‘Citizen Emperor’: Political Ritual, Popular Sovereignty and the Coronation of Napoleon I
Abstract
The coronation of Napoleon in Notre Dame on 2 December 1804 was built upon a number of contradictory concepts. As heir to the French Revolution, Napoleon founded the legitimacy of his new regime on the notion of popular sovereignty. He incorporated the idea into a new coronation ceremony, a mélange of different rites and customs, incorporating aspects of Carolingian tradition, the ancien régime and the Revolution, thereby helping to create a new political culture based on continuity with the past. And yet the people were precluded from the ceremony itself. Moreover, the coronation contained within it the seeds of the Empire's later turn towards absolute-style monarchy, based on revived notions of divine right. The coronation thus highlights Napoleon's, and the French political elite's, ambivalent attitude towards the idea of monarchy and popular sovereignty. Although the coronation should be seen as part of the process of national reconciliation implemented by Napoleon, as ritual it failed to leave a deep impression.
Footnotes
- 1On the transformation of the French Republic to Empire, see Philip Dwyer, ‘Napoleon and the foundation of the Empire’, The Historical Journal, 53 (2010), pp. 339–358. The author would like to thank the two anonymous referees for their helpful suggestions.
- 2The literature on the notion of the sovereignty of the people is too vast to cite extensively here, but a good starting point is Jon Cowans, To Speak for the People: Public Opinion and the Problem of Legitimacy in the French Revolution (New York, 2001).
- 3The politics of pageantry for the era of the French Revolution has been treated by Marie-Louise Biver, Fêtes révolutionnaires à Paris (Paris, 1979); Michel Vovelle, Les Metamorphoses de la fête en Provence de 1750 à 1820 (Paris, 1975); and Rosemonde Sanson, Les 14 juillet (1789–1975) (Paris, 1976); Mona Ozouf, Festivals and the French Revolution, trans. by Alan Sheridan (Cambridge, Mass., 1988); Olivier Ihl, La fête républicaine (Pars, 1996); Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution (Berkeley, 1984). For other periods and other countries see, George Mosse, The Nationalization of the Masses: Political Symbolism and Mass Movements in Germany from the Napoleonic Wars through the Third Reich (New York, 1975), esp. pp. 73–99.
- 4Napoleonic festivals, entries, spectacles and celebrations have been largely neglected by historians of the period. The exception to the rule is Michael J. Hughes, Forging Napoleon's Grande Armée: Motivation, Military Culture, and Masculinity in the French Army, 1800–1808 (New York, 2012). For the Second Empire,
10.18574/nyu/9780814737484.001.0001 Google Scholarsee Matthew Truesdell, Spectacular Politics: Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte and the Fête Impériale, 1849–1870 (Oxford, 1997).
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- 6Günter Oesterle, ‘ Die Kaiserkrönung Napoleons: eine ästhetische und ideologische Instrumentalisierung’, in Jörg Jochen Berns and Thomas Rahn (eds), Zeremoniell als höfische Ästhetik in Spätmittelalter und Früher Neuzeit (Tübingen, 1995), pp. 632–649, at p. 634. For an example of this approach in another time and place, see Christopher Clark, ‘ When culture meets power: the Prussian coronation of 1701’, in Hamish Scott and Brendan Simms (eds), Cultures of Power in Europe During the Long Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 14–35.
- 7David J. Kertzer, ‘ The role of ritual in political change’, in Myron J. Aronoff (ed.), Culture and Political Change (New York, 1983), pp. 53–74, at pp. 67–8.
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- 9Louis Dubroca, Les Quatre fondateurs des dynasties françaises, ou Histoire de l'établissement de la monarchie française par Clovis, du renouvellement des dynasties royales par Pépin et Hugues Capet et de la fondation de l'Empire français par Napoléon le Grand (Paris, 1806), p. 327.
- 10David Chanteranne, Le Sacre de Napoléon (Paris, 2004), p. 12.
- 11See, János M. Bak, ‘ Introduction: coronation studies – past, present, and future’, in János M. Bak (ed.), Coronations: Medieval and Early Modern Monarchic Ritual (Berkeley, 1990), pp. 1–10; Clifford Geertz, ‘ Centers, kings, and charisma: reflections on the symbolics of power’, in Geertz, Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (New York, 1983), pp. 121–146; David Cannadine, ‘ Introduction: divine rites of kings’, in David Cannadine and Simon Price (eds), Rituals of Royalty: Power and Ceremonial in Traditional Societies (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 1–19; and David Cannadine, ‘ The context, performance and meaning of ritual: the British Monarchy and the invention of tradition, c. 1820–1977’, in Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition, (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 101–164.
