From Consul to Emperor: The Coronation of 1804

In 1804 Bonaparte turned the consulate into a hereditary empire. Royalist plots against his life gave him a pretext: in March 1804 he had the Duke of Enghien, a Bourbon prince, seized from neutral Baden and executed after a hasty trial, a move that shocked Europe. In May the Senate proclaimed him Emperor of the French, and a plebiscite approved the hereditary title. On 2 December 1804, at Notre-Dame in Paris, with Pope Pius VII present, Napoleon crowned himself and then crowned Joséphine.

Napoleon presented the empire as the guarantee of the Revolution's gains, such as legal equality and the land settlement, against a Bourbon restoration. Critics then and since saw a betrayal of republican principles: a man who rose through the Revolution had created a new monarchy. Beethoven reportedly struck out a dedication to Bonaparte from his Third Symphony on hearing the news.