History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814

by M. Mignet

CHAPTER XIII

FROM THE 18TH FRUCTIDOR, IN THE YEAR V. (4TH OF SEPTEMBER, 1797), TO THE 18TH BRUMAIRE, IN THE YEAR VIII. (9TH OF NOVEMBER, 1799)

The chief result of the 18th Fructidor was a return, with slight mitigation, to the revolutionary government. The two ancient privileged classes were again excluded from society; the dissentient priests were again banished. The Chouans, and former fugitives, who occupied the field of battle in the departments, abandoned it to the old republicans: those who had formed part of the military household of the Bourbons, the superior officers of the crown, the members of the parliaments, commanders of the order of the Holy Ghost and Saint Louis, the knights of Malta, all those who had protested against the abolition of nobility, and who had preserved its titles, were to quit the territory of the republic. The ci- devant nobles, or those ennobled, could only enjoy the rights of citizens, after a term of seven years, and after having gone through a sort of apprenticeship as Frenchmen. This party, by desiring sway, restored the dictatorship.

At this period the directory attained its maximum of power; for some time it had no enemies in arms. Delivered from all internal opposition, it imposed the continental peace on Austria by the treaty of Campo-Formio, and on the empire by the congress of Rastadt. The treaty of Campo-Formio was more advantageous to the cabinet of Vienna than the preliminaries of Leoben. Its Belgian and Lombard states were paid for by a part of the Venetian states. This old republic was divided; France retained the Ionian Isles, and gave the city of Venice and the provinces of Istria and Dalmatia to Austria. In this the directory committed a great fault, and was guilty of an attempt against liberty. In the fanaticism of a system, we may desire to set a country free, but we should never give it away. By arbitrarily distributing the territory of a small state, the directory set the bad example of this traffic in nations since but too much followed. Besides, Austrian dominion would, sooner or later, extend in Italy, through this imprudent cession of Venice.

The coalition of 1792 and 1793 was dissolved; England was the only remaining belligerent power. The cabinet of London was not at all disposed to cede to France, which it had attacked in the hope of weakening it, Belgium, Luxembourg, the left bank of the Rhine, Porentruy, Nice, Savoy, the protectorate of Genoa, Milan, and Holland. But finding it necessary to appease the English opposition, and reorganize its means of attack, it made propositions of peace; it sent Lord Malmesbury as plenipotentiary, first to Paris, then to Lille. But the offers of Pitt not being sincere, the directory did not allow itself to be deceived by his diplomatic stratagems. The negotiations were twice broken off, and war continued between the two powers. While England negotiated at Lille, she was preparing at Saint Petersburg the triple alliance, or second coalition.

The directory, on its side, without finances, without any party in the interior, having no support but the army, and no eminence save that derived from the continuation of its victories, was not in a condition to consent to a general peace. It had increased the public discontent by the establishment of certain taxes and the reduction of the debt to a consolidated third, payable in specie only, which had ruined the fundholders. It became necessary to maintain itself by war. The immense body of soldiers could not be disbanded without danger. Besides, being deprived of its power, and being placed at the mercy of Europe, the directory had attempted a thing never done without creating a shock, except in times of great tranquillity, of great ease, abundance, and employment. The directory was driven by its position to the invasion of Switzerland and the expedition into Egypt.

Bonaparte had then returned to Paris. The conqueror of Italy and the pacificator of the continent, was received with enthusiasm, constrained on the part of the directory, but deeply felt by the people. Honours were accorded him, never yet obtained by any general of the republic. A patriotic altar was prepared in the Luxembourg, and he passed under an arch of standards won in Italy, on his way to the triumphal ceremony in his honour. He was harangued by Barras, president of the directory, who, after congratulating him on his victories, invited him "to crown so noble a life by a conquest which the great country owed to its insulted dignity." This was the conquest of England. Everything seemed in preparation for a descent, while the invasion of Egypt was really the enterprise in view.

Such an expedition suited both Bonaparte and the directory. The independent conduct of that general in Italy, his ambition, which, from time to time, burst through his studied simplicity, rendered his presence dangerous. He, on his side, feared, by his inactivity, to compromise the already high opinion entertained of his talents: for men always require from those whom they make great, more than they are able to perform. Thus, while the directory saw in the expedition to Egypt the means of keeping a formidable general at a distance, and a prospect of attacking the English by India, Bonaparte saw in it a gigantic conception, an employment suited to his taste, and a new means of astonishing mankind. He sailed from Toulon on the 30th Floréal, in the year VI. (19th May, 1798), with a fleet of four hundred sail, and a portion of the army of Italy; he steered for Malta; of which he made himself master, and from thence to Egypt.

The directory, who violated the neutrality of the Ottoman Porte in order to attack the English, had already violated that of Switzerland, in order to expel the emigrants from its territory. French opinions had already penetrated into Geneva and the Pays de Vaud; but the policy of the Swiss confederation was counter-revolutionary, from the influence of the aristocracy of Berne. They had driven from the cantons all the Swiss who had shown themselves partisans of the French republic. Berne was the headquarters of the emigrants, and it was there that all the plots against the revolution were formed. The directory complained, but did not receive satisfaction. The Vaudois, placed by old treaties under the protection of France, invoked her help against the tyranny of Berne. This appeal of the Vaudois, its own grievances, its desire to extend the directorial republican system to Switzerland, much more than the temptation of seizing the little amount of treasure in Berne, a reproach brought against it by some, determined the directory. Some conferences took place, which led to no result, and war began. The Swiss defended themselves with much courage and obstinacy, and hoped to resuscitate the times of their ancestors, but they succumbed. Geneva was united to France, and Switzerland exchanged its ancient constitution for that of the year III. From that time two parties existed in the confederation, one of which was for France and the revolution, the other for the counter-revolution and Austria. Switzerland ceased to be a common barrier, and became the high road of Europe.

This revolution had been followed by that of Rome. General Duphot was killed at Rome in a riot; and in punishment of this assassination, which the pontifical government had not interfered to prevent, Rome was changed into a republic. All this combined to complete the system of the directory, and make it preponderant in Europe; it was now at the head of the Helvetian, Batavian, Ligurian, Cisalpine, and Roman republics, all constructed on the same model. But while the directory extended its influence abroad, it was again menaced by internal parties.

The elections of Floréal in the year VI. (May, 1798) were by no means favourable to the directory; the returns were quite at variance with those of the year V. Since the 18th Fructidor, the withdrawal of the counter- revolutionists had restored all the influence of the exclusive republican party, which had reestablished the clubs under the name of Constitutional Circles. This party dominated in the electoral assemblies, which, most unusually, had to nominate four hundred and thirty-seven deputies: two hundred and ninety-eight for the council of five hundred; a hundred and thirty-nine for that of the ancients. When the elections drew near, the directory exclaimed loudly against the anarchists. But its proclamations having been unable to prevent democratic returns, it decided upon annulling them in virtue of a law, by which the councils, after the 18th Fructidor, had granted it the power of judging the operations of the electoral assemblies. It invited the legislative body, by a message, to appoint a commission of five members for that purpose. On the 22nd Floréal, the elections were for the most part annulled. At this period the directorial party struck a blow at the extreme republicans, as nine months before it had aimed at the royalists.

