Napoleon I on Marriage
His opinions, sayings, thoughts
On the institution of marriage
We have no idea of the institution of marriage nor of the illuminating ideas of the century. Now that there are no more castes, it is the most imposing before nature. (Mémoires sur le Consulat, Antoine Claire Thibaudeau)
Marriage takes its form from the mores, the customs, the religion of each people. It is by this reason that it is not the same everywhere; there are lands where women and concubines live under the same roof, where slaves are treated like children.
The consideration of alliance no longer influences but a small number of marriages; it is the consideration of the individual which influences most of them. (Minutes of the Council of State)
Conditions which should be required to be able to contract a marriage
Would it be desirable to get married at 13 and 15? We answer: no; and we propose 18 years for men and 14 for women.
Why make such a big difference between men and women? Is it to remedy a few accidents? But the state's interest is much more important. I would see fewer disadvantages in setting the age at fifteen for men than at 13 for women; for what could come out of a girl of that age who has nine months of pregnancy to endure? They cite the Jews. In Jerusalem, a girl is marriageable at ten, old at sixteen and untouchable at twenty.
You do not give 15-year-old children the ability to make ordinary contracts; how could we enable them to make, at this age, the most solemn contract?
It is desirable that men should not be able to marry before twenty years of age, nor girls before eighteen. Without this we will not have a good race.
We should not allow marriage to individuals who have not known each other for six months. (Mémoires sur le Consulat)
In a country where divorce is accepted, we cannot hope for the longevity of marriages if we allow them to be contracted right after childhood. Even before divorce was common in France, children aged thirteen to fourteen were rarely married; or if great interests determined to form such unions, the spouses were separated until they had reached the age of more advanced maturity. It would be strange if the law authorized individuals to marry before the age when it allows them to be heard as witnesses, or to impose on them the penalties intended for crimes committed with full discernment.
This system would perhaps be the wisest, which would only authorize marriage at the age of twenty-one for men and at fifteen for girls.
Marriage being a contract, and every contract forming by consent, we understand that he who cannot express his consent cannot marry; but the deaf-mute from birth, by seeing his father and mother, has known the society of marriage; he is always capable of manifesting the will to live like them; and then why aggravate his misfortune by adding privations to those imposed on him by nature?
Deprivation of hearing and speech should not be an impediment to marriage, rather than other infirmities which may also be related to it.
It is not enough to be on guard against the interest that strangers may have in seducing the deaf and mute; it is also important not to lose sight of the interest that her family may have in preventing them from getting married
Moreover, the law could be silent about deaf-mutes, since they are capable of marrying under the condition common to all of giving their consent: it could limit itself to saying how they will express that they consent to marriage. (Minutes of the Council of State)
On mistaken identity
There is no mistaken identity when the consent to marriage concerns an individual present.
But, they say, we are no longer in the state of nature; in the social order, the person is made up of the face, the name, and the civil qualities at the same time.
It is easy to prove that, in the social order itself, the name and civil qualities do not make the person: for example, the sister of the one whom a citizen proposes to marry arrives from America; she has the same names and the same qualities as the other; However, will we say that it is the same person? How can we admit that civil qualities have a decisive influence on such an important act than marriage! It’s through character, it’s through physical qualities that spouses agree, become attached, choose, and the legislator cannot assume that they do not know each other in this respect, and that a commitment as serious as marriage, a commitment in itself indissoluble, since it can be broken only by the extreme remedy of divorce, would ever be contracted with such lightness that the spouses didn't take the time to get to know each other. What are, next to natural qualities, purely civil ones? They must undoubtedly have been of great weight when caste distinctions existed; then the existing system had to make them influence the validity of marriage; but now that we no longer consider Man by himself and as he is in Nature, it would be barbaric to destroy, after six months, a marriage where each of the spouses has perfectly experienced the individual with whom he wanted to unite. What! A husband would have consented to marry the person we will have made appear before him; he will have promised them protection and attachment, the exchange of souls would have taken place between them, and six months later it would be admitted to say that this is not the person he chose, because she bears a name different from the one under which he had known until then!
The marriage should only be void when the woman is complicit in the fraud. The law would be immoral if it abandoned an innocent wife who shared her husband's error… The validity of the marriage, in the event of error, must depend only on the distinction between the case where the woman is guilty and the case where she is innocent… The woman's good faith must go as far as to validate the marriage.
