French Consulate

Categories: 1911 Britannica | French Revolution | National legislatures

The Consulate marks a period of French constitutional history between 1799 and 1804—from the fall of the Directory until the start of the Napoleonic Empire.

Fall of the Directory government

French military disasters in 1798 and 1799 had shaken the Directory, and eventually shattered it. On 18 June 1799 beneath the reprobation showered on Treilhard, Merlin de Douai, and La Révellière-Lépeaux the age of the Directory came to a close. A few more military disasters, royalist insurrections in the south, Chouan disturbances in Normandy, Orleanist intrigues and the end was certain. In order to soothe the populace and protect the frontier more than the Revolution's usual terrorist measures (such as forced taxation or the law of hostages) was necessary. The new Directory government, led by Sieyès, decided that the necessary revision of the constitution would require "a head and a sword". Moreau being unattainable, Sieyès favoured Joubert as his sword; but, when he was killed at the Battle of Novi (15 August 1799), the sword of the Revolution fell into the hands of General Napoleon Bonaparte.

Although Brune and Masséna retrieved the fight at Bergen and Zürich, and although the Allies lingered on the frontier as they had done after Valmy, still the fortunes of the of Directory were not restored. Success was reserved for Bonaparte, suddenly landing at Fréjus with the prestige of his victories in the East, and now, after Roche's death, appearing as sole master of the armies.

On the 18th Brumaire of the Republic's "year VIII" (9 November 1799) France and the army fell together at Napoleon's feet. By a two-fold coup d’état, parliamentary and military power went into the hands of a single man. There was little resistance to this move; after years of turmoil and revolution, France was tired and appeared to accept the sacrifice of the liberty and democracy that she had known for so short a time in return for simple stability and a strong hand at the reins of government.

On the night of the 19th Brumaire (10 November 1799) a remnant of the French National Assembly abolished the constitution of the year III, ordained "The Consulate", and legalised the coup d’état in favour of Bonaparte. A striking and singular event; for the history of France and a great part of Europe was now for fifteen years to be summed up in the person of a single man.

The New Government

The initial 18 Brumaire coup seemed to be a victory for Sieyès, rather than for Bonaparte. Sieyès was a proponent of a new system of government for the Republic, and the coup initially seemed certain to bring his system into force. Bonaparte's cleverness lay in counterposing Pierre Claude François Daunou's plan to that of Sieyès, and in retaining only those portions of both which could serve his ambition.

The new government was composed of three parliamentary assemblies: the Council of State which drafted bills, the Tribunate which discussed them without voting them, and the Legislative Assembly which voted them without discussing them. Popular suffrage was retained, though mutilated by the lists of notables (on which the members of the Assemblies were to be chosen by the conservative Senate). Executive authority was vested in three consuls, who were elected for for ten years.

Napoleon vetoed Sieyès' original idea of having a single Grand Elector as supreme executive and Head of State. Sieyès had intended to reserved this important position for himself, and by denying him the job Napoleon helped reinforce the authority of the consuls, an office which he would assume. Nor was Napoleon content simply to be part of an equal triumvirate. As the years would progress he would move to consolidate his own power as First Consul, and leave the two other consuls, Jean Jacques Régis de Cambacérès and Charles François Lebrun, as well as the Assemblies, weak and subservient.

By consolidating power Bonaparte was able to transform the aristocratic constitution of Sieyès into an unavowed dictatorship.

On February 7, 1800 a public referendum confirmed Napoleon as First Consul, a position which would give him executive powers above the other two consuls. The (clearly rigged) election showed 99.9% approval for the motion.

While this near-unanimity is certainly open to question, Napoleon was genuinely popular among many voters, and after a period of strife many in France were reassured by his dazzling but unconvincing and unsuccessful offers of peace to the victorious Second Coalition, his rapid disarmament of La Vendée, and his talk of stability of government, order, justice and moderation. He gave everyone a feeling that France was governed once more by a real statesman, and that a competent government was finally in charge.