The directory wished to maintain the political balance, which had been the characteristic of its first two years; but its position was much changed. Since its last coup-d'état, it could no longer be an impartial government, because it was no longer a constitutional government. With these pretensions of isolation, it dissatisfied every one. Yet it lived on in this way till the elections of the year VII. It displayed much activity, but an activity of a narrow and shuffling nature. Merlin de Douai and Treilhard, who had replaced Carnot and Barthélemy, were two political lawyers. Rewbell had in the highest degree the courage, without having the enlarged views of a statesman. Laréveillère was too much occupied with the sect of the Theophilanthropists for a government leader. As to Barras, he continued his dissipated life and his directorial regency; his palace was the rendezvous of gamesters, women of gallantry, and stock-jobbers of every kind. The administration of the directors betrayed their character, but more especially their position; to the embarrassments of which was added war with all Europe.

While the republican plenipotentiaries were yet negotiating for peace with the empire at Rastadt, the second coalition began the campaign. The treaty of Campo-Formio had only been for Austria a suspension of arms. England had no difficulty in gaining her to a new coalition; with the exception of Spain and Prussia, most of the European powers formed part of it. The subsidies of the British cabinet, and the attraction of the West, decided Russia; the Porte and the states of Barbary acceded to it, because of the invasion of Egypt; the empire, in order to recover the left bank of the Rhine, and the petty princes of Italy, that they might destroy the new republics. At Rastadt they were discussing the treaty relative to the empire, the concession of the left bank of the Rhine, the navigation of that river, and the demolition of some fortresses on the right bank, when the Russians entered Germany, and the Austrian army began to move. The French plenipotentiaries, taken by surprise, received orders to leave in four and twenty hours; they obeyed immediately, and set out, after having obtained safe conduct from the generals of the enemy. At a short distance from Rastadt they were stopped by some Austrian hussars, who, having satisfied themselves as to their names and titles, assassinated them: Bonnier and Roberjot were killed, Jean de Bry was left for dead. This unheard-of violation of the right of nations, this premeditated assassination of three men invested with a sacred character, excited general horror. The legislative body declared war, and declared it with indignation against the governments on whom the guilt of this enormity fell.

Hostilities had already commenced in Italy and on the Rhine. The directory, apprised of the march of the Russian troops, and suspecting the intentions of Austria, caused the councils to pass a law for recruiting. The military conscription placed two hundred thousand young men at the disposal of the republic. This law, which was attended with incalculable consequences, was the result of a more regular order of things. Levies en masse had been the revolutionary service of the country; the conscription became the legal service.

The most impatient of the powers, those which formed the advanced guard of the coalition, had already commenced the attack. The king of Naples had advanced on Rome, and the king of Sardinia had raised troops and threatened the Ligurian republic. As they had not sufficient power to sustain the shock of the French armies, they were easily conquered and dispossessed. General Championnet entered Naples after a sanguinary victory. The lazaroni defended the interior of the town for three days; but they yielded, and the Parthenopian republic was proclaimed. General Joubert occupied Turin; and the whole of Italy was in the hands of the French, when the new campaign began.

The coalition was superior to the republic in effective force and in preparations. It attacked it by the three great openings of Italy, Switzerland, and Holland. A strong Austrian army debouched in the duchy of Mantua; it defeated Scherer twice on the Adige, and was soon joined by the whimsical and hitherto victorious Suvorov. Moreau replaced Scherer, and, like him, was beaten; he retreated towards Genoa, in order to keep the barrier of the Apennines and to join the army of Naples, commanded by Macdonald, which was overpowered at the Trebia. The Austro-Russians then directed their chief forces upon Switzerland. A few Russian corps joined the archduke Charles, who had defeated Jourdan on the Upper Rhine, and was preparing to pass over the Helvetian barrier. At the same time the duke of York disembarked in Holland with forty thousand Anglo-Russians. The small republics which protected France were invaded, and a few more victories would have enabled the confederates to penetrate even to the scene of the revolution.

In the midst of these military disasters and the discontent of parties, the elections of Floréal in the year VII. (May, 1799) took place; they were republican, like those of the preceding year. The directory was no longer strong enough to contend with public misfortunes and the rancour of parties. The retirement of Rewbell, who was replaced by Sieyès, caused it to lose the only man able to face the storm, and brought into its bosom the most avowed antagonist of this compromised and worn-out government. The moderate party and the extreme republicans united in demanding from the directory an account of the internal and external situation of the republic. The councils sat permanently. Barras abandoned his colleagues. The fury of the councils was directed solely against Treilhard, Merlin, and La Réveillère, the last supports of the old directory. They deposed Treilhard, because an interval of a year had not elapsed between his legislative and his directorial functions, as the constitution required. The ex-minister of justice, Gohier, was immediately chosen to replace him.

The orators of the councils then warmly attacked Merlin and La Réveillère, whom they could not dismiss from the directory. The threatened directors sent a justificatory message to the councils, and proposed peace. On the 30th Prairial, the republican Bertrand (du Calvados) ascended the tribune, and after examining the offers of the directors, exclaimed: "You have proposed union; and I propose that you reflect if you yourselves can still preserve your functions. If you love the republic you will not hesitate to decide. You are incapable of doing good; you will never have the confidence of your colleagues, that of the people, or that of the representatives, without which you cannot cause the laws to be executed. I know that, thanks to the constitution, there already exists in the directory a majority which enjoys the confidence of the people, and that of the national representation. Why do you hesitate to introduce unanimity of desires and principles between the two first authorities of the republic? You have not even the confidence of those vile flatterers, who have dug your political tomb. Finish your career by an act of devotion, which good republican hearts will be able to appreciate."

Merlin and La Réveillère, deprived of the support of the government by the retirement of Rewbell, the dismissal of Treilhard, and the desertion of Barras, urged by the councils and by patriotic motives, yielded to circumstances, and resigned the directorial authority. This victory, gained by the republican and moderate parties combined, turned to the profit of both. The former introduced general Moulins into the directory; the latter, Roger Ducos. The 30th Prairial (18th June), which witnessed the breaking up of the old government of the year III., was an act of reprisal on the part of the councils against the directory for the 18th Fructidor and the 22nd Floréal. At this period the two great powers of the state had each in turn violated the constitution: the directory by decimating the legislature; the legislature by expelling the directory. This form of government, which every party complained of, could not have a protracted existence.

Sieyès, after the success of the 30th Prairial, laboured to destroy what yet remained of the government of the year III., in order to establish the legal system on another plan. He was whimsical and systematic; but he had the faculty of judging surely of situations. He re-entered upon the scene of the revolution of a singular epoch, with the intention of strengthening it by a definitive constitution. After having co-operated in the principal changes of 1789, by his motion of the 17 of June, which transformed the states-general into a national assembly, and by his plan of internal organization, which substituted departments for provinces, he had remained passive and silent during the subsequent interval. He waited till the period of public defence should again give place to institutions. Appointed, under the directory, to the embassy at Berlin, the neutrality of Prussia was attributed to his efforts. On his return, he accepted the office of director, hitherto refused by him, because Rewbell was leaving the government, and he thought that parties were sufficiently weary to undertake a definitive pacification, and the establishment of liberty. With this object, he placed his reliance on Roger-Ducos in the directory, on the council of ancients in the legislature, and without, on the mass of moderate men and the middle-class, who, after desiring laws, merely as a novelty, now desired repose as a novelty. This party sought for a strong and secure government, which should have no past, no enmities, and which thenceforward might satisfy all opinions and interests. As all that had been dene, from the 14th of July till the 9th Thermidor, by the people, in connexion with a part of the government, had been done since the 13th Vendémiaire by the soldiers, Sieyès was in want of a general. He cast his eyes upon Joubert, who was put at the head of the army of Italy, in order that he might gain by his victories, and by the deliverance of Italy, a great political importance.

