Of all the Consulate’s policies, Andrew Roberts explains (in Napoleon: A Life), the one to smash rural brigandage was among the most popular:
‘The art of policing is in punishing infrequently and severely,’ Napoleon believed, but in his war against the brigands who were terrorizing vast areas of France, he tended to punish both frequently and severely. Brigands could be royalist rebels (especially in western and southern France), groups of deserters or draft-dodgers, outlaws, highwaymen, simple ruffians or a combination of all these. The Ancien Régime, the Committee of Public Safety and the Directory had all fought against endemic lawlessness in the countryside, but the Consulate fought to win with every means at its disposal. Napoleon interned and deported suspected brigands, and used the death penalty against convicted ones, who were often called such unedifying names as ‘The Dragon’, ‘Beat-to-Death’ and ‘The Little Butcher of Christians’, and who raided isolated farmhouses as well as hijacking coaches and robbing travellers.
Although the gendarmerie or paramilitary police had been inaugurated in April 1798 with a force of 10,575 men, Napoleon reorganized it, increased its numbers to 16,500, paid it well and on time, improved its morale and stamped out most of the corruption within its ranks.
Patrols were increased and were mounted on horseback when before they had been on foot; special tribunals and military commissions guillotined suspects on circumstantial evidence without the right to a defence lawyer; and huge mobile columns were sent out which meted out summary justice. In November 1799, some 40 per cent of France was under martial law, but within three years it was safe to travel around France again, and trade could be resumed. Not even his Italian victories brought Napoleon more popularity.
In March 1800 the Consulate replaced more than 3,000 elected judges, public prosecutors and court presidents with its own appointees. Political opinions don’t seem to have been the deciding factor so much as practical expertise, as well as Napoleon’s keenness to sack elderly, corrupt or incompetent lawyers. It took seven months for the system to run smoothly again due to the backlogs, but thereafter the delivery of justice was improved.
In his bid to end some of the more symbolic aspects of the Revolution once he had declared it to be over, Napoleon ordered that the red bonnets that had been put on church steeples and public buildings during the Revolution be taken down. Monsieur and Madame replaced citoyen and citoyenne, Christmas and Easter returned, and finally, on January 1, 1806, the revolutionary calendar was abolished.
Napoleon had always been alive to the power of nomenclature and so he renamed the Place de la Révolution (formerly the Place Louis XV) as the Place de la Concorde, and demolished the giant female statue of Liberty there.
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Other examples of his passion for renaming included rechristening his invention the Cisalpine Republic as the Italian Republic, the Army of England as the Grande Armée (in 1805), and the Place de l’Indivisibilité – the old Place Royale – as the Place des Vosges. Over the Consular period, Napoleon’s written style subtly altered, with revolutionary clichés such as inaltérable and incorruptible being replaced by the more incisive grand, sévère and sage.
Napoleon next went about persuading the émigrés — aristocrats, property-owners, royalists and priests who had fled during the Revolution — to return to France, on the understanding that they must not expect to get their property back. He eventually restored their voting and citizenship rights. In October 1800 he removed 48,000 émigrés’ names from the list of 100,000 proscribed during the Revolution, and in April 1802 all but 1,000 irreconcilable royalists were removed altogether.
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By May 1803, some 90 per cent of all émigrés had returned to France, reversing the huge drain of talent that had so weakened the country.
Of the 281 prefects appointed by Napoleon between 1800 and 1814, as many as 110 (39 per cent) had been Ancien Régime nobles.
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Napoleon instructed General d’Hédouville to deal with the rebels robustly: ‘If you make war, employ severity and activity; it is the only means by which you make it shorter, and consequently less deplorable for humanity.’
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On January 17, 1800, Napoleon closed no fewer than sixty of France’s seventy-three newspapers, saying that he wouldn’t ‘allow the papers to say or do anything contrary to my interests’.
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‘The printing press is an arsenal; it cannot be private property.’
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France had no tradition of press freedom before the Revolution. Freedom of speech was declared to be a universal right in 1789, and the number of officially sanctioned journals ballooned from four to over three hundred, but the government started closing journals as early as 1792, and periodic purging on political grounds had brought the number down to seventy-three by 1799. Freedom of the press didn’t exist in Prussia, Russia or Austria at the time, and even in 1819 the British government passed the notorious Six Acts, which tightened the definition of sedition, and by which three editors were arraigned. That was in peacetime, whereas France in January 1800 was at war with five countries, each of which had vowed to overthrow its government. Objectionable by modern standards, Napoleon’s move was little other than standard practice for his time and circumstances.
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‘My intention is that everything is printed, absolutely everything except obscene material and anything that might disturb the tranquillity of the State. Censorship should pay no attention to anything else.’
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Ten days after announcing the results of the plebiscite in February 1800, the Consulate passed a law (by 71 to 25 in the Tribunate and 217 to 68 in the Legislative Body) placing the administration of all eighty-three departments or regions of France, which had been created in 1790 in an effort to devolve power, under prefects who were appointed by the minister of the interior. An essential element of local democracy established by the Revolution was thus completely abolished at a stroke, and brought about a massive concentration of power into Napoleon’s hands. Each department now had a centrally appointed prefect, with sub-prefects to look after the arrondissements and mayors for communes, who were also centrally appointed if they had more than 5,000 inhabitants in their charge.
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Local self-government, in which after 1790 about one Frenchmen in thirty was a local official of some kind, was thus replaced by one in which initiative and control were vested ultimately in the First Consul.
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As First Consul Napoleon made all public officials salaried servants of the state, ensured they were properly trained, and abolished promotion through corruption and nepotism, replacing it with rewards for talent and merit.
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Boniface de Castellane-Novejean, prefect of the Basses-Pyrénées, summed up the prefect’s task as to ‘make sure that the taxes are paid, that the conscription is enacted, and that law and order is preserved’. In fact he also had to impound horses for the cavalry, billet troops, guard prisoners-of-war, stimulate economic development, deliver political support for the government at plebiscites and elections, fight brigands and represent the views of the department, especially its elites, to the government.
Only in areas in which Napoleon wasn’t interested, such as the relief of the poor and primary education, was much power left with the departments.