[1] The interest aroused by the debates of the first National Assembly suggested to Hugues-Bernard Maret the idea of publishing them in the Bulletin de l'Assemblée.

Charles-Joseph Panckoucke (1736-1798), owner of the Mercure de France and publisher of the famous Encyclopédie of 1785, persuaded him to merge this into a larger paper, the Gazette Nationale ou Le Moniteur Universel.

Due to Napoleon's strict controls of the press, the Moniteur's reports of legislative debates were replaced by bulletins of the Grand Army and polemical articles directed against England.

The newspaper also became less exclusively political, articles on literature, science, and art occupying a considerable portion of its columns.

De facto deprived of its official function, Le Moniteur Universel continued to exist as an independent, tendentially conservative newspaper until June 30, 1901.