen's uniforms”.(3) Whilst it is true that the palace was to be called the “Palais consulaire” and that all three consuls were to take up residence there, it was clear to all (even foreign observers)(4) that only one consul counted, namely, the first.(5)
And this was no random change but very much part of Napoleon's policy. Again in his memoirs, the Second Consul noted that Napoleon, at this very beginning of office, was obsessed with “the idea of giving his government the ancient character which it lacked. He would have preferred to have drawn a veil over the authorities which had preceded him post 1792 and to have made the consular power the heir of the monarchy. For this reason, much later on, he tried to place no intermediary between Charlemagne and the proclamation of Empire.”(6) It was also no accident that Napoleon chose for his apartments what had been the rooms of Louis XVI – Third Consul Lebrun took the peripheral Pavillion de Flore in the south wing and Second Consul Cambacérès flatly refused to lodge there at all. Appearances were not deceptive. Napoleon was there as monarch.(7) Indeed, the architect Fontaine later noted in his Journal that Napoleon regarded the Tuileries Palace as “the sanctuary of monarchy”.(8)
However, despite these pretensions to pomp and show, government did not have the infrastructure for full-blown royal protocol. This was brutally revealed two days after the ‘royal' entry into the royal palace, when Bonaparte held there a formal reception of foreign diplomats. Here, for lack of a court official, the Councillor of State, Pierre Benezech (later Master of Ceremonies at the palace), had to improvise the role of announcer.(9) Clearly if not a court at least a court structure was required. Even contemporaries noted this. Thibaudeau in his memoirs saw clearly that once government was in the Tuileries there would have to be an etiquette and a court.(10) Here, as with other apparently ancient regime “recyclings”, developments went slowly. It was noted that there were courtiers but no court or specific etiquette. Indeed Constant noted that the palace etiquette was so simple that the First Consul slept in the same bed as his wife!(11) At formal dinners only important people were given specific place settings, whilst the rest were obliged to sit where they could. Etiquette remained at a bare minimum, and Napoleon's personal staff remained at the relatively restrained numbers, with ten close servants and 15 men for more subaltern tasks, all directed by Bourienne. There were no court chamberlains, only Napoleon's ADCs performing what should have been the former's duties, and at formal presentations the only entourage the First Consul had was his ministers and councillors of state.
This rather ad hoc situation was seen as unsatisfactory. Receptions were thenceforward regularised and fixed for certain days. Ambassadors were to be received on the second and the seventeenth of the month, senators and generals on the second day of every décade,(12) deputies at the Corps législatif on the fourth of every decade, and tribunes and the Tribunale de Cassation on the sixth of every décade). Every Quintidi (the central day of the décade) there was to be a full-dress military review. This was a particularly spectacular affair which Napoleon himself took very seriously, inspecting all the ranks in minute detail, talking directly to soldiers to get information regarding their needs and requests. He would spend hours with this ‘military court' and observers noted how he was clearly in his element.(13) The aim this regularisation of official events was to set in high relief the difference between the dissolution of pre-18 Brumaire and the vigour and panache of the current regime. Indeed the difference between this and affairs under the Directory was huge. Then there had been no court, and everything had been ‘bourgeois' and straightforward in style. Only Director Barras had had something approaching a court, but as Thibaudeau pointed out, it did not work very well since he was only one fifth of government.(14)
In parallel with this systematisation of military and governmental display, Napoleon then laid the foundations of his own formal court. And Josephine was mobilised to play her part. Napoleon dictated to her that her entourage would be composed of the wives of civilian and military figures of the regime, and they would form the kernel of the new court. Josephine and her legendary charm were to placate hearts nostalgic for the immediate past and ruffled by Napoleon's brusque changes. This proto-court – at which address to women was altered from the Revolutionary Citoyenne to the old-fashioned Madame – was to be small but decent.(15)
A consular ‘Versailles’
