X. BRUMAIRE
Rarely has France been in a more distracted state than in the summer of 1799. Royalist revolts in the west and south rent the national life. The religious schism was unhealed; education was at a standstill; commerce had been swept from the seas by the British fleets; and trade with Italy and Germany was cut off by the war of the Second Coalition.
The formation of this league between Russia, Austria, England, Naples, Portugal, and Turkey was in the main the outcome of the alarm and indignation aroused by the reckless conduct of the Directory, which overthrew the Bourbons at Naples, erected the Parthenopæan Republic, and compelled the King of Sardinia to abdicate at Turin and retire to his island. Russia and Austria took a leading part in forming the Coalition. Great Britain, ever hampered by her inept army organization, offered to supply money in place of the troops which she could not properly equip.
But under the cloak of legitimacy the monarchical Powers harboured their own selfish designs. This Nessus' cloak of the First Coalition soon galled the limbs of the allies and rendered them incapable of sustained and vigorous action. Yet they gained signal successes over the raw conscripts of France. In July, 1799, the Austro-Russian army captured Mantua and Alessandria; and in the following month Suvoroff gained the decisive victory of Novi and drove the remains of the French forces towards Genoa. The next months were far more favourable to the tricolour flag, for, owing to Austro-Russian jealousies, Masséna was able to gain an important victory at Zurich over a Russian army. In the north the republicans were also in the end successful. Ten days after Bonaparte's arrival at Fréjus, they compelled an Anglo-Russian force campaigning in Holland to the capitulation of Alkmaar, whereby the Duke of York agreed to withdraw all his troops from that coast. Disgusted by the conduct of his allies, the Czar Paul withdrew his troops from any active share in the operations by land, thenceforth concentrating his efforts on the acquisition of Corsica, Malta, and posts of vantage in the Adriatic. These designs, which were well known to the British Government, served to hamper our naval strength in those seas, and to fetter the action of the Austrian arms in Northern Italy.[123]
Yet, though the schisms of the allies finally yielded a victory to the French in the campaigns of 1799, the position of the Republic was precarious. The danger was rather internal than external. It arose from embarrassed finances, from the civil war that burst out with new violence in the north-west, and, above all, from a sense of the supreme difficulty of attaining political stability and of reconciling liberty with order. The struggle between the executive and legislative powers which had been rudely settled by the coup d'état of Fructidor, had been postponed, not solved. Public opinion was speedily ruffled by the Jacobinical violence which ensued. The stifling of liberty of the press and the curtailment of the right of public meeting served only to instill new energy into the party of resistance in the elective Councils, and to undermine a republican government that relied on Venetian methods of rule. Reviewing the events of those days, Madame de Staël finely remarked that only the free consent of the people could breathe life into political institutions; and that the monstrous system of guaranteeing freedom by despotic means served only to manufacture governments that had to be wound up at intervals lest they should stop dead.[124] Such a sarcasm, coming from the gifted lady who had aided and abetted the stroke of Fructidor, shows how far that event had falsified the hopes of the sincerest friends of the Revolution. Events were therefore now favourable to a return from the methods of Rousseau to those of Richelieu; and the genius who was skilfully to adapt republicanism to autocracy was now at hand. Though Bonaparte desired at once to attack the Austrians in Northern Italy, yet a sure instinct impelled him to remain at Paris, for, as he said to Marmont: "When the house is crumbling, is it the time to busy oneself with the garden? A change here is indispensable."
The sudden rise of Bonaparte to supreme power cannot be understood without some reference to the state of French politics in the months preceding his return to France. The position of parties had been strangely complicated by the unpopularity of the Directors. Despite their illegal devices, the elections of 1798 and 1799 for the renewal of a third part of the legislative Councils had signally strengthened the anti-directorial ranks. Among the Opposition were some royalists, a large number of constitutionals, whether of the Feuillant or Girondin type, and many deputies, who either vaunted the name of Jacobins or veiled their advanced opinions under the convenient appellation of "patriots." Many of the deputies were young, impressionable, and likely to follow any able leader who promised to heal the schisms of the country. In fact, the old party lines were being effaced. The champions of the constitution of 1795 (Year III.) saw no better means of defending it than by violating electoral liberties--always in the sacred name of Liberty; and the Directory, while professing to hold the balance between the extreme parties, repressed them by turns with a vigour which rendered them popular and official moderation odious.
In this general confusion and apathy the dearth of statesmen was painfully conspicuous. Only true grandeur of character can defy the withering influences of an age of disillusionment; and France had for a time to rely upon Sieyès. Perhaps no man has built up a reputation for political capacity on performances so slight as the Abbé Sieyès. In the States General of 1789 he speedily acquired renown for oracular wisdom, owing to the brevity and wit of his remarks in an assembly where such virtues were rare. But the course of the Revolution soon showed the barrenness of his mind and the timidity of his character. He therefore failed to exert any lasting influence upon events. In the time of the Terror his insignificance was his refuge. His witty reply to an inquiry how he had then fared--"J'ai vécu "--sufficiently characterizes the man. In the Directorial period he displayed more activity. He was sent as French ambassador to Berlin, and plumed himself on having persuaded that Court to a neutrality favourable to France. But it is clear that the neutrality of Prussia was the outcome of selfish considerations. While Austria tried the hazards of war, her northern rival husbanded her resources, strengthened her position as the protectress of Northern Germany, and dextrously sought to attract the nebula of middle German States into her own sphere of influence. From his task of tilting a balance which was already decided, Sieyès was recalled to Paris in May, 1799, by the news of his election to the place in the Directory vacated by Rewbell. The other Directors had striven, but in vain, to prevent his election: they knew well that this impracticable theorist would speedily paralyze the Government; for, when previously elected Director in 1795, he had refused to serve, on the ground that the constitution was thoroughly bad. He now declared his hostility to the Directory, and looked around for some complaisant military chief who should act as his tool and then be cast away. His first choice, Joubert, was killed at the battle of Novi. Moreau seems then to have been looked on with favour; he was a republican, able in warfare and singularly devoid of skill or ambition in political matters. Relying on Moreau, Sieyès continued his intrigues, and after some preliminary fencing gained over to his side the Director Barras. But if we may believe the assertions of the royalist, Hyde de Neuville, Barras was also receiving the advances of the royalists with a view to a restoration of Louis XVIII., an event which was then quite within the bounds of probability. For the present, however, Barras favoured the plans of Sieyès, and helped him to get rid of the firmly republican Directors, La Réveillière-Lépeaux and Merlin, who were deposed (30th Prairial).[125]
The new Directors were Gohier, Roger Ducos, and Moulin; the first, an elderly respectable advocate; the second, a Girondin by early associations, but a trimmer by instinct, and therefore easily gained over by Sieyès; while the recommendation of the third, Moulin, seem to have been his political nullity and some third-rate military services in the Vendéan war. Yet the Directory of Prairial was not devoid of a spasmodic energy, which served to throw back the invaders of France. Bernadotte, the fiery Gascon, remarkable for his ardent gaze, his encircling masses of coal-black hair, and the dash of Moorish blood which ever aroused Bonaparte's respectful apprehensions, was Minister of War, and speedily formed a new army of 100,000 men: Lindet undertook to re-establish the finances by means of progressive taxes: the Chouan movement in the northern and western departments was repressed by a law legalising the seizure of hostages; and there seemed some hope that France would roll back the tide of invasion, keep her "natural frontiers," and return to normal methods of government.
Such was the position of affairs when Bonaparte's arrival inspired France with joy and the Directory with ill-concealed dread. As in 1795, so now in 1799, he appeared at Paris when French political life was in a stage of transition. If ever the Napoleonic star shone auspiciously, it was in the months when he threaded his path between Nelson's cruisers and cut athwart the maze of Sieyès' intrigues. To the philosopher's "J'ai vécu" he could oppose the crushing retort "J'ai vaincu."
The general, on meeting the thinker at Gohier's house, studiously ignored him. In truth, he was at first disposed to oust both Sieyès and Barras from the Directory. The latter of these men was odious to him for reasons both private and public. In time past he had had good reasons for suspecting Josephine's relations with the voluptuous Director, and with the men whom she met at his house. During the Egyptian campaign his jealousy had been fiercely roused in another quarter, and, as we have seen, led to an almost open breach with his wife. But against Barras he still harboured strong suspicions; and the frequency of his visits to the Director's house after returning from Egypt was doubtless due to his desire to sound the depths of his private as well as of his public immorality. If we may credit the embarras de mensonges which has been dignified by the name of Barras' "Memoirs," Josephine once fled to his house and flung herself at his knees, begging to be taken away from her husband; but the story is exploded by the moral which the relator clumsily tacks on, as to the good advice which he gave her.[126] While Bonaparte seems to have found no grounds for suspecting Barras on this score, he yet discovered his intrigues with various malcontents; and he saw that Barras, holding the balance of power in the Directory between the opposing pairs of colleagues, was intriguing to get the highest possible price for the betrayal of the Directory and of the constitution of 1795.
For Sieyès the general felt dislike but respect. He soon saw the advantage of an alliance with so learned a thinker, so skilful an intriguer, and so weak a man. It was, indeed, necessary; for, after making vain overtures to Gohier for the alteration of the law which excluded from the Directory men of less than forty years of age, the general needed the alliance of Sieyès for the overthrow of the constitution. In a short space he gathered around him the malcontents whom the frequent crises had deprived of office, Roederer, Admiral Bruix, Réal, Cambacérès, and, above all, Talleyrand. The last-named; already known for his skill in diplomacy, had special reasons for favouring the alliance of Bonaparte and Sieyès: he had been dismissed from the Foreign Office in the previous month of July because in his hands it had proved to be too lucrative to the holder and too expensive for France. It was an open secret that, when American commissioners arrived in Paris a short time previously, for the settlement of various disputes between the two countries, they found that the negotiations would not progress until 250,000 dollars had changed hands. The result was that hostilities continued, and that Talleyrand soon found himself deprived of office, until another turn of the revolutionary kaleidoscope should restore him to his coveted place.[127] He discerned in the Bonaparte-Sieyès combination the force that would give the requisite tilt now that Moreau gave up politics.
The army and most of the generals were also ready for some change, only Bernadotte and Jourdan refusing to listen to the new proposals; and the former of these came "with sufficiently bad grace" to join Bonaparte at the time of action. The police was secured through that dextrous trimmer, the regicide Fouché, who now turned against the very men who had recently appointed him to office. Feeling sure of the soldiery and police, the innovators fixed the 18th of Brumaire as the date of their enterprise. There were many conferences at the houses of the conspirators; and one of the few vivid touches which relieve the dull tones of the Talleyrand "Memoirs" reveals the consciousness of these men that they were conspirators. Late on a night in the middle of Brumaire, Bonaparte came to Talleyrand's house to arrange details of the coup d'état, when the noise of carriages stopping outside caused them to pale with fear that their plans were discovered. At once the diplomatist blew out the lights and hurried to the balcony, when he found that their fright was due merely to an accident to the carriages of the revellers and gamesters returning from the Palais Royal, which were guarded by gendarmes. The incident closed with laughter and jests; but it illustrates the tension of the nerves of the political gamesters, as also the mental weakness of Bonaparte when confronted by some unknown danger. It was perhaps the only weak point in his intellectual armour; but it was to be found out at certain crises of his career.
Meanwhile in the legislative Councils there was a feeling of vague disquiet. The Ancients were, on the whole, hostile to the Directory, but in the Council of Five Hundred the democratic ardour of the younger deputies foreboded a fierce opposition. Yet there also the plotters found many adherents, who followed the lead now cautiously given by Lucien Bonaparte. This young man, whose impassioned speeches had marked him out as an irreproachable patriot, was now President of that Council. No event could have been more auspicious for the conspirators. With Sieyès, Barras, and Ducos, as traitors in the Directory, with the Ancients favourable, and the junior deputies under the presidency of Lucien, the plot seemed sure of success.
The first important step was taken by the Council of Ancients, who decreed the transference of the sessions of the Councils to St. Cloud. The danger of a Jacobin plot was urged as a plea for this motion, which was declared carried without the knowledge either of the Directory as a whole, or of the Five Hundred, whose opposition would have been vehement. The Ancients then appointed Bonaparte to command the armed forces in and near Paris. The next step was to insure the abdication of Gohier and Moulin. Seeking to entrap Gohier, then the President of the Directory, Josephine invited him to breakfast on the morning of 18th Brumaire; but Gohier, suspecting a snare, remained at his official residence, the Luxemburg Palace. None the less the Directory was doomed; for the two defenders of the institution had not the necessary quorum for giving effect to their decrees. Moulin thereupon escaped, and Gohier was kept under guard--by Moreau's soldiery![128]
Meanwhile, accompanied by a brilliant group of generals, Bonaparte proceeded to the Tuileries, where the Ancients were sitting; and by indulging in a wordy declamation he avoided taking the oath to the constitution required of a general on entering upon a new command. In the Council of Five Hundred, Lucien Bonaparte stopped the eager questions and murmurs, on the pretext that the session was only legal at St. Cloud.
There, on the next day (19th Brumaire or 10th November), a far more serious blow was to be struck. The overthrow of the Directory was a foregone conclusion. But with the Legislature it was far otherwise, for its life was still whole and vigorous. Yet, while amputating a moribund limb, the plotters did not scruple to paralyze the brain of the body politic.
Despite the adhesion of most of the Ancients to his plans, Bonaparte, on appearing before them, could only utter a succession of short, jerky phrases which smacked of the barracks rather than of the Senate. Retiring in some confusion, he regains his presence of mind among the soldiers outside, and enters the hall of the Five Hundred, intending to intimidate them not only by threats, but by armed force. At the sight of the uniforms at the door, the republican enthusiasm of the younger deputies catches fire. They fiercely assail him with cries of "Down with the tyrant! down with the Dictator! outlaw him!" In vain Lucien Bonaparte commands order. Several deputies rush at the general, and fiercely shake him by the collar. He turns faint with excitement and chagrin; but Lefebvre and a few grenadiers rushing up drag him from the hall. He comes forth like a somnambulist (says an onlooker), pursued by the terrible cry, "Hors la loi!" Had the cries at once taken form in a decree, the history of the world might have been different. One of the deputies, General Augereau, fiercely demands that the motion of outlawry be put to the vote. Lucien Bonaparte refuses, protests, weeps, finally throws off his official robes, and is rescued from the enraged deputies by grenadiers whom the conspirators send in for this purpose. Meanwhile Bonaparte and his friends were hastily deliberating, when one of their number brought the news that the deputies had declared the general an outlaw. The news chased the blood from his cheek, until Sieyès, whose sang froid did not desert him in these civilian broils, exclaims, "Since they outlaw you, they are outlaws." This revolutionary logic recalls Bonaparte to himself. He shouts, "To arms!" Lucien, too, mounting a horse, appeals to the soldiers to free the Council from the menaces of some deputies armed with daggers, and in the pay of England, who are terrorising the majority. The shouts of command, clinched by the adroit reference to daggers and English gold, cause the troops to waver in their duty; and Lucien, pressing his advantage to the utmost, draws a sword, and, holding it towards his brother, exclaims that he will stab him if ever he attempts anything against liberty. Murat, Leclerc, and other generals enforce this melodramatic appeal by shouts for Bonaparte, which the troops excitedly take up. The drums sound for an advance, and the troops forthwith enter the hall. In vain the deputies raise the shout, "Vive la République," and invoke the constitution. Appeals to the law are overpowered by the drum and by shouts for Bonaparte; and the legislators of France fly pell-mell from the hall through doors and windows.[129]
Thus was fulfilled the prophecy which eight years previously Burke had made in his immortal work on the French Revolution. That great thinker had predicted that French liberty would fall a victim to the first great general who drew the eyes of all men upon himself. "The moment in which that event shall happen, the person who really commands the army is your master, the master of your king, the master of your Assembly, the master of your whole republic."
Discussions about the coup d'état of Brumaire generally confuse the issue at stake by ignoring the difference between the overthrow of the Directory and that of the Legislature. The collapse of the Directory was certain to take place; but few expected that the Legislature of France would likewise vanish. For vanish it did: not for nearly half a century had France another free and truly democratic representative assembly. This result of Brumaire was unexpected by several of the men who plotted the overthrow of unpopular Directors, and hoped for the nipping of Jacobinical or royalist designs. Indeed, no event in French history is more astonishing than the dispersal of the republican deputies, most of whom desired a change of personnel but not a revolution in methods of government. Until a few days previously the Councils had the allegiance of the populace and of the soldiers; the troops at St. Cloud were loyal to the constitution, and respected the persons of the deputies until they were deluded by Lucien. For a few minutes the fate of France trembled in the balance; and the conspirators knew it.[130] Bonaparte confessed it by his incoherent gaspings; Sieyès had his carriage ready, with six horses, for flight; the terrible cry, "Hors la loi!" if raised against Bonaparte in the heart of Paris, would certainly have roused the populace to fury in the cause of liberty and have swept the conspirators to the guillotine. But, as it was, the affair was decided in the solitudes of St. Cloud by Lucien and a battalion of soldiers.
Efforts have frequently been made to represent the events of Brumaire as inevitable and to dovetail them in with a pretended philosophy of history. But it is impossible to study them closely without observing how narrow was the margin between the success and failure of the plot, and how jagged was the edge of an affair which philosophizers seek to fit in with their symmetrical explanations. In truth, no event of world-wide importance was ever decided by circumstances so trifling. "There is but one step from triumph to a fall. I have seen that in the greatest affairs a little thing has always decided important events"--so wrote Bonaparte three years before his triumph at St. Cloud: he might have written it of that event. It is equally questionable whether it can be regarded as saving France from anarchy. His admirers, it is true, have striven to depict France as trodden down by invaders, dissolved by anarchy, and saved only by the stroke of Brumaire. But she was already triumphant: it was quite possible that she would peacefully adjust her governmental difficulties: they were certainly no greater than they had been in and since the year 1797: Fouché had closed the club of the Jacobins: the Councils had recovered their rightful influence, and, but for the plotters of Brumaire, might have effected a return to ordinary government of the type of 1795-7. This was the real blow; that the vigorous trunk, the Legislature, was struck down along with the withering Directorial branch.
The friends of liberty might well be dismayed when they saw how tamely France accepted this astounding stroke. Some allowance was naturally to be made, at first, for the popular apathy: the Jacobins, already discouraged by past repression, were partly dazed by the suddenness of the blow, and were also ignorant of the aims of the men who dealt it; and while they were waiting to see the import of events, power passed rapidly into the hands of Bonaparte and his coadjutors. Such is an explanation, in part at least, of the strange docility now shown by a populace which still vaunted its loyalty to the democratic republic. But there is another explanation, which goes far deeper. The revolutionary strifes had wearied the brain of France and had predisposed it to accept accomplished facts. Distracted by the talk about royalist plots and Jacobin plots, cowering away from the white ogre and the red spectre, the more credulous part of the populace was fain to take shelter under the cloak of a great soldier, who at least promised order. Everything favoured the drill-sergeant theory of government. The instincts developed by a thousand years of monarchy had not been rooted out in the last decade. They now prompted France to rally round her able man; and, abandoning political liberty as a hopeless quest, she obeyed the imperious call which promised to revivify the order and brilliance of her old existence with the throbbing blood of her new life.
The French constitution was now to be reconstructed by a self-appointed commission which sat with closed doors. This strange ending to all the constitution-building of a decade was due to the adroitness of Lucien Bonaparte. At the close of that eventful day, the 19th of Brumaire, he gathered about him in the deserted hall at St. Cloud some score or so of the dispersed deputies known to be favourable to his brother, declaimed against the Jacobins, whose spectral plot had proved so useful to the real plotters, and proposed to this "Rump" of the Council the formation of a commission who should report on measures that were deemed necessary for the public safety. The measures were found to be the deposition of the Directory, the expulsion of sixty-one members from the Councils, the nomination of Sieyès, Roger Ducos, and Bonaparte as provisional Consuls and the adjournment of the Councils for four months. The Consuls accordingly took up their residence in the Luxemburg Palace, just vacated by the Directors, and the drafting of a constitution was confided to them and to an interim commission of fifty members chosen equally from the two Councils.
The illegality of these devices was hidden beneath a cloak of politic clemency. To this commission the Consuls, or rather Bonaparte--for his will soon dominated that of Sieyès--proposed two most salutary changes. He desired to put an end to the seizure of hostages from villages suspected of royalism; and also to the exaction of taxes levied on a progressive scale, which harassed the wealthy without proportionately benefiting the exchequer. These two expedients, adopted by the Directory in the summer of 1799, were temporary measures adopted to stem the tide of invasion and to crush revolts; but they were regarded as signs of a permanently terrorist policy, and their removal greatly strengthened the new consular rule. The blunder of nearly all the revolutionary governments had been in continuing severe laws after the need for them had ceased to be pressing. Bonaparte, with infinite tact, discerned this truth, and, as will shortly appear, set himself to found his government on the support of that vast neutral mass which was neither royalist nor Jacobin, which hated the severities of the reds no less than the abuses of the ancien régime.
