Political Uses of the Napoleonic Past in France, 1815-1840
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Between Memory and History: Political Uses of the Napoleonic Past in France, 1815-1840 Natasha S. Naujoks A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History. Chapel Hill 2011 Approved by: Dr. Jay M. Smith Dr. Lloyd S. Kramer Dr. Donald M. Reid Dr. Karen Hagemann Dr. Daniel Sherman 2011 Natasha S. Naujoks ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT NATASHA S. NAUJOKS: Between Memory and History: Political Uses of the Napoleonic Past in France, 1815-1840 (Under the direction of Dr. Jay M. Smith) This dissertation examines the political uses of historical memory in France between 1815 and 1848 through the lens of the Napoleonic myth. Reflections on the recent Napoleonic past permeated opposition discourse throughout the Restoration despite the regime’s attempts to enforce collective amnesia, while Louis-Philippe’s more favorable attitudes towards the Napoleonic legacy secured it a vital role in the July Monarchy’s political culture as well. Whereas historians have long accepted the thesis that the myth originated in Napoleon’s efforts to impose a carefully constructed public image through propaganda, this dissertation argues that it is better understood as part of the nineteenth-century obsession with the past as a mode of explanation. Long recognized in studies of Romanticism, this dissertation attempts to locate the same historicism in popular political discourse and examines the work of largely unknown or anonymous writers who flooded the increasingly popular market for literary novelties in early-nineteenth-century France. Drawing on published sources such as political pamphlets, poems, songs, and other ephemera, as well as police and judicial records, this study analyzes how this community of politically engaged writers fashioned multiple and iii often contradictory narratives of the Napoleonic past in order to make arguments about France’s present and future. This dissertation argues that the Napoleonic myth exemplified the power of the past to both divide and unite the post-Revolutionary nation. The myth took shape as a political discourse against the Restoration regime, and carefully woven narratives of Napoleonic history gave liberal opposition writers a potent means of condemning the Bourbon regime as anti-national for undermining its commitment to “unite and forget,” succumbing to political factionalism, and perpetuating fractures in the French polity. Napoleon’s death in 1821 made it even easier for liberals and republicans to make use of the myth for their own purposes, while also freeing his apologists to reframe their narratives as a path towards reconciliation. The ultimate act of national reconciliation with the past came with the triumphant return of Napoleon’s ashes to France in 1840, and the attendant celebrations of a spectacular military legacy formed a useful proxy for reasserting French importance in international diplomacy. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project would not have been possible without the intellectual, moral, and financial support of teachers, colleagues, friends, and family. It has been a great privilege for me to study with an extraordinary number of brilliant and highly supportive faculty over the years, who deserve all of the credit for any merits this project may have. At Fordham University, Bryant Ragan and Rosemary Wakeman graciously agreed to supervise me in a senior honors thesis that would eventually lay much of the groundwork for my master’s research. The History faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have provided invaluable professional training in both teaching and research, and I’d like to extend special thanks to Melissa Bullard, Jacqueline Hall, Barbara Harris, and Peter Filene for their insights. I am also particularly indebted to Karen Hagemann and Daniel Sherman for agreeing to serve as readers on my dissertation committee and offering such helpful advice on refining the project. I owe a special debt of gratitude to the three professors of French history who have guided me every step of the way throughout my graduate career. Don Reid has consistently encouraged me to push my conceptual boundaries and consider the broader ramifications of my arguments, and I am especially grateful to him for introducing me to Flaubert, Proust, and the intricate rules of the jeu de furet. Lloyd Kramer has left an indelible stamp on my work with his uncanny ability to deconstruct and repackage my v ideas in a far more pithy and brilliant way than I could ever hope to do myself. I am also forever indebted to Lloyd for helping me discover my love of teaching and providing me with endless opportunities to hone my skills in that direction. I owe the biggest debt of all to my advisor, Jay Smith, for providing an admirable and unparalleled model of intellectual rigor. I am eternally grateful to him for his patience and unflagging faith in my abilities, which sustained me through repeated and prolonged periods of self-doubt and propelled