Augereau gradually lost their place as important military actors; Moncey
and Mortier spent their later careers away from Napoleon in the
Peninsular War. More puzzling than the appointments made out of
political considerations were the ones not made, for several obvious
candidates were in the ring. By all laws of friendship, Junot should have
been promoted but his quick tongue had spoken out of turn once too
often. Suchet, who would eventually be created marshal in I8II and be
acknowledged by Napoleon as the finest of all his commanders, was at
this stage severely underrated by the Emperor. He had quasi-familial
claims, having married the niece of Julie and Desiree Clary, but had two
strikes against his record; he had fallen out with the influential Massena
during the second Italian campaign of 18oo and, more seriously, had
declined an offer to accompany Napoleon to Egypt in 1798.
The creation of the marshalate was the most important, but by no
means the only, stage in Napoleon's construction of a new nobility. The
day after his coronation, a morose Emperor, depressed by anticlimax after
the euphoria of the day before, said to his Navy Minister Decres: 'I have
come too late; there is nothing great left to do ... look at Alexander; after
he had conquered Asia and been proclaimed to the peoples as the son of
Jupiter, the whole of the East believed it ... with the exception of
Aristotle and some Athenian pedants. Well, as for me, .if I declared myself
today the son of the eternal Father ... there is no fishwife who would not
hiss at me as I passed by.'
Alexander the Great was on his mind in more ways than one, for he
now sought to emulate the great Macedonian conqueror by creating a
new nobility, partly by fusion of the notables and the returned emigres,
partly by intermarriage between his family and other European poten
tates; Alexander had famously ordered the mass wedding of Macedonian
soldiers and Persian brides. To an extent the reestablishment of
monarchical forms of power in France entailed the fo rmation of a
concomitant nobility. A decree of March 18o6 gave the title 'Prince' to
members of the imperial family, and in March 1808 the former ranks of
the nobility were restored, except fo r viscounts and marquises. Senators,
Councillors of State, presidents of the legislature and archbishops
automatically became counts; presidents of electoral colleges, the supreme
court of appeal, audit officers and some mayors received the title 'baron'.
By 1814 there were 31 dukes, 450 counts, I,soo barons and a similar
number of knights.
The new imperial nobility was recruited fr om the Army, fr om
officialdom and from the notables, with the military most heavily
represented. The titles were rewards fo r military or civil service but the
marcin
(Marcin)
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