The internal coup which consolidated Napoleon's power came on r2
December. Working on his famous principle that constitutions should be
short and obscure, Napoleon presented a constitutional document which
was a masterpiece of ambiguity. Ostensibly following Sieyes's principles,
but really tailoring the draft to favour his own ambitions, Napoleon
proposed that there should be a First Consul with executive powers,
flanked by two other consuls with advisory powers and 'checked' by four
assemblies: a Council of State with 3o-- 4o members, a Tribunate with roo
members, a 6o-strong Senate and a Legislature of 300 souls. The object
was to paralyse the legislative arm with a maze of checks and balances,
leaving the First Consul with virtually untrammelled power. Ministers
were to be responsible to the Consuls and theoretically powerful figures
in their own right, but Napoleon had already calculated that he could
divide and rule by, for example, countering the ambition of Talleyrand
with that of Fouche, or setting Lucien as Minister of the Interior against
Fouche as Minister of Police. A further weakening of Ministers' powers
came in the 'flanking' proposal whereby two director-generals drawn
from the Councils of State would 'shadow' each Minister. The entire
Constitution was to be ratified by plebiscite.
On 12 December Napoleon brought his draft Constitution into the
legislative chamber and got it adopted by fifty commissioners. The three
consuls were supposed to be elected by secret ballot but Napoleon, in a
clever show of 'magnanimity' suggested that Sieyes should nominate
them. He rubber-stamped Napoleon as First Consul for ten years and
chose as his advisory Second and Third Consuls Cambaceres and Charles
Lebrun; this was supposed to be an act of balancing, with Cambaceres, a
one-time member of the Committee of Public Safety as a sop to the
Jacobins and Lebrun a concession to the monarchists. The vote in the
chamber then took place by acclamation.
There remained now only the hurdle of the plebiscite, which Napoleon
insisted on turning into a personal vote of confidence for him. The
referendum was an odd affair, where the only possible answer was yes or
no to the proposed constitution. The ballot was not secret, the vote was
given on property qualifications which favoured those who were
beneficiaries of Brumaire and the scope for intimidation was immense,
given that the vote did not take place simultaneously nationwide. The
result seemed to be an overwhelming victory for Napoleon: 3,orr,oo7
'yes' votes and only r,562 'noes'; in Paris the figures were 12,440 'yes'
and ro 'noes'. Interestingly, there was a high 'no' vote in Corsica.
However, in an electorate of over nine million, there was a huge
abstention rate. Lucien at the Ministry of the Interior doctored the result
marcin
(Marcin)
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