ETAPA DE DISPOSICIÓN (Remplazo, Desvinculación, Venta o Baja)

While the geographer was successful in joining the Legion, the inventor, Joly,

was not. In a letter to his superior, Nicolas Brûlé, chief of the bureau of

passports, he related how he had succeeded in being included on the list of

candidates for his département in Year XII; however, the Grand Council of the

Legion had dismissed his candidature unilaterally, saying that it would only allow

those above the rank of chef de division to receive the honour.®® This arbitrary

decision, Joly complained, robbed him of "justice" and reduced him to petitioning

his ministerial superiors - d'Hauterive and Brûlé - for assistance. Joly's

expectation was that his services - displayed both in his work chronology and the

documented proof of his perfectionnement of the oil lamp - had given him a

natural right to membership of the Legion. However, although the Legion of Honour had explicitly sought to regularise and formalise the award of national honours, both civil and military, complementing "natural" career hierarchies and strategies of advancement®^, there was no guarantee that a combination of his military service and contributions to civil society was enough to clinch a

nomination. Becoming a chevalier of the Legion was an important social

distinction: as a "moral institution" concerned with fostering the emulation of civic virtue, the Legion invested its members with a sanctioned authority.®® Keying into a Rousseauian belief that visible signs of distinction were necessary in Republics and placing their modern-day Legion within a tradition spanning back

®® Roederer to the Corps Legisiatif, in A. Lievyns, Jean-Maurice Verdot, & Pierre

Bégat (eds.). Fastes de la Légion d'Honneur: iDiographie de tous les décorés

accompagnée de l'histoire législative et réglementaire de l'ordre, 5 vols. (Paris: au bureau de l’Administration, 1842-1847), vol. I, p. 35.

®® A.A.E., Personnel: Volumes Réiiés, vol. XXXIX [Joly], 408 recto.

®^ Fastes de la Légion d'Honneur, vol. I, p. 12 [the Legion of Honour was first debated in the Conseil d'État on the 14, 18 and 24 Floréal Year X].

to the Romans®®, the Legion served to police French "national honour" in the choice of Legionnaires and their communication of honourable principles to their feilow citizens.®^ What deeds the Legion actually rewarded was less clear. The

passage of the Legion's statutes through the Tribunat had stripped the nascent

institution of any sort of hereditary principle or corporate privilege - it represented in theory neither caste nor court.®® When Lucien Bonaparte, the nominated rapporteur of the Conseil d'État, took the podium of the Tribunat, he assured the legislators that no special privilege or power would ever accrue to the Legion.®® It existed solely for the reward of those who merited a place among the most honourable men of France, whoever they might be.

The Legion of Honour thus was left with no central purpose, other than the

transaction of "honour". The Legion was simply a repository of a "moral

currency" and repayment for the efforts of both military and civil functionaries, who sacrificed financial gain by working, not for their own profit, but for the profit of the nation.®® It was the "natural" reward for a lifetime of public service, proof of an honourable career devoted to the public good (despite the paucity of wages and hope of advancement in most of such vocations).®^ Yet "honour" was ill defined: the heterogeneous composition of the Legion served to conceal the reasons why specific members were appointed.®^ Although there, were some

ground rules - a statutory requirement of ancienneté (25 years of service) - there

was no guarantee that one's merit would be recognised, even when one had

®® Portalis to the Conseil d'État, 18 Floréal Year X, in ibid., vol. I, p.14, argued on

the need for distinction in a Republic. For neo-classical inspiration, see

Napoleon Bonaparte to the Conseil d'État, in ibid., vol. I, pp.12-14; Girardin to the

Tribunat, in ibid., vol. I, p. 44.

®^ Roederer in his speech to the Corps Législatif, in ibid., vol. I, p. 24, draws a direct comparison to the workings of administrative institutions. He explains how an authoritative figure can calm the fears of the ordinary people and service to conciiiate them to the needs of the Nation, by explaining the reason for the state’s action.

