Napoleon Bonaparte became Emperor, “by Divine Will and the Constitution of the French Republic”—Imperator and hereditary Caesar of the Republic—on Friday, May 18, 1804. Three weeks later it was publicly announced in the Moniteur that the Eagle had been adopted as the heraldic cognisance of the new régime in France.
Its selection for the State armorial bearing of the Empire was one of Napoleon’s first acts. That the Roman lictor’s axe and fasces surmounted by the red Phrygian cap, with its traditions of revolution, which had supplanted the Fleur-de-Lis of the Monarchy, and had served as the official badge on the standards of the Republic and the Consulate, should continue under the Imperial régime, was obviously impossible. But what distinctive emblem should be adopted in its stead?
Napoleon had the question debated in his presence at the first séance of the Imperial Council of State. He had, it would seem, not made up his mind in regard to it. At any rate, a few days before the meeting of the Council, he had directed a Committee to draw up a statement and offer suggestions.
The matter was brought forward at the first meeting of the Imperial Council, held at the Château of Saint-Cloud on Tuesday, June 12, 1804, after a preliminary discussion on the arrangements for the Coronation, when and where it should be held, and what was to be the form of ceremonial. The Coronation, all agreed at the outset, must take place in the current year. Rheims, Aix-la-Chapelle, and Paris, in turn, were suggested as suitable places for the ceremony, Paris being finally decided on; the scene of the event to be the Champ de Mars. Napoleon himself proposed the Champs de Mars, with a threefold ceremony there—the taking of the constitutional oath, the actual coronation, the presentation of the Emperor to the assembled people. A brief discussion followed on the form of the coronation ceremony, whether it should be accompanied by religious rites. It was put forward that, as Charlemagne had received his authority from the Pope, might not the Pope now be induced to visit Paris and personally crown the Emperor? Napoleon, intervening in the discussion, made a strong point of the necessity of some kind of religious service on the occasion. He did not care much, he cynically remarked, what religion was selected; only it must be in accordance with the views of the majority of the nation. It would be impossible to do without some sort of religious observance. In all nations, said he, Ceremonies of State were accompanied by religious services. As to asking the Pope to take part, from his point of view, at the moment, the attendance of a Papal legate would be preferable. If the Pope himself came to Paris, his presence would assuredly tend to relegate the Emperor to a secondary position: “Tout le monde me laisserait pour courir voir le Pape!” The matter, however, as the discussion proceeded, seemed to present so many difficulties, that the Council, after declaring themselves generally against having any religious ceremony at all, decided to leave the question for further consideration.
On that the Council turned to deal with the selection of the heraldic insignia and official badge of the Empire.
Senator Crétet, on behalf of the special Committee appointed by Napoleon to prepare a statement for the Council, presented his report. The Committee, he said, had decided unanimously to recommend the Cock, the historic national emblem of Ancient Gaul, as the most fitting cognisance for Imperial France. Should that not find favour with the Council, either the Eagle, the Lion, or the Elephant, in the opinion of the Committee, might well be adopted. Individual members of the Committee, added Crétet, had further suggested the Aegis of Minerva, or some flower like the Fleur-de-Lis, an Oak-tree, or an Ear of Corn.
Miot, one of the members of the Council, rose as Crétet sat down, and protested against the re-introduction of the Fleur-de-Lis. That, he said, was imbecility. He proposed a figure of the Emperor seated on his throne as the best possible badge for the French Empire.
He was not seconded, however, and Napoleon interposed abruptly to set aside the Committee’s suggestion of reviving the Gallic Cock. He dismissed that notion with a contemptuous sneer. “Bah,” he exclaimed, “the Cock belongs to the farmyard! It is far too feeble a creature!” (“Le Coq est de basse cour. C’est un animal trop faible!”) Napoleon spoke rapidly and vivaciously. He had not yet, in those early days, acquired the impressive Imperial style that he afterwards affected. “His language at these earlier Council meetings was still impregnated with his original Jacobin style; he spoke frequently, spontaneously, familiarly; monologued at the top of his voice (avec des éclats de voix); apostrophised frequently, appearing at times as though overcome with nervousness, now almost in tears, now breaking out in a frenzy of passion, unrestrainedly emphasising his personal likes and dislikes.”