While Bonaparte was conciliating the many, Sieyès was striving to body forth the constitution which for many years had been nebulously floating in his brain. The function of the Socratic [Greek: maieutaes] was discharged by Boulay de la Meurthe, who with difficulty reduced those ideas to definite shape. The new constitution was based on the principle: "Confidence comes from below, power from above." This meant that the people, that is, all adult males, were admitted only to the preliminary stages of election of deputies, while the final act of selection was to be made by higher grades or powers. The "confidence" required of the people was to be shown not only towards their nominees, but towards those who were charged with the final and most important act of selection. The winnowing processes in the election of representatives were to be carried out on a decimal system. The adult voters meeting in their several districts were to choose one-tenth of their number, this tenth being named the Notabilities of the Commune. These, some five or six hundred thousand in number, meeting in their several Departments, were thereupon to choose one-tenth of their number; and the resulting fifty or sixty thousand men, termed Notabilities of the Departments, were again to name one-tenth of their number, who were styled Notabilities of the Nation. But the most important act of selection was still to come--from above. From this last-named list the governing powers were to select the members of the legislative bodies and the chief officials and servants of the Government.
The executive now claims a brief notice. The well-worn theory of the distinction of powers, that is, the legislative and executive powers, was maintained in Sieyès' plan. At the head of the Government the philosopher desired to enthrone an august personage, the Grand Elector, who was to be selected by the Senate. This Grand Elector was to nominate two Consuls, one for peace, the other for war; they were to nominate the Ministers of State, who in their turn selected the agents of power from the list of Notabilities of the Nation. The two Consuls and their Ministers administered the executive affairs. The Senate, sitting in dignified ease, was merely to safeguard the constitution, to elect the Grand Elector, and to select the members of the Corps Législatif (proper) and the Tribunate.
Distrust of the former almost superhuman activity in law-making now appeared in divisions, checks, and balances quite ingenious in their complexity. The Legislature was divided into three councils: the Corps Législatif, properly so called, which listened in silence to proposals of laws offered by the Council of State and criticised or orally approved by the Tribunate.[131] These three bodies were not only divided, but were placed in opposition, especially the two talking bodies, which resembled plaintiff and defendant pleading before a gagged judge. But even so the constitution was not sufficiently guarded against Jacobins or royalists. If by any chance a dangerous proposal were forced through these mutually distrustful bodies, the Senate was charged with the task of vetoing it, and if the Grand Elector, or any other high official, strove to gain a perpetual dictatorship, the Senate was at once to absorb him into its ranks.
Moreover, lest the voters should send up too large a proportion of Jacobins or royalists, the first selection of members of the great Councils and the chief functionaries for local affairs was to be made by the Consuls, who thus primarily exercised not only the "power from above," but also the "confidence" which ought to have come from below. Perhaps this device was necessary to set in motion Sieyès' system of wheels within wheels; for the Senate, which was to elect the Grand Elector, by whom the executive officers were indirectly to be chosen, was in part self-sufficient: the Consuls named the first members, who then co-opted, that is, chose the new members. Some impulse from without was also needed to give the constitution life; and this impulse was now to come. Where Sieyès had only contrived wheels, checks, regulator, break, and safety-valve, there now rushed in an imperious will which not only simplified the parts but supplied an irresistible motive power.
The complexity of much of the mechanism, especially that relating to popular election and the legislature, entirely suited Bonaparte. But, while approving the triple winnowing, to which Sieyès subjected the results of manhood suffrage, and the subordination of the legislative to the executive authority,[132] the general expressed his entire disapproval of the limitations of the Grand Elector's powers. The name was anti-republican: let it be changed to First Consul. And whereas Sieyès condemned his grand functionary to the repose of a roi fainéant, Bonaparte secured to him practically all the powers assigned by Sieyès to the Consuls for Peace and for War. Lastly, Bonaparte protested against the right of absorbing him being given to the Senate. Here also he was successful; and thus a delicately poised bureaucracy was turned into an almost unlimited dictatorship.
This metamorphosis may well excite wonder. But, in truth, Sieyès and his colleagues were too weary and sceptical to oppose the one "intensely practical man." To Bonaparte's trenchant reasons and incisive tones the theorist could only reply by a scornful silence broken by a few bitter retorts. To the irresistible power of the general he could only oppose the subtlety of a student. And, indeed, who can picture Bonaparte, the greatest warrior of the age, delegating the control of all warlike operations to a Consul for War while Austrian cannon were thundering in the county of Nice and British cruisers were insulting the French coasts? It was inevitable that the reposeful Grand Elector should be transformed into the omnipotent First Consul, and that these powers should be wielded by Bonaparte himself.[133]
The extent of the First Consul's powers, as finally settled by the joint commission, was as follows. He had the direct and sole nomination of the members of the general administration, of those of the departmental and municipal councils, and of the administrators, afterwards called prefects and sub-prefects. He also appointed all military and naval officers, ambassadors and agents sent to foreign Powers, and the judges in civil and criminal suits, except the juges de paix and, later on, the members of the Cour de Cassation. He therefore controlled the army, navy, and diplomatic service, as well as the general administration. He also signed treaties, though these might be discussed, and must be ratified, by the legislative bodies. The three Consuls were to reside in the Tuileries palace; but, apart from the enjoyment of 150,000 francs a year, and occasional consultation by the First Consul, the position of these officials was so awkward that Bonaparte frankly remarked to Roederer that it would have been better to call them Grand Councillors. They were, in truth, supernumeraries added to the chief of the State, as a concession to the spirit of equality and as a blind to hide the reality of the new despotism. All three were to be chosen for ten years, and were re-eligible.
Such is an outline of the constitution of 1799 (Year VIII.). It was promulgated on December 15th, 1799, and was offered to the people for acceptance, in a proclamation which closed with the words: "Citizens, the Revolution is confined to the principles which commenced it. It is finished." The news of this last fact decided the enthusiastic acceptance of the constitution. In a plébiscite, or mass vote of the people, held in the early days of 1800, it was accepted by an overwhelming majority, viz., by 3,011,007 as against only 1,562 negatives. No fact so forcibly proves the failure of absolute democracy in France; and, whatever may be said of the methods of securing this national acclaim, it was, and must ever remain, the soundest of Bonaparte's titles to power. To a pedant who once inquired about his genealogy he significantly replied: "It dates from Brumaire."
Shortly before the plébiscite, Sieyès and Ducos resigned their temporary commissions as Consuls: they were rewarded with seats in the Senate; and Sieyès, in consideration of his constitutional work, received the estate of Crosne from the nation.
"Sieyès à Bonaparte a fait present du trône, Sous un pompeux débris croyant l'ensevelir. Bonaparte à Sieyès a fait present de Crosne Pour le payer et l'avilir."
The sting in the tail of Lebrun's epigram struck home. Sieyès' acceptance of Crosne was, in fact, his acceptance of notice to quit public affairs, in which he had always moved with philosophic disdain. He lived on to the year 1836 in dignified ease, surveying with Olympian calm the storms of French and Continental politics.
The two new Consuls were Cambacérès and Lebrun. The former was known as a learned jurist and a tactful man. He had voted for the death of Louis XVI., but his subsequent action had been that of a moderate, and his knowledge of legal affairs was likely to be of the highest service to Bonaparte, who intrusted him with a general oversight of legislation. His tact was seen in his refusal to take up his abode in the Tuileries, lest, as he remarked to Lebrun, he might have to move out again soon. The third Consul, Lebrun, was a moderate with leanings towards constitutional royalty. He was to prove another useful satellite to Bonaparte, who intrusted him with the general oversight of finance and regarded him as a connecting link with the moderate royalists. The chief secretary to the Consuls was Maret, a trusty political agent, who had striven for peace with England both in 1793 and in 1797.
As for the Ministers, they were now reinforced by Talleyrand, who took up that of Foreign Affairs, and by Berthier, who brought his powers of hard work to that of War, until he was succeeded for a time by Carnot. Lucien Bonaparte, and later Chaptal, became Minister of the Interior, Gaudin controlled Finance, Forfait the Navy, and Fouché the Police. The Council of State was organized in the following sections; that of War, which was presided over by General Brune: Marine, by Admiral Gantheaume: Finance, by Defermon: Legislation, by Boulay de la Meurthe: the Interior, by Roederer.
The First Consul soon showed that he intended to adopt a non-partisan and thoroughly national policy. That had been, it is true, the aim of the Directors in their policy of balance and repression of extreme parties on both sides. For the reasons above indicated, they had failed: but now a stronger and more tactful grasp was to succeed in a feat which naturally became easier every year that removed the passions of the revolutionary epoch further into the distance. Men cannot for ever perorate, and agitate and plot. A time infallibly comes when an able leader can successfully appeal to their saner instincts: and that hour had now struck. Bonaparte's appeal was made to the many, who cared not for politics, provided that they themselves were left in security and comfort: it was urged quietly, persistently, and with the reserve power of a mighty prestige and of overwhelming military force. Throughout the whole of the Consulate, a policy of moderation, which is too often taken for weakness, was strenuously carried through by the strongest man and the greatest warrior of the age.
The truly national character of his rule was seen in many ways. He excluded from high office men who were notorious regicides, excepting a few who, like Fouché, were too clever to be dispensed with. The constitutionals of 1791 and even declared royalists were welcomed back to France, and many of the Fructidorian exiles also returned.[134] The list of émigrés was closed, so that neither political hatred nor private greed could misrepresent a journey as an act of political emigration. Equally generous and prudent was the treatment of Roman Catholics. Toleration was now extended to orthodox or non-juring priests, who were required merely to promise allegiance to the new constitution. By this act of timely clemency, orthodox priests were allowed to return to France, and they were even suffered to officiate in places where no opposition was thereby aroused.
While thus removing one of the chief grievances of the Norman, Breton and Vendéan peasants, who had risen as much for their religion as for their king, he determined to crush their revolts. The north-west, and indeed parts of the south of France, were still simmering with rebellions and brigandage. In Normandy a daring and able leader named Frotté headed a considerable band of malcontents, and still more formidable were the Breton "Chouans" that followed the peasant leader Georges Cadoudal. This man was a born leader. Though but thirty years of age, his fierce courage had long marked him out as the first fighter of his race and creed. His features bespoke a bold, hearty spirit, and his massive frame defied fatigue and hardship. He struggled on; and in the autumn of 1799 fortune seemed about to favour the "whites": the revolt was spreading; and had a Bourbon prince landed in Brittany before Bonaparte returned from Egypt, the royalists might quite possibly have overthrown the Directory. But Bonaparte's daring changed the whole aspect of affairs. The news of the stroke of Brumaire gave the royalists pause. At first they believed that the First Consul would soon call back the king, and Bonaparte skilfully favoured this notion: he offered a pacification, of which some of the harassed peasants availed themselves. Georges himself for a time advised a reconciliation, and a meeting of the royalist leaders voted to a man that they desired "to have the king and you" (Bonaparte). One of them, Hyde de Neuville, had an interview with the First Consul at Paris, and has left on record his surprise at seeing the slight form of the man whose name was ringing through France. At the first glance he took him for a rather poorly dressed lackey; but when the general raised his eyes and searched him through and through with their eager fire, the royalist saw his error and fell under the spell of a gaze which few could endure unmoved. The interview brought no definite result.
Other overtures made by Bonaparte were more effective. True to his plan of dividing his enemies, he appealed to the clergy to end the civil strife. The appeal struck home to the heart or the ambitions of a cleric named Bernier. This man was but a village priest of La Vendée: yet his natural abilities gained him an ascendancy in the councils of the insurgents, which the First Consul was now victoriously to exploit. Whatever may have been Bernier's motives, he certainly acted with some duplicity. Without forewarning Cadoudal, Bourmont, Frotté, and other royalist leaders, he secretly persuaded the less combative leaders to accept the First Consul's terms; and a pacification was arranged (January 18th), In vain did Cadoudal rage against this treachery: in vain did he strive to break the armistice. Frotté in Normandy was the last to capitulate and the first to feel Bonaparte's vengeance: on a trumped-up charge of treachery he was hurried before a court-martial and shot. An order was sent from Paris for his pardon; but a letter which Bonaparte wrote to Brune on the day of the execution contains the ominous phrase: By this time Frotté ought to be shot; and a recently published letter to Hédouville expresses the belief that the punishment of that desperate leader will doubtless contribute to the complete pacification of the West.[135]
In the hope of gaining over the Chouans, Bonaparte required their chiefs to come to Paris, where they received the greatest consideration. In Bernier the priest, Bonaparte discerned diplomatic gifts of a high order, which were soon to be tested in a far more important negotiation. The nobles, too, received flattering attentions which touched their pride and assured their future insignificance. Among them was Count Bourmont, the Judas of the Waterloo campaign.
In contrast with the priest and the nobles, Georges Cadoudal stood firm as a rock. That suave tongue spoke to him of glory, honour, and the fatherland: he heeded it not, for he knew it had ordered the death of Frotté. There stood these fighters alone, face to face, types of the north and south, of past and present, fiercest and toughest of living men, their stern wills racked in wrestle for two hours. But southern craft was foiled by Breton steadfastness, and Georges went his way unshamed. Once outside the palace, his only words to his friend, Hyde de Neuville, were: "What a mind I had to strangle him in these arms!" Shadowed by Bonaparte's spies, and hearing that he was to be arrested, he fled to England; and Normandy and Brittany enjoyed the semblance of peace.[136]
Thus ended the civil war which for nearly seven years had rent France in twain. Whatever may be said about the details of Bonaparte's action, few will deny its beneficent results on French life. Harsh and remorseless as Nature herself towards individuals, he certainly, at this part of his career, promoted the peace and prosperity of the masses. And what more can be said on behalf of a ruler at the end of a bloody revolution?
Meanwhile the First Consul had continued to develop Sieyès' constitution in the direction of autocracy. The Council of State, which was little more than an enlarged Ministry, had been charged with the vague and dangerous function of "developing the sense of laws" on the demand of the Consuls; and it was soon seen that this Council was merely a convenient screen to hide the operations of Bonaparte's will. On the other hand, a blow was struck at the Tribunate, the only public body which had the right of debate and criticism. It was now proposed (January, 1800) that the time allowed for debate should be strictly limited. This restriction to the right of free discussion met with little opposition. One of the most gifted of the new tribunes, Benjamin Constant, the friend of Madame de Staël, eloquently pleaded against this policy of distrust which would reduce the Tribunate to a silence that would be heard by Europe. It was in vain. The rabid rhetoric of the past had infected France with a foolish fear of all free debate. The Tribunate signed its own death warrant; and the sole result of its feeble attempt at opposition was that Madame de Staël's salon was forthwith deserted by the Liberals who had there found inspiration; while the gifted authoress herself was officially requested to retire into the country.
The next act of the central power struck at freedom of the press. As a few journals ventured on witticisms at the expense of the new Government, the Consuls ordered the suppression of all the political journals of Paris except thirteen; and three even of these favoured papers were suppressed on April 7th. The reason given for this despotic action was the need of guiding public opinion wisely during the war, and of preventing any articles "contrary to the respect due to the social compact, to the sovereignty of the people, and to the glory of the armies." By a finely ironical touch Rousseau's doctrine of the popular sovereignty was thus invoked to sanction its violation. The incident is characteristic of the whole tendency of events, which showed that the dawn of personal rule was at hand. In fact, Bonaparte had already taken the bold step of removing to the Tuileries, and that too, on the very day when he ordered public mourning for the death of Washington (February 7th). No one but the great Corsican would have dared to brave the comments which this coincidence provoked. But he was necessary to France, and all men knew it. At the first sitting of the provisional Consuls, Ducos had said to him: "It is useless to vote about the presidence; it belongs to you of right"; and, despite the wry face pulled by Sieyès, the general at once took the chair. Scarcely less remarkable than the lack of energy in statesmen was the confusion of thought in the populace. Mme. Reinhard tells us that after the coup d'état people believed they had returned to the first days of liberty. What wonder, then, that the one able and strong-willed man led the helpless many and re-moulded Sieyès' constitution in a fashion that was thus happily parodied:
"J'ai, pour les fous, d'un Tribunat Conservé la figure; Pour les sots je laisse un Sénat, Mais ce n'est qu'en peinture; A ce stupide magistrat Ma volonté préside; Et tout le Conseil d'Etat Dans mon sabre réside."
* * * * *
XI. MARENGO: LUNÉVILLE
Reserving for the next chapter a description of the new civil institutions of France, it will be convenient now to turn to foreign affairs. Having arranged the most urgent of domestic questions, the First Consul was ready to encounter the forces of the Second Coalition. He had already won golden opinions in France by endeavouring peacefully to dissolve it. On the 25th of December, 1799, he sent two courteous letters, one to George III., the other to the Emperor Francis, proposing an immediate end to the war. The close of the letter to George III. has been deservedly admired: "France and England by the abuse of their strength may, for the misfortune of all nations, be long in exhausting it: but I venture to declare that the fate of all civilized nations is concerned in the termination of a war which kindles a conflagration over the whole world." This noble sentiment touched the imagination of France and of friends of peace everywhere.
And yet, if the circumstances of the time be considered, the first agreeable impressions aroused by the perusal of this letter must be clouded over by doubts. The First Consul had just seized on power by illegal and forcible means, and there was as yet little to convince foreign States that he would hold it longer than the men whom he had displaced. Moreover, France was in a difficult position. Her treasury was empty; her army in Italy was being edged into the narrow coast-line near Genoa; and her oriental forces were shut up in their new conquest. Were not the appeals to Austria and England merely a skillful device to gain time? Did his past power in Italy and Egypt warrant the belief that he would abandon the peninsula and the new colony? Could the man who had bartered away Venetia and seized Malta and Egypt be fitly looked upon as the sacred'r peacemaker? In diplomacy men's words are interpreted by their past conduct and present circumstances, neither of which tended to produce confidence in Bonaparte's pacific overtures; and neither Francis nor George III. looked on the present attempt as anything but a skilful means of weakening the Coalition.
Indeed, that league was, for various reasons, all but dissolved by internal dissensions. Austria was resolved to keep all the eastern part of Piedmont and the greater part of the Genoese Republic. While welcoming the latter half of this demand, George III.'s Ministers protested against the absorption of so great a part of Piedmont as an act of cruel injustice to the King of Sardinia. Austria was annoyed at the British remonstrances and was indignant at the designs of the Czar on Corsica. Accordingly no time could have been better chosen by Bonaparte for seeking to dissolve the Coalition, as he certainly hoped to do by these two letters. Only the staunch support of legitimist claims by England then prevented the Coalition from degenerating into a scramble for Italian territories.[137] And, if we may trust the verdict of contemporaries and his own confession at St. Helena, Bonaparte never expected any other result from these letters than an increase of his popularity in France. This was enhanced by the British reply, which declared that His Majesty could not place his reliance on "general professions of pacific dispositions": France had waged aggressive war, levied exactions, and overthrown institutions in neighbouring States; and the British Government could not as yet discern any abandonment of this system: something more was required for a durable peace: "The best and most natural pledge of its reality and permanence would be the restoration of that line of princes which for so many centuries maintained the French nation in prosperity at home and in consideration and respect abroad." This answer has been sharply criticised, and justly so, if its influence on public opinion be alone considered. But a perusal of the British Foreign Office Records reveals the reason for the use of these stiffly legitimist claims. Legitimacy alone promised to stop the endless shiftings of the political kaleidoscope, whether by France, Austria, or Russia. Our ambassador at Vienna was requested to inform the Government of Vienna of the exact wording of the British reply:
"As a proof of the zeal and steadiness with which His Majesty adheres to the principles of the Confederacy, and as a testimony of the confidence with which he anticipates a similar answer from His Imperial Majesty, to whom an overture of a similar nature has without doubt been made."
But this correct conduct, while admirably adapted to prop up the tottering Coalition, was equally favourable to the consolidation of Bonaparte's power. It helped to band together the French people to resist the imposition of their exiled royal house by external force. Even George III. thought it "much too strong," though he suggested no alteration. At once Bonaparte retorted in a masterly note; he ironically presumed that His Britannic Majesty admitted the right of nations to choose their form of government, since only by that right did he wear the British crown; and he invited him not to apply to other peoples a principle which would recall the Stuarts to the throne of Great Britain.
Bonaparte's diplomatic game was completely won during the debates on the King's speech at Westminster at the close of January, 1800. Lord Grenville laboriously proved that peace was impossible with a nation whose war was against all order, religion, and morality; and he cited examples of French lawlessness from Holland and Switzerland to Malta and Egypt. Pitt declared that the French Revolution was the severest trial which Providence had ever yet inflicted on the nations of the earth; and, claiming that there was no security in negotiating with France, owing to her instability, he summed up his case in the Ciceronian phrase: Pacem nolo quia infida. Ministers carried the day by 260 votes to 64; but they ranged nearly the whole of France on the side of the First Consul. No triumph in the field was worth more to him than these Philippics, which seemed to challenge France to build up a strong Government in order that the Court of St. James might find some firm foundation for future negotiations.
Far more dextrous was the conduct of the Austrian diplomatists. Affecting to believe in the sincerity of the First Consul's proposal for peace, they so worded their note as to draw from him a reply that he was prepared to discuss terms of peace on the basis of the Treaty of Campo Formio.[138] As Austria had since then conquered the greater part of Italy, Bonaparte's reply immediately revealed his determination to reassert French supremacy in Italy and the Rhineland. The action of the Courts of Vienna and London was not unlike that of the sun and the wind in the proverbial saw. Viennese suavity induced Bonaparte to take off his coat and show himself as he really was: while the conscientious bluster of Grenville and Pitt made the First Consul button up his coat, and pose as the buffeted peacemaker.