The constitution of the year III. was, however, still supported by the two directors, Gohier and Moulins, the council of five hundred, and without, by the party of the Manège. The decided republicans had formed a club that held its sittings in that hall where had sat the first of our assemblies. The new club, formed from the remains of that of Salm, before the 18th Fructidor; of that of the Panthéon, at the beginning of the directory; and of the old society of the Jacobins, enthusiastically professed republican principles, but not the democratic opinions of the inferior class. Each of these parties also had a share in the ministry which had been renewed at the same time as the directory. Cambacérès had the department of justice; Quinette, the home department; Reinhard, who had been temporarily placed in office during the ministerial interregnum of Talleyrand, was minister of foreign affairs; Robert Lindet was minister of finance, Bourdon (of Vatry) of the navy, Bernadotte of war, Bourguignon, soon afterwards replaced by Fouché (of Nantes), of police.

This time Barras remained neutral between the two divisions of the legislature, of the directory and of the ministry. Seeing that matters were coming to a more considerable change than that of the 30th Prairial, he, an ex-noble, thought that the decline of the republic would lead to the restoration of the Bourbons, and he treated with the Pretender Louis XVIII. It seems that, in negotiating the restoration of the monarchy by his agent, David Monnier, he was not forgetful of himself. Barras espoused nothing from conviction, and always sided with the party which had the greatest chance of victory. A democratic member of the Mountain on the 31st of May; a reactionary member of the Mountain on the 9th Thermidor; a revolutionary director against the royalists on the 18th Fructidor; extreme republican director against his old colleagues on the 30th Prairial; he now became a royalist director against the government of the year III.

The faction disconcerted by the 18th Fructidor and the peace of the Continent, had also gained courage. The military successes of the new coalition, the law of compulsory loans and that of hostages, which had compelled every emigrant family to give guarantees to government, had made the royalists of the south and west again take up arms. They reappeared in bands, which daily became more formidable, and revived the petty but disastrous warfare of the Chouans. They awaited the arrival of the Russians, and looked forward to the speedy restoration of the monarchy. This was a moment of fresh competition with every party. Each aspired to the inheritance of the dying constitution, as they had done at the close of the convention. In France, people are warned by a kind of political odour that a government is dying, and all parties rush to be in at the death.

Fortunately for the republic, the war changed its aspect on the two principal frontiers of the Upper and Lower Rhine. The allies, after having acquired Italy, wished to enter France by Switzerland and Holland; but generals Masséna and Brune arrested their hitherto victorious progress. Masséna advanced against Korsakov and Suvorov. During twelve days of great combinations and consecutive victories, hastening in turns from Constance to Zurich, he repelled the efforts of the Russians, forced them to retreat, and disorganized the coalition. Brune also defeated the duke of York in Holland, obliged him to re-embark, and to renounce his attempted invasion. The army of Italy alone had been less fortunate. It had lost its general, Joubert, killed at the battle of Novi, while leading a charge on the Austro-Russians. But this frontier, which was at a distance from the centre of action, despite the defeat of Novi, was not crossed, and Championnet ably defended it. It was soon to be repassed by the republican troops, who, after each resumption of arms, having been for a moment beaten, soon regained their superiority and recommenced their victories. Europe, by giving additional exercise to the military power, by its repeated attacks, rendered it each time more triumphant.

But at home nothing was changed. Divisions, discontent, and anxiety were the same as before. The struggle between the moderate republicans and the extreme republicans had become more determined. Sieyès pursued his projects against the latter. In the Champ-de-Mars, on the 10th of August, he assailed the Jacobins. Lucien Bonaparte, who had much influence in the council of five hundred, from his character, his talents, and the military importance of the conqueror of Italy and of Egypt, drew in that assembly a fearful picture of the reign of terror, and said that France was threatened with its return. About the same time, Sieyès caused Bernadotte to be dismissed, and Fouché, in concert with him, closed the meetings of the Manège. The multitude, to whom it is only necessary to present the phantom of the past to inspire it with fear, sided with the moderate party, dreading the return of the reign of terror; and the extreme republicans failed in their endeavour to declare la patrie en danger, as they had done at the close of the legislative assembly. But Sieyès, after having lost Joubert, sought for a general who could enter into his designs, and who would protect the republic, without becoming its oppressor. Hoche had been dead more than a year. Moreau had given rise to suspicion by his equivocal conduct to the directory before the 18th Fructidor, and by the sudden denunciation of his old friend Pichegru, whose treason he had kept secret for a whole year; Masséna was not a political general; Bernadotte and Jourdan were devoted to the party of the Manège; Sieyès was compelled to postpone his scheme for want of a suitable agent.

Bonaparte had learned in the east, from his brother Lucien and a few other friends, the state of affairs in France, and the decline of the directorial government. His expedition had been brilliant, but without results. After having defeated the Mamelukes, and ruined their power in Upper and Lower Egypt, he had advanced into Syria; but the failure of the siege of Acre had compelled him to return to his first conquest. There, after defeating an Ottoman army on the coast of Aboukir, so fatal to the French fleet the preceding year, he decided on leaving that land of exile and fame, in order to turn the new crisis in France to his own elevation. He left general Kléber to command the army of the east, and crossed the Mediterranean, then covered with English ships, in a frigate. He disembarked at Fréjus, on the 7th Vendémiaire, year VIII. (9th October, 1799), nineteen days after the battle of Berghen, gained by Brune over the Anglo-Russians under the duke of York, and fourteen days after that of Zurich, gained by Masséna over the Austro-Russians under Korsakov and Suvorov. He traversed France, from the shore of the Mediterranean to Paris, in triumph. His expedition, almost fabulous, had struck the public mind with surprise, and had still more increased the great renown he had acquired by the conquest of Italy. These two enterprises had raised him above all the other generals of the republic. The distance of the theatre upon which he had fought enabled him to begin his career of independence and authority. A victorious general, an acknowledged and obeyed negotiator, a creator of republics, he had treated all interests with skill, all creeds with moderation. Preparing afar off his ambitious destiny, he had not made himself subservient to any system, and had managed all parties so as to work his elevation with their assent. He had entertained this idea of usurpation since his victories in Italy. On the 18th Fructidor, had the directory been conquered by the councils, he purposed marching against the latter with his army and seizing the protectorate of the republic. After the 18th Fructidor; finding the directory too powerful, and the inactivity of the continent too dangerous for him, he accepted the expedition to Egypt, that he might not fall, and might not be forgotten. At the news of the disorganization of the directory, on the 30th Prairial, he repaired with haste to the scene of events.