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10.1177/095269518800100106 Google ScholarDarcy Grimaldo Grigsby, ‘Rumor, contagion, and colonization in Gros's Plague-Stricken of Jaffa (1804)’, Representations, 51 (1995), pp. 1–46;10.1525/rep.1995.51.1.99p02872 Google ScholarDarcy Grimaldo Grigsby, Extremities: Painting Empire in Post-Revolutionary France (New Haven, 2002), pp. 65–103; David O'Brien, After the Revolution: Antoine-Jean Gros, Painting and Propaganda under Napoleon (University Park, PA, 2006), pp. 97–104, 111–16. For a medical/scientific interpretation of the painting see Todd Porterfield, The Allure of Empire: Art in the Service of French Imperialism, 1798–1836 (Princeton, 1998), pp. 53–61.
- 16The press described it as the greatest success of the Salon (Henri Mollaret and Jacqueline Brossollet, ‘A propos des “Pestiférés de Jaffa” de A. J. Gros’, Jaarboek van het Koninklijk Museum voor schoone kunsten (1968), pp. 271–273).
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- 19On the retreat from St John of Acre in 1799, Bonaparte had ordered lethal doses of opium to be administered to troops in Jaffa dying of the plague. See Grigsby, Extremities, pp. 90–101; Dimitri Casali and David Chanteranne, Napoléon par les peintres (Paris, 2009), p. 37.
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10.2307/750411 Google ScholarEdgar Munhall, ‘Portraits of Napoleon’, Yale French Studies, 26 (1960), p. 7. This interpretation is contested, but it certainly shows Napoleon as the ‘caring father’, very much in the tradition of the clement ruler that was one of the main themes of Napoleonic painting in the later empire. See, Manfred Heinrich Brunner, Antoine-Jean Gros: die Napoleonischen Historienbilder (Bonn, 1979), pp. 152–155, 175–80; Paddy Jill Morse, ‘ A Revaluation of the Napoleonic History Paintings of Jean-Antoine Gros’, PhD dissertation (Ohio State University, 1993), p. 54; and Les clémences de Napoléon: l'image au service du mythe (Paris, 2004).
- 22See Marc Bloch, Les Rois Thaumaturges: étude sur le caractère surnaturel attribué à la puissance royale particulièrement en France et en Angleterre (Paris, 1983), pp. 399–405; Chantal Grell, ‘ The sacre of Louis XVI: the end of a myth’, in Michael Schaich (ed.), Monarchy and Religion: The Transformation of Royal Culture in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Oxford, 2007), pp. 345–366. Charles X reinstated it when he was crowned in Rheims in 1825, but it was the last time it was used.
- 23Robert Darnton, The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France (New York, 1996), p. 237. See Jeffrey W. Merrick, The Desacralization of the French Monarchy in the Eighteenth Century (Baton Rouge, 1990). For a critique of the thesis, see William Doyle, France and the Age of Revolution: Regimes Old and New from Louis XIV to Napoleon Bonaparte (London, 2013), pp. 103–111.
- 24Doyle, France and the Age of Revolution, p. 106.
- 25For this see Morse, ‘ A revaluation’, pp. 74–81, 101–7; Grigsby, Extremities, pp. 101–102; Grigsby, ‘ Rumor, contagion and colonization’, p. 36.
- 26Guy-Édouard Pillard, Louis Fontanes, 1757–1821: prince de l'esprit (Maulévrier, 1990), p. 196; Gaubert, Le Sacre de Napoléon, p. 38; Thierry Lentz, Nouvelle histoire du Premier Empire ( 4 vols; Paris, 2002), I, 72.
- 27Alfred Marquiset, Napoléon sténographié au Conseil d'Etat, 1804–1805 (Paris, 1913), pp. 22–29; Jacques-Olivier Boudon, ‘ Les fondements religieux du pouvoir impérial’, in Natalie Petiteau (ed.), Voies nouvelles pour l'histoire du Premier Empire (Paris, 2003), pp. 195–212, at p. 206.
- 28Pillard, Louis Fontanes, pp. 192–196.
- 29Marquiset, Napoléon sténographié, p. 25.
- 30Joseph Fiévée, Correspondance et relations de J. Fiévée avec Bonaparte … pendant onze années, 1802 à 1813 ( 3 vols; Paris, 1837), II, 39.
- 31Lentz, Nouvelle histoire du Premier Empire, I, 73.
- 32 Journal des Débats, 2 prairial an XII (22 May 1804); Chanteranne, Le Sacre de Napoléon, p. 62.
