13 Vendémiaire
Following the fall of the Robespierres in the July 1794 Thermidorian Reaction, Bonaparte was put under house arrest in August 1794 for his association with the brothers.[note 5] Although he was released after only ten days, he remained out of favour.[25] In April 1795, he was assigned to the Army of the West, which was engaged in the War in the Vendée—a civil war and royalist counter-revolution
in France's Vendée region. As an infantry command, it was a demotion
from artillery general, and he pleaded poor health to avoid the posting.[26] He was moved to the Bureau of Topography of the Committee of Public Safety and sought, unsuccessfully, to be transferred to Constantinople (officially renamed Istanbul on 28 March 1930) in order to offer his services to the Sultan.[27] During this period he wrote a romantic novella, Clisson et Eugénie, about a soldier and his lover, in a clear parallel to Bonaparte's own relationship with Désirée.[28]
On 15 September Bonaparte was removed from the list of generals in
regular service, with the reason given being his refusal to serve in
the Vendée campaign. He now faced a difficult financial situation and
further reduced career prospects.[29]
On 3 October, royalists in Paris declared a rebellion against the National Convention after they were excluded from a new government, the Directory.[30] One of the leaders of the Thermidorian Reaction, Paul Barras
knew of Bonaparte's military exploits at Toulon and gave him command of
the improvised forces in defence of the Convention in the Tuileries Palace. Bonaparte had witnessed the massacre of the King's Swiss Guard there three years earlier and realised artillery would be key to its defence.[8] He ordered a young cavalry officer, Joachim Murat to seize large cannons and used them to repel the attackers on 5 October 1795—13 Vendémiaire An IV in the French Republican Calendar. 1,400 royalists died and the rest fled.[30] He had cleared the streets with "a whiff of grapeshot" according to the 19th-century historian Thomas Carlyle, in The French Revolution: A History.[31]
The defeat of the Royalist insurrection extinguished the threat to
the Convention and earned Bonaparte sudden fame, wealth, and the
patronage of the new Directory; Murat would become his brother-in-law
and one of his generals. Bonaparte was promoted to Commander of the
Interior and given command of the Army of Italy.[20] Within weeks he was romantically attached to Barras's former mistress, Joséphine de Beauharnais, whom he married on 9 March 1796, after he had broken off his engagement to Désirée Clary.[32]
Two days after the marriage, Bonaparte left Paris to take command of
the Army of Italy and led it on a successful invasion of Italy. At the Battle of Lodi he defeated Austrian forces, then drove them out of Lombardy.[20] He was defeated at Caldiero by Austrian reinforcements, led by József Alvinczi, though Bonaparte regained the initiative at the crucial Battle of the Bridge of Arcole and proceeded to subdue the Papal States.[33]
Bonaparte argued against the wishes of Directory atheists to march on
Rome and dethrone the Pope as he reasoned this would create a power vacuum that would be exploited by the Kingdom of Naples. Instead, in March 1797, Bonaparte led his army into Austria and forced it to negotiate peace.[34] The Treaty of Leoben gave France control of most of northern Italy and the Low Countries and a secret clause promised the Republic of Venice
to Austria. Bonaparte marched on Venice and forced its surrender,
ending 1,100 years of independence; he also authorised the French to
loot treasures such as the Horses of Saint Mark.[35]
His application of conventional military ideas to real-world
situations effected his military triumphs, such as creative use of
artillery as a mobile force to support his infantry.
He referred to his tactics thus: "I have fought sixty battles and I
have learned nothing which I did not know at the beginning. Look at
Caesar; he fought the first like the last."[36] He was adept at espionage
and deception and could win battles by concealment of troop deployments
and concentration of his forces on the 'hinge' of an enemy's weakened
front. If he could not use his favourite envelopment strategy, he would take up the central position and attack two cooperating forces at their hinge, swing round to fight one until it fled, then turn to face the other.[37] In this Italian campaign, Bonaparte's army captured 150,000 prisoners, 540 cannons and 170 standards.[38] The French army fought 67 actions and won 18 pitched battles through superior artillery technology and Bonaparte's tactics.[39]
During the campaign, Bonaparte became increasingly influential in
French politics. He published two newspapers, ostensibly for the troops
in his army, but widely circulated in France as well, and in May 1797,
founded a third newspaper, Le Journal de Bonaparte et des hommes vertueux, which was published in Paris.[40] Elections in mid-1797 gave the royalist party more power and alarmed the Directory.[41]
The royalists attacked Bonaparte for looting Italy and claimed he had
overstepped his authority in dealings with the Austrians. Bonaparte
sent General Pierre Augereau to Paris to lead a coup d'état and purge the royalists on 4 September—18 Fructidor.