His arrival excited the enthusiasm of the moderate masses of the nation. He received general congratulations, and every party contended for his favour. Generals, directors, deputies, and even the republicans of the Manège, waited on and tried to sound him. Fêtes and banquets were given in his honour. His manners were grave, simple, cool, and observing; he had already a tone of condescending familiarity and involuntary habits of command. Notwithstanding his want of earnestness and openness, he had an air of self-possession, and it was easy to read in him an after-thought of conspiracy. Without uttering his design, he allowed it to be guessed; because a thing must always be expected in order to be accomplished. He could not seek supporters in the republicans of the Manège, as they neither wished for a coup-d'état nor for a dictator; and Sieyès feared that he was too ambitious to fall in with his constitutional views. Hence Sieyès hesitated to open his mind to Bonaparte, but, urged by their mutual friends, they at length met and concerted together. On the 15th Brumaire, they determined on their plan of attack on the constitution of the year III, Sieyès undertook to prepare the councils by the commissions of inspectors, who placed unlimited confidence in him. Bonaparte was to gain the generals and the different corps of troops stationed in Paris, who displayed much enthusiasm for him and much attachment to his person. They agreed to convoke an extraordinary meeting of the moderate members of the councils, to describe the public danger to the Ancients, and by urging the ascendancy of Jacobinism to demand the removal of the legislative body to Saint-Cloud, and the appointment of general Bonaparte to the command of the armed force, as the only man able to save the country; and then, by means of the new military power, to obtain the dismissal of the directory, and the temporary dissolution of the legislative body. The enterprise was fixed for the morning of the 18th Brumaire (9th November).

During these three days, the secret was faithfully kept, Barras, Moulins, and Gohier, who formed the majority of the directory, of which Gohier was then president, might have frustrated the coup-d'état of the conspirators by forestalling them, as on the 18th Fructidor. But they gave them credit for hopes only, and not for any decided projects. On the morning of the 18th, the members of the ancients were convoked in an unusual way by the inspectors; they repaired to the Tuileries, and the debate was opened about seven in the morning under the presidentship of Lemercier. Cornudet, Lebrun, and Fargues, the three most influential conspirators in the council, drew a most alarming picture of the state of public affairs; protesting that the Jacobins were flocking in crowds to Paris from all the departments; that they wished to re-establish the revolutionary government, and that a reign of terror would once more desolate the republic, if the council had not the courage and wisdom to prevent its return. Another conspirator, Régnier de la Meurthe, required of the ancients already moved, that in virtue of the right conferred on them by the constitution, they should transfer the legislative body to Saint Cloud, and depute Bonaparte, nominated by them to the command of the 17th military division, to superintend the removal. Whether all the members of the council were accomplices of this manoeuvre, or whether they were terrified by so hasty convocation, and by speeches so alarming, they instantly granted what the conspirators required.

Bonaparte awaited with impatience the result of this deliberation, at his house in the Rue Chantereine; he was surrounded by generals, by Lefèvre, the commander of the guard of the directory, and by three regiments of cavalry which he was about to review. The decree of the council of ancients was passed about eight, and brought to him at half-past eight by a state messenger. He received the congratulations of all around him; the officers drew their swords as a sign of fidelity. He put himself at their head, and they marched to the Tuileries; he appeared at the bar of the ancients, took the oath of fidelity, and appointed as his lieutenant, Lefèvre, chief of the directorial guard.

This was, however, only a beginning of success. Bonaparte was at the head of the armed force; but the executive power of the directory and the legislative power of the councils still existed. In the struggle which would infallibly ensue, it was not certain that the great and hitherto victorious force of the revolution would not triumph. Sieyès and Roger Ducos went from the Luxembourg to the legislative and military camp of the Tuileries, and gave in their resignation. Barras, Moulins, and Gohier, apprised on their side, but a little too late, of what was going on, wished to employ their power and make themselves sure of their guard; but the latter, having received from Bonaparte information of the decree of the ancients, refused to obey them. Barras, discouraged, sent in his resignation, and departed for his estate of Gros-Bois. The directory was, in fact, dissolved; and there was one antagonist less in the struggle. The five hundred and Bonaparte alone remained opposed.

The decree of the council of ancients and the proclamations of Bonaparte were placarded on the walls of Paris. The agitation which accompanies extraordinary events prevailed in that great city. The republicans, and not without reason, felt serious alarm for the fate of liberty. But when they showed alarm respecting the intentions of Bonaparte, in whom they beheld a Caesar, or a Cromwell, they were answered in the general's own words: "Bad parts, worn out parts, unworthy a man of sense, even if they were not so of a good man. It would be sacrilege to attack representative government in this age of intelligence and freedom. He would be but a fool who, with lightness of heart, could wish to cause the loss of the stakes of the republic against royalty after having supported them with some glory and peril." Yet the importance he gave himself in his proclamations was ominous. He reproached the directory with the situation of France in a most extraordinary way. "What have you done," said he, "with that France which I left so flourishing in your hands? I left you peace, I find you at war; I left you victories, I find nothing but reverses; I left you the millions of Italy, I find nothing but plundering laws and misery. What have you done with the hundred thousand Frenchmen whom I knew, my companions in glory? They are dead! This state of things cannot last; in less than three years it would lead us to despotism." This was the first time for ten years that a man had ventured to refer everything to himself; and to demand an account of the republic, as of his own property. It is a painful surprise to see a new comer of the revolution introduce himself thus into the inheritance, so laboriously acquired, of an entire people.

On the 19th Brumaire the members of the councils repaired to Saint Cloud; Sieyès and Roger Ducos accompanied Bonaparte to this new field of battle; they went thither with the intention of supporting the designs of the conspirators; Sieyès, who understood the tactics of revolution, wished to make sure of events by provisionally arresting the leaders, and only admitting the moderate party into the councils; but Bonaparte refused to accede to this. He was no party man; having hitherto acted and conquered with regiments only, he thought he could direct legislative councils like an army, by the word of command. The gallery of Mars had been prepared for the ancients, the Orangery for the five hundred. A considerable armed force surrounded the seat of the legislature, as the multitude, on the 2nd of June, had surrounded the convention. The republicans, assembled in groups in the grounds, waited the opening of the sittings; they were agitated with a generous indignation against the military brutalism that threatened them, and communicated to each other their projects of resistance. The young general, followed by a few grenadiers, passed through the courts and apartments, and prematurely yielding to his character, he said, like the twentieth king of a dynasty: "I will have no more factions: there must be an end to this; I absolutely will not have any more of it," About two o'clock in the afternoon, the councils assembled in their respective halls, to the sound of instruments which played the Marseillaise.

As soon as the business of the sitting commenced, Emile Gaudin, one of the conspirators, ascended the tribune of the five hundred. He proposed a vote of thanks to the council of ancients for the measures it had taken, and to request it to expound the means of saving the republic. This motion was the signal for a violent tumult; cries arose against Gaudin from every part of the hall. The republican deputies surrounded the tribune and the bureau, at which Lucien Bonaparte presided. The conspirators Cabanis, Boulay (de la Meurthe), Chazal, Gaudin, etc., turned pale on their seats. After a long scene of agitation, during which no one could obtain a hearing, calm was restored for a few moments, and Delbred proposed that the oath made to the constitution of the year III. should be renewed. As no one opposed this motion, which at such a juncture was of vital importance, the oath was taken with an enthusiasm and unanimity which was dangerous to the conspiracy.