- 33Marquiset, Napoléon sténographié, pp. 23–24 (12 June 1804).
- 34Marquiset, Napoléon sténographié, pp. 36–37 (26 June 1804).
- 35Gaubert, Le Sacre de Napoléon, pp. 44–45.
- 36Boudon, ‘ Les fondements religieux du pouvoir impérial’, pp. 206–212.
- 37Jacques-Olivier Boudon, Napoléon et les cultes: les religions en Europe à l'aube du XIXe siècle, 1800–1815 (Paris, 2002), p. 127.
- 38Lentz, Nouvelle histoire du Premier Empire, I, 77; Chanteranne, Le Sacre de Napoléon, p. 45.
- 39Todd Porterfield and Susan L. Siegfried, Staging Empire: Napoleon, Ingres, and David (University Park, PA, 2006), p. 7.
- 40On the negotiations between Napoleon and the pope, see Jean Leflon, Histoire de l'Eglise: depuis les origines jusqu'à nos jours (Paris, 1949), pp. 223–226; Gaubert, Le Sacre de Napoléon, pp. 70–88, 102–12.
- 41On the ‘Organic Articles’, see Jean-Luc A. Chartier, Portalis, le père du Code civil (Paris, 2004), pp. 251–257.
- 42Edward Shils and Michael Young, ‘ The meaning of the coronation’, in Edward Shils (ed.), Center and Periphery: Essays in Macrosociology (Chicago, 1975), pp. 135–152, at p. 141.
- 43Margaret Waller, ‘ The emperor's new clothes: display, cover-up and exposure in modern masculinity’, in Timothy Reeser and Lewis Seifert (eds), Entre hommes: French and Francophone Masculinities in Literature and Culture (Newark, 2008), pp. 115–142, at pp. 121, 122.
- 44In ancient times, the bee was a symbol of immortality and resurrection, but people also remembered that metal jewellery in the form of bees had been discovered in the tomb of the father of Clovis, Childeric I (440–81), at Tournai in 1653, during the reign of Louis XIV (Masson, Le Sacre et le couronnement, pp. 75–76). It is more likely that what was discovered were cicadas or crickets, and they were not emblems but votive objects placed on the royal clothes: insects enabled the soul of the departed to fly more easily towards heaven ( Chanteranne, Sacre, p. 67). The bee was nevertheless a symbol that drew on the past, even if contemporaries had incorrectly interpreted its historical significance. It was also meant to be a metaphor for France: the beehive was the republic, with its leader a hard worker. And perhaps it was hoped that the French would be as submissive as drones working for the queen. The bee thus enabled the regime to draw a link between the farthest reaches of French history – the Merovingian dynasty – and the present.
- 45Marquiset, Napoléon sténographié, pp. 49–50 (16 Oct. 1804); Peter Hicks, ‘ Un Sacre sans pareil’, in Lentz (ed.), Le Sacre, pp. 101–139.
- 46René Boudard, ‘Le Sacre de Napoléon vu par un figurant’, Revue de l'Institut Napoléon, 50 (1954), pp. 33–34, at p. 34.
- 47 Stéphanie Bade (ed.), ‘Souvenirs de Stéphanie de Beauharnais’, Revue des deux mondes, 102 (1 mars 1932), p. 81.
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- 49See Clark, ‘ When culture meets power’, p. 19.
- 50 Lentz (ed.), Le Sacre, p. 116.
- 51The question is raised by Chanteranne, Le Sacre, p. 153.
- 52Ibid., pp. 158–159; Clark, ‘ When culture meets power’, p. 14.
- 53Chanteranne, Le Sacre, p. 157.
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- 55Annie Jourdan, ‘ Le Sacre ou le pacte social’, in Napoléon le Sacre, pp. 25–33; and
Annie Jourdan, ‘Le Premier Empire: un nouveau pacte social’, Cités: philosophie, politique, histoire, 20 (2004), pp. 51–64.
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- 59Jean-Marc Olivesi, ‘ De l'impossible porphyrogénèse à un rituel de légitimation: le Sacre’, in Napoléon le Sacre, pp. 9–14, at p. 10.
- 60Edward Shils and Michael Young, ‘ The meaning of the coronation’, in Edward Shils (ed.), Center and Periphery: Essays in Macrosociology (Chicago, 1975), pp. 135–152; and T. J. Nossiter, ‘Attitudes to the monarchy: their structure and development during a ceremonial occasion’, Political Studies, 19 (1971), pp. 149–171; Emmanuel Fureix, La France des larmes: deuils politiques à l'âge romantique (1814–1840) (Paris, 2009), pp. 18–20.