The allies had good grounds for confidence. Though Russia had withdrawn from the Second Coalition yet the Austrians continued their victorious advance in Italy. In April, 1800, they severed the French forces near Savona, driving back Suchet's corps towards Nice, while the other was gradually hemmed in behind the redoubts of Genoa. There the Imperialist advance was stoutly stayed. Masséna, ably seconded by Oudinot and Soult, who now gained their first laurels as generals, maintained a most obstinate resistance, defying alike the assaults of the white-coats, the bombs hurled by the English squadron, and the deadlier inroads of famine and sickness. The garrison dwindled by degrees to less than 10,000 effectives, but they kept double the number of Austrians there, while Bonaparte was about to strike a terrible blow against their rear and that of Melas further west. It was for this that the First Consul urged Masséna to hold out at Genoa to the last extremity, and nobly was the order obeyed.
Suchet meanwhile defended the line of the River Var against Melas. In Germany, Moreau with his larger forces slowly edged back the chief Austrian army, that of General Kray, from the defiles of the Black Forest, compelling it to fall back on the intrenched camp at Ulm.
On their side, the Austrians strove to compel Masséna to a speedy surrender, and then with a large force to press on into Nice, Provence, and possibly Savoy, surrounding Suchet's force, and rousing the French royalists of the south to a general insurrection. They also had the promise of the help of a British force, which was to be landed at some point on the coast and take Suchet in the flank or rear.[139] Such was the plan, daring in outline and promising great things, provided that everything went well. If Masséna surrendered, if the British War Office and Admiralty worked up to time, if the winds were favourable, and if the French royalists again ventured on a revolt, then France would be crippled, perhaps conquered. As for the French occupation of Switzerland and Moreau's advance into Swabia, that was not to prevent the prosecution of the original Austrian plan of advancing against Provence and wresting Nice and Savoy from the French grasp. This scheme has been criticised as if it were based solely on military considerations; but it was rather dictated by schemes of political aggrandizement. The conquest of Nice and Savoy was necessary to complete the ambitious schemes of the Hapsburgs, who sought to gain a large part of Piedmont at the expense of the King of Sardinia, and after conquering Savoy and Nice, to thrust that unfortunate king to the utmost verge of the peninsula, which the prowess of his descendants has ultimately united under the Italian tricolour.
The allied plan sinned against one of the elementary rules of strategy; it exposed a large force to a blow from the rear, namely, from Switzerland. The importance of this immensely strong central position early attracted Bonaparte's attention. On the 17th of March he called his secretary, Bourrienne (so the latter states), and lay down with him on a map of Piedmont: then, placing pins tipped, some with red, others with black wax, so as to denote the positions of the troops, he asked him to guess where the French would beat their foes:
"How the devil should I know?" said Bourrienne. "Why, look here, you fool," said the First Consul: "Melas is at Alessandria with his headquarters. There he will remain until Genoa surrenders. He has at Alessandria his magazines, his hospitals, his artillery, his reserves. Crossing the Alps here (at the Great St. Bernard), I shall fall upon Melas, cut off his communications with Austria, and meet him here in the plains of the River Scrivia at San Giuliano."
I quote this passage as showing how readily such stories of ready-made plans gain credence, until they come to be tested by Napoleon's correspondence. There we find no strategic soothsaying, but only a close watching of events as they develop day by day. In March and April he kept urging on Moreau the need of an early advance, while he considered the advantages offered by the St. Gotthard, Simplon, and Great St. Bernard passes for his own army. On April 27th he decided against the first (except for a detachment), because Moreau's advance was too slow to safeguard his rear on that route. He now preferred the Great St. Bernard, but still doubted whether, after crossing, he should make for Milan, or strike at Masséna's besiegers, in case that general should be very hard pressed. Like all great commanders, he started with a general plan, but he arranged the details as the situation required. In his letter of May 19th, he poured scorn on Parisian editors who said he prophesied that in a month he would be at Milan. "That is not in my character. Very often I do not say what I know: but never do I say what will be."
The better to hide his purpose, he chose as his first base of operations the city of Dijon, whence he seemed to threaten either the Swabian or the Italian army of his foes. But this was not enough. At the old Burgundian capital he assembled his staff and a few regiments of conscripts in order to mislead the English and Austrian spies; while the fighting battalions were drafted by diverse routes to Geneva or Lausanne. So skilful were these preparations that, in the early days of May, the greater part of his men and stores were near the lake of Geneva, whence they were easily transferred to the upper valley of the Rhone. In order that he might have a methodical, hard-working coadjutor he sent Berthier from the office of the Ministry of War, where he had displayed less ability than Bernadotte, to be commander-in-chief of the "army of reserve." In reality Berthier was, as before in Italy and Egypt, chief of the staff; but he had the titular dignity of commander which the constitution of 1800 forbade the First Consul to assume.
On May 6th Bonaparte left Paris for Geneva, where he felt the pulse of every movement in both campaigns. At that city, on hearing the report of his general of engineers, he decided to take the Great St. Bernard route into Italy, as against the Simplon. With redoubled energy, he now supervised the thousands of details that were needed to insure success: for, while prone to indulging in grandiose schemes, he revelled in the work which alone could bring them within his grasp: or, as Wellington once remarked, "Nothing was too great or too small for his proboscis." The difficulties of sending a large army over the Great St. Bernard were indeed immense. That pass was chosen because it presented only five leagues of ground impracticable for carriages. But those five leagues tested the utmost powers of the army and of its chiefs. Marmont, who commanded the artillery, had devised the ingenious plan of taking the cannon from their carriages and placing them in the hollowed-out trunks of pine, so that the trunnions fitting into large notches kept them steady during the ascent over the snow and the still more difficult descent.[140] The labour of dragging the guns wore out the peasants; then the troops were invited--a hundred at a time--to take a turn at the ropes, and were exhilarated by martial airs played by the bands, or by bugles and drums sounding the charge at the worst places of the ascent.
The track sometimes ran along narrow ledges where a false step meant death, or where avalanches were to be feared. The elements, however, were propitious, and the losses insignificant. This was due to many causes: the ardour of the troops in an enterprise which appealed to French imagination and roused all their activities; the friendliness of the mountaineers; and the organizing powers of Bonaparte and of his staff; all these may be cited as elements of success. They present a striking contrast to the march of Hannibal's army over one of the western passes of the Alps. His motley host struggled over a long stretch of mountains in the short days of October over unknown paths, in one part swept away by a fall of the cliff, and ever and anon beset by clouds of treacherous Gauls. Seeing that the great Carthaginian's difficulties began long before he reached the Alps, that he was encumbered by elephants, and that his army was composed of diverse races held together only by trust in the prowess of their chief, his exploit was far more wonderful than that of Bonaparte, which, indeed, more nearly resembles the crossing of the St. Bernard by Francis I. in 1515. The difference between the conditions of Hannibal's and Bonaparte's enterprises may partly be measured by the time which they occupied. Whereas Hannibal's march across the Alps lasted fifteen days, three of which were spent in the miseries of a forced halt amidst the snow, the First Consul's forces took but seven days. Whereas the Carthaginian army was weakened by hunger, the French carried their full rations of biscuit; and at the head of the pass the monks of the Hospice of St. Bernard served out the rations of bread, cheese, and wine which the First Consul had forwarded, and which their own generosity now doubled. The hospitable fathers themselves served at the tables set up in front of the Hospice.
After insuring the regular succession of troops and stores, Bonaparte himself began the ascent on May 20th. He wore the gray overcoat which had already become famous; and his features were fixed in that expression of calm self-possession which he ever maintained in face of difficulty. The melodramatic attitudes of horse and rider, which David has immortalized in his great painting, are, of course, merely symbolical of the genius of militant democracy prancing over natural obstacles and wafted onwards and upwards by the breath of victory. The living figure was remarkable only for stern self-restraint and suppressed excitement; instead of the prancing war-horse limned by David, his beast of burden was a mule, led by a peasant; and, in place of victory, he had heard that Lannes with the vanguard had found an unexpected obstacle to his descent into Italy. The narrow valley of the Dora Baltea, by which alone they could advance, was wellnigh blocked by the fort of Bard, which was firmly held by a small Austrian garrison and defied all the efforts of Lannes and Berthier. This was the news that met the First Consul during his ascent, and again at the Hospice. After accepting the hospitality of the monks, and spending a short time in the library and chapel, he resumed his journey; and on the southern slopes he and his staff now and again amused themselves by sliding down the tracks which the passage of thousands of men had rendered slippery. After halting at Aosta, he proceeded down the valley to the fort of Bard.
Meanwhile some of his foot-soldiers had worked their way round this obstacle by a goat-track among the hills and had already reached Ivrea lower down the valley. Still the fort held out against the cannonade of the French. Its commanding position seemed to preclude all hope of getting the artillery past it; and without artillery the First Consul could not hope for success in the plains of Piedmont. Unable to capture the fort, he bethought him of hurrying by night the now remounted guns under the cover of the houses of the village. For this purpose he caused the main street to be strewn with straw and dung, while the wheels of the cannon were covered over so as to make little noise. They were then dragged quietly through the village almost within pistol shot of the garrison: nevertheless, the defenders took alarm, and, firing with musketry and grenades, exploded some ammunition wagons and inflicted other losses; yet 40 guns and 100 wagons were got past the fort.
How this unfailing resource contrasts with the heedless behaviour of the enemy! Had they speedily reinforced their detachment at Bard, there can be little doubt that Bonaparte's movements could have been seriously hampered. But, up to May 21st, Melas was ignorant that his distant rear was being assailed, and the 3,000 Austrians who guarded the vale of the Dora Baltea were divided, part being at Bard and others at Ivrea. The latter place was taken by a rush of Lannes' troops on May 22nd, and Bard was blockaded by part of the French rearguard.
Bonaparte's army, if the rearguard be included, numbered 41,000 men. Meanwhile, farther east, a French force of 15,000 men, drawn partly from Moreau's army and led by Moncey, was crossing the St. Gotthard pass and began to drive back the Austrian outposts in the upper valley of the Ticino; and 5,000 men, marching over the Mont Cenis pass, threatened Turin from the west. The First Consul's aim now was to unite the two chief forces, seize the enemy's magazines, and compel him to a complete surrender. This daring resolve took shape at Aosta on the 24th, when he heard that Melas was, on the 19th, still at Nice, unconscious of his doom. The chance of ending the war at one blow was not to be missed, even if Masséna had to shift for himself.
But already Melas' dream of triumph had vanished. On the 21st, hearing the astonishing news that a large force had crossed the St. Bernard, he left 18,000 men to oppose Suchet on the Var, and hurried back with the remainder to Turin. At the Piedmontese capital he heard that he had to deal with the First Consul; but not until the last day of May did he know that Moncey was forcing the St. Gotthard and threatening Milan. Then, realizing the full extent of his danger, he hastily called in all the available troops in order to fight his way through to Mantua. He even sent an express to the besiegers of Genoa to retire on Alessandria; but negotiations had been opened with Masséna for the surrender of that stronghold, and the opinion of Lord Keith, the English admiral, decided the Austrian commander there to press the siege to the very end. The city was in the direst straits. Horses, dogs, cats, and rats were at last eagerly sought as food: and at every sortie crowds of the starving inhabitants followed the French in order to cut down grass, nettles, and leaves, which they then boiled with salt.[141] A revolt threatened by the wretched townsfolk was averted by Masséna ordering his troops to fire on every gathering of more than four men. At last, on June 4th, with 8,000 half-starved soldiers he marched through the Austrian posts with the honours of war. The stern warrior would not hear of the word surrender or capitulation. He merely stated to the allied commanders that on June 4th his troops would evacuate Genoa or clear their path by the bayonet.
Bonaparte has been reproached for not marching at once to succour Masséna: the charge of desertion was brought by Masséna and Thiébault, and has been driven home by Lanfrey with his usual skill. It will, however, scarcely bear a close examination. The Austrians, at the first trustworthy news of the French inroads into Piedmont and Lombardy, were certain to concentrate either at Turin or Alessandria. Indeed, Melas was already near Turin, and would have fallen on the First Consul's flank had the latter marched due south towards Genoa.[142] Such a march, with only 40,000 men, would have been perilous: and it could at most only have rescued a now reduced and almost famishing garrison. Besides, he very naturally expected the besiegers of Genoa to retreat now that their rear was threatened.
Sound policy and a desire to deal a dramatic stroke spurred on the First Consul to a more daring and effective plan; to clear Lombardy of the Imperialists and seize their stores; then, after uniting with Moncey's 15,000 troops, to cut off the retreat of all the Austrian forces west of Milan.
On entering Milan he was greeted with wild acclaim by the partisans of France (June 2nd); they extolled the energy and foresight that brought two armies, as it were down from the clouds, to confound their oppressors. Numbers of men connected with the Cisalpine Republic had been proscribed, banished, or imprisoned by the Austrians; and their friends now hailed him as the restorer of their republic. The First Consul spent seven days in selecting the men who were to rebuild the Cisalpine State, in beating back the eastern forces of Austria beyond the River Adda, and in organizing his troops and those of Moncey for the final blow. The military problems, indeed, demanded great care and judgment. His position was curiously the reverse of that which he had occupied in 1796. Then the French held Tortona, Alessandria, and Valenza, and sought to drive back the Austrians to the walls of Mantua. Now the Imperialists, holding nearly the same positions, were striving to break through the French lines which cut them off from that city of refuge; and Bonaparte, having forces slightly inferior to his opponents, felt the difficulty of frustrating their escape.
Three routes were open to Melas. The most direct was by way of Tortona and Piacenza along the southern bank of the Po, through the difficult defile of Stradella: or he might retire towards Genoa, across the Apennines, and regain Mantua by a dash across the Modenese: or he might cross the Po at Valenza and the Ticino near Pavia. All these roads had to be watched by the French as they cautiously drew towards their quarry. Bonaparte's first move was to send Murat with a considerable body of troops to seize Piacenza and to occupy the defile of Stradella. These important posts were wrested from the Austrian vanguard; and this success was crowned on June 9th by General Lannes' brilliant victory at Montebello over a superior Austrian force marching from Genoa towards Piacenza, which he drove back towards Alessandria. Smaller bodies of French were meanwhile watching the course of the Ticino, and others seized the magazines of the enemy at Cremona.
After gaining precious news as to Melas' movements from an intercepted despatch, Bonaparte left Milan on June 9th, and proceeded to Stradella. There he waited for news of Suchet and Masséna from the side of Savona and Ceva; for their forces, if united, might complete the circle which he was drawing around the Imperialists.[143] He hoped that Masséna would have joined Suchet near Savona; but owing to various circumstances, for which Masséna was in no wise to blame, their junction was delayed; and Suchet, though pressing on towards Acqui, was unable to cut off the Austrian retreat on Genoa. Yet he so harassed the corps opposed to him in its retreat from Nice that only about 8,000 Austrians joined Melas from that quarter.[144]
Doubtless, Melas' best course would still have been to make a dash for Genoa and trust to the English ships. But this plan galled the pride of the general, who had culled plenteous laurels in Italy until the approach of Bonaparte threatened to snatch the whole chaplet from his brow. He and his staff sought to restore their drooping fortunes by a bold rush against the ring of foes that were closing around. Never has an effort of this kind so nearly succeeded and yet so wholly failed.
The First Consul, believing that the Austrians were bent solely on flight, advanced from Stradella, where success would have been certain, into the plains of Tortona, whence he could check any move of theirs southwards on Genoa. But now the space which he occupied was so great as to weaken his line at any one point; while his foes had the advantage of the central position.
Bonaparte was also forced to those enveloping tactics which had so often proved fatal to the Austrians four years previously; and this curious reversal of his usual tactics may account for the anxiety which he betrayed as he moved towards Marengo. He had, however, recently been encouraged by the arrival of Desaix from Paris after his return from Egypt. This dashing officer and noble man inspired him with a sincere affection, as was seen by the three hours of eager converse which he held with him on his arrival, as also by his words to Bourrienne: "He is quite an antique character." Desaix with 5,300 troops was now despatched on the night of June 13th towards Genoa to stop the escape of the Austrians in that direction. This eccentric move has been severely criticised: but the facts, as then known by Bonaparte, seemed to show that Melas was about to march on Genoa. The French vanguard under Gardane had in the afternoon easily driven the enemy's front from the village of Marengo; and Gardane had even reported that there was no bridge over the River Bormida by which the enemy could debouch into the plain of Marengo. Marmont, pushing on later in the evening, had discovered that there was at least one well-defended bridge; and when early next morning Gardane's error was known, the First Consul, with a blaze of passion against the offender, sent a courier in hot haste to recall Desaix. Long before he could arrive, the battle of Marengo had begun: and for the greater part of that eventful day, June the 14th, the French had only 18000 men wherewith to oppose the onset of 31,000 Austrians.[145]
As will be seen by the accompanying map, the village of Marengo lies in the plain that stretches eastwards from the banks of the River Bormida towards the hilly country of Stradella. The village lies on the high-road leading eastwards from the fortress of Alessandria, the chief stronghold of north-western Italy.
The plain is cut up by numerous obstacles. Through Marengo runs a stream called the Fontanone. The deep curves of the Bormida, the steep banks of the Fontanone, along with the villages, farmsteads, and vineyards scattered over the plain, all helped to render an advance exceedingly difficult in face of a determined enemy; and these natural features had no small share in deciding the fortunes of the day.
Shortly after dawn Melas began to pour his troops across the Bormida, and drove in the French outposts on Marengo: but there they met with a tough resistance from the soldiers of Victor's division, while Kellermann, the son of the hero of Valmy, performed his first great exploit by hurling back some venturesome Austrian horsemen into the deep bed of the Fontanone. This gave time to Lannes to bring up his division, 5,000 strong, into line between Marengo and Castel Ceriolo. But when the full force of the Austrian attack was developed about 10 a.m., the Imperialists not only gained Marengo, but threw a heavy column, led by General Ott, against Lannes, who was constrained to retire, contesting every inch of the ground. Thus, when, an hour later, Bonaparte rode up from the distant rear, hurrying along his Consular Guard, his eye fell upon his battalions overpowered in front and outflanked on both wings. At once he launched his Consular Guard, 1,000 strong, against Ott's triumphant ranks. Drawn up in square near Castel Ceriolo, it checked them for a brief space, until, plied by cannon and charged by the enemy's horse, these chosen troops also began to give ground. But at this crisis Monnier's division of 3,600 men arrived, threw itself into the fight, held up the flood of white-coats around the hamlet of Li Poggi, while Carra St. Cyr fastened his grip on Castel Ceriolo. Under cover of this welcome screen, Victor and Lannes restored some order to their divisions and checked for a time the onsets of the enemy. Slowly but surely, however, the impact of the Austrian main column, advancing along the highroad, made them draw back on San Giuliano.
By 2 p.m. the battle seemed to be lost for the French; except on the north of their line they were in full retreat, and all but five of their cannon were silenced. Melas, oppressed by his weight of years, by the terrific heat, and by two slight wounds, retired to Alessandria, leaving his chief of the staff, Zach, to direct the pursuit. But, unfortunately, Melas had sent back 2,200 horsemen to watch the district between Alessandria and Acqui, to which latter place Suchet's force was advancing. To guard against this remoter danger, he weakened his attacking force at the critical time and place; and now, when the Austrians approached the hill of San Giuliano with bands playing and colours flying, their horse was not strong enough to complete the French defeat. Still, such was the strength of their onset that all resistance seemed unavailing, until about 5 p.m. the approach of Desaix breathed new life and hope into the defence. At once he rode up to the First Consul; and if vague rumours may be credited, he was met by the eager question: "Well, what do you think of it?" To which he replied: "The battle is lost, but there is time to gain another." Marmont, who heard the conversation, denies that these words were uttered; and they presume a boldness of which even Desaix would scarcely have been guilty to his chief. What he unquestionably did urge was the immediate use of artillery to check the Austrian advance: and Marmont, hastily reinforcing his own five guns with thirteen others, took a strong position and riddled the serried ranks of the enemy as, swathed in clouds of smoke and dust, they pressed blindly forward. The First Consul disposed the troops of Desaix behind the village and a neighbouring hill; while at a little distance on the French left, Kellermann was ready to charge with his heavy cavalry as opportunity offered.
It came quickly. Marmont's guns unsteadied Zach's grenadiers: Desaix's men plied them with musketry; and while they were preparing for a last effort, Kellermann's heavy cavalry charged full on their flank. Never was surprise more complete. The column was cut in twain by this onset; and veterans, who but now seemed about to overbear all obstacles, were lying mangled by grapeshot, hacked by sabres, flying helplessly amidst the vineyards, or surrendering by hundreds. A panic spread to their comrades; and they gave way on all sides before the fiercely rallying French. The retreat became a rout as the recoiling columns neared the bridges of the Bormida: and night closed over a scene of wild confusion, as the defeated army, thrust out from the shelter of Marengo, flung itself over the river into the stronghold of Alessandria.
Such was the victory of Marengo. It was dearly bought; for, apart from the heavy losses, amounting on either side to about one-third of the number engaged, the victors sustained an irreparable loss in the death of Desaix, who fell in the moment when his skill and vigour snatched victory from defeat. The victory was immediately due to Kellermann's brilliant charge; and there can be no doubt, in spite of Savary's statements, that this young officer made the charge on his own initiative. Yet his onset could have had little effect, had not Desaix shaken the enemy and left him liable to a panic like that which brought disaster to the Imperialists at Rivoli. Bonaparte's dispositions at the crisis were undoubtedly skilful; but in the first part of the fight his conduct was below his reputation. We do not hear of him electrifying his disordered troops by any deed comparable with that of Cæsar, when, shield in hand, he flung himself among the legionaries to stem the torrent of the Nervii. At the climax of the fight he uttered the words "Soldiers, remember it is my custom to bivouac on the field of battle"--tame and egotistical words considering the gravity of the crisis.