this project to its completion. This project would not have been possible without generous financial support from the History Department at UNC-CH in the form of numerous teaching assistantships and a Mowry Fellowship. The UNC-CH Graduate School also awarded me an Off- Campus Research Fellowship that, along with a Gilbert Chinard Fellowship from the Institut Français de Washington, enabled me to carry out my dissertation research in Paris in 2008. I would be entirely remiss if I did not also thank the many librarians, archivists, and staff members at the Davis and Wilson Libraries at UNC-CH, and the Archives Nationales and Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris for their guidance and assistance in locating source material. My graduate student colleagues have been an inestimable source of support over the years and I benefited enormously from their feedback and advice, whether given in the formal space of graduate seminars or more casual exchanges over coffee at the Daily Grind. My fellow Frenchies in the History department at UNC-CH – Sarah Shurts, Jennifer Heath, Christina Hansen, Bethany Keenan, and Max Owre – welcomed me into the program in 2003 and spared me from many a first-year disaster. I likely would have given up long ago were it not for the kindness and generosity of Tim Williams and Dean vi Mundy, who graciously opened up their home to me on so many occasions with an unfailing attitude of good cheer. Tim also patiently read drafts of my work and provided the critical perspective of a non-specialist, and I am eternally grateful to him for his noble spirit of intellectual camaraderie. I had the good fortune to spend the spring of 2008 in Paris with a merry band of fellow researchers – Robin Bates, Micah Alpaugh, Jennifer Ferng, Michael Finch, and Julia Osman – who regularly helped assuage occasional pangs of homesickness. Michael Mulvey deserves a special nod of thanks, as he regularly exceeded the duties imposed by friendship by helping me navigate the impenetrable mysteries of the AN, BnF, and the 11th arrondissement. I quickly recognized kindred spirits in Amy McKnight, Mary-Elizabeth O’Neill, and Meghan Roberts, whose friendship I prize more highly than anything else I found in Paris that year. Finally, I am especially grateful to my parents, Martha von der Gathen and Erhard Naujoks, who encouraged my inclination towards history from a young age and never for a moment doubted my vocation for the profession. My oldest and dearest friend, Suzanne Francis, provided much-needed doses of laughter and joy throughout the process, keeping me anchored in the present when the past threatened to carry me away. My greatest thanks of all go to Joel Maul, not least because he has cheerfully accommodated the persistent and at times uncomfortable presence of the Napoleonic myth in our lives for fifteen years. This project would never have come to fruition without his heroic patience and seemingly inexhaustible store of support, both moral and material, and it is with inexpressible gratitude that I humbly dedicate this dissertation to him. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..1 Chapter 1 – A Revolution Unfinished…………………………………………………...21 Chapter 2 – “King of Two Peoples”……………………………………………………..75 Chapter 3 – “Bonaparte n’est plus”…………………………………………………….122 Chapter 4 – Reconciliation and a New National Past…………………………………..169 Chapter 5 – The Return of the Ashes…………………………………………………...210 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...255 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………262 viii Introduction In Present Past: Modernity and the Memory Crisis, Richard Terdiman argues that “the ‘long nineteenth-century’ became a present whose self-conception was framed by a disciplined obsession with the past.”1 Nowhere was this more evident than in France, where the momentous upheavals of 1789-1815 produced a profound sense of temporal dislocation and intensified the uncertainty of the nation’s relationship with its past. The revolutionaries of 1789 self-consciously identified their mission as one of national regeneration by explicitly positing a radical break with the past, which contributed heavily to this sense of dislocation. By 1815, it seemed clear to many in France and across Europe that the great revolutionary experiment had failed, and questions raised by the largely new and unfamiliar terrain of constitutional monarchy further encouraged people to seek answers and an often illusory security in the safe refuge of History. Thus, the period of 1815 to 1848 in particular was deeply impressed by the presence of the past. For republicans, liberals, and socialists alike, it was necessary to construct both a new national history and a new political system that accounted for the principles of 1789.2 As the era’s chief cultural and intellectual paradigm, Romanticism also fueled this obsession with the past. Born of the revolutionary disruption of 1789-1815, it was a movement that 1 Richard Terdiman, Present Past: Modernity and the Memory Crisis (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), 5.