Count Ségur, Imperial Grand Master of the Ceremonies, suggested the Lion as the most suitable emblem: “parcequ’il vaincra le Léopard,” he explained.
Councillor Laumond proposed the adoption of the Elephant instead; with for a motto “Mole et Mente.” The Elephant had a great vogue at that day among European heraldic authorities as being pre-eminently a royal beast. There was a widely prevalent belief, on the authority of old writers on natural history, that an Elephant could not be made to bow its knees. Further, too, the elephant typified resistless strength as well as magnanimity. And had not Caesar himself once placed the effigy of the Elephant on the Roman coinage? Nobody else at the Council, however, seemed to care for the Elephant.
Councillor Simon objected to Ségur’s proposition, on the score that the Lion was essentially an aggressive beast.
Cambacérès, ex-Consul and Arch-Chancellor of the Empire, suggested a swarm of Bees as the most suitable national emblem. It would represent the actual situation of France, he explained—a republic with a presiding chief.
Councillor Lacuèe supported Cambacérès. The Bee, he added, was the more suitable, in that it possessed a sting as well as being a maker of honey.
Cambacérès remarked that he favoured the idea of the Bee as typifying peaceful industry rather than offensive power.
The other members took no interest in the idea of the Bee, and after some discursive talk the Council fell back on the Committee’s original suggestion of the historic Gallic Cock. The general voice favoured the adoption of the Cock, and they unanimously voted for it.
That, however, would not do for Napoleon. He sharply refused once more to hear of the Cock in any circumstances. He had for some minutes sat silent, listening to the discussion until the vote was taken. On that he rose and banned the Cock absolutely and finally.
“The Cock is quite too weak a creature,” he exclaimed. “A thing like that cannot possibly be the cognisance of an Empire such as France. You must make your choice between the Eagle, the Elephant, and the Lion!”
The Eagle, however, did not commend itself to the Council. That emblem, it was pointed out by several members, had been already adopted by other European nations. For France, such being the case, the Eagle would not be sufficiently distinctive. The German Empire had the Eagle for its cognisance. So had Austria. So had Prussia. So had Poland even—the White Eagle of the Jagellons. The Council was plainly not attracted by the Eagle.
Lebrun, the other ex-Consul, Arch-Treasurer of the Empire, now put in a word again for the Fleur-de-Lis. It had been, he said, the national emblem of France under all the previous dynasties. The Fleur-de-Lis, declared Lebrun, was the real historic emblem of France, and he proposed that it should be adopted for the Empire.
Nobody, though, supported him, one member, Councillor Regnaud, condemning the idea of the Fleur-de-Lis as utterly out of date. “The nation,” added Regnaud, with a sneer, “will neither go back to the cult of the Lilies nor to the religion of Rome!”
At that point Napoleon lost patience. Interposing to close the discussion, he curtly bade the Council to cease from wasting time. They must decide on the Lion for the Imperial Emblem. His preference was for the figure of a Lion, lying over the map of France, with one paw stretched out across the Rhine: “Il faut prendre un Lion, s’étendu sur la carte de France, la patte prête à dépasser le Rhin.” Napoleon proposed in addition, by way of motto, beneath the Lion-figure, these defiant words: “Malheur à qui me cherche!”
No more was said on the subject after that. The Council submitted forthwith to Napoleon’s dictation, and, as it would appear, without taking any formal vote, passed to the remaining business of the day: the inscription on the new coinage and certain amendments to the Criminal Code.