Bonaparte, learning what had passed in the five hundred, and in the greatest danger of desertion and defeat, presented himself at the council of ancients. All would have been lost for him, had the latter, in favour of the conspiracy, been carried away by the enthusiasm of the younger council. "Representatives of the people," said he, "you are in no ordinary situation; you stand on a volcano. Yesterday, when you summoned me to inform me of the decree for your removal, and charged me with its execution, I was tranquil. I immediately assembled my comrades; we flew to your aid! Well, now I am overwhelmed with calumnies! They talk of Caesar, Cromwell, and military government! Had I wished to oppress the liberty of my country, I should not have attended to the orders which you gave me; I should not have had any occasion to receive this authority from your hands. Representatives of the people! I swear to you that the country has not a more zealous defender than I am; but its safety rests with you alone! There is no longer a government; four of the directors have given in their resignation; the fifth (Moulins) has been placed under surveillance for his own security; the council of five hundred is divided; nothing is left but the council of ancients. Let it adopt measures; let it but speak; I am ready to execute. Let us save liberty! let us save equality!" Linglet, a republican, then arose and said: "General, we applaud what you say: swear with us to obey the constitution of the year III., which alone can maintain the republic." All would have been lost for him had this motion met with the same reception which it had found in the five hundred. It surprised the council, and for a moment Bonaparte was disconcerted. But he soon resumed: "The constitution of the year III. has ceased to exist; you violated it on the 18th Fructidor; you violated it on the 22nd Floréal; you violated it on the 30th Prairial. The constitution is invoked by all factions, and violated by all; it cannot be a means of safety for us, because it no longer obtains respect from any one; the constitution being violated, we must have another compact, new guarantees." The council applauded these reproaches of Bonaparte, and rose in sign of approbation.

Bonaparte, deceived by his easy success with the ancients, imagined that his presence alone would suffice to appease the stormy council of the five hundred. He hastened thither at the head of a few grenadiers, whom he left at the door, but within the hall, and he advanced alone, hat in hand. At the sight of the bayonets, the assembly arose with a sudden movement. The legislators, conceiving his entrance to be a signal for military violence, uttered all at once the cry of "Outlaw him! Down with the dictator!" Several members rushed to meet him, and the republican, Bigonet, seizing him by the arm, exclaimed, "Rash man! what are you doing? Retire; you are violating the sanctuary of the laws." Bonaparte, pale and agitated, receded, and was carried off by the grenadiers who had escorted him there.

His disappearance did not put a stop to the agitation of the council. All the members spoke at once, all proposed measures of public safety and defence. Lucien Bonaparte was the object of general reproach; he attempted to justify his brother, but with timidity. After a long struggle, he succeeded in reaching the tribune, and urged the assembly to judge his brother with less severity. He protested that he had no design against their liberty; and recalled his services. But several voices immediately exclaimed: "He has lost all their merit; down with the dictator! down with the tyrants!" The tumult now became more violent than ever; and all demanded the outlawry of general Bonaparte. "What," said Lucien, "do you wish me to pronounce the outlawry of my brother?" "Yes! yes! outlawry! it is the reward of tyrants!" In the midst of the confusion, a motion was made and put to the vote that the council should sit permanently; that it should instantly repair to its palace at Paris; that the troops assembled at Saint Cloud should form a part of the guard of the legislative body; that the command of them should be given to general Bernadotte. Lucien, astounded by these propositions, and by the outlawry, which he thought had been adopted with the rest, left the president's chair, and ascending the tribune, said, in the greatest agitation: "Since I cannot be heard in this assembly, I put off the symbols of the popular magistracy with a deep sense of insulted dignity." And he took off his cap, robe, and scarf.

Bonaparte, meantime, on leaving the council of the five hundred, had found some difficulty in regaining his composure. Unaccustomed to scenes of popular tumult, he had been greatly agitated. His officers came around him; and Sieyès, having more revolutionary experience, besought him not to lose time, and to employ force. General Lefèvre immediately gave an order for carrying off Lucien from the council. A detachment entered the hall, advanced to the chair which Lucien now occupied again, placed him in their ranks, and returned with him to the troops. As soon as Lucien came out, he mounted a horse by his brother's side, and although divested of his legal character, harangued the troops as president. In concert with Bonaparte, he invented the story, so often repeated since, that poignards had been drawn on the general in the council of five hundred, and exclaimed: "Citizen soldiers, the president of the council of five hundred declares to you that the large majority of that council is at this moment kept in fear by the daggers of a few representatives, who surround the tribune, threaten their colleagues with death, and occasion the most terrible deliberations. General, and you, soldiers and citizens, you will only recognise as legislators of France those who follow me. As for those who remain in the Orangery, let force expel them. Those brigands are no longer representatives of the people, but representatives of the poignard." After this violent appeal, addressed to the troops by a conspirator president, who, as usual, calumniated those he wished to proscribe, Bonaparte spoke: "Soldiers," said he, "I have led you to victory; may I rely on you?"— "Yes! yes! Vive le Général!"—"Soldiers, there were reasons for expecting that the council of five hundred would save the country; on the contrary, it is given up to intestine quarrels; agitators seek to excite it against me. Soldiers, may I rely on you?" "Yes! yes! Vive Bonaparte." "Well, then, I will bring them to their senses!" And he instantly gave orders to the officers surrounding him to clear the hall of the five hundred.

The council, after Lucien's departure, had been a prey to great anxiety and indecision. A few members proposed that they should leave the place in a body, and go to Paris to seek protection amidst the people. Others wished the national representatives not to forsake their post, but to brave the outrages of force. In the meantime, a troop of grenadiers entered the hall by degrees, and the officer in command informed the council that they should disperse. The deputy Prudhon reminded the officer and his soldiers of the respect due to the representatives of the people; general Jourdan also represented to them the enormity of such a measure. For a moment the troops hesitated; but a reinforcement now arrived in close column. General Leclerc exclaimed: "In the name of general Bonaparte, the legislative body is dissolved; let all good citizens retire. Grenadiers, forward!" Cries of indignation arose from every side; but these were drowned by the drums. The grenadiers advanced slowly across the whole width of the Orangery, and presenting bayonets. In this way they drove the legislators before them, who continued shouting, "Vive la république!" as they left the place. At half-past five, on the 19th Brumaire of the year VIII. (10th November, 1799) there was no longer a representation.

Thus this violation of the law, this coup-d'état against liberty was accomplished. Force began to sway. The 18th of Brumaire was the 31st of May of the army against the representation, except that it was not directed against a party, but against the popular power. But it is just to distinguish the 18th Brumaire from its consequences. It might then be supposed that the army was only an auxiliary of the revolution as it had been on the 13th Vendémiaire and the 18th Fructidor, and that this indispensable change would not turn to the advantage of a man—a single man, who would soon change France into a regiment, and cause nothing to be heard of in a world hitherto agitated by so great a moral commotion, save the tread of his army, and the voice of his will.

