Napoleon Crowned Emperor
Napoleon crowned himself Emperor of the French in Notre-Dame on 2 December 1804 with the pope in attendance. The move had been prepared for years. He had been First Consul since 1799, consul for life since 1802 with the right to name his successor, and the constitutional machinery was already monarchical in everything but name. What supplied the pretext was an assassination attempt. The royalist Cadoudal plot of 1804, and the abduction and execution of the Duke of Enghien from neutral territory, were used to argue that only a hereditary succession would make the regime — and therefore the Revolution's settlement of property — safe from being ended by a single bullet. The senate proposed the title, and a plebiscite returned some three and a half million votes for it and a few thousand against. The choice of title mattered: emperor of the French rather than of France, a Roman and popular formula rather than a dynastic one, and the constitution continued to call the state a republic for another two years. Pius VII was brought from Rome to consecrate the ceremony, which was itself a statement, and Napoleon took the crown from the altar and placed it on his own head and then crowned Josephine. Whether that was a planned insult or a piece of choreography agreed in advance has been argued for two centuries. David's painting shows the crowning of Josephine rather than the awkward moment. Beethoven scratched out the dedication of his third symphony. The empire also brought back a court, a nobility and a system of titles within five years, staffed largely by men whose fathers had been notaries and innkeepers. That combination — careers open to talent, and then the talented given titles — is the whole social settlement of the regime.
- Year: 1804 CE
- Category: Political