On the evening of the great day, while paying an exaggerated compliment to Bessières and the cavalry of the Consular Guard, he merely remarked to Kellermann: "You made a very good charge"; to which that officer is said to have replied: "I am glad you are satisfied, general: for it has placed the crown on your head." Such pettiness was unworthy of the great captain who could design and carry through the memorable campaign of Marengo. If the climax was not worthy of the inception, yet the campaign as a whole must be pronounced a masterpiece. Since the days of Hannibal no design so daring and original had startled the world. A great Austrian army was stopped in its victorious career, was compelled to turn on its shattered communications, and to fight for its existence some 120 miles to the rear of the territory which it seemed to have conquered. In fact, the allied victories of the past year were effaced by this march of Bonaparte's army, which, in less than a month after the ascent of the Alps, regained Nice, Piedmont, and Lombardy, and reduced the Imperialists to the direst straits.
Staggered by this terrific blow, Melas and his staff were ready to accept any terms that were not deeply humiliating; and Bonaparte on his side was not loth to end the campaign in a blaze of glory. He consented that the Imperial troops should retire to the east of the Mincio, except at Peschiera and Mantua, which they were still to occupy. These terms have been variously criticised: Melas has been blamed for cowardice in surrendering the many strongholds, including Genoa, which his men firmly held. Yet it must be remembered that he now had at Alessandria less than 20,000 effectives, and that 30,000 Austrians in isolated bodies were practically at the mercy of the French between Savona and Brescia. One and all they could now retire to the Mincio and there resume the defence of the Imperial territories. The political designs of the Court of Vienna on Piedmont were of course shattered; but it now recovered the army which it had heedlessly sacrificed to territorial greed. Bonaparte has also been blamed for the lenience of his terms. Severer conditions could doubtless have been extorted; but he now merged the soldier in the statesman. He desired peace for the sake of France and for his own sake. After this brilliant stroke peace would be doubly grateful to a people that longed for glory but also yearned to heal the wounds of eight years' warfare. His own position as First Consul was as yet ill-established; and he desired to be back at Paris so as to curb the restive Tribunate, overawe Jacobins and royalists, and rebuild the institutions of France.
Impelled by these motives, he penned to the Emperor Francis an eloquent appeal for peace, renewing his offer of treating with Austria on the basis of the treaty of Campo Formio.[146] But Austria was not as yet so far humbled as to accept such terms; and it needed the master-stroke of Moreau at the great battle of Hohenlinden (December 2nd, 1800), and the turning of her fortresses on the Mincio by the brilliant passage of the Splügen in the depths of winter by Macdonald--a feat far transcending that of Bonaparte at the St. Bernard--to compel her to a peace. A description of these events would be beyond the scope of this work; and we now return to consider the career of Bonaparte as a statesman.
After a brief stay at Milan and Turin, where he was received as the liberator of Italy, the First Consul crossed the Alps by the Mont Cenis pass and was received with rapturous acclaim at Lyons and Paris. He had been absent from the capital less than two calendar months.
He now sent a letter to the Czar Paul, offering that, if the French garrison of Malta were compelled by famine to evacuate that island, he would place it in the hands of the Czar, as Grand Master of the Knights of St. John. Rarely has a "Greek gift" been more skilfully tendered. In the first place, Valetta was so closely blockaded by Nelson's cruisers and invested by the native Maltese that its surrender might be expected in a few weeks; and the First Consul was well aware how anxiously the Czar had been seeking to gain a foothold at Malta, whence he could menace Turkey from the south-east. In his wish completely to gain over Russia, Bonaparte also sent back, well-clad and well-armed, the prisoners taken from the Russian armies in 1799, a step which was doubly appreciated at Petersburg because the Russian troops which had campaigned with the Duke of York in Holland were somewhat shabbily treated by the British Government in the Channel Islands, where they took up their winter quarters. Accordingly the Czar now sent Kalicheff to Paris, for the formation of a Franco-Russian alliance. He was warmly received. Bonaparte promised in general terms to restore the King of Sardinia to his former realm and the Pope to his States. On his side, the Czar sent the alluring advice to Bonaparte to found a dynasty and thereby put an end to the revolutionary principles which had armed Europe against France. He also offered to recognize the natural frontiers of France, the Rhine and the Maritime Alps, and claimed that German affairs should be regulated under his own mediation. When both parties were so complaisant, a bargain was easily arranged. France and Russia accordingly joined hands in order to secure predominance in the affairs of Central and Southern Europe, and to counterbalance England's supremacy at sea.
For it was not enough to break up the Second Coalition and recover Northern Italy. Bonaparte's policy was more than European; it was oceanic. England must be beaten on her own element: then and then only could the young warrior secure his grasp on Egypt and return to his oriental schemes. His correspondence before and after the Marengo campaign reveals his eagerness for a peace with Austria and an alliance with Russia. His thoughts constantly turn to Egypt. He bargains with Britain that his army there may be revictualled, and so words his claim that troops can easily be sent also. Lord Grenville refuses (September 10th); whereupon Bonaparte throws himself eagerly into further plans for the destruction of the islanders. He seeks to inflame the Czar's wrath against the English maritime code. His success for the time is complete. At the close of 1800 the Russian Emperor marshals the Baltic Powers for the overthrow of England's navy, and outstrips Bonaparte's wildest hopes by proposing a Franco-Russian invasion of India with a view to "dealing his enemy a mortal blow." This plan, as drawn up at the close of 1800, arranged for the mustering of 35,000 Russians at Astrakan; while as many French were to fight their way to the mouth of the Danube, set sail on Russian ships for the Sea of Azov, join their allies on the Caspian Sea, sail to its southern extremity, and, rousing the Persians and Afghans by the hope of plunder, sweep the British from India. The scheme received from Bonaparte a courteous perusal; but he subjected it to several criticisms, which led to less patient rejoinders from the irascible potentate. Nevertheless, Paul began to march his troops towards the lower Volga, and several polks of Cossacks had crossed that river on the ice, when the news of his assassination cut short the scheme.[147]
The grandiose schemes of Paul vanished with their fantastic contriver; but the rapprochement of Russia to revolutionary France was ultimately to prove an event of far-reaching importance; for the eastern power thereby began to exert on the democracy of western Europe that subtle, semi-Asiatic influence which has so powerfully warped its original character.
The dawn of the nineteenth century witnessed some startling rearrangements on the political chess-board.
While Bonaparte brought Russia and France to sudden amity, the unbending maritime policy of Great Britain leagued the Baltic Powers against the mistress of the seas. In the autumn of 1800 the Czar Paul, after hearing of our capture of Malta, forthwith revived the Armed Neutrality League of 1780 and opposed the forces of Russia, Prussia, Sweden, and Denmark to the might of England's navy. But Nelson's brilliant success at Copenhagen and the murder of the Czar by a palace conspiracy shattered this league only four months after its formation, and the new Czar, Alexander, reverted for a time to friendship with England.[148] This sudden ending to the first Franco-Russia alliance so enraged Bonaparte that he caused a paragraph to be inserted in the official "Moniteur," charging the British Government with procuring the assassination of Paul, an insinuation that only proclaimed his rage at this sudden rebuff to his hitherto successful diplomacy. Though foiled for a time, he never lost sight of the hoped-for alliance, which, with a deft commixture of force and persuasion, he gained seven years later after the crushing blow of Friedland.
Dread of a Franco-Russian alliance undoubtedly helped to compel Austria to a peace. Humbled by Moreau at the great battle of Hohenlinden, the Emperor Francis opened negotiations at Lunéville in Lorraine. The subtle obstinacy of Cobenzl there found its match in the firm yet suave diplomacy of Joseph Bonaparte, who wearied out Cobenzl himself, until the march of Moreau towards Vienna compelled Francis to accept the River Adige as his boundary in Italy. The other terms of the treaty (February 9th, 1801) were practically the same as those of the treaty of Campo Formio, save that the Hapsburg Grand Duke of Tuscany was compelled to surrender his State to a son of the Bourbon Duke of Parma. He himself was to receive "compensation" in Germany, where also the unfortunate Duke of Modena was to find consolation in the district of the Breisgau on the Upper Rhine. The helplessness of the old Holy Roman Empire was, indeed, glaringly displayed; for Francis now admitted the right of the French to interfere in the rearrangement of that medley of States. He also recognized the Cisalpine, Ligurian, Helvetic, and Batavian Republics, as at present constituted; but their independence, and the liberty of their peoples to choose what form of government they thought fit, were expressly stipulated.
The Court of Naples also made peace with France by the treaty of Florence (March, 1801), whereby it withdrew its troops from the States of the Church, and closed its ports to British and Turkish ships; it also renounced in favour of the French Republic all its claims over a maritime district of Tuscany known as the Présidii, the little principality of Piombino, and a port in the Isle of Elba. These cessions fitted in well with Napoleon's schemes for the proposed elevation of the heir of the Duchy of Parma to the rank of King of Tuscany or Etruria. The King of Naples also pledged himself to admit and support a French corps in his dominions. Soult with 10,000 troops thereupon occupied Otranto, Taranto, and Brindisi, in order to hold the Neapolitan Government to its engagements, and to facilitate French intercourse with Egypt.
In his relations with the New World Bonaparte had also prospered. Certain disputes between France and the United States had led to hostilities in the year 1798. Negotiations for peace were opened in March, 1800, and led to the treaty of Morfontaine, which enabled Bonaparte to press on the Court of Madrid the scheme of the Parma-Louisiana exchange, that promised him a magnificent empire on the banks of the Mississippi.
These and other grandiose designs were confided only to Talleyrand and other intimate counsellors. But, even to the mass of mankind, the transformation scene ushered in by the nineteenth century was one of bewildering brilliance. Italy from the Alps to her heel controlled by the French; Austria compelled to forego all her Italian plans; Switzerland and Holland dominated by the First Consul's influence; Spain following submissively his imperious lead; England, despite all her naval triumphs, helpless on land; and France rapidly regaining more than all her old prestige and stability under the new institutions which form the most enduring tribute to the First Consul's glory.
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XII. THE NEW INSTITUTIONS OF FRANCE
"We have done with the romance of the Revolution: we must now commence its history. We must have eyes only for what is real and practicable in the application of principles, and not for the speculative and hypothetical." Such were the memorable words of Bonaparte to his Council of State at one of its early meetings. They strike the keynote of the era of the Consulate. It was a period of intensely practical activity that absorbed all the energies of France and caused the earlier events of the Revolution to fade away into a seemingly remote past. The failures of the civilian rulers and the military triumphs of Bonaparte had exerted a curious influence on the French character, which was in a mood of expectant receptivity. In 1800 everything was in the transitional state that favours the efforts of a master builder; and one was now at hand whose constructive ability in civil affairs equalled his transcendent genius for war.
I propose here briefly to review the most important works of reconstruction which render the Consulate and the early part of the Empire for ever famous. So vast and complex were Bonaparte's efforts in this field that they will be described, not chronologically, but subject by subject. The reader will, however, remember that for the most part they went on side by side, even amidst the distractions caused by war, diplomacy, colonial enterprises, and the myriad details of a vast administration. What here appears as a series of canals was in reality a mighty river of enterprise rolling in undivided volume and fed by the superhuman vitality of the First Consul. It was his inexhaustible curiosity which compelled functionaries to reveal the secrets of their office: it was his intelligence that seized on the salient points of every problem and saw the solution: it was his ardour and mental tenacity which kept his Ministers and committees hard at work, and by toil of sometimes twenty hours a day supervised the results: it was, in fine, his passion for thoroughness, his ambition for France, that nerved every official with something of his own contempt of difficulties, until, as one of them said, "the gigantic entered into our very habits of thought."[149]
The first question of political reconstruction which urgently claimed attention was that of local government. On the very day when it was certain that the nation had accepted the new constitution, the First Consul presented to the Legislature a draft of a law for regulating the affairs of the Departments. It must be admitted that local self-government, as instituted by the men of 1789 in their Departmental System, had proved a failure. In that time of buoyant hope, when every difficulty and abuse seemed about to be charmed away by the magic of universal suffrage, local self-government of a most advanced type had been intrusted to an inexperienced populace. There were elections for the commune or parish, elections for the canton, elections for the district, elections for the Department, and elections for the National Assembly, until the rustic brain, after reeling with excitement, speedily fell back into muddled apathy and left affairs generally to the wire-pullers of the nearest Jacobin club. A time of great confusion ensued. Law went according to local opinion, and the national taxes were often left unpaid. In the Reign of Terror this lax system was replaced by the despotism of the secret committees, and the way was thus paved for a return to organized central control, such as was exercised by the Directory.
The First Consul, as successor to the Directory, therefore found matters ready to his hand for a drastic measure of centralization, and it is curious to notice that the men of 1789 had unwittingly cleared the ground for him. To make way for the "supremacy of the general will," they abolished the Parlements, which had maintained the old laws, customs, and privileges of their several provinces, and had frequently interfered in purely political matters. The abolition of these and other privileged corporations in 1789 unified France and left not a single barrier to withstand either the flood of democracy or the backwash of reaction. Everything therefore favoured the action of the First Consul in drawing all local powers under his own control. France was for the moment weary of elective bodies, that did little except waste the nation's taxes; and though there was some opposition to the new proposal, it passed on February 16th, 1800 (28 Pluviose, an, viii).
It substituted local government by the central power for local self-government. The local divisions remained the same, except that the "districts," abolished by the Convention, were now reconstituted on a somewhat larger scale, and were termed arrondissements, while the smaller communes, which had been merged in the cantons since 1795, were also revived. It is noteworthy that, of all the areas mapped out by the Constituent Assembly in 1789-90, only the Department and canton have had a continuous existence--a fact which seems to show the peril of tampering with well-established boundaries, and of carving out a large number of artificial districts, which speedily become the corpus vile of other experimenters. Indeed, so little was there of effective self-government that France seems to have sighed with relief when order was imposed by Bonaparte in the person of a Prefect. This important official, a miniature First Consul, was to administer the affairs of the Department, while sub-prefects were similarly placed over the new arrondissements, and mayors over the communes. The mayors were appointed by the First Consul in communes of more than 5,000 souls: by the prefects in the smaller communes: all were alike responsible to the central power.
The rebound from the former electoral system, which placed all local authority ultimately in the hands of the voters, was emphasized by Article 75 of the constitution, which virtually raised officials beyond reach of prosecution. It ran thus: "The agents of the Government, other than the Ministers, cannot be prosecuted for facts relating to their duties except by a decision of the Council of State: in that case the prosecution takes place before the ordinary tribunals." Now, as this decision rested with a body composed almost entirely of the higher officials, it will be seen that the chance of a public prosecution of an official became extremely small. France was therefore in the first months of 1800 handed over to a hierarchy of officials closely bound together by interest and esprit de corps; and local administration, after ten years of democratic experiments, practically reverted to what it had been under the old monarchy. In fact, the powers of the Prefects were, on the whole, much greater than those of the royal Intendants: for while the latter were hampered by the provincial Parlements, the nominees of the First Consul had to deal with councils that retained scarce the shadow of power. The real authority in local matters rested with the Prefects. The old elective bodies survived, it is true, but their functions were now mainly advisory; and, lest their advice should be too copious, the sessions of the first two bodies were limited to a fortnight a year. Except for a share in the assessment of taxation, their existence was merely a screen to hide the reality of the new central despotism.[150] Beneficent it may have been; and the choice of Prefects was certainly a proof of Bonaparte's discernment of real merit among men of all shades of opinion; but for all that, it was a despotism, and one that has inextricably entwined itself with the whole life of France.[151]
It seems strange that this law should not have aroused fierce opposition; for it practically gagged democracy in its most appropriate and successful sphere of action, local self-government, and made popular election a mere shadow, except in the single act of the choice of the local juges de paix. This was foreseen by the Liberals in the Tribunate: but their power was small since the regulations passed in January: and though Daunou, as "reporter," sharply criticised this measure, yet he lamely concluded with the advice that it would be dangerous to reject it. The Tribunes therefore passed the proposal by 71 votes to 25: and the Corps Législatif by 217 to 68.
The results of this new local government have often been considered so favourable as to prove that the genius of the French people requires central control rather than self-government. But it should be noted that the conditions of France from 1790 to 1800 were altogether hostile to the development of free institutions. The fierce feuds at home, the greed and the class jealousies awakened by confiscation, the blasts of war and the blight of bankruptcy, would have severely tested the firmest of local institutions; they were certain to wither so delicate an organism as an absolute democracy, which requires peace, prosperity, and infinite patience for its development. Because France then came to despair of her local self-government, it did not follow that she would fail after Bonaparte's return had restored her prestige and prosperity. But the national élan forbade any postponement or compromise; and France forthwith accepted the rule of an able official hierarchy as a welcome alternative to the haphazard acts of local busybodies. By many able men the change has been hailed as a proof of Bonaparte's marvellous discernment of the national character, which, as they aver, longs for brilliance, order, and strong government, rather than for the steep and thorny paths of liberty. Certainly there is much in the modern history of France which supports this opinion. Yet perhaps these characteristics are due very largely to the master craftsman, who fashioned France anew when in a state of receptivity, and thus was able to subject democracy to that force which alone has been able to tame it--the mighty force of militarism.
* * * * *
The return to a monarchical policy was nowhere more evident than in the very important negotiations which regulated the relations of Church and State and produced the Concordat or treaty of peace with the Roman Catholic Church. But we must first look back at the events which had reduced the Roman Catholic Church in France to its pitiable condition.
The conduct of the revolutionists towards the Church of France was actuated partly by the urgent needs of the national exchequer, partly by hatred and fear of so powerful a religious corporation. Idealists of the new school of thought, and practical men who dreaded bankruptcy, accordingly joined in the assault on its property and privileges: its tithes were confiscated, the religious houses and their property were likewise absorbed, and its lands were declared to be the lands of the nation. A budget of public worship was, it is true, designed to support the bishops and priests; but this solemn obligation was soon renounced by the fiercer revolutionists. Yet robbery was not their worst offence. In July, 1790, they passed a law called the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which aimed at subjecting the Church to the State. It compelled bishops and priests to seek election by the adult males of their several Departments and parishes, and forced them to take a stringent oath of obedience to the new order of things. All the bishops but four refused to take an oath which set at naught the authority of the Pope: more than 50,000 priests likewise refused, and were ejected from their livings: the recusants were termed orthodox or non-juring priests, and by the law of August, 1792, they were exiled from France, while their more pliable or time-serving brethren who accepted the new decree were known as constitutionals. About 12,000 of the constitutionals married, while some of them applauded the extreme Jacobinical measures of the Terror. One of them shocked the faithful by celebrating the mysteries, having a bonnet rouge on his head, holding a pike in his hand, while his wife was installed near the altar.[152] Outrages like these were rare: but they served to discredit the constitutional Church and to throw up in sharper relief the courage with which the orthodox clergy met exile and death for conscience' sake. Moreover, the time-serving of the constitutionals was to avail them little: during the Terror their stipends were unpaid, and the churches were for the most part closed. After a partial respite in 1795-6, the coup d'état of Fructidor (1797) again ushered in two years of petty persecutions; but in the early summer of 1799 constitutionals were once more allowed to observe the Christian Sunday, and at the time of Bonaparte's return from Egypt their services were more frequented than those of the Theophilanthropists on the décadis. It was evident, then, that the anti-religious furor had burnt itself out, and that France was turning back to her old faith. Indeed, outside Paris and a few other large towns, public opinion mocked at the new cults, and in the country districts the peasantry clung with deep affection to their old orthodox priests, often following them into the forests to receive their services and forsaking those of their supplanters.
Such, then, was the religious state of France in 1799: her clergy were rent by a formidable schism; the orthodox priests clung where possible to their parishioners, or lived in destitution abroad; the constitutional priests, though still frowned on by the Directory, were gaining ground at the expense of the Theophilanthropists, whose expiring efforts excited ridicule. In fine, a nation weary of religious experiments and groping about for some firm anchorage in the midst of the turbid ebb-tide and its numerous backwaters.[153]
Despite the absence of any deep religious belief, Bonaparte felt the need of religion as the bulwark of morality and the cement of society. During his youth he had experienced the strength of Romanism in Corsica, and during his campaigns in Italy he saw with admiration the zeal of the French orthodox priests who had accepted exile and poverty for conscience' sake. To these outcasts he extended more protection than was deemed compatible with correct republicanism; and he received their grateful thanks. After Brumaire he suppressed the oath previously exacted from the clergy, and replaced it by a promise of fidelity to the constitution. Many reasons have been assigned for this conduct, but doubtless his imagination was touched by the sight of the majestic hierarchy of Rome, whose spiritual powers still prevailed, even amidst the ruin of its temporal authority, and were slowly but surely winning back the ground lost in the Revolution. An influence so impalpable yet irresistible, that inherited from the Rome of the Cæsars the gift of organization and the power of maintaining discipline, in which the Revolution was so signally lacking, might well be the ally of the man who now dominated the Latin peoples. The pupil of Cæsar could certainly not neglect the aid of the spiritual hierarchy, which was all that remained of the old Roman grandeur.