As things were gradually propelled from Revolutionary Directorate to Consulate, the seat of government became synonymous with the ruler's residence. And this change from government house to ruler's residence led to the idea that the ruler ought to have in addition a country seat.(16) Since the consular couple's own personal château, Malmaison, was rightly considered as too ‘cramped', the palace at Saint-Cloud (on the heights to the west of Paris) was commandeered in September 1801 by the Consul as his country residence, in effect his consular ‘Versailles'. And in accordance with royal tradition and in the wake of the recently signed Concordat with the Holy See, whereby Catholicism was recognised as the religion of the majority of the French,(17) mass in the chapel at Saint Cloud became an event around which the ‘court' gathered. On Sunday mornings, the road to the palace was crammed with carriages (as Versailles had been in times past). According to a strict etiquette, the invitee/petitioners (cardinals, bishops, senators, councillors of state, deputés, tribunes, generals, ambassadors, magistrates, important private individuals and presented foreigners) would be asked to gather in the Galérie d'Apollon. The First Consul would then be announced, and he would walk down the centre of an honour guard to the chapel, leading a procession comprising the Second Consul with Josephine on his arm, and then the Third Consul etc. Since the chapel was too small to accommodate the crowds, a good number of those present spent the service time walking and talking in the galleries whose windows gave onto the chapel. Indeed, many claimed the service was a sham, levelling specific criticism at the choir composed of ‘actresses' from the Paris theatres singing in a less than religious manner.(18) During the service, Napoleon took the place of honour previously used by Louis XVI. The audience with the First Consul took place afterwards, during which Napoleon wandered amongst the assembled guests in an essentially etiquette-free zone. After the audience, visitors would pass on to Josephine's apartment. Here the great names of noble Europe (Thibaudeau cites the Zamoiskas and the Potockas, the Gordons, Dorsets, Newcastles and Cholmondleys, the Dolgorukis and Galitsins)(19) came to see and be seen. The First Consul then instituted regular dinners – on Wednesdays and Fridays – for 12 to 15 guests, also followed by receptions in Josephine's apartment. It was not enough for the proto-court to be established. It had to be seen to have been established, and that by the whole of Europe.
The life-consulship and the ‘Monarchisation’ of the regime
After this first stage in the mutation from ‘Revolutionary' France into ‘Consular' France, Napoleon as First Consul was concerned that his position was not stable enough. There were still attempts on his life. If he were to die, all that he had created could simply vanish into thin air, he feared. With the aim of establishing the regime once and for all, he began to work to change his temporary consulship into a life consulship. And what better moment to get this change passed by the administrative bodies of the Tribunat and the Council of State than in the euphoria surrounding the Peace of Amiens (25 March, 1802)? It was a question of changing his status from that of the “man of providence”, the dictator of the Cincinnatus type (the famous Roman ur-dictator who came in to save the state but then returned to his farm), to the permanent ruler. His record in the first two years of the consulship was very good: peace with Austria enshrined in the treaty at Lunéville; peace with Britain fixed in the treaty signed at Amiens; stable finances as reflected in the creation of the Banque de France; national unity as expressed in the pacification of the Vendée, the return of religion to France as enshrined in the Concordat; and the return of the émigré nobles.(20) It came as no surprise then that voters in the plebiscite regarding the life consulship voted hugely in favour. But the change from the temporary man of providence to the life consul was also significant in symbolic terms. As Thierry Lentz has put it, it was also the beginning of the ‘monarchisation' of the regime.(21) And along with this ‘monarchisation' of the regime came the ‘monarchisation' of the ruler's entourage. Since Napoleon's power was now that of a king, that of the court had to match it, with an appropriate etiquette. It is no coincidence then that the first official regulation of etiquette dates from March 1802. Importantly Thibaudeau informs us that the procedure for establishing this etiquette was systematic and scientific. Both courtiers and valets of the ancient regime were consulted and old etiquette rulebooks scoured. The end result was not however the invention of a new form of court and etiquette (as it could have been), homogenising Revolutionary practice with Consular decorum, but rather a return to customs and practices of yesteryear.(22) Whilst there was in general approval for this return to the monarchy, there were of course notes of discord. Those who disliked a return to the old ways, but also those who were nostalgic for the old regime, mocked the gaucheness of the ‘new' court.
