VIVE LA CONSTITUTION!
To win French support, Napoleon promised revolutionary reform
In early 1814, as the empire was crumbling, French political writer Benjamin Constant published a scathing attack on Napoleon, painting him as a tyrant obsessed with conquest. A year later, however, Constant could not resist the returned emperor’s invitation to draw up a new French constitution. Napoleon knew that to rally support after returning from Elba, he needed to embrace France’s revolutionary heritage and pose as the defender of liberty against the Bourbons.
Constant’s document, although described as a simple ‘addition’ to the earlier imperial French constitutions, was more like a suggestion for a liberal constitutional monarchy. Called the Acte Additionel, it gave real power to the House of Representatives, which was elected by the ‘electoral colleges’ of the empire and allowed for the extension of franchise to a greater number of people. It also explicitly guaranteed both press and religious freedom, as well as ruling out any reversal of revolutionary land reform.
Napoleon signed the Acte Additionnel on 22 April 1815 and submitted the constitution, quickly nicknamed ‘La Benjamine’ after its author, to a plebiscite. Scarcely 20 per cent of those eligible actually voted but it still received 1.3 million ‘yes’ votes versus 5,000 negative votes, so the government hailed its approval on 1 June. The re-restored Louis XVIII abolished it after the Battle of Waterloo but it went on to serve as an inspiration for later French constitutions, especially that of 1830.