THE CONSULATE

CHAPTER XIV

FROM THE 18TH BRUMAIRE (9TH OF NOVEMBER, 1799) TO THE 2ND OF DECEMBER, 1804

The 18th Brumaire had immense popularity. People did not perceive in this event the elevation of a single man above the councils of the nation; they did not see in it the end of the great movement of the 14th of July, which had commenced the national existence.

The 18th Brumaire assumed an aspect of hope and restoration. Although the nation was much exhausted, and little capable of supporting a sovereignty oppressive to it, and which had even become the object of its ridicule, since the lower class had exercised it, yet it considered despotism so improbable, that no one seemed to it to be in a condition to reduce it to a state of subjection. All felt the need of being restored by a skilful hand, and Bonaparte, as a great man and a victorious general, seemed suited for the task.

On this account almost every one, except the directorial republicans, declared in favour of the events of that day. Violation of the laws and coups-d'état had occurred so frequently during the revolution, that people had become accustomed no longer to judge them by their legality, but by their consequences. From the party of Sieyès down to the royalists of 1788, every one congratulated himself on the 18th Brumaire, and attributed to himself the future political advantages of this change. The moderate constitutionalists believed that definitive liberty would be established; the royalists fed themselves with hope by inappropriately comparing this epoch of our revolution with the epoch of 1660 in the English revolution, with the hope that Bonaparte was assuming the part of Monk, and that he would soon restore the monarchy of the Bourbons; the mass, possessing little intelligence, and desirous of repose, relied on the return of order under a powerful protector; the proscribed classes and ambitious men expected from him their amnesty or elevation. During the three months which followed the 18th Brumaire, approbation and expectation were general. A provisional government had been appointed, composed of three consuls, Bonaparte, Sieyès, and Roger Ducos, with two legislative commissioners, entrusted to prepare the constitution and a definitive order of things.

The consuls and the two commissioners were installed on the 21st Brumaire. This provisional government abolished the law respecting hostages and compulsory loans; it permitted the return of the priests proscribed since the 18th Fructidor; it released from prison and sent out of the republic the emigrants who had been shipwrecked on the coast of Calais, and who for four years were captives in France, and were exposed to the heavy punishment of the emigrant army. All these measures were very favourably received. But public opinion revolted at a proscription put in force against the extreme republicans. Thirty-six of them were sentenced to transportation to Guiana, and twenty-one were put under surveillance in the department of Charante-Inférieure, merely by a decree of the consuls on the report of Fouché, minister of police. The public viewed unfavourably all who attacked the government; but at the same time it exclaimed against an act so arbitrary and unjust. The consuls, accordingly, recoiled before their own act; they first commuted transportation into surveillance, and soon withdrew surveillance itself.

It was not long before a rupture broke out between the authors of the 18th Brumaire. During their provisional authority, it did not create much noise, because it took place in the legislative commissions. The new constitution was the cause of it. Sieyès and Bonaparte could not agree on this subject: the former wished to institute France, the latter to govern it as a master.

The constitution of Sieyès, which was distorted in the consular constitution of the year VIII., deserves to be known, were it only in the light of a legislative curiosity. Sieyès distributed France into three political divisions; the commune, the province or department, and the State. Each had its own powers of administration and judicature, arranged in hierarchical order: the first, the municipalities and tribunaux de paix and de premiere instance; the second, the popular prefectures and courts of appeal; the third, the central government and the court of cassation. To fill the functions of the commune, the department, and the State, there were three budgets of notability, the members of which were only candidates nominated by the people.

The executive power was vested in the proclamateur-électeur, a superior functionary, perpetual, without responsibility, deputed to represent the nation without, and to form the government in a deliberating state-council and a responsible ministry. The proclamateur-électeur selected from the lists of candidates, judges, from the tribunals of peace to the court of cassation; administrators, from the mayors to the ministers. But he was incapable of governing himself; power was directed by the state council, exercised by the ministry.

The legislature departed from the form hitherto established; it ceased to be a deliberative assembly to become a judicial court. Before it, the council of state, in the name of the government, and the tribunat, in the name of the people, pleaded their respective projects. Its sentence was law. It would seem that the object of Sieyès was to put a stop to the violent usurpations of party, and while placing the sovereignty in the people, to give it limits in itself: this design appears from the complicated works of his political machine. The primary assemblies, composed of the tenth of the general population, nominated the local list of communal candidates; electoral colleges, also nominated by them, selected from the communal list the superior list of provincial candidates and from the provincial list, the list of national candidates. In all which concerned the government, there was a reciprocal control. The proclamateur-électeur selected his functionaries from among the candidates nominated by the people: and the people could dismiss functionaries, by not keeping them on the lists of candidates, which were renewed, the first every two years, the second every five years, the third every ten years. But the proclamateur-électeur did not interfere in the nomination of tribunes and legislators, whose attributes were purely popular.

Yet, to place a counterpoise in the heart of this authority itself, Sieyès separated the initiative and the discussion of the law, which was invested in the tribunate from its adoption, which belonged to the legislative assembly. But besides these different prerogatives, the legislative body and the tribunate were not elected in the same manner. The tribunate was composed by right of the first hundred members of the national list, while the legislative body was chosen directly by the electoral colleges. The tribunes, being necessarily more active, bustling, and popular, were appointed for life, and by a protracted process, to prevent their arriving in a moment of passion, with destructive and angry projects, as had hitherto been the case in most of the assemblies. The same dangers not existing in the other assembly, which had only to judge calmly and disinterestedly of the law, its election was direct, and its authority transient.

Lastly, there existed, as the complement of all the other powers, a conservatory body, incapable of ordering, incapable of acting, intended solely to provide for the regular existence of the state. This body was the constitutional jury, or conservatory senate; it was to be for the political law what the court of cassation was to the civil law. The tribunate, or the council of state, appealed to it when the sentence of the legislative body was not conformable to the constitution. It had also the faculty of calling into its own body any leader of the government who was too ambitious, or a tribune who was too popular, by the "droit d'absorption," and when senators, they were disqualified from filling any other function. In this way it kept a double watch over the safety of the whole republic, by maintaining the fundamental law, and protecting liberty against the ambition of individuals.

Whatever may be thought of this constitution, which seems too finely complicated to be practicable, it must be granted that it is the production of considerable strength of mind, and even great practical information. Sieyès paid too little regard to the passions of men; he made them too reasonable as human beings, and too obedient as machines. He wished by skilful inventions to avoid the abuses of human constitutions, and excluded death, that is to say, despotism, from whatever quarter it might come. But I have very little faith in the efficacy of constitutions; in such moments, I believe only in the strength of parties in their domination, and, from time to time, in their reconciliation. But I must also admit that, if ever a constitution was adapted to a period, it was that of Sieyès for France in the year VIII.

After an experience of ten years, which had only shown exclusive dominations, after the violent transition from the constitutionalists of 1789 to the Girondists, from the Girondists to the Mountain, from the Mountain to the reactionists, from the reactionists to the directory, from the directory to the councils, from the councils to the military force, there could be no repose or public life save in it. People were weary of worn-out constitutions; that of Sieyès was new; exclusive men were no longer wanted, and by elaborate voting it prevented the sudden accession of counter-revolutionists, as at the beginning of the directory, or of ardent democrats, as at the end of this government. It was a constitution of moderate men, suited to terminate a revolution, and to settle a nation. But precisely because it was a constitution of moderate men, precisely because parties had no longer sufficient ardour to demand a law of domination, for that very reason there would necessarily be found a man stronger than the fallen parties and the moderate legislators, who would refuse this law, or, accepting, abuse it, and this was what happened.