This left Barras and his Republican allies in control again, but
dependent on Bonaparte who proceeded to peace negotiations with
Austria. These negotiations resulted in the Treaty of Campo Formio, and Bonaparte returned to Paris in December as a hero, more popular than the Directors.[42] He met with Talleyrand, France's new Foreign Minister—who would later serve in the same capacity for Emperor Napoleon—and they began to prepare for an invasion of England.[20]
After two months of planning, Bonaparte decided France's naval power
was not yet strong enough to confront the Royal Navy in the English Channel and proposed a military expedition to seize Egypt and thereby undermine Britain's access to its trade interests in India.[20]
Bonaparte wished to establish a French presence in the Middle East,
with the ultimate dream of linking with a Muslim enemy of the British
in India, Tipu Sultan.[43] Napoleon assured the Directory that "as
soon as he had conquered Egypt, he will establish relations with the
Indian princes and, together with them, attack the English in their
possessions."[44] According to a February 1798 report by Talleyrand: "Having occupied and fortified Egypt, we shall send a force of 15,000 men from Suez to India, to join the forces of Tipu-Sahib and drive away the English."[44]
The Directory, though troubled by the scope and cost of the enterprise,
agreed so the popular general would be absent from the centre of power.[45]
In May 1798, Bonaparte was elected a member of the French Academy of Sciences. His Egyptian expedition included a group of 167 scientists: mathematicians, naturalists, chemists and geodesists among them; their discoveries included the Rosetta Stone and their work was published in the Description de l'Égypte in 1809.[46]
En route to Egypt, Bonaparte reached Malta on 9 June 1798, then controlled by the Knights Hospitaller. The two hundred Knights of French origin did not support the Grand Master, Prussian Ferdinand von Hompesch zu Bolheim,
who had succeeded a Frenchman, and made it clear they would not fight
against their compatriots. Hompesch surrendered after token resistance
and Bonaparte captured a very important naval base with the loss of
only three men.[47]
General Bonaparte and his expedition eluded pursuit by the Royal Navy and on 1 July landed at Alexandria.[20] Bonaparte successfully fought the Battle of Chobrakit against the Mamluks, an old power in the Middle East. This helped the French plan their attack in the Battle of the Pyramids fought over a week later, about 6 km from the pyramids.
General Bonaparte's forces were greatly outnumbered by the Mamluks'
cavalry—20,000 against 60,000—but he formed hollow squares with
supplies kept safely inside. 300 French and approximately 6,000
Egyptians were killed.[48]
On 1 August, the British fleet under Horatio Nelson captured or destroyed all but two French vessels in the Battle of the Nile and Bonaparte's goal of a strengthened French position in the Mediterranean Sea was frustrated.[49] His army had nonetheless succeeded in a temporary increase of French power in Egypt, though it faced repeated uprisings.[50] In early 1799, he moved the army into the Ottoman province of Damascus (Syria and Galilee). Bonaparte led these 13,000 French soldiers in the conquest of the coastal towns of Arish, Gaza, Jaffa, and Haifa.[51] The attack on Jaffa was particularly brutal: Bonaparte, on discovering many of the defenders were former prisoners of war, ostensibly on parole, ordered the garrison and 1,400 prisoners to be executed by bayonet or drowning to save bullets.[49] Men, women and children were robbed and murdered for three days.[52]
With his army weakened by disease — mostly bubonic plague — and poor supplies, Bonaparte was unable to reduce the fortress of Acre, and returned to Egypt in May.[49] To speed up the retreat, he ordered plague-stricken men to be poisoned.[53]
His supporters have argued this decision was necessary given the
continued harassment of stragglers by Ottoman forces and those left
behind alive were indeed tortured and beheaded by the Ottomans. Back in
Egypt, on 25 July, Bonaparte defeated an Ottoman amphibious invasion at
Abukir.[54]
While in Egypt, Bonaparte stayed informed of European affairs
through irregular delivery of newspapers and dispatches. He learned
France had suffered a series of defeats in the War of the Second Coalition.[55]
On 24 August 1799, he took advantage of the temporary departure of
British ships from French coastal ports and set sail for France,
despite the fact he had received no explicit orders from Paris.[49] The army was left in the charge of Jean Baptiste Kléber.[56]
Unknown to Bonaparte, the Directory had sent him orders to return to
ward off possible invasions of French soil but poor lines of
communication meant the messages had failed to reach him.[55]
By the time he reached Paris in October, France's situation had been
improved by a series of victories. The Republic was bankrupt, however,
and the ineffective Directory was unpopular with the French population.[57] The Directory discussed Bonaparte's "desertion" but was too weak to punish him.[55]