The name and civil qualities are based on social ideas: but there is something more real in moral qualities, such as honesty, gentleness, love of work and the like. If these qualities are to have a great influence on the choice of a wife, should we say that he has been deceived, who finds them in the person with whom he has associated himself, although he was mistaken about simple accessories?…
A woman who introduced herself under another's name may have been acting in good faith; her guardian may have deceived her herself, and she may not have known her true state until long after her marriage…
There is not really mistaken identity when the individual one married was physically present at the time one gave consent; there is only real mistaken identity if an individual is physically substituted for an individual, and only then is the marriage radically void. The error regarding civil qualities must not vitiate the marriage when it does not arise from the fact of the individual on whom it falls…
If the error relates only to the qualities, and there is no fraud on the part of the individual to whom it relates, time and the occurrence of children must cover the original vice of the marriage, because the circumstances indicate that it was erased by a later consent.
Morality could prohibit the dissolution of a marriage contracted by mistake with a rogue, if, by long-sustained good conduct, she had made the happiness of her husband. (Minutes of the Council of State)
[Let’s say] I married a dark-haired woman who had been well known to me for six months, and I then recognize that she is not the daughter of the man I believed to be her father: there is no mistaken identity, there is marriage. Otherwise it would be a game. There was an exchange of souls, of sweat… Too bad for the man… You can no longer put the girl back in the state she was in… A drama would be whistled that would be contrary to my system. (Mémoires sur le Consulat)
On violence and the nullity which results of it
The word violence expresses a thing done by force, but done nevertheless, and which persists until it is destroyed. Whereas there has been no consent, marriage does not exist even in appearance. A young person finds herself in the presence of the civil registry officer: he wishes to assume that she consents to the marriage: she cries out; she disavows this falsity to the public; she escapes and implores the help of the citizens against oppression: it is obvious that then there is no marriage. If, on the contrary, intimidated by threats, she consents to marriage even if but for an instant, the marriage will subsist until the courts have decided that consent was not freely given. (Minutes of the Council of State)
There is no marriage where there is no free consent; and it is possible that the consent given before the public officer was not free. The law must provide for these kinds of violence. When they have taken place, there is a civil act; but it is null, because we cannot consider the consent of an individual who has been abused to be free. We would even have to look for an expression that better reflects this idea than the expression free consent. It could be decided that there is no marriage when consent has not been given in the forms prescribed by the title relating to acts of civil status, and that there is no consent when there is violence, seduction or error on the person. (Le Consulat et l’Empire)
On the request for nullity
The request for nullity will be formulated by the spouse as soon as they will have recovered their liberty or recognized their error; dating from a year after that event it will no longer be possible take it to court… This delay is necessary so that the duration of action not be unlimited. (Minutes of the Council of State)
On the request for nullity, formulated by the father
Fathers and mothers may be granted the right to request the nullity of a marriage contracted without their consent; but it would be too harsh to give these kinds of nullities an indefinite duration. They must be done within a delay. The request is not receivable when the father has known of the marriage and kept a long silence, when he should not have remained neutral. (Le Consulat et l’Empire)
Rules specific to wedding acts
The rights and duties of the spouses should be stated and they should be made aware of the commitments they make towards each other…
The marriage being perfect in the eyes of the law, and having all its effects after the civil ceremony, the civil officer must explain to the parties the conditions of their contract.
Reading the title on the duties of spouses would give a girl whose inclinations have been forced the time to claim in the face of the public; it would, moreover, leave, in the minds of the spouses, memories which would lead them to question the law as their regulator, when, during the course of their marriage, certain difficulties arise between them. (Minutes of the Council of State)
The wife owes her husband obedience
There would need to be a formula for the civil registry officer which would contain the woman's promise of obedience and fidelity. She must be taught that by leaving the guardianship of her family, she comes under that of her husband. The civil officer marries without any solemnity; this is too dry. Something moral is needed: look at the priests; there was a sermon. If this was not heard by the spouses busy with other things, it was heard by the assistants. (Le Consulat et l’Empire)
A councilor of State had asked if the old laws had imposed obedience:
“The angel told Adam and Eve,” replied the first consul. “It was pronounced in Latin during the wedding celebration, and the wife would not hear it. This word is good for Paris, especially where women believe they have the right to do whatever they want. I am not saying that it will have an effect on all, but it will have an effect on some.” (Le Consulat et l’Empire)
Should we not add that the woman is not free to see someone that does not please her husband? There are wives who always have these words at the mouth: “You wish to prevent me from seeing those who please me?” (Mémoires sur le Consulat)
The wife must follow her husband
The obligation where the woman must follow her husband is general and absolute… The wife must follow her husband every time that he demands it. (Minutes of the Council of State)
On the indissolubility of marriage
Is it true that the indissolubility of marriage is absolute?
