Stop 8: Coronation – Vive L'Empereur!
Napoleon once said, ‘A throne is only a bench covered with velvet’. Nevertheless, he understood the great power of such accoutrements. Of the decision to crown himself Emperor, Napoleon stated:
I had emerged from the crowd. I needed, as a necessity, to create myself an exterior, to give myself a certain gravitas, succinctly put, a certain etiquette. Otherwise people would always have been slapping me on the back.
Napoleon’s Coronation ceremony definitely had ‘a certain gravitas’ On 2nd of December 1804, an ornate carriage led by eight horses carried Napoleon and Josephine to Notre Dame Cathedral where the Pope was waiting for them. Napoleon had spared no expense for the day, even ordering houses to be demolished so that his carriage might pass unencumbered to the Cathedral. He enlisted the artist Jean-Baptiste Isabey to design lavish costumes and had his royal architects Pierre-Francois-Léonard Fontaine and Charles Percier create elaborate decorations for Notre Dame Cathedral. You can see from Fontaine’s watercolour sketches here that this was an occasion that was – put frankly – fit for a king. Napoleon intended to make it an unforgettable day.
Napoleon’s symbols of power featured heavily in the decorations. He wore a gold crown, for instance, fashioned like a wreath of laurel leaves designed to link him to the Roman Emperors. Another example were the many little golden bees that buzzed around the interior of Notre Dame as well as along Napoleon’s gown of purple velvet and ermine. 
Napoleon’s Coronation has achieved infamy in the pages of history. Despite its being agreed with papal negotiators beforehand, Napoleon’s crowning of himself caused a stir, and opponents of the French emperor were to portray the gesture as extreme hubris. Napoleon however thought that Church ought to be subordinate to the state. 
He told his bother Lucien as much in 1801: ‘Skillful conquerors’ he wrote, ‘have not got entangled with priests. Now they can both contain them and use them.’ 
The liturgy for the Coronation ceremony prescribed that Napoleon should crown Josephine, a gesture that particularly struck one attendee, Mme de Rémusat, who remarked that: 
The manner of his crowning Josephine was most remarkable. After picking up her smaller crown, he first put it on his own head and then transferred it to hers … His manner was almost playful. He took great pains to arrange this little crown, which was set over Josephine’s diadem. He put it on, then took it off, and finally put it on again. 
The Coronation ceremony also enflamed rivalries within the Bonaparte family. Napoleon’s immediate family was set in their opposition to Napoleon’s marriage to Josephine – they thought it a despicable idea. Although Napoleon was a man who could commandeer great armies, his sisters proved bothersome. When Napoleon requested that they act as Josephine’s attendants at the coronation they emphatically refused. Under duress, they carried out the role, but in a manner both snide and sarcastic. While carrying Josephine’s train, one sister sulked, another acerbically buried her nose in smelling salts, and the third pulled the material causing Josephine to stumble backwards down some stairs. 
Napoleon’s marriage was also plagued by mother-in-law issues. The emperor’s mother was so displeased with Napoleon at the time of his Coronation, and was so offended that Josephine was to be crowned Empress, that she boycotted the Coronation ceremony. She took off to Rome, retreating to the medicinal waters of Bagni di Lucca where she would not be troubled by the sight of the crowning of the woman she called ‘la putana’ – ‘the whore’. Napoleon, however, was affectionate and adoring towards his new Empress. At their private celebratory dinner that evening, Napoleon requested that Josephine wear her crown because she looked ‘so pretty’ in it. ‘No one’ he said, ‘could wear a crown with more grace’.