“Look at me.  The recent campaign, agitation, and movement have made me fat.  I believe that if all the kings coalesced against me, I should get a quite ridiculous stomach....  You have heard my words.  I can no longer have relatives in obscurity.  Those who will not rise with me, shall no longer be of my family.  I am making a family of kings attached to my federative system."[67]

The threat having had its effect, Joseph was proclaimed King of Naples by a decree of Napoleon.  “Keep a firm hand:  I only ask one thing of you:  be entirely the master there."[68] Such was the advice given to his amiable brother, who after enjoying a military promenade southwards was charged to undertake the conquest of Sicily.  It mattered little that the overthrow of the Neapolitan Bourbons offended the Czar, who had undertaken the protection of that House.

As though intent on browbeating Alexander by an exhibition of his power, Napoleon lavished Italian titles on his Marshals and statesmen.  Talleyrand became Prince of Benevento; and Bernadotte, Prince of Ponte-Corvo (two Papal enclaves in Neapolitan soil).  To these and other titles were attached large domains (not divisible at death), which enabled his paladins and their successors to support their new dignities with pomp and splendour; especially was this so with the two titles which his bargains with Prussia and Bavaria enabled him to bestow.  Thanks to the complaisance of their Kings, the Grand Duchy of Berg and Cleves was granted to Murat, while the energetic and trusty Berthier was rewarded with the Principality of Neufchatel and a truly princely fortune.[69]

Thus was founded the Napoleonic nobility; and thus was fulfilled Mme. de Stael’s prophecy that the priests and nobles would be the caryatides of the future throne.  The change was brought about skilfully.  It took place when pride in Napoleon’s exploits was at its height, and when the “Gazette de France” asserted: 

“France is henceforth the arbitress of Europe....  Civilization would have perished in Europe, if forth from the ruins there had not arisen one of these men before whom the world keeps silence, and to whom Providence seems to intrust its destinies."[70]

This adulation, which recalls that of the Court of Augustus or Tiberius, gives the measure of French thought.  In truth, Napoleon showed profound insight into human nature when he judged the hatred of an order of nobility to be a mere passing spasm of revolutionary fever; and he evinced equal good sense in restoring that order through the chiefs of the one truly popular institution in France, the army.  Besides, the new titles were not taken from French domains, which would have revived the idea of feudal dependence in France:  they were the fruit of Napoleon’s great victory; and the sound of distant names like Benevento, Berg, and Dalmatia skilfully flattered the pride of la grande nation.