How Napoleon Tried to Silence the Press

The upheavals of the French Revolution (1789-1794) meant that the flow of news and information became a vital tool for new leaders to maintain power and control the nation. That meant that although “freedom of the press” was regularly touted as one of the great achievements of the movement, there was never genuine freedom for political journalism in France. 

The French government had always used a system of licenses to control the press, and after the Reign of Terror began, notes University of Warwick historian Charles Walton in his book, Policing Public Opinion in the French Revolution, “the revolutionary government did not stop at repression. It also created a nationwide network of agents responsible for monitoring public opinion and spreading revolutionary propaganda.” 

Napoleon’s subsequent reign as emperor of France would be no different.

When Napoleon Bonaparte came to power during the coup d'état of 18 Brumaire in November 1799, he inherited a Jacobin tradition of strict press controls. In the coup of Fructidor two years earlier, 60 pressmen were imprisoned, 44 exiled and 42 newspapers suppressed for the alleged crime of "railing at Nature and compromising the human race."

But upon becoming first consul, Napoleon wasted no time securing even greater control. Only weeks later, on January 17, 1800, he issued a decree that suppressed 50 political newspapers, leaving only 13 in Paris, and forbade the establishment of new newspapers. He appointed Joseph Fouché as minister of police, charging him with oversight of the press. 

Fouché's office controlled not only all printing but even dramatic performances (the theater of 18th-century France was a hotbed of political expression and potential sedition), as well as the issuing of all pamphlets and posters. Prefects of each French département were also given close oversight of all printing in their regions and were required to report regularly on public opinion.

Napoleon justified the crackdown on the press in the name of “nationhood.” "The character of the French nation requires that liberty of the Press should be restricted in the case of works of a certain size, and the newspapers must be subjected to the rigid surveillance of the police,” he declared in December 1803.

He was especially concerned—with reason—about English journalism infiltrating the French state. On August 13, 1802, he ordered Fouché "not to let...any English newspaper enter France anymore, and above all not let them circulate in public places, literary salons or other places.” He was right to be concerned: As King’s College London historian Oskar Cox Jensen notes in his 2015 book, Napoleon and British Song, “No historical figure has taken up so many pages of English-language publications—memoirs, monographs, novels, poems, songs.”

A year later, in September 1803, a decree ordered that every book for sale in France be submitted to a “commission of revision,” and a few months later the surveillance responsibility was given to Fouché and his ministry. These measures were enshrined in the Senatus Consultum of May 18, 1804, which declared Napoleon emperor. The act also appointed a commission on liberty of the press, with power to declare that liberty of the press had been violated.

Throughout this period, Napoleon regularly wrote to Fouché, ordering him to crack down on writers and journalists he suspected of critical or seditious publishing. On August 6, 1804, he wrote, "If the abbot David is living freely at home, find out if he's received his papers and arrest him so you can seize all of them." 

He also commanded him to plant false stories in the remaining newspapers to vaunt his own successes: "It would be good to try to paralyze the gossip that factions have an art of spreading and to distract the public by making the news arriving from London or other places run in a different sense.”

Napoleon understood that this distraction could be carried out in multiple forms of media, including satirical cartoons. "Have caricatures made: an Englishman, purse in hand, entreating the various powers to take his money,” he ordered Fouché on May 30, 1805. In the same letter, he urged Fouché to invent false stories of French maritime success: "Have it circulated in Holland that news comes from Madeira that [the French admiral Pierre-Charles] Villeneuve has fallen in with and captured an English convoy of 100 ships.”

News of military success was also conveyed to the public through the two military newspapers Napoleon created, the Courrier de l’Armée d’Italie and La France vue de l’Armée d’Italie, both of which trumpeted his victories in Italy. In early 1806, he took steps to control religious publishing: The only religious newspaper allowed was Le Journal des Curés. The formerly independent Journal des Débats became Le Journal de l'Empire, directed by "four intellectuals attached to the Government.” 

Still, this increasing control did not satisfy Napoleon's suspicion of the press. In January 1807, he wrote, "It is difficult to not see that the Journal de l'Empire and the Mercure are not animated by a good spirit.”

In 1811, Napoleon took the final step: He allowed only four papers in Paris and one in each of the other départements, all essentially instruments of his government. The dictatorship was complete.

But even this censorship could not prevent news of his disastrous campaign in Russia the following year. When Prussia and Austria formed a coalition with Russia and invaded France in 1814, the writing was on the wall: Napoleon was forced to abdicate on April 4. The restored Bourbon monarchy passed the Serre Laws in 1819, which for the first time allowed a truly free press in France.