General outline
The first members of the Conseil d'État when it was created in 1799 were given the title conseillers d’État. Soon two categories of these were defined:

•  conseillers in ordinary service who worked within the Conseil
•  members in extraordinary service, who were made available to other administrative bodies.

From 1803, a decree provided for younger members, known as auditeurs, to attend the Conseil d'Etat for the purpose of learning. In ordinary service they were responsible for assisting the sections in their work and, in extraordinary service, they were made available to other administrative bodies: prefecture, sub-prefecture, intendancy of occupied countries…

In 1806, an intermediate level was created: the  maîtres des requêtes (counsels), initially specialising in litigation.

Consult the biographical database on the members of the Conseil d'Etat

Twenty nine conseillers were appointed on 4 Nivôse, An VIII (24 December, 1799). By the end of An VIII they numbered forty. The choice of these first conseillers d'État betrays a degree of political eclecticism dictated by the First Consul's concern for efficiency, which led him to select men who were sound and competent, particularly in legal matters, rather than unreserved supporters.

Thibeaudeau (1) reports that Napoleon gave the following reasons for his choice:
"Governing by party sooner or later makes you subordinate to it. I will not be taken in like that; I am a nationalist. I will make use of all those who have the capacity and will to go with me. This is why I have made up my Conseil d'État with Members who might be called moderates or Feuillants such as Defermon, Roederer, Regnier, Regnaud, royalists such as Devaisne and Dufresne; and even Jacobins such as Brune, Réal and Berlier. I like honest men of all colours."

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In order of precedence, the Conseil d'État was the second body of the State, and came immediately after the Senate in public ceremonies (opening of the sessions of the Legislative Body and the Tribunate, reception of ambassadors, coronation, etc.)
The Conseil d'État was, with the Senate, the Legislative Body and the Tribunate, one of the four bodies in whose presence the Head of State had to take the oath (Consul for life in Art. 43 of the sénatus consulte of 16 Thermidor, An X, Emperor in the two years following his government for the sénatus consulte of 28 Floréal, An XII). At the coronation of 1804, it was the longest-standing section president of the Conseil d'État, Defermon, who, with the presidents of the three assemblies, presented the Emperor with the wording of the oath to respect the Constitution.

Every conseiller d'Etat dressed in his ceremonial clothes had the right, individually and in any place, to military honours.

Conseillers d'État also enjoyed certain legal privileges: exclusive jurisdiction of the High Court to deal with their crimes, the form of their testimony in court.

Three quarters of the ministers appointed after Nivôse, An VIII (December, 1799) came from the Conseil d'État. In chronological order: Barbé-Marbois, Dejean, Regnier, Portalis, Champagny, Mollien, Clarke, Cretet, Bigot de Préameneu, Montalivet, Lacuée, Daru, Molé.

All members of the Conseil d'État could in principle be removed from office but there were in fact just two dismissals, affecting Frochot and Portalis junior.

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There was originally just one category of conseiller d'État. An order of 7 Fructidor, An VIII (26 August, 1800) distinguished conseillers who carried out the "ordinary service" in Paris and those in "extraordinary service" consisting "either of permanent duties or temporary missions". Members of the Conseil in extraordinary service could carry out the duties of a prefect in a département, be sent to armies on campaign or on a mission into newly annexed territories to establish their administrative reorganisation. Conseillers in extraordinary service retained the title of conseillers d'État but appeared on a different list in the quarterly statement of the Conseil.

The notion of extraordinary service and ordinary service was later applied to auditeurs (created in 1803) and to maîtres des requêtes.. The existence of the extraordinary service is an indisputable sign of the role of the Conseil d'État as a breeding ground for administrators. At the end of the Empire, the Conseil had around a hundred members in ordinary service and over 250 in extraordinary service.

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See list of conseillers

 Statistics
Conseillers d'État, numbering thirty to forty according to the regulation of 5 Nivôse, An VIII (25 December, 1799), were the only members of the Conseil d'État during its first four years of existence.

From 1799 to 1814, one hundred and twelve conseillers d'État were in ordinary service, 66 of them appointed under the Consulate (only two of them in An IX) and 46 under the Empire. 66% of them were also in extraordinary service. Forty seven spent only a short time in this, and twenty seven ended their career there.