The civilising or homogenisation of society
The First Consul also had as his aim the reform of society by reintroducing a certain concept of order which had been banished by the Revolution. “Society”, Thibaudeau noted, “was reformed at the same time as social order was reconstituted. […] The First Consul wanted it like this. It was for him a way of effacing political divisions, winning over the citizens to the government, effecting his own ‘fusion' of society, giving power and widening his sphere of action.” One specific feature of this yearning for order and hierarchy was revealed in the creation of the Légion d'Honneur, yet another ‘court', this time one of military honour to be set alongside (and sometimes included in) his civilian version. Napoleon is said to dreamt up the idea of the legion on seeing the Prussian envoy, Lucchesini, arrive decked in many medals. “We need that sort of thing”, the First Consul was heard to exclaim. “We need it for the people”. And along with this establishment of an honour hierarchy came hierarchical and formal dress, it too (as with the court) based on the ancien régime. The military dress (boots and sabre) of the early consulate gave way to civilian dress (ceremonial sword and silk stockings) of yesteryear. And in this the First Consul even played the role of trend setter, appearing for the first time not in military garb at the fête of 14 July, An X.(23) Finance minister Gaudin was seen to wear a snood and lace at Saint-Cloud receptions, and he was gradually followed by others, although there was a certain amount of disorder with men mixing and matching traditional clothing combinations. One particular fashion caused significant debate, namely that of powdering hair and the wearing of snoods. Given that some men in the emperor's entourage had begun to revive this fashion, all eyes became fixed on the First Consul to see whether he would follow suit.(24) In the end, Napoleon could never decide which way to go on the ‘powder/snood or not' debate, but by general agreement it was thought that powdered hair and a snood were more decent and better liked by the First Consul. A direct consequence of this was that most Englishmen on coming to the First Consul's ‘court', even though when in town wore they wore their hair cut short and no powder, nevertheless when they came to audiences they would plaster their heads in the stuff and attach snoods to the collars of their jackets. The great ‘powder' debate was also to affect the women at ‘court'. They however pronounced against it, fearing that there would be knock-on effect and that they would be compelled to wear the huge headdresses typical of the reign of Louis XV. Josephine herself led this opposition, often repeating that excessive formality “bored her”.(25) And this is one criticism which returned frequently with reference to the consular ‘court', that it was tedious and stiff. At the ‘court' theatre, no one was allowed to give applause or to boo. Anyone tired had to stifle yawns or to sleep standing up.
The birth of an imperial court
By the summer of 1803, it was clear to many observers that the Life Consul was the monarch of France. During a ‘royal progress' through the northern departments of France at that time, Constant informs us that Napoleon “was received everywhere as a monarch. There was no difference whatsoever between the homage which [he] received then from that which [he] received later during the Empire.”(26) A striking example of this would be the gift of four swans to the emperor given by the town of Amiens, in a gesture which in the past had been reserved for kings.(27) Socially speaking, the ‘emperor Napoleon' was born long before the creation of empire in 1804. And the court structure long preceded sénatus-consultus on 28 Floréal An XIII (18 May 1804) which founded that empire.(28) The imperial status was to be ‘ratified' by a sumptuously regal (and etiquette-laden) coronation and consecration by the hands of Pius VII in December. For Napoleon, his legitimacy was always to be sought in royal resonances, and there was to be no intervening stage between Charlemagne and the Empire. The subsequent writing of books of palace etiquette and the appointment of ladies in waiting, pages, chamberlains etc were simply a regularisation of a situation already in place and a continuation of an earlier past.(29) The imperial court was to prove the tool that Napoleon wanted it to be. It provided an example of social cohesion (with the return of the émigrés and the ralliement of broad swathes of the political spectrum after the damage caused by the early Revolution), it was a tool of political unity (by 1812 many old noble families had sent their sons to become chamberlains, Napoleon's marriage to Marie-Louise having removed many last die-hard-royalist scruples) and it was a means of regenerating the French luxury goods industry (Napoleon was so acutely conscious of the court's role as a financial motor that in times of crisis he would make a special effort to order goods). Finally it had an immense influence on painting and the decorative arts in the period. Empire style was communicated to the world via France's court and diplomatic elite.
This heady mixture of old world formality and new regime money and splash was to prove tenacious. And the society which it forged was to prove a solid amalgam (though it did not survive the Restoration), and its opulence and style was to remain almost as much a memory symbol for the epoch as Napoleon's hat or his hand in his waistcoat.