title seemed to the world to convict
him of full complicity in the schemes for the murder of the Duc
d'Enghien. For the rest, the Emperor's mother was to be styled _Madame
Mere_; his sisters became Imperial Highnesses, with their several
establishments of ladies-in-waiting; and Paris fluttered with excitement
at each successive step upwards of expectant nobles, regicides,
generals, and stockjobbers towards the central galaxy of the Corsican
family, which, ten years before, had subsisted on the alms of the
Republic one and indivisible.

It remained to gain over the army. The means used were profuse, in
proportion as the task was arduous. The following generals were
distinguished as Marshals of the Empire (May 19th): Berthier, Murat,
Massena, Augereau, Lannes, Jourdan, Ney, Soult, Brune, Davoust,
Bessieres, Moncey, Mortier, and Bernadotte; two marshal's batons were
held in reserve as a reward for future service, and four aged
generals, Lefebvre, Serrurier, Perignon, and Kellerman (the hero of
Valmy), received the title of honorary marshals. In one of his
conversations with Roederer, the Emperor frankly avowed his reasons
for showering these honours on his military chiefs; it was in order to
assure the imperial dignity to himself; for how could they object to
this, when they themselves received honours so lofty?[308] The
confession affords a curious instance of Napoleon's unbounded trust
in the most elementary, not to say the meanest, motives of human
conduct. Suitable rewards were bestowed on officers of the second
rank. But it was at once remarked that determined and outspoken
republicans like Suchet, Gouvion St. Cyr, and Macdonald, whose talents
and exploits far outstripped those of many of the marshals, were
excluded from their ranks. St. Cyr was at Taranto, and Macdonald,
after an enforced diplomatic mission to Copenhagen, was received on
his recall with much coolness.[309] Other generals who had given
umbrage at the Tuileries were more effectively broken in by a term of
diplomatic banishment. Lannes at Lisbon and Brune at Constantinople
learnt a little diplomacy and some complaisance to the head of the
State, and were taken back to Napoleon's favour. Bernadotte, though ever
suspected of Jacobinism and feared for the forceful ambition that sprang
from the blending of Gascon and Moorish blood in his veins, was now also
treated with the consideration due to one who had married Joseph
Bonaparte's sister-in-law: he rece