 Européens au Conseil
Napoleon wished to have men from annexed territories in the Conseil: from 1802 to 1811, six Italians, (2), one Rhinelander (3), four Dutchmen (4) and one German were appointed as conseillers d'État.

 Conseillers in ordinary service not attached to a section
In An X (5) conseillers in ordinary service, not attached to a section, emerged: these were senior Parisian public servants, too absorbed by their duties to participate in the work of the sections but qualified to lend their support during the general assemblies.

 Salary
The salary of conseillers d'État was comfortable: 25,000 francs per year for conseillers, 30,000 francs per year for section presidents. From 1802 to 1810, Napoleon regularly had a supplementary bonus of 10,000 to 15,000 francs paid to some of them.

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See list of auditeurs

 Figures
The conseillers d'État were not to be the only members of the Conseil for long: a consular order of 19 Germinal, (9 April, 1803) created six posts of auditeurs at the Conseil d'État. The decree of 28 December 1809 reorganised the service of auditeurs in the Conseil d'État.

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 Auditeurs, a breeding ground for administrators
"The aim of the institution is to put in the hands of the emperor an elite body of men, who are sincerely devoted to him […], whom he will be able to observe from close enough to be able to assess their zeal and their talent, who will be educated, so to speak, in his school, and whom he may employ anywhere where the need for their service will make them useful. It is from here that genuine magistrates and genuine administrators will emerge.. His Majesty tested the institution when he put the auditeurs in charge of administering conquered countries. He found them to have zeal, integrity, intelligence. […]
The office of auditeur is nothing more than a school to set them on the road to other offices."
From Locré, quoted by A. Gazier in the Revue de Paris, March 1903, p. 160.

Almost all the auditeurs were aged between twenty and thirty, and several of them had previously held an administrative post. The auditeur "in ordinary service" was attached to a section and to a minister. He took steps on their behalf, sought information, prepared dossiers and drew up reports. This work, and the fact of attending the meetings of the sections and the general assembly of the Conseil d'Etat as spectators, prepared these young people for more substantial administrative responsibilities. The majority of auditors went on to extraordinary service. Several became, for several months or several years, intendants of a district in a hostile or foreign country occupied by the French army. Many of them became sub-prefects and some of them went straight into being prefects when still under thirty.

 An instrument for winning alliest
An indirect aim of the institution of auditeurs was also to draw young people from very well-to-do  (8) or prestigious (9) families (the former noblesse de robe (nobility from office, often purchased) and even the noblesse d'épée (older nobility, often acquired by military valour) into serving the State. Auditeurs were recruited above all according to their family or on recommendation. The institution of auditeurs was therefore a route for winning allies. The auditeurs were not paid by the Conseil d'État and so were required to show proof of a personal income of at least 6000 francs per year.
Similarly, Napoleon wished to win over the social elite of conquered countries by bringing representatives of the principal families of these countries into the administration. From the earliest days young people from the Genoese or Belgian aristocracy (10) became auditeurs after having requested this as a favour. But there were also appointments made as a matter of course, particularly in Italy in 1809 and in Belgium, against the will of the beneficiaries…

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See list of maîtres des requêtes

The creation of maîtres des requêtes, a title inherited from the Conseil du Roi of the Ancien Régime, followed a different logic to the creation of the auditeurs. The gap between the rank of conseiller and that of auditeur was very wide and it seemed appropriate to create an intermediate post, for men with some experience who were not so young. The decree of 11 June 1806 created the title of "maître des requêtes", with no limitation as to number, and appointed eleven of these, followed by a further one on 26 June. Eight of them were allocated to the ordinary service of the Conseil, with an annual salary of 5000 francs. Seventy two maîtres des requêtes were appointed during the Empire, although the last eight appointments were merely honorary rewards.

 Early specialisation: litigation
The ordinary service of maîtres des requêtes initially involved taking care of procedures in contentious administrative matters (the Contentieux administratif) that came under the authority of the Conseil d'État. This gave them access to the general assemblies of the Conseil with the right to speak. They were distributed among the sections and associated with all the work of these sections in early 1810. The annual composition of the sections and committees is shown under the heading Organisation, with a sub-heading for each section.

 Composition of the members of the Conseil d'Etat from 1800 to 1814.

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