The Constitution of 1799 created the Consulate, an authoritarian regime with some democratic elements. It put executive power in the hands of three consuls but added that "the decision of the First Consul (Napoleon) shall suffice." Legislative power was fragmented among many bodies: one to draft bills, a separate body to debate them, another to vote on them, and a fourth to rule on the constitutionality of these acts. All were elected by universal manhood suffrage, but it was diluted by three stages of indirect voting: voters chose representatives, who chose representatives, who chose a list of representatives from which the first consul named the legislators. Even with such restrictions, Napoleon permitted only "a single party and a single will."

The nearest approach to popular sovereignty in Napoleonic government was the plebiscite. Some legislation, such as the constitution itself, was submitted to a direct vote of adult men. A plebiscite of February 1800 ratified the Constitution of 1799 by a reported vote of three million to fifteen hundred. Electoral fraud, directed by Lucien Bonaparte as minister of the interior, doubled the favorable vote. The actual vote fell far below the turnout in 1793; in Paris only 23 percent voted. It is also noteworthy that Napoleon enforced the constitution before holding the plebiscite.

Napoleon's reign, from 1799 to 1814, mixed such techniques with a refined Old Regime despotism and revolutionary reformism. The trend of his regime, however, was unmistakably toward dictatorship. "Liberty," he said, "is a need felt by a small class of people. . . . Therefore, it may be repressed with impunity." He produced his second constitution in 1802, awarding himself the consulate for life. Two years later, his third constitution (France's sixth of the revolutionary era) created an hereditary empire and reduced the legislative bodies to mere ornaments. He celebrated with an elaborate coronation, crowning himself at Notre Dame Cathedral in December 1804.

Napoleon was not a simple counterrevolutionary, but he used his autocratic powers to undo some of the works of the French Revolution. He restricted divorce to preserve the traditional family. He legalized slavery again, hoping to boost the economy of Caribbean colonies. Denouncing the "pretensions of gilded Africans," he imprisoned Toussaint Louverture, who died in a French jail in 1803. And Bonaparte reestablished nobility as an honor for his generals and civil servants. Whereas Louis XVI had named approximately ten nobles per year, Napoleon averaged one a day. . . .

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