H-FRANCE NAPOLEON FORUM
The first panelist in the Napoleon Forum is Malcolm Crook, Professor of
French History at Keele University. Dr. Crook's publications include
_Toulon in war and revolution : from the ancien régime to the Restoration,
1750-1820_ (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press and St.
Martin's Press, 1991); _Elections in the French Revolution : an
apprenticeship in democracy, 1789-1799_ (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press,
1996); and Napoleon Comes to Power: Democracy and Dictatorship in
Revolutionary France, 1795-1804 (Cardiff: Univ. of Wales Press, 1998). He
is currently working on the development of electoral culture in
nineteenth-century France, which will encompass the elections and
plebiscites of the Napoleonic period
THE MYTH OF THE 18 BRUMAIRE
Malcolm Crook, Keele University, UK
It is hard to shake off the myths surrounding the events of November 1799
by which Napoleon Bonaparte came to power. The approach of the bicentenary
is already prompting their repetition: France was devastated by a decade of
Revolution, led by colourless and corrupt politicians, and yearning for the
arrival of a saviour, who was received with open arms by a despairing
people. It is not only in student essays that such sentiments are
expressed. I want to suggest three ways of interrogating the Bonapartist
narrative of events, conveyed in official proclamations that were issued as
soon as the coup was completed. First, the Directory, the regime that was
overturned, had rather more to offer than the poor image propagated by its
successors would have us believe. Second, the coup of Brumaire nearly
miscarried on its second day, though unforeseen difficulties rebounded to
Bonaparte's advantage by involving the military more than intended. And
third, the consolidation of the general's authority was not achieved either
rapidly or smoothly, but through a gradual process of repression and
reconciliation.
Although its positive aspects have yet to make much impact at textbook
level, the Directory was clearly a much more creative regime than is
usually realised. Besides underlining achievements in the administrative or
financial realms, recent research has brought to light a good deal of
innovation. The pendulum did not simply swing back towards the early 1790s,
for the politicians who remained in office from the Convention continued to
explore ways to found a new order, not least by their endeavours to
entrench republican institutions. Their efforts over four years, pursued in
extremely difficult circumstances, were fruitful if not always successful.
This was especially true in the sphere of political culture.
Whilst it has usually been viewed as a post-revolutionary retreat from the
commanding heights of the Year II, the Directory was a broadly based
republican regime. The male, taxpaying franchise encompassed some five
million Frenchmen, of whom a million were eligible to serve on the
departmental electoral colleges which chose national deputies. Elections
remained indirect, but legislative contests took place each year. There was
a brief experiment with declared candidates, a fair measure of press
freedom was permitted and a few glimmers of pluralistic politics can be
discerned during this period. Indeed, in the Year VII (1799), the outcome
of the electoral process was for once endorsed, rather than overturned, and
measures were in hand to ensure the more orderly operation of elections in
future. Voter turnout was not high, but there was no reason to suppose it
was in terminal decline. It was Bonaparte's seizure of power that
decisively removed any further opportunities for development along more
liberal lines.
Ironically it was Bonaparte himself who contributed to the crisis which
brought the Directory crashing down, since the military reverses of 1799
were provoked by his adventurism in the Middle East. The Second anti-French
coalition not only threatened the invasion of France, which in turn
provoked a recrudescence of internal unrest. It also convinced many, more
recently elected, deputies at the legislative Councils that a revision of
the Constitution of 1795 was the only alternative to Jacobin terror or
royalist restoration. Of course, when Siey`s began to plot this course
Bonaparte was bogged down in the desert sands of Egypt and the general's
unanticipated return in September was certainly not welcomed by the former
priest turned statesman. Yet Bonaparte's role was intended to be a
subordinate one, since it was planned to persuade the two legislative
Councils to yield up power voluntarily to a revisionary commission, rather
than force them to do so.