But even then, as it befell, the decision as to the national emblem was not conclusive. Napoleon changed his mind about the Lion shortly after the Council had broken up. The Lion as the designated cognisance of the French Empire did not last twenty-four hours. Napoleon himself, on the report of the Council meeting being presented for his signature, definitely rejected the Lion. He cancelled his own proposition with a stroke of his pen. With his own hand the Emperor struck out the words “Lion couchant,” with the reference to the map of France and the Rhine, writing over the erasure, “Un Aigle éploye”—an Eagle with extended wings. So Napoleon independently settled the matter.
Napoleon, as it would appear, in making his ultimate choice of the Eagle, had this in his mind. Charlemagne was ever in his thoughts at that time as his own destined exemplar. The Eagle of Charlemagne, it was now borne in upon his mind irresistibly, had a pre-eminent claim to be recalled and become the national heraldic badge for the new Frankish Empire of the West, as having been the traditional emblem of Imperial authority in the ancient Frankish Empire, the prototype and historic predecessor of the Empire of which he was head. Said Napoleon, indeed, in justifying his final adoption of the Eagle: “Elle affirme la dignité Impériale et rappelait Charlemagne.”
A commission to design the new Imperial Eagle “after that of Charlemagne” was forthwith given to Isabey (the elder Isabey—Jean Baptiste), “Peintre et Dessinateur du Cabinet de l’Empereur,” whose reputation was at that moment at its zenith. The artist, however, had no Carlovingian model to draw from, and nobody, it would appear, could give him any advice. He had to depict “Un Aigle éployé”—a Spread-Eagle. Discarding heraldic conventionalism, he produced the Napoleonic Eagle of history; an Eagle au naturel, shown in the act of taking wing. The idea of it Isabey took from a sketch he himself had made nine years before, in the Monastery of the Certosa of Milan, of an eagle sculptured on one of the tombs of the Visconti.
Following on his adoption of the Eagle for the cognisance of the Empire at large, Napoleon announced that the Eagle would in future be the battle-standard of the Army. He had, though, as to that Eagle, yet another thought in his mind. For his soldiers he desired the French Eagle to represent the military standard of Ancient Rome, the historic emblem of Caesar’s legionaries, with its resplendent traditions of world-wide victory. That intention, furthermore, Napoleon went out of his way to emphasise significantly through the place and moment that he chose for the promulgation of the Army Order appointing the Eagle of the Caesars as the battle-standard of the French Empire. The Imperial rescript was dated from the Camp of the “Army of the Ocean” at Boulogne; from amidst the vast array of soldiers mustered there for the threatened invasion of England.
At the same time Isabey’s design for one Eagle would suffice as a model for the other. It sufficiently suggested the Roman type. Like Charlemagne, had not Napoleon led his army across the Alps? like Caesar, was he not about to lead it across the Straits?
“The Eagle with wings outspread, as on the Imperial Seal, will be at the head of the standard-staves, as was the practice in the Roman army—(placée au sommet du bâton, telle que la portaient les Romains). The flag will be attached at the same distance beneath the Eagle, as was the Labarum.” So Napoleon wrote in his preliminary instructions from Boulogne to Marshal Berthier, Head of the Etat-Major of the “Army of England,” at that moment on duty at the War Office in Paris.
The Eagle, Napoleon directed, was of itself to constitute the standard: “Essentiellement constituer l’étendard,” were Napoleon’s words. He set a secondary value on the flag which the Eagle surmounted. The flag to Napoleon was a subsidiary adjunct.
Flags, of course, would come and go. They could be renewed, he wrote, as might be necessary, at any time; every two years, or oftener. The Eagle, on the other hand, was to be a permanency. It was to be for all time the standard of its corps: also, to add still further to its sacrosanct nature and éclat, every Eagle would be received only from the hands of the Emperor.1
Every Battalion of Foot and Squadron of Horse was to have its Eagle, which, on parade and before the enemy under fire, would be in the special charge of the battalion or squadron sergeant-major, with an escort of picked veteran soldiers; “men who had distinguished themselves on the battlefield in at least two combats.”
