"Was Napoleon making himself a monarch a mistake?" Topic

"This is something I've heard people tossing around here and there. The basic idea is that Napoleon didn't make a very wise move in crowning himself as a monarch, at least in the sense about his family. They say that people respected and adored Napoleon himself, not his family, and that he would never be accepted as a legitimate monarch since they would always see him as an upstart.

Murat, of all people, has a rather valid criticism of this.

"When France raised you to the throne," he told him, "she believed she had found a popular leader, a plebeian leader, and gave him a title that would set him above all the sovereigns of Europe; she did not intend to renew the monarchy of Louis XIV, with all the abuses and all the pretentions of the old courts. Yet you surround yourself with the former nobility. You have filled the salons of the Tuileries with them…They look on all your companions-in-arms, and you as well perhaps, as parvenus, intruders, usurpers. Today you claim the right to ally yourself with the royal house of Bavaria through Eugene's marriage; and you are doing it to show Europe how much store you set upon something that we all lack: distinction of birth. You pay homage to titles to authority which are not yours, which are opposed to ours; you make it plain to France and the sovereigns of Europe that you want to be the continuation of an ancient dynasty; and yours, make no mistake, will always be new in the eyes of the sovereigns."…"
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