the defect of all parvenus, that of having too great an opinion of the class
into which he had risen.'
Napoleon's third aim - reconciling the beneficiaries of the Revolution
with the nobility of the ancien regime - rested on too optimistic a
conception of human nature- a surprising blind spot for someone usually
so cynical and sceptical. The two aristocracies looked at each other with a
contempt that could not be assuaged even by intermarriage; because of
the issue of national property the two groups were divided by
irreconcilable differences. The notables and the Brumairian bourgeoisie
resented the reintroduction of the aristocratic principle as it were by the
back door. Banking and financial elites prided themselves on their
meritocratic achievements and felt degraded by the new nobility; while
the shopkeepers and petit -bourgeoisie, who had been deprived of political
liberty, received nothing whatever in compensation. Until 1807 the
notables still fe ared a royalist restoration if Napoleon were defeated in
battle so they clung to him; they needed time to consolidate their gains
from the Empire and to be sure they would retain them under a new
regime before they could even contemplate abandoning Napoleon. But
there was no deep love between Emperor and notables.
There was even less between Bonaparte and the returned royalists
who, even as they accepted the titles, were simply ,biding their time,
waiting for the Emperor to destroy himself. Finally, those who had
genuinely risen from the ranks to ennoblement were the worst ingrates of
all. Far from acknowledging the favour of their benefactor, they were
forever on the look-out for fresh sources of money and loot. There is a
clear correlation between Napoleon's looting marshals and humble social
origin: Augereau, Duke of Castiglione, was an ex-footman; Massena,
Duke of Rivoli was an ex-pedlar; Lannes, Duke of Montebello, was a
onetime dyer's assistant; Ney, Duke of Danzig, was the son of a miller
and a washerwoman. Napoleon never grasped that there was a
fundamental contradiction between raising men from the gutter to the
aristocracy even as he hankered after the titles of the ancien regime.
Yet one undoubted consequence of the way Napoleon bound the
notables to his imperial system through the nexus of his new nobility was
that it enabled him progressively to dispense with the constitutional
accretions from the Consulate that still clogged his power. In effect he
reduced the government machine to an appendage: ministers were
reduced to the role of simple executives, and henceforth all their
correspondence passed across the Emperor's desk. The assemblies, a
counterbalance to the executive during the Consulate, were whittled
down; the troublesome Tribunate was abolished in 1807; the Senate
marcin
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