Added to this was his keen instinct for reality, which led him to scorn such whipped-up creeds as Robespierre's Supreme Being and that amazing hybrid, Theophilanthropy, offspring of the Goddess of Reason and La Réveillière-Lépeaux. Having watched their manufacture, rise and fall, he felt the more regard for the faith of his youth, which satisfied one of the most imperious needs of his nature, a craving for certainty. Witness this crushing retort to M. Mathieu: "What is your Theophilanthropy? Oh, don't talk to me of a religion which only takes me for this life, without telling me whence I come or whither I go." Of course, this does not prove the reality of Napoleon's religion; but it shows that he was not devoid of the religious instinct.
The victory of Marengo enabled Bonaparte to proceed with his plans for an accommodation with the Vatican; and he informed one of the Lombard bishops that he desired to open friendly relations with Pope Pius VII., who was then about to make his entry into Rome. There he received the protection of the First Consul, and soon recovered his sovereignty over his States, excepting the Legations.
The negotiations between Paris and the Vatican were transacted chiefly by a very able priest, Bernier by name, who had gained the First Consul's confidence during the pacification of Brittany, and now urged on the envoys of Rome the need of deferring to all that was reasonable in the French demands. The negotiators for the Vatican were Cardinals Consalvi and Caprara, and Monseigneur Spina--able ecclesiastics, who were fitted to maintain clerical claims with that mixture of suppleness and firmness which had so often baffled the force and craft of mighty potentates. The first difficulty arose on the question of the resignation of bishops of the Gallican Church: Bonaparte demanded that, whether orthodox or constitutionals, they must resign their sees into the Pope's hands; failing that, they must be deposed by the papal authority. Sweeping as this proposal seemed, Bonaparte claimed that bishops of both sides must resign, in order that a satisfactory selection might be made. Still more imperious was the need that the Church should renounce all claim to her confiscated domains. All classes of the community, so urged Bonaparte, had made immense sacrifices during the Revolution; and now that peasants were settled on these once clerical lands, the foundations of society would be broken up by any attempt to dispossess them.
To both of these proposals the Court of Rome offered a tenacious resistance. The idea of compelling long-persecuted bishops to resign their sees was no less distasteful than the latter proposal, which involved acquiescence in sacrilegious robbery. At least, pleaded Mgr. Spina, let tithes be re-established. To this request the First Consul deigned no reply. None, indeed, was possible except a curt refusal. Few imposts had been so detested as the tithe; and its reimposition would have wounded the peasant class, on which the First Consul based his authority. So long as he had their support he could treat with disdain the scoffs of the philosophers and even the opposition of his officers; but to have wavered on the subject of tithe and of the Church lands might have been fatal even to the victor of Marengo.[154]
In fact, the difficulty of effecting any compromise was enormous. In seeking to reconcile the France of Rousseau and Robespierre to the unchanging policy of the Vatican, the "heir to the Revolution" was essaying a harder task than any military enterprise. To slay men has ever been easier than to mould their thoughts anew; and Bonaparte was now striving not only to remould French thought but also to fashion anew the ideas of the Eternal City. He soon perceived that this latter enterprise was more difficult than the former. The Pope and his councillors rejoiced at the signs of his repentance, but required to see the fruits thereof. Instead of first-fruits they received unheard-of demands--the surrender of the three Legations of Bologna, Ferrara, and Romagna, the renunciation of all tithes and Church lands in France, and the acceptance of a compromise with schismatics. What wonder that the replies from Rome were couched in the non possumus terms which form the last refuge of the Vatican. Finding that negotiations made no progress, Bonaparte intrusted Berthier and Murat to pay a visit to Rome and exercise a discreet but burdensome pressure in the form of requisitions for the French troops in the Papal States.
The ratification of peace with Austria gave greater weight to his representations at Rome, and he endeavoured to press on the signature of the Concordat, so as to startle the world by the simultaneous announcement of the pacification of the Continent and of the healing of the great religious schism in France. But the clerical machinery worked too slowly to admit of this projected coup de théâtre. In Bonaparte's proposals of February 25th, 1801, there were several demands already found to be inadmissible at the Vatican;[155] and matters came to a deadlock until the Pope invested Spina with larger powers for negotiating at Paris. Consalvi also proceeded to Paris, where he was received in state with other ambassadors at the Tuileries, the sight of a cardinal's robe causing no little sensation. The First Consul granted him a long interview, speaking at first somewhat seriously, but gradually becoming more affable and gracious. Yet as his behaviour softened his demands stiffened; and at the close of the audience he pressed Consalvi to sign a somewhat unfavourable version of the compact within five days, otherwise the negotiations would be at an end and a national religion would be adopted--an enterprise for which the auguries promised complete success. At a later interview he expressed the same resolution in homely phrase: when Consalvi pressed him to take a firm stand against the "constitutional" intruders, he laughingly remarked that he could do no more until he knew how he stood with Rome; for "you know that when one cannot arrange matters with God, one comes to terms with the devil."[156]
This dalliance with the "constitutionals" might have been more than an astute ruse, and Consalvi knew it. In framing a national Church the First Consul would have appealed not only to the old Gallican feeling, still strong among the clerics and laity, but also to the potent force of French nationality. The experiment might have been managed so as to offend none but the strictest Catholics, who were less to be feared than the free-thinkers. Consalvi was not far wrong when, writing of the official world at Paris, he said that only Bonaparte really desired a Concordat.
The First Consul's motives in seeking the alliance of Rome have, very naturally, been subjected to searching criticism; and in forcing the Concordat on France, and also on Rome, he was certainly undertaking the most difficult negotiation of his life.[157] But his preference for the Roman connection was an act of far-reaching statecraft. He saw that a national Church, unrecognized by Rome, was a mere half-way house between Romanism and Protestantism; and he disliked the latter creed because of its tendency to beget sects and to impair the validity of the general will. He still retained enough of Rousseau's doctrine to desire that the general will should be uniform, provided that it could be controlled by his own will. Such uniformity in the sphere of religion was impossible unless he had the support of the Papacy. Only by a bargain with Rome could he gain the support of a solid ecclesiastical phalanx. Finally, by erecting a French national Church, he would not only have perpetuated schism at home, but would have disqualified himself for acting the part of Charlemagne over central and southern Europe. To re-fashion Europe in a cosmopolitan mould he needed a clerical police that was more than merely French. To achieve those grander designs the successor of Cæsar would need the aid of the successor of Peter; and this aid would be granted only to the restorer of Roman Catholicism in France, never to the perpetuator of schism.
These would seem to be the chief reasons why he braved public opinion in Paris and clung to the Roman connection, bringing forward his plan of a Gallican Church only as a threatening move against the clerical flank. When the Vatican was obdurate he coquetted with the "constitutional" bishops, allowing them every facility for free speech in a council which they held at Paris at the close of June, 1801. He summoned to the Tuileries their president, the famous Grégoire, and showed him signal marks of esteem. "Put not your trust in princes" must soon have been the thought of Grégoire and his colleagues: for a fortnight later Bonaparte carried through his treaty with Rome and shelved alike the congress and the church of the "constitutionals."
It would be tedious to detail all the steps in this complex negotiation, but the final proceedings call for some notice. When the treaty was assuming its final form, Talleyrand, the polite scoffer, the bitter foe of all clerical claims, found it desirable to take the baths at a distant place, and left the threads of the negotiation in the hands of two men who were equally determined to prevent its signature, Maret, Secretary of State, and Hauterive, who afterwards become the official archivist of France. These men determined to submit to Consalvi a draft of the treaty differing widely from that which had been agreed upon; and that, too, when the official announcement had been made that the treaty was to be signed immediately. In the last hours the cardinal found himself confronted with unexpected conditions, many of which he had successfully repelled. Though staggered by this trickery, which compelled him to sign a surrender or to accept an open rupture, Consalvi fought the question over again in a conference that lasted twenty-four hours; he even appeared at the State dinner given on July 14th by the First Consul, who informed him before the other guests that it was a question of "my draft of the treaty or none at all." Nothing baffled the patience and tenacity of the Cardinal; and finally, by the good offices of Joseph Bonaparte, the objectionable demands thrust forward at the eleventh hour were removed or altered.
The question has been discussed whether the First Consul was a party to this device. Theiner asserts that he knew nothing of it: that it was an official intrigue got up at the last moment by the anti-clericals so as to precipitate a rupture. In support of this view, he cites letters of Maret and Hauterive as inculpating these men and tending to free Bonaparte from suspicion of complicity. But the letters cannot be said to dissipate all suspicion. The First Consul had made this negotiation peculiarly his own: no officials assuredly would have dared secretly to foist their own version of an important treaty; or, if they did, this act would have been the last of their career. But Bonaparte did not disgrace them; on the contrary, he continued to honour them with his confidence. Moreover, the First Consul flew into a passion with his brother Joseph when he reported that Consalvi could not sign the document now offered to him, and tore in pieces the articles finally arranged with the Cardinal. On the return of his usually calm intelligence, he at last allowed the concessions to stand, with the exception of two; but in a scrutiny of motives we must assign most importance, not to second and more prudent thoughts, but to the first ebullition of feelings, which seem unmistakably to prove his knowledge and approval of Hauterive's device. We must therefore conclude that he allowed the antagonists of the Concordat to make this treacherous onset, with the intention of extorting every possible demand from the dazed and bewildered Cardinal.[158]
After further delays the Concordat was ratified at Eastertide, 1802. It may be briefly described as follows: The French Government recognized that the Catholic apostolic and Roman religion was the religion of the great majority of the French people, "especially of the Consuls"; but it refused to declare it to be the religion of France, as was the case under the ancien régime. It was to be freely and publicly practised in France, subject to the police regulations that the Government judged necessary for the public tranquillity. In return for these great advantages, many concessions were expected from the Church. The present bishops, both orthodox and constitutional, were, at the Pope's invitation, to resign their sees; or, failing that, new appointments were to be made, as if the sees were vacant. The last proviso was necessary; for of the eighty-one surviving bishops affected by this decision as many as thirteen orthodox and two "constitutionals" offered persistent but unavailing protests against the action of the Pope and First Consul.
A new division of archbishoprics and bishoprics was now made, which gave in all sixty sees to France. The First Consul enjoyed the right of nomination to them, whereupon the Pope bestowed canonical investiture. The archbishops and bishops were all to take an oath of fidelity to the constitution. The bishops nominated the lower clerics provided that they were acceptable to the Government: all alike bound themselves to watch over governmental interests. The stability of France was further assured by a clause granting complete and permanent security to the holders of the confiscated Church lands--a healing and salutary compromise which restored peace to every village and soothed the qualms of many a troubled conscience. On its side, the State undertook to furnish suitable stipends to the clergy, a promise which was fulfilled in a rather niggardly spirit. For the rest, the First Consul enjoyed the same consideration as the Kings of France in all matters ecclesiastical; and a clause was added, though Bonaparte declared it needless, that if any succeeding First Consul were not a Roman Catholic, his prerogatives in religious matters should be revised by a Convention. A similar Concordat was passed a little later for the pacification of the Cisalpine Republic.
The Concordat was bitterly assailed by the Jacobins, especially by the military chiefs, and had not the infidel generals been for the most part sundered by mutual jealousies they might perhaps have overthrown Bonaparte. But their obvious incapacity for civil affairs enabled them to venture on nothing more than a few coarse jests and clumsy demonstrations. At the Easter celebration at Notre Dame in honour of the ratification of the Concordat, one of them, Delmas by name, ventured on the only protest barbed with telling satire: "Yes, a fine piece of monkery this, indeed. It only lacked the million men who got killed to destroy what you are striving to bring back." But to all protests Bonaparte opposed a calm behaviour that veiled a rigid determination, before which priests and soldiers were alike helpless.
In subsequent articles styled "organic," Bonaparte, without consulting the Pope, made several laws that galled the orthodox clergy. Under the plea of legislating for the police of public worship, he reaffirmed some of the principles which he had been unable to incorporate in the Concordat itself. The organic articles asserted the old claims of the Gallican Church, which forbade the application of Papal Bulls, or of the decrees of "foreign" synods, to France: they further forbade the French bishops to assemble in council or synod without the permission of the Government; and this was also required for a bishop to leave his diocese, even if he were summoned to Rome. Such were the chief of the organic articles. Passed under the plea of securing public tranquillity, they proved a fruitful source of discord, which during the Empire became so acute as to weaken Napoleon's authority. In matters religious as well as political, he early revealed his chief moral and mental defect, a determination to carry his point by whatever means and to require the utmost in every bargain. While refusing fully to establish Roman Catholicism as the religion of the State, he compelled the Church to surrender its temporalities, to accept the regulations of the State, and to protect its interests. Truly if, in Chateaubriand's famous phrase, he was the "restorer of the altars," he exacted the uttermost farthing for that restoration.
In one matter his clear intelligence stands forth in marked contrast to the narrow pedantry of the Roman Cardinals. At a time of reconciliation between orthodox and "constitutionals," they required from the latter a complete and public retractation of their recent errors. At once Bonaparte intervened with telling effect. So condign a humiliation, he argued, would altogether mar the harmony newly re-established. "The past is past: and the bishops and prefects ought to require from the priests only the declaration of adhesion to the Concordat, and of obedience to the bishop nominated by the First Consul and instituted by the Pope." This enlightened advice, backed up by irresistible power, carried the day, and some ten thousand constitutional priests were quietly received back into the Roman communion, those who had contracted marriages being compelled to put away their wives. Bonaparte took a deep interest in the reconstruction of dioceses, in the naming of churches, and similar details, doubtless with the full consciousness that the revival of the Roman religious discipline in France was a more important service than any feat of arms.
He was right: in healing a great schism in France he was dealing a deadly blow at the revolutionary feeling of which it was a prominent manifestation. In the words of one of his Ministers, "The Concordat was the most brilliant triumph over the genius of Revolution, and all the following successes have without exception resulted from it."[159]
After this testimony it is needless to ask why Bonaparte did not take up with Protestantism. At St. Helena, it is true, he asserted that the choice of Catholicism or Protestantism was entirely open to him in 1801, and that the nation would have followed him in either direction: but his religious policy, if carefully examined, shows no sign of wavering on this subject, though he once or twice made a strategic diversion towards Geneva, when Rome showed too firm a front. Is it conceivable that a man who, as he informed Joseph, was systematically working to found a dynasty, should hesitate in the choice of a governmental creed? Is it possible to think of the great champion of external control and State discipline as a defender of liberty of conscience and the right of private judgment?
The regulation of the Protestant cult in France was a far less arduous task. But as Bonaparte's aim was to attach all cults to the State, he decided to recognize the two chief Protestant bodies in France, Calvinists and Lutherans, allowing them to choose their own pastors and to regulate their affairs in consistories. The pastors were to be salaried by the State, but in return the Government not only reserved its approval of every appointment, but required the Protestant bodies to have no relations whatever with any foreign Power or authority. The organic articles of 1802, which defined the position of the Protestant bodies, form a very important landmark in the history of the followers of Luther and Calvin. Persecuted by Louis XIV. and XV., they were tolerated by Louis XVI.; they gained complete religious equality in 1789, and after a few years of anarchy in matters of faith, they found themselves suddenly and stringently bound to the State by the organizing genius of Bonaparte.
In the years 1806-1808 the position of the Jews was likewise defined, at least for all those who recognized France as their country, performed all civic duties, and recognized all the laws of the State. In consideration of their paying full taxes and performing military service, they received official protection and their rabbis governmental support.
Such was Bonaparte's policy on religious subjects. There can be little doubt that its motive was, in the main, political. This methodizing genius, who looked on the beliefs and passions, the desires and ambitions of mankind, as so many forces which were to aid him in his ascent, had already satisfied the desires for military glory and material prosperity; and in his bargain with Rome he now won the support of an organized priesthood, besides that of the smaller Protestant and Jewish communions. That he gained also peace and quietness for France may be granted, though it was at the expense of that mental alertness and independence which had been her chief intellectual glory; but none of his intimate acquaintances ever doubted that his religion was only a vague sentiment, and his attendance at mass merely a compliment to his "sacred gendarmerie."[l60]
Having dared and achieved the exploit of organizing religion in a half-infidel society, the First Consul was ready to undertake the almost equally hazardous task of establishing an order of social distinction, and that too in the very land where less than eight years previously every title qualified its holder for the guillotine. For his new experiment, the Legion of Honour, he could adduce only one precedent in the acts of the last twelve years.
The whole tendency had been towards levelling all inequalities. In 1790 all titles of nobility were swept away; and though the Convention decreed "arms of honour" to brave soldiers, yet its generosity to the deserving proved to be less remarkable than its activity in guillotining the unsuccessful. Bonaparte, however, adduced its custom of granting occasional modest rewards as a precedent for his own design, which was to be far more extended and ambitious.
In May, 1802, he proposed the formation of a Legion of Honour, organized in fifteen cohorts, with grand officers, commanders, officers, and legionaries. Its affairs were to be regulated by a council presided over by Bonaparte himself. Each cohort received "national domains" with 200,000 francs annual rental, and these funds were disbursed to the members on a scale proportionate to their rank. The men who had received "arms of honour" were, ipso facto to be legionaries; soldiers "who had rendered considerable services to the State in the war of liberty," and civilians "who by their learning, talents, and virtues contributed to establish or to defend the principles of the Republic," might hope for the honour and reward now held out. The idea of rewarding merit in a civilian, as well as among the military caste which had hitherto almost entirely absorbed such honours, was certainly enlightened; and the names of the famous savants Laplace, Monge, Berthollet, Lagrange, Chaptal, and of jurists such as Treilhard and Tronchet, imparted lustre to what would otherwise have been a very commonplace institution. Bonaparte desired to call out all the faculties of the nation; and when Dumas proposed that the order should be limited to soldiers, the First Consul replied in a brilliant and convincing harangue:
"To do great things nowadays it is not enough to be a man of five feet ten inches. If strength and bravery made the general, every soldier might claim the command. The general who does great things is he who also possesses civil qualities. The soldier knows no law but force, sees nothing but it, and measures everything by it. The civilian, on the other hand, only looks to the general welfare. The characteristic of the soldier is to wish to do everything despotically: that of the civilian is to submit everything to discussion, truth, and reason. The superiority thus unquestionably belongs to the civilian."
In these noble words we can discern the secret of Bonaparte's supremacy both in politics and in warfare. Uniting in his own person the ablest qualities of the statesman and the warrior, he naturally desired that his new order of merit should quicken the vitality of France in every direction, knowing full well that the results would speedily be felt in the army itself. When admitted to its ranks, the new member swore:
"To devote himself to the service of the Republic, to the maintenance of the integrity of its territory, the defence of its government, laws, and of the property which they have consecrated; to fight by all methods authorized by justice, reason, and law, against every attempt to re-establish the feudal régime or to reproduce the titles and qualities thereto belonging; and finally to strive to the uttermost to maintain liberty and equality."
It is not surprising that the Tribunate, despite the recent purging of its most independent members, judged liberty and equality to be endangered by the method of defence now proposed. The members bitterly criticised the scheme as a device of the counter-revolution; but, with the timid inconsequence which was already sapping their virility, they proceeded to pass by fifty-six votes to thirty-eight a measure of which they had so accurately gauged the results. The new institution was, indeed, admirably suited to consolidate Bonaparte's power. Resting on the financial basis of the confiscated lands, it offered some guarantee against the restoration of the old monarchy and feudal nobility; while, by stimulating that love of distinction and brilliance which is inherent in every gifted people, it quietly began to graduate society and to group it around the Paladins of a new Gaulish chivalry. The people had recently cast off the overlordship of the old Frankish nobles, but admiration of merit (the ultimate source of all titles of distinction) was only dormant even in the days of Robespierre; and its insane repression during the Terror now begat a corresponding enthusiasm for all commanding gifts. Of this inevitable reaction Bonaparte now made skillful use. When Berlier, one of the leading jurists of France, objected to the new order as leading France back to aristocracy, and contemptuously said that crosses and ribbons were the toys of monarchy, Bonaparte replied:
"Well: men are led by toys. I would not say that in a rostrum, but in a council of wise men and statesmen one ought to speak one's mind. I don't think that the French love liberty and equality: the French are not at all changed by ten years of revolution: they are what the Gauls were, fierce and fickle. They have one feeling--honour. We must nourish that feeling: they must have distinctions. See how they bow down before the stars of strangers."[161]
After so frank an exposition of motives to his own Council of State, little more need be said. We need not credit Bonaparte or the orators of the Tribunate with any superhuman sagacity when he and they foresaw that such an order would prepare the way for more resplendent titles. The Legion of Honour, at least in its highest grades, was the chrysalis stage of the Imperial noblesse. After all, the new Charlemagne might plead that his new creation satisfied an innate craving of the race, and that its durability was the best answer to hostile critics. Even when, in 1814, his Senators were offering the crown of France to the heir of the Bourbons, they expressly stipulated that the Legion of Honour should not be abolished: it has survived all the shocks of French history, even the vulgarizing associations of the Second Empire.
* * * * *
The same quality of almost pyramidal solidity characterizes another great enterprise of the Napoleonic period, the codification of French law.
