The personal authority of the future emperor, meantime, was daily widening and strengthening.  After the Consulate was established in France, some corresponding change in the government of the Cisalpine Republic was judged necessary, and Napoleon took care that it should be so conducted as to give himself not only permanent, but wholly independent, power beyond the Alps.  A convention of 450 Italian deputies was summoned to meet at Lyons; and there Talleyrand was ready to dictate the terms of a new constitution, by which the executive functions were to be lodged in a president and vice-president, the legislative in a council chosen from three electoral colleges.  It was next proposed that Buonaparte should be invited to take on him the office of president—­Buonaparte, it was studiously explained, not as Chief Consul of France, but in his own individual capacity.  He repaired to Lyons in person, and having harangued the convention in the Italian tongue, assumed the dignity thus conferred on him on the 2nd of January, 1802.

The next step was to prolong the period of his French Consulate.  Chabot de L’Allier, his creature, moved in the Tribunate that the Conservative Senate should be requested to mark the national feelings of gratitude by conferring some new honour on Napoleon.  The Senate proposed accordingly that he should be declared Consul for a second period of ten years, to commence on the expiration of his present magistracy.  He thanked them; but said he could not accept of any such prolongation of his power except from the suffrages of the people.  To the people the matter was to be referred; but the Second and Third Consuls, in preparing the edict of the Senate for public inspection and ratification, were instructed by their master-colleague to introduce an important change in its terms.  The question which they sent down was, “Shall Buonaparte be Chief Consul for life?” No mention was made of ten years.  Books were opened as on a former occasion:  the officers of government in the departments well knew in what method to conduct the business, and the voice of the nation was declared to be in favour of the decree.  Some few hundreds of sturdy republicans alone recorded their opposition; and Carnot, who headed them, said he well knew he was signing his own sentence of exile.  But Napoleon was strong enough to dispense with any such severities; Carnot remained in safety, but out of office, until, many years afterwards, his services were tendered and accepted on the entrance of foreign invaders into France.  Buonaparte was proclaimed Consul for life on the 2nd of August.