Bonaparte took part in the deliberations of the constituent committee; with his instinct of power, he seized upon everything in the ideas of Sieyès which was calculated to serve his projects, and caused the rest to be rejected. Sieyès intended for him the functions of grand elector, with a revenue of six millions of francs, and a guard of three thousand men; the palace of Versailles for a residence, and the entire external representation of the republic. But the actual government was to be invested in a consul for war and a consul for peace, functionaries unthought of by Sieyès in the year III., but adopted by him in the year VIII.; in order, no doubt, to suit the ideas of the times. This insignificant magistracy was far from suiting Bonaparte. "How could you suppose," said he, "that a man of any talent and honour could resign himself to the part of fattening like a hog, on a few millions a year?" From that moment it was not again mentioned; Roger Ducos, and the greater part of the committee, declared in favour of Bonaparte; and Sieyès, who hated discussion, was either unwilling or unable to defend his ideas. He saw that laws, men, and France itself were at the mercy of the man whose elevation he had promoted.

On the 24th of December, 1799 (Nivôse, year VIII.), forty-five days after the 18th Brumaire, was published the constitution of the year VIII.; it was composed of the wrecks of that of Sieyès, now become a constitution of servitude. The government was placed in the hands of the first consul, who was supported by two others, having a deliberative voice. The senate, primarily selected by the consuls, chose the members of the tribunal and legislative body, from the list of the national candidates. The government alone had the initiative in making the laws. Accordingly, there were no more bodies of electors who appointed the candidates of different lists, the tribunes and legislators; no more independent tribunes earnestly pleading the cause of the people before the legislative assembly; no legislative assembly arising directly from the bosom of the nation, and accountable to it alone—in a word, no political nation. Instead of all this, there existed an all-powerful consul, disposing of armies and of power, a general and a dictator; a council of state destined to be the advanced guard of usurpation; and lastly, a senate of eighty members, whose only function was to nullify the people, and to choose tribunes without authority, and legislators who should remain mute. Life passed from the nation to the government. The constitution of Sieyès served as a pretext for a bad order of things. It is worth notice that up to the year VIII. all the constitutions had emanated from the Contrat-social, and subsequently, down to 1814, from the constitution of Sieyès.

The new government was immediately installed. Bonaparte was first consul, and he united with him as second and third consuls, Cambacérès, a lawyer, and formerly a member of the Plain in the convention, and Lebrun, formerly a co-adjutor of the chancellor Maupeou. By their means, he hoped to influence the revolutionists and moderate royalists. With the same object, an ex-noble, Talleyrand, and a former member of the Mountain, Fouché, were appointed to the posts of minister of foreign affairs, and minister of police. Sieyès felt much repugnance at employing Fouché; but Bonaparte wished it. "We are forming a new epoch," said he; "we must forget all the ill of the past, and remember only the good." He cared very little under what banner men had hitherto served, provided they now enlisted under his, and summoned thither their old associates in royalism and in revolution.

The two new consuls and the retiring consuls nominated sixty senators, without waiting for the lists of eligibility; the senators appointed a hundred tribunes and three hundred legislators; and the authors of the 18th Brumaire distributed among themselves the functions of the state, as the booty of their victory. It is, however, just to say that the moderate liberal party prevailed in this partition, and that, as long as it preserved any influence, Bonaparte governed in a mild, advantageous, and republican manner. The constitution of the year VIII., submitted to the people for acceptance, was approved by three millions eleven thousand and seven citizens. That of 1793 had obtained one million eight hundred and one thousand nine hundred and eighteen suffrages; and that of the year III. one million fifty-seven thousand three hundred and ninety. The new law satisfied the moderate masses, who sought tranquillity, rather than guarantees; while the code of '93 had only found partisans among the lower class; and that of the year III. had been equally rejected by the royalists and democrats. The constitution of 1791 alone had obtained general approbation; and, without having been subjected to individual acceptance, had been sworn to by all France.

The first consul, in compliance with the wishes of the republic, made offers of peace to England, which it refused. He naturally wished to assume an appearance of moderation, and, previous to treating, to confer on his government the lustre of new victories. The continuance of the war was therefore decided on, and the consuls made a remarkable proclamation, in which they appealed to sentiments new to the nation. Hitherto it had been called to arms in defence of liberty; now they began to excite it in the name of honour: "Frenchmen, you wish for peace. Your government desires it with still more ardour: its foremost hopes, its constant efforts, have been in favour of it. The English ministry rejects it; the English ministry has betrayed the secret of its horrible policy. To rend France, to destroy its navy and ports, to efface it from the map of Europe, or reduce it to the rank of a secondary power, to keep the nations of the continent at variance, in order to seize on the commerce of all, and enrich itself by their spoils: these are the fearful successes for which England scatters its gold, lavishes its promises, and multiplies its intrigues. It is in your power to command peace; but, to command it, money, the sword, and soldiers are necessary; let all, then, hasten to pay the tribute they owe to their common defence. Let our young citizens arise! No longer will they take arms for factions, or for the choice of tyrants, but for the security of all they hold most dear; for the honour of France, and for the sacred interests of humanity."

Holland and Switzerland had been sheltered during the preceding campaign. The first consul assembled all his force on the Rhine and the Alps. He gave Moreau the command of the army of the Rhine, and he himself marched into Italy. He set out on the 16th Floréal, year VIII. (6th of May, 1800) for that brilliant campaign which lasted only forty days. It was important that he should not be long absent from Paris at the beginning of his power, and especially not to leave the war in a state of indecision. Field-marshal Mélas had a hundred and thirty thousand men under arms; he occupied all Italy. The republican army opposed to him only amounted to forty thousand men. He left the field-marshal lieutenant Ott with thirty thousand men before Genoa; and marched against the corps of general Suchet. He entered Nice, prepared to pass the Var, and to enter Provence. It was then that Bonaparte crossed the great Saint Bernard at the head of an army of forty thousand men, descended into Italy in the rear of Mélas, entered Milan on the 16th Prairial (2nd of June), and placed the Austrians between Suchet and himself. Mélas, whose line of operation was broken, quickly fell back upon Nice, and from thence on to Turin; he established his headquarters at Alessandria, and decided on re-opening his communications by a battle. On the 9th of June, the advance guard of the republicans gained a glorious victory at Monte-Bello, the chief honour of which belonged to general Lannes. But it was the plain of Marengo, on the 14th of June (25th Prairial) that decided the fate of Italy; the Austrians were overwhelmed. Unable to force the passage of the Bormida by a victory, they were placed without any opportunity of retreat between the army of Suchet and that of the first consul. On the 15th, they obtained permission to fall behind Mantua, on condition of restoring all the places of Piedmont, Lombardy, and the Legations; and the victory of Marengo thus secured possession of all Italy.

