Napoleon vetoed Sieyès` original idea of having a single Grand Duke as supreme executive and head of state. Sieyès intended to keep this important position for him, and by denying him the post, Napoleon helped to strengthen the authority of the consuls, a position he would take. Nor was Napoleon content to be part of an equal triumvirate. Over the years, he consolidated his own power as First Consul, leaving the other two consuls, Jean Jacques Régis de Cambacérès and Charles-François Lebrun, as well as the assemblies weak and submissive. Contrary to the opposition of Republican senators and generals, the majority of the French population remained insensitive to Bonaparte`s authority. No indication of the possibility of his death was tolerated. The Napoleonic period began here when he became an officer of the French state and founded the consulate. As Napoleon`s influence on political power was still weak, the French royalists developed a conspiracy to kidnap and assassinate him and invite Louis Antoine de Bourbon, Duke of Enghien, to lead a coup that would precede the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy with Louis XVIII on the throne. The British government of William Pitt the Younger had contributed to this royalist conspiracy by financing a million pounds and providing the conspirators George Cadoudal and General Charles Pichegru with a sealift (by Captain John Wesley Wright`s ship) for their return from England to France.
On January 28, 1804, Pichegru met Jean Victor Marie Moreau, one of Napoleon`s generals and a former protégé of Pichegru. The next day, a British secret agent named Courson was arrested and confessed that Pichegru, Moreau and Cadoudal had conspired under torture to overthrow the consulate. The French government sought more details about this conspiracy by arresting and torturing Louis Picot, Cadoudal`s servant. Joachim Murat ordered the closing of the paris gates from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m., while Pichegru and Moreau were arrested the following month. Bonaparte is not depicted as a long-haired revolutionary or in the blue uniform he wears in Gros` Bonaparte at the Pont d`Arcole, but in the red uniform of a short-haired consul of the Republic. Instead of placing his hand on his sword in a martial pose, he takes a civilian one and puts it in his jacket. The curtain is open in the background and shows the street. The Lambert Cathedral in Liège is finished, although it was demolished at that time during the Liège Revolution. The excesses of the French Revolution and the counter-revolutionaries have been relativized by the painting, in a context of détente and reconciliation between the French Republic and the Catholic Church. Official relations between the France and the papacy had been poor since the civil constitution of the clergy in 1790, but the reconstruction of the cathedral then destroyed by the painting symbolized the resumption of good relations between them and the “protection” that the First French Republic granted to the Catholic Church in the Concordat of 1801. During the coup d`état of 18 Brumaire year VIII (9 November 1799), Napoleon seized the parliamentary and military power of the France in a double coup d`état and forced the current directors of the government to resign.
In the night of the 19th century. Brumaire (November 10, 1799), a remnant of the Council of Elders abolished the Constitution of Year III, ordered the consulate and legalized the coup in favor of Bonaparte with the Constitution of Year VIII. The new government consisted of three parliamentary assemblies: the Council of State, which drafted bills, the Tribunat, which could not vote on bills but debated them, and the Legislative Body, whose members could not discuss bills, but voted on them after examining the minutes of the tribunate debate. The Senate Conservator was a governing body equal to the three legislative assemblies mentioned above, and considered bills and directly advised the First Consul on the effects of such laws. The final executive power was given to three consuls, who were elected for ten years.