Marriage is indissoluble in the sense that from the moment it is contracted, each of the spouses must have the firm intention of never breaking it, and must not then foresee the accidental causes, sometimes culpable, which, subsequently, may require its dissolution. But that the indissolubility of marriage cannot be modified in any case is a system contradicted by the maxims and examples of all the centuries. It is not in the nature of things that two beings organized separately are ever perfectly identical: now, the legislator must foresee the results that the nature of things can bring about. Also, the fiction of the identity of the spouses has always been modified: it has been by the Catholic religion in the case of impotence; it was everywhere through divorce. (Minutes of the Council of State)
During the discussion on the Civil Code, many jurisconsults of the Council of State were of the opinion that the marriage of the individual whose civil death was declared would, by the sole fact of his condemnation, be struck by nullity. The First Consul loudly cried out against this doctrine
“According to this system,” he said, “it would therefore be forbidden for a woman deeply convinced of the innocence of her husband to follow in deportation the man to whom she is most closely united, or, if she yielded according to her conviction, to her duty, she would no longer be anything more than a concubine. Why deprive these unfortunate people of the right to live near each other, under the honorable title of legitimate spouses?…”
“If the law allows a woman to follow her husband without granting her the title of wife, it allows adultery…”
”Society is fairly avenged by condemnation, when the culprit is deprived of his property, when he finds himself separated from his friends, from his habits. Should we extend the punishment to the woman, and violently tear her away from a union which identifies her existence with that of her husband? She would tell you: ‘It was better to take his life; at least I would be allowed to cherish his memory; but you command that he shall live, and you do not want me to console him!’ Hey! How many men are only guilty because of their weakness for their wives! May it therefore be permitted to those who caused their misfortunes to soften them by sharing them. If a woman fulfills this duty, you will esteem her virtue; and yet you make no difference between her and the infamous being who prostitutes herself!…”
“It would be appropriate to oblige the woman to declare, within a given period, whether she wants the marriage to continue or to be revoked; when she declares that she wishes to maintain her marriage, she would be required to follow her husband.” (Minutes of the Council of State)
What! When the condemned person is deported, are justice and public vindictiveness not sufficiently satisfied? Kill him instead. Then his wife will be able to raise a grass altar for him in her garden to come and cry there. The wife may sometimes have been the cause of her husband's crime: she owes him consolation. Will you not esteem the woman who will follow him? (Mémoires sur le Consulat)
Of second marriages
The term of ten months is not long enough for the woman. As for the husband, we must either not talk about it, and abandon ourselves to morals and customs, or prohibit him from marriage for a longer term than forty days: it would be inappropriate for the Civil Code to show itself, on this point, more lenient than usual. (Minutes of the Council of State)
Marriage of priests
Fox, speaking with Napoleon after the Treaty of Amiens criticized him for not having obtained the marriage of priests, he answered him: “I needed and I need to pacify; it is with water and not with oil that one calms theological volcanos: I would have had less difficulty in establishing the Augsburg Confession in my empire. (Memoirs of Napoleon)
Our synods wanted that priests not be married, so that the cares of family not divert them from the cares of spiritual affairs to which they must be exclusively devoted. (Letter answering the deputies of the three new departments of Italy, October 27th, 1808)
There is no motive for opposing the marriage of a priest who hadn’t exercised his functions since the Concordat; it is up to him to judge the merit of an action by which he fails to fulfill the commitments that he signed up for. (Le Consulat et l’Empire)
Motives for the marriage of Napoleon with Marie-Louise
Napoleon's divorce caused a lot of noise. His throne, the highest in Europe, was the object of the ambition of all the ruling houses. Politics called for three princesses: one from the House of Russia, one from the House of Austria, one from the House of Saxony.
Open negotiations were initiated with Russia. A few words had already been said about it by the Emperor Alexander at Erfurt.
A letter from the Count of Narbonne announced that some insinuations had been made to him, during his visit to Vienna, about the choice of Napoleon, and that he had been able to conclude that an alliance with an archduchess could enter into the views of Austria…
An extraordinary private council was convened, the question of the choice to be made was posed, and the majority decided in favor of an Austrian princess. It was observed that, of all the powers, Austria was the one which would be most concerned about France's intentions towards it; it was represented that the alliance that was to be formed with her would dissipate all clouds, would give undisputed reason for trust, and would be the pledge of long-lasting peace. These considerations were decisive, and the marriage with the archduchess favored. (Memoirs of Napoleon)
We wanted to contribute eminently to the happiness of the current generation. The continent's enemies have based their prosperity on its dissensions and its tearing apart. They will no longer be able to fuel the war, by assuming projects that are incompatible with the ties and duties of kinship that we have just contracted with the reigning imperial house in Austria. (Message to the Senate, February 27h, 1810)