Government under the Consulate and Napoleon's consolidation of Power

Bonaparte had now to rid himself of Sieyès and of those republicans who had no desire to hand over the republic to one man, particularly of Moreau and Masséna, his military rivals. The victory of Marengo (14 June 1800) momentarily in the balance, but secured by Desaix and Kellermann, offered a further opportunity to his jealous ambition by increasing his popularity. The royalist plot of the Rue Saint-Nicaise on 24 December 1800 allowed him to make a clean sweep of the democratic republicans, who despite their innocence were deported to Guiana, and to annul the Assemblies and instead making the senate omnipotent in constitutional matters.

The Treaty of Lunéville, signed in February 1801 with Austria (which had been disarmed by Moreau’s victory at Hohenlinden), restored peace to Europe, gave nearly the whole of Italy to France, and permitted Bonaparte to eliminate from the Assemblies all the leaders of the opposition in the discussion of the Civil Code. The Concordat of 1801, drawn up not in the Church's interest but in that of his own policy, by giving satisfaction to the religious feeling of the country, allowed him to put down the constitutional democratic Church, to rally round him the consciences of the peasants, and above all to deprive the royalists of their best weapon. The Articles Organiques hid from the eyes of his companions-in-arms and councillors a reaction which, in fact if not in law, restored to a submissive Church, despoiled of her revenues, her position as the religion of the state.

The Peace of Amiens (25 March 1802) with England, of which France's allies, Spain and the Batavian Republic, paid all the costs, finally gave the peacemaker a pretext for endowing himself with a Consulate, not for ten years but for life, as a recompense from the nation. The Rubicon was crossed on that day: Bonaparte’s march to empire began with the constitution of the year "X."

In August of 1802 a second national referendum was held, this time to confirm Napoleon as "First Consul for Life." Once again a rigged vote claimed 99% approval.

As Napoleon increased his power he borrowed many techniques of the ancien régime in his new form of one-man government. Like the old monarchy he re-introduced plenipotentiaries, an over-centralised, strictly utilitarian administrative and bureaucratic methods, and a policy of subservient pedantic scholasticism towards the nation's universities. He constructed or consolidated the funds necessary for national institutions, local governments, a judiciary system, organs of finance, banking, codes, traditions of conscientious well-disciplined labour force.

Despite his harsh reforms, France enjoyed a high level of peace and order under Napoleon that helped to raise the standard of comfort. Provisions, in Paris which had so often suffered from hunger and thirst, and lacked fire and light, had become cheap and abundant; while trade prospered and wages ran high. The pomp and luxury of the nouveaux riches were displayed in the salons of the good Josephine, the beautiful Madame Tallien, and the "divine" Juliette Récamier.

But the republicans, and above all the military, continued to view Napoleon as little more than a tyrant. They criticized the regime's bullying police, the prostration before authority, the sympathy lavished on royalists, the recall of the émigrés, the contempt for the Assemblies, the purification of the Tribunate, the platitudes of the servile Senate, and the silence of the press. In strengthening the machinery of state, creating the elite order of the Legion of Honour, the Concordat, and the restoration of indirect taxes, they saw a betrayal of the Revolution.

Napoleon was largely able to quell dissent within government by expelling his more vocal critics, such as Benjamin Constant and Madame de Staël. The expedition to San Domingo reduced the republican army to a nullity; constant war helped demoralised and scattered the military's leaders, who were jealous of their "comrade" Bonaparte. The last major challenge to Napoleon's authority came from Moreau, who cleverly compromised in a royalist plot, but soon too did he disappear into exile.

In contradistinction to this opposition of senators and republican generals, the majority of the French populace remained uncritical of Bonaparte's authority. No suggestion of the possibility of his death was tolerated. After thwarting yet another conspiracy against his rule, led by Cadoudal and Pichegru, and provoked by Bonaparte's refusal to give place to Louis XVIII, and executing the hated duc d'Enghien, Napoleon enjoyed a great outpouring of adulation, which he in turn took advantage of to put the crowning touch to his ambitious dream.

The End of the Republic

On 18 May, 1804 the French Senate voted to give Bonaparte the title of emperor, a move that was ratified by yet another public referendum on the same day. The Emperor Napoleon I crowned himself later that same year - the Consulate had passed away in favour of the Empire.

References

This article incorporates text from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, which is in the public domain.de:Französisches Konsulat fr:Consulat (histoire de France) lb:Consulat pl:Konsulat (Francja) ru:Консульство (Франция)