The emigres pounced on the fact he became emperor. The people were fine with strong hands reigning in the excess. Napoleon, though declaring himself emperor, still carried the anti aristocracy sentiment and didn't hesitate to promote talent wherever he found it. He also issued his Code, which was well received by the people. He made military service, something available to most men, a way to get a better life if you applied yourself, many of his best commanders rose from low positions and it would have been impossible under the ancien regime. Eventually his forever wars outlasted the rosy feeling of "la Gloire" as the bodies started stacking up and the people were much less receptive to him and his ideas.

The republic's had lots of breaks - First Empire and restored monarchy in 1804-48, Second Empire in 1852-70, Vichy and occupation in 1940-44 - each drawing support from an anti-republican element that might have prevailed but for its internal divisions (Emperor? King? - and if the latter, which of various rival claimants?). Even amid the Revolution, monarchist candidates won most of the seats at stake in the legislative elections of 1795 and 1797. A large part of the population hoped if not for the Revolution's undoing, at least for its more orderly governance.

Reaction to Bonaparte's coup and subsequent elevation was thus muted: here perhaps was an end to the chaos of the 1790s, and even his assumption of the rank of Emperor was partly aimed at preventing a future Bourbon restoration by incorprorating the hereditary principle in favour of a new dynasty, securing one of the Revolution's acts by unconventional means. He could for a time be all things to all Frenchmen, or at least most - much like that motto, itself open to various interpretations and simultaneously satisfying radical sans-culotte and respectable bourgeois alike.