Rare books, manuscripts and ephemera from five centuries

A constitutional power-grab 

​

[NAPOLEON]. CONSTITUTION de la République Française. A Mâcon: de l’Imprimerie de J. Galand, [1799]. £250

​

8vo, pp. 40; some spotting and browning throughout, but never heavy; stitched as issued, uncut; extremities worn.

​

Rare provincial printing, from the Burgundian city of Macon, of the French Revolutionary (or perhaps post-revolutionary) Constitution de l’an VIII, signed on the 22 frimaire, that is, December 13, 1799, and accompanied by the law of the following day which sets out the way in which the Constitution was to be presented to the French people, an address by the minister of justice, Jean-Jacques-Régis de Cambacérès to the various levels of civil administration and the civil and criminal courts, and finally an extract from the minutes of the meeting of the central administration of the Saône et Loire department on 26 frimaire, taking note of the requirement that ‘l’acte constitutionnel soit de suite enrengistré, imprimé, transmis à toutes les communes du rassort, pour être publié dans les formes ordinaires...’.

​

The constitution itself followed the coup of 18 Brumaire, a month beforehand, which in effect handed executive power to Napoleon. This swiftly assembled constitution was designed to cement that power, and is notable for being the first since the Revolution not to include a Declaration of Rights, and for naming the three consuls: Lebrun as third, Cambacérès as second, and Napoleon as first - specificity unusual in constitutional arrangements. 

​

OCLC records two copies, at British Columbia and Florida State. 

 

[ref: 2593 ]