But if ever it cease to be the recompense of the brave private, or be confined to soldiers alone, it will cease to be the Legion of Honour." On the 15th of May, 1802, the Legion of Honour was formally instituted; large national domains were set apart for its maintenance; and crosses (each of which entitled the bearer to certain precedence and a pension) widely distributed among the soldiery, and among citizens of almost all professions.
The personal authority of the future emperor, meantime, was daily widening and strengthening.

After the Consulate was established in France, some corresponding change in the government of the Cisalpine Republic was judged necessary, and Napoleon took care that it should be so conducted as to give himself not only permanent, but wholly independent, power beyond the Alps.

A convention of 450 Italian deputies was summoned to meet at _Lyons_; and there Talleyrand was ready to dictate the terms of a new constitution, by which the executive functions were to be lodged in a president and vice-president, the legislative in a council chosen from three electoral colleges.

It was next proposed that Buonaparte should be invited to take on him the office of president--Buonaparte, it was studiously explained, not as Chief Consul of France, but in his own individual capacity.

He repaired to Lyons in person, and having harangued the convention in the Italian tongue, assumed the dignity thus conferred on him on the 2nd of January, 1802.
The next step was to prolong the period of his French Consulate.