®® Ibid., vol. I, pp. 15 (introduction); Roederer to the Tribunat, in ibid., vol. I, p. 34. ®® Lucien Bonaparte to the Tribunat, in ibid., vol. I, p. 28.

®° Roederer to the Corps Législatif, in ibid., vol. I, p. 35; Fréville to the Tribunat, in ibid., vol. I, p. 23.

®^ Fréville to the Tribunat, in ibid., vol. I, p. 21.

devoted the best years of one's life to public service.®^ The vacuum at the heart of post-revolutionary narratives of "honour" and "virtue" was never more apparent

than in the Legion itself. The Legion sidestepped the petty jealousies of

competing colleagues (or comrades-in-arms) by cloaking the conditions of the "production" of chevaliers in mystery.

The problem of proving one’s virtue in the office and the problem of proving one’s virtue in civil society neatly came together, when, during the First Restoration in August 1814, Louis XVIII formalised the use of work chronologies in the appointment of Legionnaires. Taking the responsibility for filtering candidates from the Grand Council and giving it to his ministries, he invited them to appoint

Legionnaires from within their administrations.®^ Award for success in civil

society would be negotiated in the same way: Louis XVIII’s legislation obliged each candidate to draw up a certificate stating his services, signed by five of his collaborators, and transmitted to the relevant Ministry.®® Each Ministry, in turn, had a quota of nominations to fill, decided by the size of its administration and the extent of its remit.®® The "moral currency" wielded by members of the Legion of Honour was therefore distributed directly through the office. Yet even then, not only administrative service, but also participation in civil society, was instrumental in demands for nomination.®^

®® "Décret du 29 floréal an X", in ibid., vol. I, p. 44.

®"^ "Ordonnance Royale relative aux propositions à faire pour les nominations et promotions de la Légion d'Honneur", 31 August 1814, in ibid., vol. I, p. 118. ®® "Ordonnance Royale concernant la Légion d'Honneur", in ibid., vol. I, p. 121. ®® The annual intake of the Legion was divided into fortieths and distributed between the various ministries in 1815: "Ordonnance Royale qui fixe la Répartition des Grades de la Légion d'Honneur entre les divers ministères", 17 February 1815, in ibid., vol. I, p. 123. The Ministry of the Interior and Religions (as it existed in 1815) wielded five fortieths of the nominations - the large

percentage is explained by its connection to civil society - in terms of sociétés

savantes, religious functionaries, and, of course, the garde nationaie.

®^ As in Barbié du Bocage's case: see letter, J-D. Barbié du Bocage to the Duc

de Cadore, Minister of the Interior, 2 June 1814, A.A.E. Personnei: première

série [Barbié du Bocage, J.-D.]. Barbié du Bocage signed this letter "Geographer of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Member of the Institute; Professor at the Imperial University, etc.", noting the three different professional milieu in which he had served.

For the administrator, participation in civii society allowed him and extend his renown into other fieids of endeavour (and augment his work chronology). The reputation he had earned in the office often ailowed him to claim the right to sit at the heart of the société savantes. Honour as a "moral currency" was infinite: as the administrator moved into new arenas, or founded new societies, he could accumulate honour without taking away from that of his coileagues. The myth of progress - of an interlinked development of all aspects of the social world - legitimised this broader accumulation of distinction. The administrator could constructed his reputation without making any new discoveries or performing any new deeds by keeping within the boundaries of a rhetoric of emulation. Legitimacy for the society was also assured by its contribution to the "progress" of its science, rather than its deveiopment of a specific agenda. All societies looked to move the focus from competition over production to emulation: the Lycée and S.E.I.N. by constructing elaborate rituals of technological testing; the Société de Géographie by listing - but not publishing - its members memoirs and

by keeping its prize competitions anonymous. Embracing a myth of social

progress, and fleshing it out in bogus narratives of "tradition", post-Revolutionary civil society balanced the emulative imperative with the need to protect against the dominance of a single corporate voice. By creating "founders", it recognised individuals who could be safely emulated, while preserving the fragile balance of a fraternal meritocracy.