The difficulties of this undertaking consisted mainly in the enormous mass of decrees emanating from the National Assemblies, relative to political, civil, and criminal affairs. Many of those decrees, the offspring of a momentary enthusiasm, had found a place in the codes of laws which were then compiled; and yet sagacious observers knew that several of them warred against the instincts of the Gallic race. This conviction was summed up in the trenchant statement of the compilers of the new code, in which they appealed from the ideas of Rousseau to the customs of the past: "New theories are but the maxims of certain individuals: the old maxims represent the sense of centuries." There was much force in this dictum. The overthrow of Feudalism and the old monarchy had not permanently altered the French nature. They were still the same joyous, artistic, clan-loving people whom the Latin historians described: and pride in the nation or the family was as closely linked with respect for a doughty champion of national and family interests as in the days of Cæsar. Of this Roman or quasi-Gallic reaction Napoleon was to be the regulator; and no sphere of his activities bespeaks his unerring political sagacity more than his sifting of the old and the new in the great code which was afterwards to bear his name.
Old French law had been an inextricable labyrinth of laws and customs, mainly Roman and Frankish in origin, hopelessly tangled by feudal customs, provincial privileges, ecclesiastical rights, and the later undergrowth of royal decrees; and no part of the legislation of the revolutionists met with so little resistance as their root and branch destruction of this exasperating jungle. Their difficulties only began when they endeavoured to apply the principles of the Rights of Man to political, civil, and criminal affairs. The chief of these principles relating to criminal law were that law can only forbid actions that are harmful to society, and must only impose penalties that are strictly necessary. To these epoch-making pronouncements the Assembly added, in 1790, that crimes should be visited only on the guilty individual, not on the family; and that penalties must be proportioned to the offences. The last two of these principles had of late been flagrantly violated; but the general pacification of France now permitted a calm consideration of the whole question of criminal law, and of its application to normal conditions.
Civil law was to be greatly influenced by the Rights of Man; but those famous declarations were to a large extent contravened in the ensuing civil strifes, and their application to real life was rendered infinitely more difficult by that predominance of the critical over the constructive faculties which marred the efforts of the revolutionary Babel-builders. Indeed, such was the ardour of those enthusiasts that they could scarcely see any difficulties. Thus, the Convention in 1793 allowed its legislative committee just one month for the preparation of a code of civil law. At the close of six weeks Cambacérès, the reporter of the committee, was actually able to announce that it was ready. It was found to be too complex. Another commission was ordered to reconstruct it: this time the Convention discovered that the revised edition was too concise. Two other drafts were drawn up at the orders of the Directory, but neither gave satisfaction. And thus it was reserved for the First Consul to achieve what the revolutionists had only begun, building on the foundations and with the very materials which their ten years' toil had prepared.
He had many other advantages. The Second Consul, Cambacérès, was at his side, with stores of legal experience and habits of complaisance that were of the highest value. Then, too, the principles of personal liberty and social equality were yielding ground before the more autocratic maxims of Roman law. The view of life now dominant was that of the warrior not of the philosopher. Bonaparte named Tronchet, Bigot de Préameneu, and the eloquent and learned Portalis for the redaction of the code. By ceaseless toil they completed their first draft in four months. Then, after receiving the criticisms of the Court of Cassation and the Tribunals of Appeal, it came before the Council of State for the decision of its special committee on legislation. There it was subjected to the scrutiny of several experts, but, above all, to Bonaparte himself. He presided at more than half of the 102 sittings devoted to this criticism; and sittings of eight or nine hours were scarcely long enough to satisfy his eager curiosity, his relentless activity, and his determined practicality.
From the notes of Thibaudeau one of the members of this revising committee, we catch a glimpse of the part there played by the First Consul. We see him listening intently to the discussions of the jurists, taking up and sorting the threads of thought when a tangle seemed imminent, and presenting the result in some striking pattern. We watch his methodizing spirit at work on the cumbrous legal phraseology, hammering it out into clear, ductile French. We feel the unerring sagacity, which acted as a political and social touchstone, testing, approving, or rejecting multifarious details drawn from old French law or from the customs of the Revolution; and finally we wonder at the architectural skill which worked the 2,281 articles of the Code into an almost unassailable pile. To the skill and patience of the three chief redactors that result is, of course, very largely due: yet, in its mingling of strength, simplicity, and symmetry, we may discern the projection of Napoleon's genius over what had hitherto been a legal chaos.
Some blocks of the pyramid were almost entirely his own. He widened the area of French citizenship; above all, he strengthened the structure of the family by enhancing the father's authority. Herein his Corsican instincts and the requirements of statecraft led him to undo much of the legislation of the revolutionists. Their ideal was individual liberty: his aim was to establish public order by autocratic methods. They had sought to make of the family a little republic, founded on the principles of liberty and equality; but in the new code the paternal authority reappeared no less strict, albeit less severe in some details than that of the ancien régime. The family was thenceforth modelled on the idea dominant in the State, that authority and responsible action pertained to a single individual. The father controlled the conduct of his children: his consent was necessary for the marriage of sons up to their twenty-fifth year, for that of daughters up to their twenty-first year; and other regulations were framed in the same spirit.[162] Thus there was rebuilt in France the institution of the family on an almost Roman basis; and these customs, contrasting sharply with the domestic anarchy of the Anglo-Saxon race, have had a mighty influence in fashioning the character of the French, as of the other Latin peoples, to a ductility that yields a ready obedience to local officials, drill-sergeants, and the central Government.
In other respects Bonaparte's influence on the code was equally potent. He raised the age at which marriage could be legally contracted to that of eighteen for men, and fifteen for women, and he prescribed a formula of obedience to be repeated by the bride to her husband; while the latter was bound to protect and support the wife.[163]
And yet, on the question of divorce, Bonaparte's action was sufficiently ambiguous to reawaken Josephine's fears; and the detractors of the great man have some ground for declaring that his action herein was dictated by personal considerations. Others again may point to the declarations of the French National Assemblies that the law regarded marriage merely as a civil contract, and that divorce was to be a logical sequel of individual liberty, "which an indissoluble tie would annul." It is indisputable that extremely lax customs had been the result of the law of 1792, divorce being allowed on a mere declaration of incompatibility of temper.[164] Against these scandals Bonaparte firmly set his face. But he disagreed with the framers of the new Code when they proposed altogether to prohibit divorce, though such a proposition might well have seemed consonant with his zeal for Roman Catholicism. After long debates it was decided to reduce the causes which could render divorce possible from nine to four--adultery, cruelty, condemnation to a degrading penalty, and mutual consent--provided that this last demand should be persistently urged after not less than two years of marriage, and in no case was it to be valid after twenty years of marriage.[165]
We may also notice here that Bonaparte sought to surround the act of adoption with much solemnity, declaring it to be one of the grandest acts imaginable. Yet, lest marriage should thereby be discouraged, celibates were expressly debarred from the privileges of adopting heirs. The precaution shows how keenly this able ruler peered into the future. Doubtless, he surmised that in the future the population of France would cease to expand at the normal rate, owing to the working of the law compelling the equal division of property among all the children of a family. To this law he was certainly opposed. Equality in regard to the bequest of property was one of the sacred maxims of revolutionary jurists, who had limited the right of free disposal by bequest to one-tenth of each estate: nine-tenths being of necessity divided equally among the direct heirs. Yet so strong was the reaction in favour of the Roman principle of paternal authority, that Bonaparte and a majority of the drafters of the new Code scrupled not to assail that maxim, and to claim for the father larger discretionary powers over the disposal of his property. They demanded that the disposable share should vary according to the wealth of the testator--a remarkable proposal, which proves him to be anything but the unflinching champion of revolutionary legal ideas which popular French histories have generally depicted him.
This proposal would have re-established liberty of bequest in its most pernicious form, granting almost limitless discretionary power to the wealthy, while restricting or denying it to the poor.[166] Fortunately for his reputation in France, the suggestion was rejected; and the law, as finally adopted, fixed the disposable share as one-half of the property, if there was but one heir; one-third, if there were two heirs; one-fourth, if there were three; and so on, diminishing as the size of the family increased. This sliding scale, varying inversely with the size of the family, is open to an obvious objection: it granted liberty of bequest only in cases where the family was small, but practically lapsed when the family attained to patriarchal dimensions. The natural result has been that the birth-rate has suffered a serious and prolonged check in France. It seems certain that the First Consul foresaw this result. His experience of peasant life must have warned him that the law, even as now amended, would stunt the population of France and ultimately bring about that [Greek: oliganthrôpia] which saps all great military enterprises. The great captain did all in his power to prevent the French settling down in a self-contained national life; he strove to stir them up to world-wide undertakings, and for the success of his future imperial schemes a redundant population was an absolute necessity.
The Civil Code became law in 1804: after undergoing some slight modifications and additions, it was, in 1807 renamed the Code Napoléon. Its provisions had already, in 1806, been adopted in Italy. In 1810 Holland, and the newly-annexed coast-line of the North Sea as far as Hamburg, and even Lübeck on the Baltic, received it as the basis of their laws, as did the Grand Duchy of Berg in 1811. Indirectly it has also exerted an immense influence on the legislation of Central and Southern Germany, Prussia, Switzerland, and Spain: while many of the Central and South American States have also borrowed its salient features.
A Code of Civil Procedure was promulgated in France in 1806, one of Commerce in 1807, of "Criminal Instruction" in 1808, and a Penal Code in 1810. Except that they were more reactionary in spirit than the Civil Code, there is little that calls for notice here, the Penal Code especially showing little advance in intelligence or clemency on the older laws of France. Even in 1802, officials favoured severity after the disorders of the preceding years. When Fox and Romilly paid a visit to Talleyrand at Paris, they were informed by his secretary that:
"In his opinion nothing could restore good morals and order in the country but 'la roue et la religion de nos ancêtres.' He knew, he said, that the English did not think so, but we knew nothing of the people. Fox was deeply shocked at the idea of restoring the wheel as a punishment in France."[167]
This horrible punishment was not actually restored: but this extract from Romilly's diary shows what was the state of feeling in official circles at Paris, and how strong was the reaction towards older ideas. The reaction was unquestionably emphasized by Bonaparte's influence, and it is noteworthy that the Penal and other Codes, passed during the Empire, were more reactionary than the laws of the Consulate. Yet, even as First Consul, he exerted an influence that began to banish the customs and traditions of the Revolution, except in the single sphere of material interests; and he satisfied the peasants' love of land and money in order that he might the more securely triumph over revolutionary ideals and draw France insensibly back to the age of Louis XIV.
While the legislator must always keep in reserve punishment as the ultima ratio for the lawless, he will turn by preference to education as a more potent moralizing agency; and certainly education urgently needed Bonaparte's attention. The work of carrying into practice the grand educational aims of Condorcet and his coadjutors in the French Convention was enough to tax the energies of a Hercules. Those ardent reformers did little more than clear the ground for future action: they abolished the old monastic and clerical training, and declared for a generous system of national education in primary, secondary, and advanced schools. But amid strifes and bankruptcy their aims remained unfulfilled. In 1799 there were only twenty-four elementary schools open in Paris, with a total attendance of less than 1,000 pupils; and in rural districts matters were equally bad. Indeed, Lucien Bonaparte asserted that scarcely any education was to be found in France. Exaggerated though this statement was, in relation to secondary and advanced education, it was proximately true of the elementary schools. The revolutionists had merely traced the outlines of a scheme: it remained for the First Consul to fill in the details, or to leave it blank.
The result can scarcely be cited as a proof of his educational zeal. Elementary schools were left to the control and supervision of the communes and of the sous-préfets, and naturally made little advance amidst an apathetic population and under officials who cared not to press on an expensive enterprise. The law of April 30th, 1802, however, aimed at improving the secondary education, which the Convention had attempted to give in its écoles centrales. These were now reconstituted either as écoles secondaires or as lycées. The former were local or even private institutions intended for the most promising pupils of the commune or group of communes; while the lycées, far fewer in number, were controlled directly by the Government. In both of these schools great prominence was given to the exact and applied sciences. The aim of the instruction was not to awaken thought and develop the faculties, but rather to fashion able breadwinners, obedient citizens, and enthusiastic soldiers. The training was of an almost military type, the pupils being regularly drilled, while the lessons began and ended with the roll of drums. The numbers of the lycées and of their pupils rapidly increased; but the progress of the secondary and primary schools, which could boast no such attractions, was very slow. In 1806 only 25,000 children were attending the public primary schools. But two years later elementary and advanced instruction received a notable impetus from the establishment of the University of France.
There is no institution which better reveals the character of the French Emperor, with its singular combination of greatness and littleness, of wide-sweeping aims with official pedantry. The University, as it existed during the First Empire, offers a striking example of that mania for the control of the general will which philosophers had so attractively taught and Napoleon so profitably practised. It is the first definite outcome of a desire to subject education and learning to wholesale regimental methods, and to break up the old-world bowers of culture by State-worked steam-ploughs. His aims were thus set forth:
"I want a teaching body, because such a body never dies, but transmits its organization and spirit. I want a body whose teaching is far above the fads of the moment, goes straight on even when the government is asleep, and whose administration and statutes become so national that one can never lightly resolve to meddle with them.... There will never be fixity in politics if there is not a teaching body with fixed principles. As long as people do not from their infancy learn whether they ought to be republicans or monarchists, Catholics or sceptics, the State will never form a nation: it will rest on unsafe and shifting foundations, always exposed to changes and disorders."
Such being Napoleon's designs, the new University of France was admirably suited to his purpose. It was not a local university: it was the sum total of all the public teaching bodies of the French Empire, arranged and drilled in one vast instructional array. Elementary schools, secondary schools, lycées, as well as the more advanced colleges, all were absorbed in and controlled by this great teaching corporation, which was to inculcate the precepts of the Catholic religion, fidelity to the Emperor and to his Government, as guarantees for the welfare of the people and the unity of France. For educational purposes, France was now divided into seventeen Academies, which formed the local centres of the new institution. Thus, from Paris and sixteen provincial Academies, instruction was strictly organized and controlled; and within a short time of its institution (March, 1808), instruction of all kinds, including that of the elementary schools, showed some advance. But to all those who look on the unfolding of the mental and moral faculties as the chief aim of true education, the homely experiments of Pestalozzi offer a far more suggestive and important field for observation than the barrack-like methods of the French Emperor. The Swiss reformer sought to train the mind to observe, reflect, and think; to assist the faculties in attaining their fullest and freest expression; and thus to add to the richness and variety of human thought. The French imperial system sought to prune away all mental independence, and to train the young generation in neat and serviceable espalier methods: all aspiring shoots, especially in the sphere of moral and political science, were sharply cut down. Consequently French thought, which had been the most ardently speculative in Europe, speedily became vapid and mechanical.
The same remark is proximately true of the literary life of the First Empire. It soon began to feel the rigorous methods of the Emperor. Poetry and all other modes of expression of lofty thought and rapt feeling require not only a free outlet but natural and unrestrained surroundings. The true poet is at home in the forest or on the mountain rather than in prim parterres. The philosopher sees most clearly and reasons most suggestively, when his faculties are not cramped by the need of observing political rules and police regulations. And the historian, when he is tied down to a mere investigation and recital of facts, without reference to their meaning, is but a sorry fowl flapping helplessly with unequal wings.
Yet such were the conditions under which the literature of France struggled and pined. Her poets, a band sadly thinned already by the guillotine, sang in forced and hollow strains until the return of royalism begat an imperialist fervour in the soul-stirring lyrics of Béranger: her philosophy was dumb; and Napoleonic history limped along on official crutches, until Thiers, a generation later, essayed his monumental work. In the realm of exact and applied science, as might be expected, splendid discoveries adorned the Emperor's reign; but if we are to find any vitality in the literature of that period, we must go to the ranks, not of the panegyrists, but of the opposition. There, in the pages of Madame de Staël and Chateaubriand, we feel the throb of life. Genius will out, of its own native force: but it cannot be pressed out, even at a Napoleon's bidding. In vain did he endeavour to stimulate literature by the reorganization of the Institute, and by granting decennial prizes for the chief works and discoveries of the decade. While science prospered, literature languished: and one of his own remarks, as to the desirability of a public and semi-official criticism of some great literary work, seems to suggest a reason for this intellectual malaise:
"The public will take interest in this criticism; perhaps it will even take sides: it matters not, as its attention will be fixed on these interesting debates: it will talk about grammar and poetry: taste will be improved, and our aim will be fulfilled: out of that will come poets and grammarians."
And so it came to pass that, while he was rescuing a nation from chaos and his eagles winged their flight to Naples, Lisbon, and Moscow, he found no original thinker worthily to hymn his praises; and the chief literary triumphs of his reign came from Chateaubriand, whom he impoverished, and Madame de Staël, whom he drove into exile.
* * * * *
Such are the chief laws and customs which are imperishably associated with the name of Napoleon Bonaparte. In some respects they may be described as making for progress. Their establishment gave to the Revolution that solidity which it had previously lacked. Among so "inflammable" a people as the French--the epithet is Ste. Beuve's--it was quite possible that some of the chief civil conquests of the last decade might have been lost, had not the First Consul, to use his own expressive phrase, "thrown in some blocks of granite." We may intensify his metaphor and assert that out of the shifting shingle of French life he constructed a concrete breakwater, in which his own will acted as the binding cement, defying the storms of revolutionary or royalist passion which had swept the incoherent atoms to and fro, and had carried desolation far inland. Thenceforth France was able to work out her future under the shelter of institutions which unquestionably possess one supreme merit, that of durability. But while the chief civic and material gains of the Revolution were thus perpetuated, the very spirit and life of that great movement were benumbed by the personality and action of Napoleon. The burning enthusiasm for the Rights of Man was quenched, the passion for civic equality survived only as the gibbering ghost of what it had been in 1790, and the consolidation of revolutionary France was effected by a process nearly akin to petrifaction.
And yet this time of political and intellectual reaction in France was marked by the rise of the greatest of her modern institutions. There is the chief paradox of that age. While barren of literary activity and of truly civic developments, yet it was unequalled in the growth of institutions. This is generally the characteristic of epochs when the human faculties, long congealed by untoward restraints, suddenly burst their barriers and run riot in a spring-tide of hope. The time of disillusionment or despair which usually supervenes may, as a rule, be compared with the numbing torpor of winter, necessary doubtless in our human economy, but lacking the charm and vitality of the expansive phase. Often, indeed, it is disgraced by the characteristics of a slavish populace, a mean selfishness, a mad frivolity, and fawning adulation on the ruler who dispenses panem et circenses. Such has been the course of many a political reaction, from the time of degenerate Athens and imperial Rome down to the decay of Medicean Florence and the orgies of the restored Stuarts.
The fruitfulness of the time of monarchical reaction in France may be chiefly attributed to two causes, the one general, the other personal; the one connected with the French Revolution, the other with the exceptional gifts of Bonaparte. In their efforts to create durable institutions the revolutionists had failed: they had attempted too much: they had overthrown the old order, had undertaken crusades against monarchical Europe, and striven to manufacture constitutions and remodel a deeply agitated society. They did scarcely more than trace the outlines of the future social structure. The edifice, which should have been reared by the Directory, was scarcely advanced at all, owing to the singular dullness of the new rulers of France. But the genius was at hand. He restored order, he rallied various classes to his side, he methodized local government, he restored finance and credit, he restored religious peace and yet secured the peasants in their tenure of the confiscated lands, he rewarded merit with social honours, and finally he solidified his polity by a comprehensive code of laws which made him the keystone of the now rounded arch of French life.
His methods in this immense work deserve attention: they were very different from those of the revolutionary parties after the best days of 1789 were past. The followers of Rousseau worked on rigorous a priori methods. If institutions and sentiments did not square with the principles of their master, they were swept away or were forced into conformity with the new evangel. A correct knowledge of the "Contrat Social" and keen critical powers were the prime requisites of Jacobinical statesmanship. Knowledge of the history of France, the faculty of gauging the real strength of popular feelings, tact in conciliating important interests, all were alike despised. Institutions and class interests were as nothing in comparison with that imposing abstraction, the general will. For this alone could philosophers legislate and factions conspire.
From these lofty aims and exasperating methods Bonaparte was speedily weaned. If victorious analysis led to this; if it could only pull down, not reconstruct; if, while legislating for the general will, Jacobins harassed one class after another and produced civil war, then away with their pedantries in favour of the practical statecraft which attempted one task at a time and aimed at winning back in turn the alienated classes. Then, and then alone, after civic peace had been re-established, would he attempt the reconstruction of the civil order in the same tentative manner, taking up only this or that frayed end at once, trusting to time, skill, and patience to transform the tangle into a symmetrical pattern. And thus, where Feuillants, Girondins, and Jacobins had produced chaos, the practical man and his able helpers succeeded in weaving ineffaceable outlines. As to the time when the change took place in Bonaparte's brain from Jacobinism to aims and methods that may be called conservative, we are strangely ignorant. But the results of this mental change will stand forth clear and solid for many a generation in the customs, laws, and institutions of his adopted country. If the Revolution, intellectually considered, began and ended with analysis, Napoleon's faculties supplied the needed synthesis. Together they made modern France.
* * * * *
XIII. THE CONSULATE FOR LIFE
With the view of presenting in clear outlines the chief institutions of Napoleonic France, they have been described in the preceding chapter, detached from their political setting. We now return to consider the events which favoured the consolidation of Bonaparte's power.
No politician inured to the tricks of statecraft could more firmly have handled public affairs than the man who practically began his political apprenticeship at Brumaire. Without apparent effort he rose to the height whence the five Directors had so ignominiously fallen; and instinctively he chose at once the policy which alone could have insured rest for France, that of balancing interests and parties. His own political views being as yet unknown, dark with the excessive brightness of his encircling glory, he could pose as the conciliator of contending factions. The Jacobins were content when they saw the regicide Cambacérès become Second Consul; and friends of constitutional monarchy remembered that the Third Consul, Lebrun, had leanings towards the Feuillants of 1791. Fouché at the inquisitorial Ministry of Police, and Merlin, Berlier, Real, and Boulay de la Meurthe in the Council of State seemed a barrier to all monarchical schemes; and the Jacobins therefore remained quiet, even while Catholic worship was again publicly celebrated, while Vendean rebels were pardoned, and plotting émigrés were entering the public service.
