Creation of the imperial nobility — 1er mars 1808

Princes, dukes, counts, barons and knights: the Empire equipped itself with a hierarchy of titles attached to service, hereditary if endowed with an entailed estate. Three thousand five hundred titles would be created, more than a fifth of them for soldiers, with no fiscal or legal privilege. This compromise between civil equality and social distinction won over the old nobility while rewarding talent.

Rewarding without restoring privilege

Since the night of 4 August 1789 France had abolished nobility and its privileges. Yet the imperial regime needed to reward lastingly, and to give its personnel a social visibility that the Legion of Honour alone, created in 1802, no longer sufficed to provide.

Two decrees of 1 March 1808 created the titles of the Empire. The solution was a compromise: titles returned, but emptied of their legal content. No fiscal privilege, no judicial privilege, no exemption from tax or conscription — the civil equality of the Code remained intact.

A hierarchy built for service

The degrees were prince, duke, count, baron and knight. Marquis and viscount, too marked by the Ancien Régime, were left out. The title attached first of all to office: the great dignitaries, ministers, archbishops and presidents of electoral colleges were entitled to one by virtue of their charge.

To be transmissible it had to be backed by a majorat: an inalienable estate yielding a fixed income, passing to the eldest son with the title. Many of these endowments were assigned on conquered territory and managed by the extraordinary domain — which tied the fortunes of the titled to those of the army.

The deliberate fusion of elites

From 1808 to 1814, more than three thousand titles were created. They went to marshals and generals — the dukes of Auerstaedt, of Rivoli, of Elchingen bear the names of their victories — but also to jurists, administrators, bankers, and to Ancien Régime names rallied since the amnesty of 1802.

The aim was explicit: to fuse into a single body the elites of the Ancien Régime, of the Revolution and of the Empire. The Restoration, which could have annulled them, maintained these titles; many survive to this day.