Early on the morning of 18 Brumaire VIII (9 November 1799 according to the
old calendar) the deputies were duly encouraged to decamp to Saint-Cloud,
to the west of Paris. So far, so good. It was the following day, 19
Brumaire, that was the crucial one, for by then the element of surprise had
been lost. Many Council members saw through the unfounded threat that had
led to their transfer out of the capital and began to suspect they had been
led into a trap. As the deputies remonstrated, so Bonaparte lost his
composure and stormed into the chambers, to convey a few 'home truths'. In
fact, he only exacerbated the growing resistance he encountered there. When
Bonaparte was assaulted in the Council of Five Hundred he almost fainted
(contrary to Bouchot's famous depiction of the scene, which shows the
general maintaining his "sang froid") and it was brother Lucien, a deputy
in the Council, who saved the day by calling upon the troops to defend
their leader. No wonder subsequent accounts sought to emphasize the orderly
18 Brumaire rather than the almost disastrous 19 Brumaire. The elision of
the latter is complete, for history only makes reference to the former date.
The recourse to military force to overcome the protesting politicians only
served to strengthen Bonaparte's hand when order was restored. He cashed in
on his enhanced role in the events to determine the character of the new
constitution that was rapidly drawn up. One French historian has rightly
referred to the many coups of Napoleon, since the way in which he imposed
his own solution to the post-Brumaire outcome may be described as a coup
within the original coup hatched by Siey`s. Bonaparte declared his refusal
to be 'the man of any party'. In practice this meant that when he nominated
himself as First Consul in the three-man Consulate that emerged in December
1799, he was rendering himself a dictator. The short and obscure
Constitution of the Year VIII set the tone for a regime in which government
decrees would decide how broad legislation was actually interpreted. It was
significant that the Declaration of Rights was dropped from this fourth
constitutional charter of the revolutionary decade and that references to
liberty and equality became increasingly perfunctory.
None the less, the success of the emergent Bonapartist order was by no
means a foregone conclusion. The events of Brumaire were deeply ambiguous
and could be read in different ways. The Directory found few defenders,
even among its own personnel, many of whom sent congratulatory addresses to
Paris. Yet if there was agreement that change was needed to end the
uncertainty of the revolutionary decade, the basis of the
post-revolutionary order remained in dispute. In some areas there was
relief among radical groups that the Republic had been saved, while in
others royalists assumed that a restoration was imminent. Above all, there
was widespread apathy, neither enthusiasm nor opposition, for few perceived
more than just another coup taking place in the depths of a severe economic
crisis.
The vote or 'plebiscite' to which the new constitution was put (like its
two predecessors in 1793 and 1795) revealed indifference if not much
outright hostility. Yet the regime declared that some three million
Frenchmen had expressed an opinion in favour of the new order and this
fraud has only recently come to light. It was once again Lucien who rushed
to his brother's assistance when it became obvious that the returns were
disappointing and that the figures would be inferior to those recorded in
1793, if not 1795. By effectively doubling the number of votes cast in yet
another 'coup', the regime imposed authority from above on the basis of
minimal confidence from below. It would take victory on the battlefield,
notably at Marengo in June 1800, some severely repressive measures against
lawlessness, and a healing of the rift with the Catholic church, via the
Concordat of 1801, to produce a greater degree of popularity. This was
subsequently reflected in a strong turnout in the more genuine plebiscitary
returns of 1802 on the Life Consulate.
The so-called 'revolution of 18 Brumaire' must thus be set in a broad
context in order to demystify the Bonapartist legend. There were
alternatives available in 1799 which have not been adequately explored
because Bonaparte's news management was so effective. The coup itself was
far from being a neat surgical operation. Above all, engineering the
post-revolutionary regime was to prove a protracted matter. A great deal of
attention has been paid to how revolutions begin, but relatively little to
how they are brought to an end. As even Napoleon was to discover, the
latter is rather more difficult than the former. He was gradually able to
fulfil the promise he made on the morrow of Brumaire that 'the Revolution
is over', yet only at the expense of abandoning much of the political
acculturation of the 1790s. However, his authoritarian solution was no more
enduring and efforts to combine freedom with stability would continue
during the century that followed.
Copyright 1999 H-France and Malcolm Crook