Bonaparte was approached by one of the Directors, Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, for his support in a coup to overthrow the constitutional government. The leaders of the plot included his brother Lucien Bonaparte; the speaker of the Council of Five Hundred, Roger Ducos; another Director, Joseph Fouché;
and Talleyrand. On 9 November—18 Brumaire by the French Republican
Calendar—Bonaparte was charged with the safety of the legislative
councils, who were persuaded to remove to the Château de Saint-Cloud, to the west of Paris, after a rumour of a Jacobin rebellion was spread by the plotters.[58]
By the following day, the deputies had realised they faced an attempted
coup. Faced with their remonstrations, Bonaparte led troops to seize
control and disperse them, which left a rump legislature to name Bonaparte, Sièyes, and Ducos as provisional Consuls to administer the government.[49]
Though Sieyès expected to dominate the new regime, he was outmanoeuvred by Bonaparte, who drafted the Constitution of the Year VIII and secured his own election as First Consul.[59] This made Bonaparte the most powerful person in France and he took up residence at the Tuileries.[49]
In 1800, Bonaparte and his troops crossed the Alps into Italy, where
French forces had been almost completely driven out by the Austrians
whilst he was in Egypt.[note 6] The campaign began badly for the French after Bonaparte made strategic errors; one force was left besieged at Genoa but managed to hold out and thereby occupy Austrian resources.[61] This effort and French general Desaix's timely reinforcements, allowed Bonaparte to narrowly avoid defeat and triumph over the Austrians in June at the significant Battle of Marengo. Bonaparte's brother Joseph led the peace negotiations in Lunéville
and reported that Austria, emboldened by British support, would not
recognise France's newly gained territory. As negotiations became
increasingly fractious, Bonaparte gave orders to his general Moreau to strike Austria once more. Moreau led France to victory at Hohenlinden. As a result, the Treaty of Lunéville was signed in February 1801: the French gains of the Treaty of Campo Formio were reaffirmed and increased.[62]
Temporary peace in Europe
Bonaparte set up a camp at Boulogne-sur-Mer to prepare for an invasion of Britain but both countries had become tired of war and signed the Treaty of Amiens
in October 1801 and March 1802; this included the withdrawal of British
troops from most colonial territories it had recently occupied.[61] The peace was uneasy and short-lived; Britain did not evacuate Malta as promised and protested against Bonaparte's annexation of Piedmont and his Act of Mediation, which established a new Swiss Confederation, though neither of these territories were covered by the Treaty.[63] The dispute culminated in a declaration of war by Britain in May 1803, and he reassembled the invasion camp at Boulogne.[49]
Bonaparte faced a major setback and eventual defeat in the Haitian Revolution. By the Law of 20 May 1802 Bonaparte re-established slavery in France's colonial possessions, where it had been banned following the Revolution.[64] Following a slave revolt, he sent an army to reconquer Saint-Domingue and establish a base. The force was, however, destroyed by yellow fever and fierce resistance led by Haitian generals Toussaint Louverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines.[note 7]
Faced by imminent war against Britain and bankruptcy, he recognised
French possessions on the mainland of North America would be
indefensible and sold them to the United States—the Louisiana Purchase—for less than three cents per acre ($7.40 per km²).[66]
Reforms
Bonaparte instituted lasting reforms, including centralised administration of the departments, higher education, a tax code, road and sewer systems and the Banque de France—the country's central bank. He negotiated the Concordat of 1801
with the Catholic Church, which sought to reconcile the mostly Catholic
population to his regime. It was presented alongside the Organic Articles,
which regulated public worship in France. Later that year, Bonaparte
became President of the French Academy of Sciences and appointed Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre its Permanent Secretary.[46] In May 1802, he instituted the Légion d'Honneur, a substitute for the old royalist decorations and orders of chivalry, to encourage civilian and military achievements; the order is still the highest decoration in France.[67] His powers were increased by the Constitution of the Year X including: Article 1. The French people name, and the Senate proclaims Napoleon-Bonaparte First Consul for Life.[68] After this he was generally referred to as Napoleon rather than Bonaparte.[16]
Napoleon's set of civil laws, the Code Civil—now often known as the Napoleonic code—was prepared by committees of legal experts under the supervision of Jean Jacques Régis de Cambacérès, the Second Consul. Napoleon participated actively in the sessions of the Council of State that revised the drafts. The development of the Code was a fundamental change in the nature of the civil law
legal system with its stress on clearly written and accessible law.
Other codes were commissioned by Napoleon to codify criminal and
commerce law; a Code of Criminal Instruction was published, which
enacted rules of due process.[69] See Legacy.
