Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Napoleon’s consolidation of Power
- Coercion and control
- Changes to the judiciary
- Judges to be appointed rather than
elected – for life and kept subservient and
loyal by combination of close supervision
and rewards
- Criminal, commercial and penal code updated
in same was as Civil Code – hard punishment
e.g. hard labour, loss of right hand, branding
- arbitrary imprisonment without trial
- Prison population 16,000 by 1814 (3 times that of 1800)
- Agents of coercion
- General Police
- surveillance and gathering
intelligence on those suspected
threats
- Imposition of censorship
- Search for army deserters and draft dodgers
- Prefects
- Head of each department
- appointed by Napoleon
- acted as agent of central government,
nominates mayors and municipal
council
- Oversees collection of taxes, enforcement
of conscription, dissemination of
propaganda
- Gendarmes
- 18,000 stationed
throughout France
- maintenance of law
and order, crime
prevention
- but also helped
gather
information on
threats
- Livret
- but also helped gather
information on threats
- any worker wanting to move from one department to
another needed official permission to do so
- Patronage and Bribery
- Legion d’honneur
- Created May 1802
- 15 cohorts each comprising 350 legionaries, 30
officers, 20 commanders, 7 grand officers
- Decorations and 250 francs annually
- New title of Grand Dignitary created to
officials of new imperial court (1804-08)
- Estates given to Generals in
Poland and Germany...
- maintaining the empire would
mean maintaining their own
power
- Imperial nobility
- 1808 – all grand dignitaries became prices; archbishop
became counts, mayors of large towns became barons
and holders of the Legion d’Honneur became
Chevaliers
- If new nobility paid, (200,000F in the case of
a duke) the title could become hereditary
- Censorship and propaganda
- Control of the Press
- Jan 1800: reduced number of political
journals published in Paris from 73 -13
(only 9 remained by the end of the
year)
- 1811 only 4 Parisian journals and
subject to police supervision
- No sources of information; reliance on news from
military bulletins and Le Moniteur – official
government newspaper
- Censorship of books and plays
- anything to be published required 2
copies to be sent to censors
- printers forced to take out licence and swear
an oath of loyalty to the government
- One poet consigned to mental asylum for
writing the Great Napoleon is a great
chameleon
- Majority of Paris’
theatres closed down
- Propaganda
- Control of information
- Order of the Day - orders to soldiers under
his command (but ‘leaked’ to press)
- Bulletin – addressed to the country at large
- Published in
Le Moniteur
- Always exaggerated and
self- promotion
- Artistic and architectural projects...
- Louvre rich with Italian art
- During Italian campaign (1797)
Napoleon commissioned over 30
pictures turned into postcards
- Once in power... Jacques Louis David
appointed to oversee all artwork and
assess its suitability
- Architecture: Place Vendome
column to celebrate the battle
of Austerlitz in 1805 , modelled
on Trajan’s column, ancient
Rome