Many, indeed, of the prominent terrorists had settled profitably on the offices which Bonaparte had multiplied throughout France, and were therefore dumb: but some of the less favoured ones, angered by the stealthy advance of autocracy, wove a plot for the overthrow of the First Consul. Chief among them were a braggart named Demerville, a painter, Topino Lebrun, a sculptor, Ceracchi, and Aréna, brother of the Corsican deputy who had shaken Bonaparte by the collar at the crisis of Brumaire. These men hit upon the notion that, with the aid of one man of action, they could make away with the new despot. They opened their hearts to a penniless officer named Harel, who had been dismissed from the army; and he straightway took the news to Bonaparte's private secretary, Bourrienne. The First Consul, on hearing of the matter, at once charged Bourrienne to supply Harel with money to buy firearms, but not to tell the secret to Fouché, of whose double dealings with the Jacobins he was already aware. It became needful, however, to inform him of the plot, which was now carefully nursed by the authorities. The arrests were planned to take place at the opera on October 10th. About half an hour after the play had begun, Bonaparte bade his secretary go into the lobby to hear the news. Bourrienne at once heard the noise caused by a number of arrests: he came back, reported the matter to his master, who forthwith returned to the Tuileries. The plot was over.[168]
A more serious attempt was to follow. On the 3rd day of Nivôse (December 24th, 1800), as the First Consul was driving to the opera to hear Haydn's oratorio, "The Creation," his carriage was shaken by a terrific explosion. A bomb had burst between his carriage and that of Josephine, which was following. Neither was injured, though many spectators were killed or wounded. "Josephine," he calmly said, as she entered the box, "those rascals wanted to blow me up: send for a copy of the music." But under this cool demeanour he nursed a determination of vengeance against his political foes, the Jacobins. On the next day he appeared at a session of the Council of State along with the Ministers of Police and of the Interior, Fouché and Chaptal. The Aréna plot and other recent events seemed to point to wild Jacobins and anarchists as the authors of this outrage: but Fouché ventured to impute it to the royalists and to England.
"There are in it," Bonaparte at once remarked, "neither nobles, nor Chouans, nor priests. They are men of September (Septembriseurs), wretches stained with blood, ever conspiring in solid phalanx against every successive government. We must find a means of prompt redress."
The Councillors at once adopted this opinion, Roederer hotly declaring his open hostility to Fouché for his reputed complicity with the terrorists; and, if we may credit the on dit of Pasquier, Talleyrand urged the execution of Fouché within twenty-four hours. Bonaparte, however, preferred to keep the two cleverest and most questionable schemers of the age, so as mutually to check each other's movements. A day later, when the Council was about to institute special proceedings, Bonaparte again intervened with the remark that the action of the tribunal would be too slow, too restricted: a signal revenge was needed for so foul a crime, rapid as lightning:
"Blood must be shed: as many guilty must be shot as the innocent who had perished--some fifteen or twenty--and two hundred banished, so that the Republic might profit by that event to purge itself."
This was the policy now openly followed. In vain did some members of the usually obsequious Council object to this summary procedure. Roederer, Boulay, even the Second Consul himself, now perceived how trifling was their influence when they attempted to modify Bonaparte's plans, and two sections of the Council speedily decided that there should be a military commission to judge suspects and "deport" dangerous persons, and that the Government should announce this to the Senate, Corps Législatif, and Tribunate. Public opinion, meanwhile, was carefully trained by the official "Moniteur," which described in detail various so-called anarchist attempts; but an increasing number in official circles veered round to Fouché's belief that the outrage was the work of the royalists abetted by England. The First Consul himself, six days after the event, inclined to this version. Nevertheless, at a full meeting of the Council of State, on the first day of the year 1801, he brought up a list of "130 villains who were troubling the public peace," with a view to inflicting summary punishment on them. Thibaudeau, Boulay, and Roederer haltingly expressed their fears that all the 130 might not be guilty of the recent outrage, and that the Council had no powers to decide on the proscription of individuals. Bonaparte at once assured them that he was not consulting them about the fate of individuals, but merely to know whether they thought an exceptional measure necessary. The Government had only
"Strong presumptions, not proofs, that the terrorists were the authors of this attempt. Chouannerie and emigration are surface ills, terrorism is an internal disease. The measure ought to be taken independently of the event. It is only the occasion of it. We banish them (the terrorists) for the massacres of September 2nd, May 31st, the Babeuf plot, and every subsequent attempt."[169]
The Council thereupon unanimously affirmed the need of an exceptional measure, and adopted a suggestion of Talleyrand (probably emanating from Bonaparte) that the Senate should be invited to declare by a special decision, called a senatus consultum, whether such an act were "preservative of the constitution." This device, which avoided the necessity of passing a law through two less subservient bodies, the Tribunate and Corps Législatif, was forthwith approved by the guardians of the constitution. It had far-reaching results. The complaisant Senate was brought down from its constitutional watchtower to become the tool of the Consuls; and an easy way for further innovations was thus dextrously opened up through the very portals which were designed to bar them out.
The immediate results of the device were startling. By an act of January 4th, 1801, as many as 130 prominent Jacobins were "placed under special surveillance outside the European territory of the Republic"--a specious phrase for denoting a living death amidst the wastes of French Guiana or the Seychelles. Some of the threatened persons escaped, perhaps owing to the connivance of Fouché; some were sent to the Isle of Oléron; but the others were forthwith despatched to the miseries of captivity in the tropics. Among these were personages so diverse as Rossignol, once the scourge of France with his force of Parisian cut-throats, and Destrem, whose crime was his vehement upbraiding of Bonaparte at St. Cloud. After this measure had taken effect, it was discovered by judicial inquiry that the Jacobins had no connection with the outrage, which was the work of royalists named Saint-Réjant and Carbon. These were captured, and on January 31st, 1801, were executed; but their fate had no influence whatever on the sentence of the transported Jacobins. Of those who were sent to Guiana and the Seychelles, scarce twenty saw France again.[170]
Bonaparte's conduct with respect to plots deserves close attention. Never since the age of the Borgias have conspiracies been so skilfully exploited, so cunningly countermined. Moreover, his conduct with respect to the Aréna and Nivôse affairs had a wider significance; for he now quietly but firmly exchanged the policy of balancing parties for one which crushed the extreme republicans, and enhanced the importance of all who were likely to approve or condone the establishment of personal rule.
It is now time to consider the effect which Bonaparte's foreign policy had on his position in France. Reserving for a later chapter an examination of the Treaty of Amiens, we may here notice the close connection between Bonaparte's diplomatic successes and the perpetuation of his Consulate. All thoughtful students of history must have observed the warping influence which war and diplomacy have exerted on democratic institutions. The age of Alcibiades, the doom of the Roman Republic, and many other examples might be cited to show that free institutions can with difficulty survive the strain of a vast military organization or the insidious results of an exacting diplomacy. But never has the gulf between democracy and personal rule been so quickly spanned as by the commanding genius of Bonaparte.
The events which disgusted both England and France with war have been described above. Each antagonist had parried the attacks of the other. The blow which Bonaparte had aimed at Britain's commerce by his eastern expedition had been foiled; and a considerable French force was shut up in Egypt. His plan of relieving his starving garrison in Malta, by concluding a maritime truce, had been seen through by us; and after a blockade of two years, Valetta fell (September, 1800). But while Great Britain regained more than all her old power in the Mediterranean, she failed to make any impression on the land-power of France. The First Consul in the year 1801 compelled Naples and Portugal to give up the English alliance and to exclude our vessels and goods. In the north the results of the war had been in favour of the islanders. The Union Jack again waved triumphant on the Baltic, and all attempts of the French to rouse and support an Irish revolt had signally failed. Yet the French preparations for an invasion of England strained the resources of our exchequer and the patience of our people. The weary struggle was evidently about to close in a stalemate.
For political and financial reasons the two Powers needed repose. Bonaparte's authority was not as yet so firmly founded that he could afford to neglect the silent longings of France for peace; his institutions had not as yet taken root; and he needed money for public works and colonial enterprises. That he looked on peace as far more desirable for France than for England at the present time is clear from a confidential talk which he had with Roederer at the close of 1800. This bright thinker, to whom he often unbosomed himself, took exception to his remark that England could not wish for peace; whereupon the First Consul uttered these memorable words:
"My dear fellow, England ought not to wish for peace, because we are masters of the world. Spain is ours. We have a foothold in Italy. In Egypt we have the reversion to their tenure. Switzerland, Holland, Belgium--that is a matter irrevocably settled, on which we have declared to Prussia, Russia, and the Emperor that we alone, if it were necessary, would make war on all, namely, that there shall be no Stadholder in Holland, and that we will keep Belgium and the left bank of the Rhine. A stadholder in Holland would be as bad as a Bourbon in the St. Antoine suburb."[171]
The passage is remarkable, not only for its frank statement of the terms on which England and the Continent might have peace, but also because it discloses the rank undergrowth of pride and ambition that is beginning to overtop his reasoning faculties. Even before he has heard the news of Moreau's great victory of Hohenlinden, he equates the military strength of France with that of the rest of Europe: nay, he claims without a shadow of doubt the mastery of the world: he will wage, if necessary, a double war, against England for a colonial empire, and against Europe for domination in Holland and the Rhineland. It is naught to him that that double effort has exhausted France in the reigns of Louis XIV. and Louis XV. Holland, Switzerland, Italy, shall be French provinces, Egypt and the Indies shall be her satrapies, and la grande nation may then rest on her glories.
Had these aims been known at Westminster, Ministers would have counted peace far more harmful than war. But, while ambition reigned at Paris, dull common sense dictated the policy of Britain. In truth, our people needed rest: we were in the first stages of an industrial revolution: our cotton and woollen industries were passing from the cottage to the factory; and a large part of our folk were beginning to cluster in grimy, ill-organized townships. Population and wealth advanced by leaps and bounds; but with them came the nineteenth-century problems of widening class distinctions and uncertainty of employment. The food-supply was often inadequate, and in 1801 the price of wheat in the London market ranged from £6 to £8 the quarter; the quartern loaf selling at times for as much as 1s. 10-1/2d.[172]
The state of the sister island was even worse. The discontent of Ireland had been crushed by the severe repression which followed the rising of 1798; and the bonds connecting the two countries were forcibly tightened by the Act of Union of 1800. But rest and reform were urgently needed if this political welding was to acquire solid strength, and rest and reform were alike denied. The position of the Ministry at Westminster was also precarious. The opposition of George III. to the proposals for Catholic Emancipation, to which Pitt believed himself in honour bound, led to the resignation in February, 1801, of that able Minister. In the following month Addington, the Speaker of the House of Commons, with the complacence born of bland obtuseness, undertook to fill his place. At first, the Ministry was treated with the tolerance due to the new Premier's urbanity, but it gradually faded away into contempt for his pitiful weakness in face of the dangers that threatened the realm.
Certain unofficial efforts in the cause of peace had been made during the year 1800, by a Frenchman, M. Otto, who had been charged to proceed to London to treat with the British Government for the exchange of prisoners. For various reasons his tentative proposals as to an accommodation between the belligerents had had no issue: but he continued to reside in London, and quietly sought to bring about a good understanding. The accession of the Addington Ministry favoured the opening of negotiations, the new Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Lord Hawkesbury, announcing His Majesty's desire for peace. Indeed, the one hope of the new Ministry, and of the king who supported it as the only alternative to Catholic Emancipation, was bound up with the cause of peace. In the next chapter it will appear how disastrous were the results of that strange political situation, when a morbidly conscientious king clung to the weak Addington, and jeopardised the interests of Britain, rather than accept a strong Minister and a measure of religious equality.
Napoleon received Hawkesbury's first overtures, those of March 21st, 1801, with thinly veiled scorn; but the news of Nelson's victory at Copenhagen and of the assassination of the Czar Paul, the latter of which wrung from him a cry of rage, ended his hopes of crushing us; and negotiations were now formally begun. On the 14th of April, Great Britain demanded that the French should evacuate Egypt, while she herself would give up Minorca, but retain the following conquests: Malta, Tobago, Martinique, Trinidad, Essequibo, Demerara, Berbice, Ceylon, and (a little later) Curaçoa; while, if the Cape of Good Hope were restored to the Dutch, it was to be a free port: an indemnity was also to be found for the Prince of Orange for the loss of his Netherlands. These claims were declared by Bonaparte to be inadmissible. He on his side urged the far more impracticable demand of the status quo ante bellum in the East and West Indies and in the Mediterranean; which would imply the surrender, not only of our many naval conquests, but also of our gains in Hindostan at the expense of the late Tippoo Sahib's dominions. In the ensuing five months the British Government gained some noteworthy successes in diplomacy and war. It settled the disputes arising out of the Armed Neutrality League; there was every prospect of our troops defeating those of France in Egypt; and our navy captured St. Eustace and Saba in the West Indies.
As a set-off to our efforts by sea, Bonaparte instigated a war between Spain and Portugal, in order that the latter Power might be held as a "guarantee for the general peace." Spain, however, merely waged a "war of oranges," and came to terms with her neighbour in the Treaty of Badajoz, June 6th, 1801, whereby she gained the small frontier district of Olivenza. This fell far short of the First Consul's intentions. Indeed, such was his annoyance at the conduct of the Court of Madrid and the complaisance of his brother Lucien Bonaparte, who was ambassador there, that he determined to make Spain bear a heavy share of the English demands. On June 22nd, 1801, he wrote to his brother at Madrid:
"I have already caused the English to be informed that I will never depart, as regards Portugal, from the ultimatum addressed to M. d'Araujo, and that the status quo ante bellum for Portugal must amount, for Spain, to the restitution of Trinidad; for France, to the restitution of Martinique and Tobago; and for Batavia [Holland], to that of Curaçoa and some other small American isles."[173]
In other words, if Portugal at the close of this whipped-up war retained her present possessions, then England must renounce her claims to Trinidad, Martinique, Tobago, Curaçoa, etc.: and he summed up his contention in the statement that "in signing this treaty Charles IV. has consented to the loss of Trinidad." Further pressure on Portugal compelled her to cede part of Northern Brazil to France and to pay her 20,000,000 francs.
A still more striking light is thrown on Bonaparte's diplomatic methods by the following question, addressed to Lord Hawkesbury on June 15th:
"If, supposing that the French Government should accede to the arrangements proposed for the East Indies by England, and should adopt the status quo ante bellum for Portugal, the King of England would consent to the re-establishment of the status quo in the Mediterranean and in America."
The British Minister in his reply of June 25th explained what the phrase status quo ante bellum in regard to the Mediterranean would really imply. It would necessitate, not merely the evacuation of Egypt by the French, but also that of the Kingdom of Sardinia (including Nice), the Duchy of Tuscany, and the independence of the rest of the peninsula. He had already offered that we should evacuate Minorca; but he now stated that, if France retained her influence over Italy, England would claim Malta as a set-off to the vast extension of French territorial influence, and in order to protect English commerce in those seas: for the rest, the British Government could not regard the maintenance of the integrity of Portugal as an equivalent to the surrender by Great Britain of her West Indian conquests, especially as France had acquired further portions of Saint Domingo. Nevertheless he offered to restore Trinidad to Spain, if she would reinstate Portugal in the frontier strip of Olivenza; and, on August 5th, he told Otto that we would give up Malta if it became independent.
Meanwhile events were, on the whole, favourable to Great Britain. She made peace with Russia on favourable terms; and in the Mediterranean, despite a first success gained by the French Admiral Linois at Algesiras, a second battle brought back victory to the Union Jack. An attack made by Nelson on the flotilla at Boulogne was a failure (August 15th). But at the close of August the French commander in Egypt, General Menou, was constrained to agree to the evacuation of Egypt by his troops, which were to be sent back to France on English vessels. This event had been expected by Bonaparte, and the secret instruction which he forwarded to Otto at London shows the nicety of his calculation as to the advantages to be reaped by France owing to her receiving the news while it was still unknown in England. He ordered Otto to fix October the 2nd for the close of the negotiations:
"You will understand the importance of this when you reflect that Menou may possibly not be able to hold out in Alexandria beyond the first of Vendémiaire (September 22nd); that, at this season, the winds are fair to come from Egypt, and ships reach Italy and Trieste in very few days. Thus it is necessary to push them [the negotiations] to a conclusion before Vendémiaire 10."
The advantages of an irresponsible autocrat in negotiating with a Ministry dependent on Parliament have rarely been more signally shown. Anxious to gain popularity, and unable to stem the popular movement for peace, Addington and Hawkesbury yielded to this request for a fixed limit of time; and the preliminaries of peace were signed at London on October 1st, 1801, the very day before the news arrived there that one of our demands was rendered useless by the actual surrender of the French in Egypt.[174]
The chief conditions of the preliminaries were as follows: Great Britain restored to France, Spain, and the Batavian Republic all their possessions and colonies recently conquered by her except Trinidad and Ceylon. The Cape of Good Hope was given back to the Dutch, but remained open to British and French commerce. Malta was to be restored to the Order of St. John, and placed under the guarantee and protection of a third Power to be agreed on in the definitive treaty. Egypt returned to the control of the Sublime Porte. The existing possessions of Portugal (that is, exclusive of Olivenza) were preserved intact. The French agreed to loose their hold on the Kingdom of Naples and the Roman territory; while the British were also to evacuate Porto Ferrajo (Elba) and the other ports and islands which they held in the Mediterranean and Adriatic. The young Republic of the Seven Islands (Ionian Islands) was recognized by France: and the fisheries on the coasts of Newfoundland and the adjacent isles were placed on their former footing, subject to "such arrangements as shall appear just and reciprocally useful."
It was remarked as significant of the new docility of George III., that the empty title of "King of France," which he and his predecessors had affected, was now formally resigned, and the fleurs de lys ceased to appear on the royal arms.
Thus, with three exceptions, Great Britain had given way on every point of importance since the first declaration of her claims; the three exceptions were Trinidad and Ceylon, which she gained from the allies of France; and Egypt, the recovery of which from the French was already achieved, though it was unknown at London. On every detail but these Bonaparte had gained a signal diplomatic success. His skill and tenacity bade fair to recover for France, Martinique, Tobago, and Santa Lucia, then in British hands, as well as the French stations in India. The only British gains, after nine years of warfare, fruitful in naval triumphs, but entailing an addition of £290,000,000 to the National Debt, were the islands of Trinidad and the Dutch possessions in Ceylon. And yet in the six months spent in negotiations the general course of events had been favourable to the northern Power. What then had been lacking? Certainly not valour to her warriors, nor good fortune to her flag; but merely brain power to her rulers. They had little of that foresight, skill, and intellectual courage, without which even the exploits of a Nelson are of little permanent effect.
Reserving for treatment in the next chapter the questions arising from these preliminaries and the resulting Peace of Amiens, we turn now to consider their bearing on Bonaparte's position as First Consul. The return of peace after an exhausting war is always welcome; yet the patriotic Briton who saw the National Debt more than doubled, with no adequate gain in land or influence, could not but contrast the difference in the fortunes of France. That Power had now gained the Rhine boundary; her troops garrisoned the fortresses of Holland and Northern Italy; her chief dictated his will to German princelings and to the once free Switzers; while the Court of Madrid, nay, the Eternal City herself, obeyed his behests. And all this prodigious expansion had been accomplished at little apparent cost to France herself; for the victors' bill had been very largely met out of the resources of the conquered territories. It is true that her nobles and clergy had suffered fearful losses in lands and treasure, while her trading classes had cruelly felt the headlong fall in value of her paper notes: but in a land endowed with a bounteous soil and climate such losses are soon repaired, and the signature of the peace with England left France comparatively prosperous. In October the First Consul also concluded peace with Russia, and came to a friendly understanding with the Czar on Italian affairs and the question of indemnities for the dispossessed German Princes.[175]
Bonaparte now strove to extend the colonies and commerce of France, a topic to which we shall return later on, and to develop her internal resources. The chief roads were repaired, and ceased to be in the miserable condition in which the abolition of the corvées in 1789 had left them: canals were dug to connect the chief river systems of France, or were greatly improved; and Paris soon benefited from the construction of the Scheldt and Oise canal, which brought the resources of Belgium within easy reach of the centre of France. Ports were deepened and extended; and Marseilles entered on golden vistas of prosperity soon to be closed by the renewal of war with England. Communications with Italy were facilitated by the improvement of the road between Marseilles and Genoa, as also of the tracks leading over the Simplon, Mont Cenis, and Mont Genèvre passes: the roads leading to the Rhine and along its left bank also attested the First Consul's desire, not only to extend commerce, but to protect his natural boundary on the east. The results of this road-making were to be seen in the campaign of Ulm, when the French forces marched from Boulogne to the Black Forest at an unparalleled speed.
Paris in particular felt his renovating hand. With the abrupt, determined tones which he assumed more and more on reaching absolute power, he one day said to Chaptal at Malmaison:
"I intend to make Paris the most beautiful capital of the world: I wish that in ten years it should number two millions of inhabitants." "But," replied his Minister of the Interior, "one cannot improvise population; ... as it is, Paris would scarcely support one million"; and he instanced the want of good drinking water. "What are your plans for giving water to Paris?" Chaptal gave two alternatives--artesian wells or the bringing of water from the River Ourcq to Paris. "I adopt the latter plan: go home and order five hundred men to set to work to-morrow at La Villette to dig the canal."
