But on the broader count of the indictment of introducing a police
state, there is much to be said in Napoleon's favour. There had been
6o,ooo people in jail under the Directory but Napoleon boasted that at his
peak there were just 243 prisoners in six state prisons. After all the chaos
of the Revolution, and given the population of France (40 millions), this
was a staggering figure. There was nothing of the modern dictator about
Napoleon's treatment of prisoners. Most of the 9,000 imprisoned at the
time of 18 Brumaire had been released, and the only political prisoners
were either Chouans reprieved from the death penalty, British spies,
royalists who had returned illegally, or emigres who had violated the
terms of the general amnesty by plotting and had then been caught by
police surveillance. Apart fr om a handful of priests jailed after Napoleon's
clash with the Pope, most of the prisoners in the cells were hardened
criminals associated with organized crime, whom Napoleon had indeed
arbitrarily - but some would say justifiably - detained when local juries
were too fearful of reprisals to convict. Moreover, the police under
Napoleon had no power to detain arbitrarily, in contrast to the situation
in a totalitarian regime proper, while imperial attorneys had the power to
release anyone imprisoned provided he was not jailed by a decision of the
Privy Council. Although it would be absurd to claim that the imperial
police and industrial conciliation boards were partial to labour, they did
provide an appearance of fairness and made the point that employers
were not the final court of appeal.
Nor was the bourgeoisie particularly upset by other manifestations of
Bonapartist 'dictatorship'. His attempt to tighten his grip on national
education by decreeing in 18II that Catholic schools, hitherto independ
ent, should be under the authority of Louis de Fontanes and the Imperial
University, achieved little success; bishops fr equently bypassed it with
the collusion of Fontanes and his inspectors. The surprising thing about
Napoleon's rift with the Pope and his apparently tough anti-Catholic
stance was how little it changed. Napoleonic education was largely a
process of inculcating the religious practices and pious observances he
himself had learned under the ancien regime. The effect of the papal
excommunication was negligible: it was notable that after this French
bishops were still able to offer a Te Deum for the peace treaty with
Austria in 1809 and fo r a valid religious marriage ceremony to be
conducted fo r the Emperor and Marie-Louise.
Perhaps more irritation was caused by the confiscation of all
independent Parisian newspapers in I8II; henceforth entirely in govern
ment hands, they became insipid and dull. Some said Napoleon was
concerned at the poor image of his Empire presented by the independent
marcin
(Marcin)
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