Napoleon faced royalist and Jacobin plots as France's ruler, including the Conspiration des poignards [Daggers conspiracy] in October 1800 and the Plot of the Rue Saint-Nicaise two months later.[70]
In January 1804, his police uncovered an assassination plot against him
which involved Moreau and which was ostensibly sponsored by the Bourbon former rulers of France. On the advice of Talleyrand, Napoleon ordered the kidnapping of the Duke of Enghien, in violation of neighbouring Baden's sovereignty. After a secret trial the Duke was executed, even though he had not been involved in the plot.[71]
Napoleon used the plot to justify the re-creation of a hereditary monarchy in France, with himself as Emperor, as a Bourbon restoration would be more difficult if the Bonapartist succession was entrenched in the constitution.[72] Napoleon crowned himself Emperor Napoleon I on 2 December 1804 at Notre Dame de Paris and then crowned Joséphine Empress. Claims that he seized the crown out of the hands of Pope Pius VII during the ceremony—to avoid his subjugation to the authority of the pontiff—are apocryphal; the coronation procedure had been agreed in advance.[note 8] At Milan Cathedral on 26 May 1805, Napoleon was crowned King of Italy with the Iron Crown of Lombardy. He created eighteen Marshals of the Empire from amongst his top generals, to secure the allegiance of the army. Ludwig van Beethoven, a long-time admirer, was disappointed at this turn towards imperialism, and scratched his dedication to Napoleon from his 3rd Symphony.[72]
War of the Third Coalition
By 1805, Britain had convinced Austria and Russia to join a Third
Coalition against France. Napoleon knew the French fleet could not
defeat the Royal Navy in a head-to-head battle and planned to lure it
away from the English Channel. The French Navy
would escape from the British blockades of Toulon and Brest and
threaten to attack the West Indies, thus drawing off the British
defence of the Western Approaches, in the hope a Franco-Spanish fleet could take control of the Channel long enough for French armies to cross from Boulogne and invade England.[73] However, after defeat at the naval Battle of Cape Finisterre in July 1805 and Admiral Villeneuve's retreat to Cadiz, invasion was never again a realistic option for Napoleon.[74]
Instead, he ordered the army stationed at Boulogne, his Grande Armée, to secretly march to Germany in a turning movement—the Ulm Campaign.
This encircled the Austrian forces about to attack France and severed
their lines of communication. On 20 October 1805, the French captured
30,000 prisoners at Ulm, though the next day Britain's victory at the Battle of Trafalgar
meant the Royal Navy gained control of the seas. Six weeks later, on
the first anniversary of his coronation, Napoleon defeated Austria and
Russia at Austerlitz. This ended the Third Coalition and he commissioned the Arc de Triomphe to commemorate the victory. Austria had to concede territory: the Peace of Pressburg led to the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire and creation of the Confederation of the Rhine with Napoleon named as its Protector.[75]
Napoleon would go on to say that "The battle of Austerlitz is the finest of all I have fought."
[76]
Frank McLynn suggests Napoleon was so successful at Austerlitz he lost
touch with reality, and what used to be French foreign policy became a
"personal Napoleonic one".
[77] Vincent Cronin disagrees, stating Napoleon was not overly ambitious for himself, that "he embodied the ambitions of thirty million Frenchmen".
[78Even after the failed campaign in Egypt, Napoleon continued to
entertain a grand scheme to establish a French presence in the Middle
East.
[43]
An alliance with Middle-Eastern powers would have the strategic
advantage of pressuring Russia on its southern border. From 1803,
Napoleon went to considerable lengths to try to convince the Ottoman
Empire to fight against Russia in the
Balkans and join his anti-Russian coalition.
[79] Napoleon sent General
Horace Sebastiani as envoy extraordinary, promising to help the Ottoman Empire recover lost territories.
[79] In February 1806, following Napoleon's victory at Austerlitz and the ensuing dismemberment of the
Habsburg Empire, the Ottoman Emperor
Selim III finally recognized Napoleon as Emperor, formally opting for an alliance with France
"our sincere and natural ally", and war with Russia and England.
[80] A Franco-Persian alliance was also formed, from 1807 to 1809, between Napoleon and the
Persian Empire of
Fath Ali Shah,
against Russia and Great Britain. The alliance ended when France allied
with Russia and turned its focus to European campaigns.
[43]The Fourth Coalition was assembled in 1806, and Napoleon defeated Prussia at the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt in October.[81] He marched against advancing Russian armies through Poland, and was involved in the bloody stalemate of the Battle of Eylau on 6 February 1807.[82]
After a decisive victory at Friedland, he signed the Treaties of Tilsit; one with Tsar Alexander I of Russia which divided the continent between the two powers; the other with Prussia which stripped that country of half its territory. Napoleon placed puppet rulers on the thrones of German states, including his brother Jérôme as king of the new Kingdom of Westphalia. In the French-controlled part of Poland, he established the Duchy of Warsaw with King Frederick Augustus I of Saxony as ruler.[83]
With his Milan and Berlin Decrees, Napoleon attempted to enforce a Europe-wide commercial boycott of Britain called the Continental System.
This act of economic warfare did not succeed, as it encouraged British
merchants to smuggle into continental Europe and Napoleon's exclusively
land-based customs enforcers could not stop them.[84]
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