- 61Most accounts of the ceremony dwell on the attitude of republicans, especially among the military, who were obliged to attend, thus underlining the extent to which oppositional elements made their opinions known. See, for example, Anita Brookner, Jacques-Louis David (London, 1980), p. 150. For a critique of Durkheimian notions of ritual by medievalists,
see Philippe Buc, ‘Rituel politique et imaginaire politique au haut Moyen Age’, Revue historique, 305 (2001), pp. 843–883; and
10.3917/rhis.014.0843 Google ScholarPhilippe Buc, The Dangers of Ritual: Between Early Medieval Texts and Social Scientific Theory (Princeton, 2001).
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Charles de Rémusat, Mémoires de ma vie ( 5 vols; Paris, 1958–67), I, 51;
Jean-Nicolas-Auguste Noël, Souvenirs militaires d'un officier du premier Empire: 1795–1832 (Paris, 1895), p. 35;
H. C. Cheuvreux (ed.), Journal et correspondance de André-Marie Ampère (de 1793 à 1805) (Paris, 1872), p. 335;
Miot de Mélito, Mémoires, II, 231;
Lentz, Nouvelle Histoire du Premier Empire, I, 90–92, 94–6;
Alfred Fierro, La vie des Parisiens sous Napoléon (Saint-Cloud, 2003), pp. 207–212;
Natalie Petiteau, ‘Lecture socio-politique de l'empire: bilan et perspectives’, Annales historiques de la Révolution française, 359 (2010), pp. 181–202, at p. 197.
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- 64Philippe Bordes, ‘ La Fabrication de l'histoire par Jacques-Louis David’, in Triomphe et mort du héros: la peinture d'histoire en Europe de Rubens a Manet (London, 1988), p. 116; Porterfield and Siegfried, Staging Empire, pp. 10–11.
- 65Ernest de Hauterive, La Police secrète du premier Empire: bulletins quotidiens adressés par Fouché à l'Empereur ( 5 vols; Paris, 1908–1964), IV, 63 (15 Feb. 1808). According to the newspaper accounts, crowds were always found gathering before the painting ( Annales de l'architecture et des arts libéraux et mécaniques, 18 March 1808, pp. 185–190).
- 66Cited in Gaubert, Le Sacre de Napoléon, p. 184.
- 67As Abby Zanger, Scenes from the Marriage of Louis XIV: Nuptial Fictions and the Making of Absolutist Power (Stanford, CA, 1997), p. 7, has pointed out for another period.
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- 69Cowans, To Speak for the People, p. 3.
- 70Joseph-François-Nicolas Dusaulchoy de Bergemont, Histoire du couronnement, ou Relation des cérémonies religieuses, politiques et militaires qui ont eu lieu pendant les jours mémorables consacrés à célébrer le sacre et le couronnement de S. M. I. Napoléon Ier (Paris, an XIII-1805), pp. 2–3; Lentz (ed.), Sacre, p. 170.
- 71Caulaincourt, Memoirs, II, 250. Note Napoleon's reactions to the limited opposition shown by the Tribunate and the Legislative Corps during the Consulate, and which led to an effectual purging in 1802 ( Isser Woloch, Napoleon and his Collaborators: The Making of a Dictatorship (New York, 2002), p. 92; Irene Collins, Napoleon and his Parliaments, 1800–1815 (New York, 1979), pp. 66–67).
- 72Pierre Rosanvallon, Le Sacre du citoyen: Histoire du suffrage universel en France (Paris, 1992), p. 197; Vida Azimi, Les premiers sénateurs français: Consulat et Premier Empire, 1800–1814 (Paris, 2000), pp. 155–156.
- 73Petiteau, Les français et l'empire, pp. 165, 170, argues that this period sees a reinvention of relations between monarch and subject and that we are seeing a return to a new kind of sacralization of the monarchy, less superstitious, than that which preceded the Revolution.
- 74André Latreille, Le Catéchisme Impérial de 1806: Études et documents pour servir a l'histoire des rapports de Napoléon et du clergé concordataire (Paris, 1935), pp. 80–81; André Latreille, L'Église catholique et la Révolution française, II, 135–139; Bernardine Melchior-Bonnet, Napoléon et le Pape (Paris, 1958), pp. 86–88.
- 75Rosanvallon, Le Sacre du citoyen, p. 203.
- 76Bluche, Le Bonapartisme, p. 90; Aurélien Lignereux, Histoire de la France contemporaine, I: L'Empire des Français (1799–1815) (Paris, 2012), pp. 85–86.