Exceptional care, Napoleon laid down, was to be taken by regimental commanders that no harm should befall the Eagle. In the event of accident happening to it, a special report was to be made direct to the Emperor. Should it unfortunately happen that the Eagle was lost in battle, the regiment concerned would have to prove to the Emperor’s satisfaction that there had been no default. No new Eagle would be granted in place of one lost until the regiment in question had atoned for the slur on its character by either achieving “éclatante” distinction in the field, by some exceptionally brilliant feat of arms, or by presenting the Emperor with an enemy’s standard “taken by its own valour.”
The silken tricolor flag, as has been said, was in the eyes of Napoleon of subordinate account. It was to be considered merely as a set-off to the Eagle, as merely “l’ornement de l’Aigle.” The Eagle, and the Eagle only, must be the object of the soldier’s devotion. Napoleon paid little regard to the flag, beyond as being of use for displaying the record of a regiment’s war career. He would have liked indeed, as it would seem, to substitute another flag altogether, and went so far as to have designs for a green regimental flag submitted to him.2 Prudence, however, forbade its introduction, and directions were issued that the general pattern of tricolor standard in use under the Consulate should be retained, with minor alterations of detail in the design rendered necessary in consequence of the new constitution of the State.
The regimental flags would consist of a white diamond-shaped centre, with the corners of the flag alternately red and blue; according to the pattern authorised two years previously by Napoleon as First Consul. Thus the national colours would continue to be represented. For the Infantry, in the centre of each flag would be, on one side, the words “Empire Français,” with the legend, inscribed in letters of gold, “L’Empereur des Français au —e Régiment d’Infanterie de Ligne,” which would take the place of the Republican inscription hitherto borne there; the number of each corps being inscribed in the blank space and in a laurel chaplet embroidered at each corner of the flag. For Cavalry the inscription ran: “L’Empereur des Français au —e Cuirassiers,” or “au —e Chasseurs”; and so on for other corps, Artillery, Dragoons, and Hussars.
On the reverse, for corps of all arms, with the exception of the Guard, was emblazoned the motto “Valeur et Discipline,” and beneath it the number of the battalion or squadron in each regiment.
Below the numbers was added any Inscription of Honour which had been granted to the corps, such as, in the case of one regiment, “Le 15e est couvert de la Gloire”; in the case of another, “Le Terrible 57e qui rien n’arrête”; with others, “Le Bon et Brave 28e”; “Le 75e arrive et bât l’Ennemi”; “J’étais tranquille, le brave 32e était là”; “Il n’est pas possible d’être plus brave que le 63e”; “Brave 18e, je vous connais. L’Ennemi ne tiendra pas devant vous”; and so on. These were mostly quotations from “mentions in despatches” made by Napoleon in regard to regiments in his famous “Army of Italy,” authorised by him, at first of his own initiative, and later as First Consul, to be recorded as Inscriptions of Honour on the regimental colours. The flags of other corps bore names of victories of note in which the regiments had taken part; as, for instance, “Rivoli,” “Lodi,” “Marengo.”3
Napoleon overlooked nothing that might add to the prestige of his Eagles. Not only would he himself personally present its Eagle to each regiment, but, further, there would be at the outset a general presentation of Eagles in Paris to the whole Army, which would be made a State event of significance, and form an integral part of the ceremony of his Coronation. On that Napoleon had insisted, in reply to a technical legal objection raised at one of the meetings of the Council of State. It was not to be a Parisian popular show. He was ready, indeed, he said, to transfer the ceremony to Boulogne. “Je rassemblerais deux cent mille hommes au camp. Là j’aurais une population couverte des blessures dont je serais sûr!” He gave directions that the Presentation of the Eagles should take place on the Field of Mars in front of the Military School, on the same day as the Coronation, and should follow immediately after the religious service and his actual crowning and consecration by the Pope in Notre Dame.4