Such was the inception of a great public work which cost more than half a million sterling. The provisioning of Paris also received careful attention, a large reserve of wheat being always kept on hand for the satisfaction of "a populace which is only dangerous when it is hungry." Bonaparte therefore insisted on corn being stored and sold in large quantities and at a very low price, even when considerable loss was thereby entailed.[176] But besides supplying panem he also provided circenses to an extent never known even in the days of Louis XV. State aid was largely granted to the chief theatres, where Bonaparte himself was a frequent attendant, and a willing captive to the charms of the actress Mlle. Georges.
The beautifying of Paris was, however, the chief means employed by Bonaparte for weaning its populace from politics; and his efforts to this end were soon crowned with complete success. Here again the events of the Revolution had left the field clear for vast works of reconstruction such as would have been impossible but for the abolition of the many monastic institutions of old Paris. On or near the sites of the famous Feuillants and Jacobins he now laid down splendid thoroughfares; and where the constitutionals or reds a decade previously had perorated and fought, the fashionable world of Paris now rolled in gilded cabriolets along streets whose names recalled the Italian and Egyptian triumphs of the First Consul. Art and culture bowed down to the ruler who ordered the renovation of the Louvre, which now became the treasure-house of painting and sculpture, enriched by masterpieces taken from many an Italian gallery. No enterprise has more conspicuously helped to assure the position of Paris as the capital of the world's culture than Bonaparte's grouping of the nation's art treasures in a central and magnificent building. In the first year of his Empire Napoleon gave orders for the construction of vast galleries which were to connect the northern pavilion of the Tuileries with the Louvre and form a splendid façade to the new Rue de Rivoli. Despite the expense, the work was pushed on until it was suddenly arrested by the downfall of the Empire, and was left to the great man's nephew to complete. Though it is possible, as Chaptal avers, that the original design aimed at the formation of a central fortress, yet to all lovers of art, above all to the hero-worshipping Heine, the new Louvre was a sure pledge of Napoleon's immortality.
Other works which combined beauty with utility were the prolongation of the quays along the left bank of the Seine, the building of three bridges over that river, the improvement of the Jardin des Plantes, together with that of other parks and open spaces, and the completion of the Conservatoire of Arts and Trades. At a later date, the military spirit of the Empire received signal illustration in the erection of the Vendôme column, the Arc de Triomphe, and the consecration, or desecration, of the Madeleine as a temple of glory.
Many of these works were subsequent to the period which we are considering; but the enterprises of the Emperor represent the designs of the First Consul; and the plans for the improvement of Paris formed during the Consulate were sufficient to inspire the Parisians with lively gratitude and to turn them from political speculations to scenes of splendour and gaiety that recalled the days of Louis XIV. If we may believe the testimony of Romilly, who visited Paris in 1802, the new policy had even then attained its end.
"The quiet despotism, which leaves everybody who does not wish to meddle with politics (and few at present have any such wish) in the full and secure enjoyment of their property and of their pleasures, is a sort of paradise, compared with the agitation, the perpetual alarms, the scenes of infamy, of bloodshed, which accompanied the pretended liberties of France."
But while acknowledging the material benefits of Bonaparte's rule, the same friend of liberty notes with concern:
"That he [Bonaparte] meditates the gaining fresh laurels in war can hardly be doubted, if the accounts which one hears of his restless and impatient disposition be true."
However much the populace delighted in this new régime, the many ardent souls who had dared and achieved so much in the sacred quest of liberty could not refrain from protesting against the innovations which were restoring personal rule. Though the Press was gagged, though as many as thirty-two Departments were subjected to the scrutiny of special tribunals, which, under the guise of stamping out brigandage, frequently punished opponents of the Government, yet the voice of criticism was not wholly silenced. The project of the Concordat was sharply opposed in the Tribunate, which also ventured to declare that the first sections of the Civil Codes were not conformable to the principles of 1789 and to the first draft of a code presented to the Convention. The Government thereupon refused to send to the Tribunate any important measures, but merely flung them a mass of petty details to discuss, as "bones to gnaw" until the time for the renewal by lot of a fifth of its members should come round. During a discussion at the Council of State, the First Consul hinted with much frankness at the methods which ought to be adopted to quell the factious opposition of the Tribunate:
"One cannot work with an institution so productive of disorder. The constitution has created a legislative power composed of three bodies. None of these branches has any right to organize itself: that must be done by the law. Therefore we must make a body which shall organize the manner of deliberations of these three branches. The Tribunate ought to be divided into five sections. The discussion of laws will take place secretly in each section: one might even introduce a discussion between these sections and those of the Council of State. Only the reporter will speak publicly. Then things will go on reasonably."
Having delivered this opinion, ex cathedra, he departed (January 7th, 1802) for Lyons, there to be invested with supreme authority in the reconstituted Cisalpine, or as it was now termed, Italian Republic[177]
Returning at the close of the month, radiant with the lustre of this new dignity, he was able to bend the Tribunate and the Corps Législatif to his will. The renewal of their membership by one-fifth served as the opportunity for subjecting them to the more pliable Senate. This august body of highly-paid members holding office for life had the right of nominating the new members; but hitherto the retiring members had been singled out by lot. Roederer, acting on a hint of the time-serving Second Consul, now proposed in the Council of State that the retiring members of those Chambers should thenceforth be appointed by the Senate, and not by lot; for the principle of the lot, he quaintly urged, was hostile to the right of election which belonged to the Senate. Against such conscious sophistry all the bolts of logic were harmless. The question was left undecided, in order that the Senate might forthwith declare in favour of its own right to determine every year not only the elections to, but the exclusions from, the Tribunate and the Corps Législatif. A senatus consultant of March legalized this monstrous innovation, which led to the exclusion from the Tribunate of zealous republicans like Benjamin Constant, Isnard, Ganilh, Daunou, and Chénier. The infusion of the senatorial nominees served to complete the nullity of these bodies; and the Tribunate, the lineal descendant of the terrible Convention, was gagged and bound within eight years of the stilling of Danton's mighty voice.
In days when civic zeal was the strength of the French Republic, the mere suggestion of such a violation of liberty would have cost the speaker his life. But since the rise of Bonaparte, civic sentiments had yielded place to the military spirit and to boundless pride in the nation's glory. Whenever republican feelings were outraged, there were sufficient distractions to dissipate any of the sombre broodings which Bonaparte so heartily disliked; and an event of international importance now came to still the voice of political criticism.
The signature of the definitive treaty of peace with Great Britain (March 25th, 1802) sufficed to drown the muttered discontent of the old republican party under the paeans of a nation's joy. The jubilation was natural. While Londoners were grumbling at the sacrifices which Addington's timidity had entailed, all France rang with praises of the diplomatic skill which could rescue several islands from England's grip and yet assure French supremacy on the Continent. The event seemed to call for some sign of the nation's thankfulness to the restorer of peace and prosperity. The hint having been given by the tactful Cambacérès to some of the members of the Tribunate, this now docile body expressed a wish that there should be a striking token of the national gratitude; and a motion to that effect was made by the Senate to the Corps Législatif and to the Government itself.
The form which the national memorial should take was left entirely vague. Under ordinary circumstances the outcome would have been a column or a statue: to a Napoleon it was monarchy.
The Senate was in much doubt as to the fit course of action. The majority desired to extend the Consulate for a second term of ten years, and a formal motion to that effect was made on May 7th. It was opposed by a few, some of whom demanded the prolongation for life. The president, Tronchet, prompted by Fouché and other republicans, held that only the question of prolonging the Consulate for another term of ten years was before the Senate: and the motion was carried by sixty votes against one: the dissentient voice was that of the Girondin Lanjuinais. The report of this vote disconcerted the First Consul, but he replied with some constraint that as the people had invested him with the supreme magistrature, he would not feel assured of its confidence unless the present proposal were also sanctioned by its vote: "You judge that I owe the people another sacrifice: I will give it if the people's voice orders what your vote now authorizes." But before the mass vote of the people was taken, an important change had been made in the proposal itself. It was well known that Bonaparte was dissatisfied with the senatorial offer: and at a special session of the Council of State, at which Ministers were present, the Second Consul urged that they must now decide how, when, and on what question the people were to be consulted. The whole question recently settled by the Senate was thus reopened in a way that illustrated the advantage of multiplying councils and of keeping them under official tutelage. The Ministers present asserted that the people disapproved of the limitations of time imposed by the Senate; and after some discussion Cambacérès procured the decision that the consultation of the people should be on the questions whether the First Consul should hold his power for life, and whether he should nominate his successor.
To the latter part of this proposal the First Consul offered a well-judged refusal. To consult the people on the restoration of monarchy would, as yet, have been as inopportune as it was superfluous. After gaining complete power, Bonaparte could be well assured as to the establishment of an hereditary claim. The former and less offensive part of the proposal was therefore submitted to the people; and to it there could be only one issue amidst the prosperity brought by the peace, and the surveillance exercised by the prefects and the grateful clergy now brought back by the Concordat. The Consulate for Life was voted by the enormous majority of more than 3,500,000 affirmative votes against 8,374 negatives. But among these dissentients were many honoured names: among military men Carnot, Drouot, Mouton, and Bernard opposed the innovation; and Lafayette made the public statement that he could not vote for such a magistracy unless political liberty were guaranteed. A senatus consultum of August 1st forthwith proclaimed Napoleon Bonaparte Consul for Life and ordered the erection of a Statue of Peace, holding in one hand the victor's laurel and in the other the senatorial decree.
On the following day Napoleon--for henceforth he generally used his Christian name like other monarchs--presented to the Council of State a project of an organic law, which virtually amounted to a new constitution. The mere fact of its presentation at so early a date suffices to prove how completely he had prepared for the recent change and how thoroughly assured he was of success. This important measure was hurried through the Senate, and, without being submitted to the Tribunate or Corps Législatif, still less to the people, for whose sanction he had recently affected so much concern--was declared to be the fundamental law of the State.
The fifth constitution of revolutionary France may be thus described. It began by altering the methods of election. In place of Sieyès' lists of notabilities, Bonaparte proposed a simpler plan. The adult citizens of each canton were thenceforth to meet, for electoral purposes, in primary assemblies, to name two candidates for the office of juge de paix (i.e., magistrate) and town councillor, and to choose the members of the "electoral colleges" for the arrondissement and for the Department. In the latter case only the 600 most wealthy men of the Department were eligible. An official or aristocratic tinge was to be imparted to these electoral colleges by the infusion of members selected by the First Consul from the members of the Legion of Honour. Fixity of opinion was also assured by members holding office for life; and, as they were elected in the midst of the enthusiasm aroused by the Peace of Amiens, they were decidedly Bonapartist.
The electoral colleges had the following powers: they nominated two candidates for each place vacant in the merely consultative councils of their respective areas, and had the equally barren honour of presenting two candidates for the Tribunate--the final act of selection being decided by the executive, that is, by the First Consul. Corresponding privileges were accorded to the electoral colleges of the Department, save that these plutocratic bodies had the right of presenting candidates for admission to the Senate. The lists of candidates for the Corps Législatif were to be formed by the joint action of the electoral colleges, namely, those of the Departments and those of the arrondissements. But as the resulting councils and parliamentary bodies had only the shadow of power, the whole apparatus was but an imposing machine for winnowing the air and threshing chaff.
The First Consul secured few additional rights or attributes, except the exercise of the royal prerogative of granting pardon. But, in truth, his own powers were already so large that they were scarcely susceptible of extension. The three Consuls held office for life, and were ex officio members of the Senate. The second and third Consuls were nominated by the Senate on the presentation of the First Consul: the Senate might reject two names proposed by him for either office, but they must accept his third nominee. The First Consul might deposit in the State archives his proposal as to his successor: if the Senate rejected this proposal, the second and third Consuls made a suggestion; and if it were rejected, one of the two whom they thereupon named must be elected by the Senate. The three legislative bodies lost practically all their powers, those of the Corps Législatif going to the Senate, those of the Council of State to an official Cabal formed out of it; while the Tribunate was forced to debate secretly in five sections, where, as Bonaparte observed, they might jabber as they liked.
On the other hand, the attributes of the Senate were signally enhanced. It was thenceforth charged, not only with the preservation of the republican constitution, but with its interpretation in disputed points, and its completion wherever it should be found wanting. Furthermore, by means of organic senatus consulta it was empowered to make constitutions for the French colonies, or to suspend trial by jury for five years in any Department, or even to declare it outside the limits of the constitution. It now gained the right of being consulted in regard to the ratification of treaties, previously enjoyed by the Corps Législatif. Finally, it could dissolve the Corps Législatif and the Tribunate. But this formidable machinery was kept under the strict control of the chief engineer: all these powers were set in motion on the initiative of the Government; and the proposals for its laws, or senatus consulta, were discussed in the Cabal of the Council of State named by the First Consul. This precaution might have been deemed superfluous by a ruler less careful about details than Napoleon; the composition of the Senate was such as to assure its pliability; for though it continued to renew its ranks by co-optation, yet that privilege was restricted in the following way: from the lists of candidates for the Senate sent up by the electoral colleges of the Departments, Napoleon selected three for each seat vacant; one of those three must be chosen by the Senate. Moreover, the First Consul was to be allowed directly to nominate forty members in addition to the eighty prescribed by the constitution of 1799. Thus, by direct or indirect means, the Senate soon became a strict Napoleonic preserve, to which only the most devoted adherents could aspire. And yet, such is the vanity of human efforts, it was this very body which twelve years later was to vote his deposition.[178]
The victory of action over talk, of the executive over the legislature, of the one supremely able man over the discordant and helpless many, was now complete. The process was startlingly swift; yet its chief stages are not difficult to trace. The orators of the first two National Assemblies of France, after wrecking the old royal authority, were constrained by the pressure of events to intrust the supervision of the executive powers to important committees, whose functions grew with the intensity of the national danger. Amidst the agonies of 1793, when France was menaced by the First Coalition, the Committee of Public Safety leaped forth as the ensanguined champion of democracy; and, as the crisis, developed in intensity, this terrible body and the Committee of General Security virtually governed France.
After the repulse of the invaders and the fall of Robespierre, the return to ordinary methods was marked by the institution of the Directory, when five men, chosen by the legislature, controlled the executive powers and the general policy of the Republic: that compromise was forcibly ended by the stroke of Brumaire. Three Consuls then seized the reins, and two years later a single charioteer gripped the destinies of France. His powers were, in fact, ultimately derived from those of the secret committees of the terrorists. But, unlike the supremacy of Robespierre, that of Napoleon could not be disputed; for the general, while guarding all the material boons which the Revolution had conferred, conciliated the interests and classes whereon the civilian had so brutally trampled. The new autocracy therefore possessed a solid strength which that of the terrorists could never possess. Indeed, it was more absolute than the dictatorial power that Rousseau had outlined. The philosopher had asserted that, while silencing the legislative power, the dictator really made it vocal, and that he could do everything but make laws. But Napoleon, after 1802, did far more: he suppressed debates and yet drew laws from his subservient legislature. Whether, then, we regard its practical importance for France and Europe, or limit our view to the mental sagacity and indomitable will-power required for its accomplishment, the triumph of Napoleon in the three years subsequent to his return from Egypt is the most stupendous recorded in the history of civilized peoples.
The populace consoled itself for the loss of political liberty by the splendour of the fête which heralded the title of First Consul for Life, proclaimed on August 15th: that day was also memorable as being the First Consul's thirty-third birthday, the festival of the Assumption, and the anniversary of the ratification of the Concordat. The decorations and fireworks were worthy of so remarkable a confluence of solemnities. High on one of the towers of Notre Dame glittered an enormous star, and at its centre there shone the sign of the Zodiac which had shed its influence over his first hours of life. The myriads of spectators who gazed at that natal emblem might well have thought that his life's star was now at its zenith. Few could have dared to think that it was to mount far higher into unknown depths of space, blazing as a baleful portent to kings and peoples; still less was there any Cassandra shriek of doom as to its final headlong fall into the wastes of ocean. All was joy and jubilation over a career that had even now surpassed the records of antique heroism, that blended the romance of oriental prowess with the beneficent toils of the legislator, and prospered alike in war and peace.
And yet black care cast one shadow over that jubilant festival. There was a void in the First Consul's life such as saddened but few of the millions of peasants who looked up to him as their saviour. His wife had borne him no heir: and there seemed no prospect that a child of his own would ever succeed to his glorious heritage. Family joys, it seemed, were not for him. Suspicions and bickerings were his lot. His brothers, in their feverish desire for the establishment of a Bonapartist dynasty, ceaselessly urged that he should take means to provide himself with a legitimate heir, in the last resort by divorcing Josephine. With a consideration for her feelings which does him credit, Napoleon refused to countenance such proceedings. Yet it is certain that from this time onwards he kept in view the desirability, on political grounds, of divorcing her, and made this the excuse for indulgence in amours against which Josephine's tears and reproaches were all in vain.
The consolidation of personal rule, the institution of the Legion of Honour, and the return of very many of the emigrant nobles under the terms of the recent amnesty, favoured the growth of luxury in the capital and of Court etiquette at the Tuileries and St. Cloud. At these palaces the pomp of the ancien régime was laboriously copied. General Duroc, stiff republican though he was, received the appointment of Governor of the Palace; under him were chamberlains and prefects of the palace, who enforced a ceremonial that struggled to be monarchical. The gorgeous liveries and sumptuous garments of the reign of Louis XV. speedily replaced the military dress which even civilians had worn under the warlike Republic. High boots, sabres, and regimental headgear gave way to buckled shoes, silk stockings, Court rapiers, and light hats, the last generally held under the arm. Tricolour cockades were discarded, along with the revolutionary jargon which thou'd and citizen'd everyone; and men began to purge their speech of some of the obscene terms which had haunted clubs and camps.
It was remarked, however, that the First Consul still clung to the use of the term citizen, and that amidst the surprising combinations of colours that flecked his Court, he generally wore only the uniform of a colonel of grenadiers or of the light infantry of the consular guard. This conduct resulted partly from his early dislike of luxury, but partly, doubtless, from a conviction that republicans will forgive much in a man who, like Vespasian, discards the grandeur which his prowess has won, and shines by his very plainness. To trifling matters such as these Napoleon always attached great importance; for, as he said to Admiral Malcolm at St. Helena: "In France trifles are great things: reason is nothing."[179] Besides, genius so commanding as his little needed the external trappings wherewith ordinary mortals hide their nullity. If his attire was simple, it but set off the better the play of his mobile features, and the rich, unfailing flow of his conversation. Perhaps no clearer and more pleasing account of his appearance and his conduct at a reception has ever been given to the world than this sketch of the great man in one of his gentler moods by John Leslie Foster, who visited Paris shortly after the Peace of Amiens:
"He is about five feet seven inches high, delicately and gracefully made; his hair a dark brown crop, thin and lank; his complexion smooth, pale, and sallow; his eyes gray, but very animated; his eye-brows light brown, thin and projecting. All his features, particularly his mouth and nose, fine, sharp, defined, and expressive beyond description; expressive of what? Not of anything percé as the prints expressed him, still less of anything méchant; nor has he anything of that eye whose bend doth awe the world. The true expression of his countenance is a pleasing melancholy, which, whenever he speaks, relaxes into the most agreeable and gracious smile you can conceive. To this you must add the appearance of deep and intense thought, but above all the predominating expression a look of calm and tranquil resolution and intrepidity which nothing human could discompose. His address is the finest I have ever seen, and said by those who have travelled to exceed not only every Prince and Potentate now in being, but even all those whose memory has come down to us. He has more unaffected dignity than I could conceive in man. His address is the gentlest and most prepossessing you can conceive, which is seconded by the greatest fund of levée conversation that I suppose any person ever possessed. He speaks deliberately, but very fluently, with particular emphasis, and in a rather low tone of voice. While he speaks, his features are still more expressive than his words."[180]
In contrast with this intellectual power and becoming simplicity of attire, how stupid and tawdry were the bevies of soulless women and the dumb groups of half-tamed soldiers! How vapid also the rules of etiquette and precedence which starched the men and agitated the minds of their consorts! Yet, while soaring above these rules with easy grace, the First Consul imposed them rigidly on the crowd of eager courtiers. On these burning questions he generally took the advice of M. de Rémusat, whose tact and acquaintance with Court customs were now of much service; while the sprightly wit of his young wife attracted Josephine, as it has all readers of her piquant but rather spiteful memoirs. In her pages we catch a glimpse of the life of that singular Court; the attempts at aping the inimitable manners of the ancien régime; the pompous nullity of the second and third Consuls; the tawdry magnificence of the costumes; the studied avoidance of any word that implied even a modicum of learning or a distant acquaintance with politics; the nervous preoccupation about Napoleon's moods and whims; the graceful manners of Josephine that rarely failed to charm away his humours, except when she herself had been outrageously slighted for some passing favourite; above all, the leaden dullness of conversation, which drew from Chaptal the confession that life there was the life of a galley slave. And if we seek for the hidden reason why a ruler eminently endowed with mental force and freshness should have endured so laboured a masquerade, we find it in his strikingly frank confession to Madame de Rémusat: It is fortunate that the French are to be ruled through their vanity. <
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