Proclamation of the Empire

Two royalist attempts — the Rue Saint-Nicaise in 1800 and the Cadoudal-Pichegru conspiracy uncovered in February 1804 — supplied the decisive argument: as long as power rested on a single life, killing the man was enough to overturn the regime. The execution of the Duke of Enghien on 21 March closed the door on any Bourbon restoration and made heredity necessary for those who had voted the death of Louis XVI.

On 28 Floréal Year XII the Senate entrusted "the government of the Republic to a hereditary emperor". The title chosen was neither king — too much Ancien Régime — nor dictator: emperor, a Roman and Carolingian reference compatible with republican vocabulary. Cambacérès greeted Napoleon I at Saint-Cloud the next day; the November plebiscite ratified heredity with more than three and a half million yes votes.

The same text created the great dignities of the Empire and restored the marshalate: eighteen appointments on 19 May founded a military hierarchy of the court.

The official formula long remained "French Republic — Napoleon Emperor": the coinage only lost the word Republic in 1808. The regime kept the prefects, the Concordat, the Civil Code, the franc and the sale of national lands — the consular architecture intact beneath a crown.

The coronation of 2 December at Notre-Dame would give this legal decision its liturgy, and David its image.