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The Beginning of the Consulate
In 1799, the French government of the Thermidorean Reaction, called the Directory, was foundering. A brilliant young French general, having already won fame with a series of victories for Revolutionary France in Italy, Napoleon Bonaparte, was then busy fighting a fruitless war in Egypt. Hearing of the chaos back in France, Napoleon abandoned his army and returned to Paris as a hero. On November 9, 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte and Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès launched a coup, overthrowing the current Directory and replacing it with a new government: the Consulate. Sieyès and Napoleon both installed themselves as consuls, but the more popular Napoleon was appointed First Consul.
A career warrior, Napoleon now claimed he only wanted peace. At the time, Austria was the only continental country that remained at war with France, and so, in June 1800, Napoleon led the French army against the Austrians at the battle of Marengo and emerged with a staggering victory. In February 1801, the Austrians were forced to sign the Treaty of Lunéville, reaffirming the earlier Treaty of Campo Formio, which had created the Cisalpine Republic in Italy (a puppet-state controlled by France). On March 1802, France also signed the Peace of Amiens with Britain, briefly bringing all of Europe to peace.
Consulate Reforms
As First Consul, Napoleon moved rapidly to institute order in France. He put down rebellions in the French province, created a secret police, and centralized the government of the various French departments under a system of prefects. To reduce the number of potential revolutionaries floating around Europe, he issued a general amnesty, allowing various exiles, from aristocrats to Jacobins, to return home. Napoleon ended the exclusion of the nobility from power that had been the trademark of earlier post-revolution regimes, seeking to fill office solely based on talent, not rank. As an example, he chose Charles Maurice de Talleyrand as his foreign minister despite Talleyrand’s aristocratic heritage.
Though unreligious, in 1801, Napoleon signed a Concordat with the Catholic pope. This agreement smoothed over the rift between France and Rome that the Revolution had caused by assuming control over appointment of bishops and confiscating church lands. Napoleon did not give the property back, but he did make Catholicism the official religion of France. In exchange, the Vatican recognized the Consulate. Even under this new agreement with the Church, Napoleon upheld religious tolerance, which remained a fundamental principle of French life under his "enlightened despotism," and prevented clergy of any kind from spearheading a resistance against him.
Napoleon also set about improving and modernizing French government. He wanted government power to apply to everyone equally, legal class differences and hereditary government offices to be abolished, and salaries to be given to his bureaucrats, who were to be selected based on talent, not birth. He stabilized French currency by creating the Bank of France, and he simplified the tangle of French law by producing the Napoleonic Code.
In 1802, having brought prestige, power, and a sense of patriotism to France, Napoleon was elected “Consul for Life.” In 1804, Napoleon did away with niceties and started calling himself what he had already been in reality for some time: the French Emperor.
French Government Under Napoleon
The overthrow of the Directory and establishment of the Consulate marked the real end of the French Revolution. The Consulate was outwardly an institution of self-government, with its Council of Notables and Senate. This bicameral legislature was largely for show, as Napoleon truly controlled the Consulate. Under his rule, France entered a period of “Enlightened Despotism,” a dictatorial rule characterized by his pursuit of Enlightenment ideas. Napoleon's executive decisions were carried out by his chief agency, the Council of State. Though he was a dictator, Napoleon’s reforms represented a victory for the goals of the bourgeoisie in the revolution: legal equality reigned, with government posts appointed based on talent, not class, education increasingly determining people's social status, and tax-exemptions based on noble birth being abolished.
The Napoleonic Code was one of Napoleon’s most important creations. After the various governments of the Revolution, French law was a complete mess. Lawyers, not to mention the people, hardly knew what was legal and illegal anymore, since there were so many confusing and conflicting laws on the books. The Napoleonic Code created a single, streamlined system of law, which enshrined the basic tenants of the Revolution, such as the legal equality of all citizens. The code, however, did have some negative aspects: it was harsher than Anglo-American "Common Law" in regards to the rights of criminals, favoring the prosecution instead, and outlawed labor unions.
