H-FRANCE NAPOLEON FORUM


Response Essay
Isser Woloch, Columbia University


I suspect that my friend Malcolm Crook and I agree on 95 percent of the
factual and interpretive questions surrounding Brumaire and the Consulate,

and that we both approach the subject in the academic historian's usual
posture: "on the one hand, on the other."  But to dwell on this consensus

would make for a dull forum.

To begin with Crook frames his discussion with a straw man: the "black
legend" of the Directory put forth during and after the coup by the
brumairians.  No doubt they sincerely believed what they said, and no doubt

that in less exaggerated terms some of their talking-points were valid (as

I shall suggest in a moment).  But recent historiography rightly dismisses

those claims in their bald form.  From Tulard, Bergeron, and Bertaud onward

the basic account sounds quite different from the luxuriantly detailed but

tendentious lawyer's brief of Albert Vandal, the source of an older, more
mythic view of "l'avénement de Bonaparte."  (But note: in the outside
 world
of popular history remote from the discipline of academic discourse,
Napoleon worship can still be found and such myths probably do prevail
(although the opposite kind of distortion - a demonization of Napoleon --
also has a certain currency).  So Crook and Brown are right to warn against

those myths.)

Arguably, the Directory regime _was_ foundering constitutionally and
politically.  It had few friends at crucial moments for a good reason,
since it had managed to alienate so many individuals and
groups.  Personally, I would emphasize the unfortunate decision in the 1795

constitution to mandate annual rather than bi-annual elections; the
dysfunctional nature of its legislative bi-cameralism, which so often
produced stalemate; the "second" Directory's utterly misguided and
counterproductive assault on traditional Catholic practices and values at
the grass roots.  In addition the Neo-Jacobins' plausible if panicky
responses to the war crisis of 1799 -- the forced loan, the law of
hostages, and above all the symbolically contentious motion to declare "la

patrie en danger" (which failed when finally put to a vote) -- ultimately
backfired because it revived the specter of terrorism in the republic.

None of this means that the Directory regime could not have rallied from
its past mistakes and constitutional debilities.  None of this means that
if left to vote freely, a majority of the Council of 500 and perhaps even
of the Elders might not have spurned the plotters' proposals to scrap the
constitution and with it representative democracy.  But these are two
questions we simply cannot answer.

As for the events of 19 Brumaire.  Obviously the outcome was uncertain
(Sieyés had a carriage ready to whisk him back to Paris and into hiding
should the plot fail).  But my reading of the sources suggests that the
Neo-Jacobins in the Council of 500 were floundering around without much
success for tactics to resist the onslaught.  It might indeed be that if
left to deliberate calmly they would have come up with a viable
stratagem.  Bonaparte's disruptive foray (which initially gave Sieyés
apoplexy: "this maneuver is going to ruin us!") created pandemonium,
followed by the introduction of troops to clear the hall, which put an end

to resistance.  Therefore the statement that "the coup of Brumaire nearly
miscarried on its second day" is not exactly accurate; either with or
without Bonaparte's precipitous act, we simply do not know that the foes of

the coup could have caused it to miscarry.

Howard Brown has little patience for such mundane issues, but wants us to
see the big picture in a new light.  Continuity and change are the
lifeblood of historical analysis, and he is right that one can easily
misconstrue that balance in dramatic, event-filled periods like
1789-1815.  But his insistence on a new periodization would create more
problems than it solves (as did Soboul's justly forgotten book called _Le
Directoire et le Consulat_).  Brumaire and its aftermath was anything but
minor.  It suppressed almost entirely the revolutionary/republican
political culture that had fitfully developed since 1792.  The Directory
(inadvertently in some respects and willfully in others) no doubt helped
prepare the ground for this dramatic turn, but until Brumaire closed the
door on that quasi-democratic political culture completely, it remained a
very open question.  I obviously agree (if for different reasons) that
Fructidor 1797 was a kind of watershed, but any perspective or
periodization that downplays Brumaire is too forced, in this case, too much

in the service of a particular thesis about the rise of the "liberal
security state."

Brown's thesis on that subject has the great merit of bringing militarized

policing squarely into the picture, but I would not rewrite French history

with that issue as the central trope.  Citizens did indeed become
administres -- but only after Brumaire, notwithstanding the use of the
 term
or the latent tendencies in that direction before Brumaire.  Moreover they

became administres in many respects possibly more fundamental than the one

Brown highlights in his important _JMH_ article. (They became administrƒs

above all, in my view, as fodder for Napoleon's conscription machine, which

was by no means perfected by 1803.)

Brown's argument about Bonaparte's complicity in many of the Directory's
decisions that the general later set out to rectify is well taken, but
overstated.  I take exception, for example, to his discussion of war and
diplomacy in Italy.  Were the French people delusional in proclaiming
Bonaparte a national hero at the end of 1797?  Hardly.  Peace through
victory with Austria was the key foreign policy objective of the French
republic, and he attained it.  And the Cisalpine republic (with all its
weaknesses and seamy sides) could certainly be hailed as a real if
unforeseen achievement of the French republic, and a foundational event in

modern Italian history, even if it complicated the Directory's diplomacy.

One might disagree with Brown in the way he situates Bonaparte.  But he is

ever so right in one crucial observation: Napoleon "helped to create a
dangerous national thirst for military glory."  You can see the
repercussions later in Carnot's attack on the Bourbon restoration
(following his initial, fatalistic acceptance), and then in his remarkably

enthusiastic response to Napoleon's return from Elba.  Le grand Carnot
despised Napoleon on every ground but two: that he had at least tempered
the acrimony between "the parties" in France (which the Bourbons did not
do), and above all that, unlike the Bourbons, Napoleon always upheld
France's honor and military glory -- a rather troubling (if unsurprising)
point of view coming from such an esteemed Frenchman.

On the whole I would probably agree with Brown (and with Louis Bergeron,
whose fine book is called _L'Episode napoleonienne_ in its French version)

that the Empire was an ephemeral phenomenon.  Yet Annie Jourdan's
contribution to the forum on the skillful fabrication by Napoleon of his
visual image across time might well give us pause about that
assumption.  And there is another reason not to be so quick: How are we to

account for the 100 Days -- for (of all things) a second chance for the
fallen and much reviled emperor -- or for the later popular bonapartism
documented by Bernard Menager?  The answer is perhaps not all that
 edifying
for devotees of French history.
Copyright 1999 H-France and Isser Woloch