Yet Napoleon was a clever politician who liked to camouflage and
obfuscate what he was doing. The most consummate act of mystification
was the introduction of the Legion of Honour, instituted on 19 May
- To offset his own imperial demeanour and the obvious dominance
of the notables and upper bourgeoisie, Napoleon tried to pretend that he
was still wedded to the Revolutionary ideal of meritocracy by seeming to
introduce a parallel elite based on talent and achievement. There were to
be four classes in the Legion: simple members, officers, commanders and
grand officers; the highest award was the Grand Eagle. Originally divided
into sixteen cohorts with 408 award holders each, the Legion by 18o8
contained 20,27 5 members.
Napoleon's honours system was a great success, and there was keen
competition for the familiar white enamel crosses on strips of red ribbon.
Seeing in the Legion the germ of a new nobility, the returned emigres
hated and despised it, but they were not alone. The Legislature, packed
with notables, absurdly opposed the Legion because it offended the
principle of inequality; they saw no such offence in the glaring inequality
of wealth and property of which they were the beneficiaries. It is a
perennial peculiarity of societies to object to inequalities of race, sex, title,
distinction and even intellect while remaining blithely untroubled about
the most important form of inequality: the economic. A more telling
criticism, which few made at the time, was that the honours system was
overwhelmingly used to reward military achievement, usually to honour
generals and others who had already done very well for themselves by
looting and pillaging. An honours system, if it is to work well, should
reward people who have not already received society's accolades and
glittering prizes. Napoleon himself came to see the force of this argument
and later regretted that he had not awarded the Legion of Honour to
people like actors, who had no other form of official prestige.
The institution of the Legion shows Napoleon at his most cynical. He
viewed human beings as despicable creatures, fuelled by banality and led
by cliches, which he himself endorsed enthusiastically: 'It is by baubles
alone that men are led'; 'bread and circuses'; 'divide and rule'; 'stick and
carrot' - all these tags express an essential truth about Napoleon's
approach to social control. He played off every class and social grouping
against every other, and manipulated divisions within and between the
strata: the urban proletariat, the petit-bourgeoisie, and the clergy were
particular victims of his Machiavellianism but he dealt with recalcitrant
lawyers, generals and financiers in essentially the same way.
It will be clear enough from the foregoing that in no sense can
Napoleon be considered an heir of the French Revolution and its