Eighteen days after, Bonaparte returned to Paris. He was received with all the evidence of admiration that such decided victories and prodigious activity could excite; the enthusiasm was universal. There was a spontaneous illumination, and the crowd hurried to the Tuileries to see him. The hope of speedy peace redoubled the public joy. On the 25th Messidor the first consul was present at the anniversary fête of the 14th of July. When the officers presented him the standards taken from the enemy, he said to them: "When you return to your camps, tell your soldiers that the French people, on the 1st Vendemiaire, when we shall celebrate the anniversary of the republic, will expect either the proclamation of peace, or, if the enemy raise insuperable obstacles, further standards as the result of new victories." Peace, however, was delayed for some time.

In the interim between the victory of Marengo and the general pacification, the first consul turned his attention chiefly to settling the people, and to diminishing the number of malcontents, by employing the displaced factions in the state. He was very conciliatory to those parties who renounced their systems, and very lavish of favours to those chiefs who renounced their parties. As it was a time of selfishness and indifference, he had no difficulty in succeeding. The proscribed of the 18th Fructidor were already recalled, with the exception of a few royalist conspirators, such as Pichegru, Willot, etc. Bonaparte soon even employed those of the banished who, like Portalis, Siméon, Barbé-Marbois, had shown themselves more anti-conventionalists than counter-revolutionists. He had also gained over opponents of another description. The late leaders of La Vendée, the famous Bernier, curé of Saint-Lo, who had assisted in the whole insurrection, Châtillon, d'Autichamp and Suzannet had come to an arrangement by the treaty of Mont-Luçon (17th January, 1800). He also addressed himself to the leaders of the Breton bands, Georges Cadoudal, Frotté, Laprévelaye, and Bourmont. The two last alone consented to submit. Frotté was surprised and shot; and Cadoudal defeated at Grand Champ, by General Brune, capitulated. The western war was thus definitively terminated.

But the Chouans who had taken refuge in England, and whose only hope was in the death of him who now concentrated the power of the revolution, projected his assassination. A few of them disembarked on the coast of France, and secretly repaired to Paris. As it was not easy to reach the first consul, they decided on a conspiracy truly horrible. On the third Nivôse, at eight in the evening, Bonaparte was to go to the Opera by the Rue Saint-Nicaise. The conspirators placed a barrel of powder on a little truck, which obstructed the carriage way, and one of them, named Saint Regent, was to set fire to it as soon as he received a signal of the first consul's approach. At the appointed time, Bonaparte left the Tuileries, and crossed the Rue Nicaise. His coachman was skilful enough to drive rapidly between the truck and the wall; but the match was already alight, and the carriage had scarcely reached the end of the street when the infernal machine exploded, covered the quarter of Saint-Nicaise with ruins, shaking the carriage, and breaking its windows.

The police, taken by surprise, though directed by Fouché, attributed this plot to the democrats, against whom the first consul had a much more decided antipathy than against the Chouans. Many of them were imprisoned, and a hundred and thirty were transported by a simple senatus- consultus asked and obtained during the night. At length they discovered the true authors of the conspiracy, some of whom were condemned to death. On this occasion, the consul caused the creation of special military tribunals. The constitutional party separated still further from him, and began its energetic but useless opposition. Lanjuinais, Grégoire, who had courageously resisted the extreme party in the convention, Garat, Lambrechts, Lenoir-Laroche, Cabanis, etc., opposed, in the senate, the illegal proscription of a hundred and thirty democrats; and the tribunes, Isnard, Daunou, Chénier, Benjamin Constant, Bailleul, Chazal, etc., opposed the special courts. But a glorious peace threw into the shade this new encroachment of power.

The Austrians, conquered at Marengo, and defeated in Germany by Moreau, determined on laying down arms; On the 8th of January, 1801, the republic, the cabinet of Vienna, and the empire, concluded the treaty of Lunéville. Austria ratified all the conditions of the treaty of Campo-Formio, and also ceded Tuscany to the young duke of Parma. The empire recognised the independence of the Batavian, Helvetian, Ligurian, and Cisalpine republics. The pacification soon became general, by the treaty of Florence (18th of February 1801,) with the king of Naples, who ceded the isle of Elba and the principality of Piombino, by the treaty of Madrid (29th of September, 1801) with Portugal; by the treaty of Paris (8th of October, 1801) with the emperor of Russia; and, lastly, by the preliminaries (9th of October, 1801) with the Ottoman Porte. The continent, by ceasing hostilities, compelled England to a momentary peace. Pitt, Dundas, and Lord Grenville, who had maintained these sanguinary struggles with France, went out of office when their system ceased to be followed. The opposition replaced them; and, on the 25th of March, 1802, the treaty of Amiens completed the pacification of the world. England consented to all the continental acquisitions of the French republic, recognised the existence of the secondary republics, and restored our colonies.

During the maritime war with England, the French navy had been almost entirely ruined. Three hundred and forty ships had been taken or destroyed, and the greater part of the colonies had fallen into the hands of the English. San Domingo, the most important of them all, after throwing off the yoke of the whites, had continued the American revolution, which having commenced in the English colonies, was to end in those of Spain, and change the colonies of the new world into independent states. The blacks of San Domingo wished to maintain, with respect to the mother country, the freedom which they had acquired from the colonists, and to defend themselves against the English. They were led by a man of colour, the famous Toussaint-L'Ouverture. France should have consented to this revolution which had been very costly for humanity. The metropolitan government could no longer be restored at San Domingo; and it became necessary to obtain the only real advantages which Europe can now derive from America, by strengthening the commercial ties with our old colony. Instead of this prudent policy, Bonaparte attempted an expedition to reduce the island to subjection. Forty thousand men embarked for this disastrous enterprise. It was impossible for the blacks to resist such an army at first; but after the first victories, it was attacked by the climate, and new insurrections secured the independence of the colony. France experienced the twofold loss of an army and of advantageous commercial connexions.

Bonaparte, whose principal object hitherto had been to promote the fusion of parties, now turned all his attention to the internal prosperity of the republic, and the organization of power. The old privileged classes of the nobility and the clergy had returned into the state without forming particular classes. Dissentient priests, on taking an oath of obedience, might conduct their modes of worship and receive their pensions from government. An act of pardon had been passed in favour of those accused of emigration; there only remained a list of about a thousand names of those who remained faithful to the family and the claims of the pretender. The work of pacification was at an end. Bonaparte, knowing that the surest way of commanding a nation is to promote its happiness, encouraged the development of industry, and favoured external commerce, which had so long been suspended. He united higher views with his political policy, and connected his own glory with the prosperity of France; he travelled through the departments, caused canals and harbours to be dug, bridges to be built, roads to be repaired, monuments to be erected, and means of communication to be multiplied. He especially strove to become the protector and legislator of private interests. The civil, penal, and commercial codes, which he formed, whether at this period, or at a later period, completed, in this respect, the work of the revolution, and regulated the internal existence of the nation, in a manner somewhat more conformable to its real condition. Notwithstanding political despotism, France, during the domination of Bonaparte, had a private legislation superior to that of any European society; for with absolute government, most of them still preserved the civil condition of the middle-ages. General peace, universal toleration, the return of order, the restoration, and the creation of an administrative system, soon changed the appearance of the republic. Attention was turned to the construction of roads and canals. Civilization became developed in an extraordinary manner; and the consulate was, in this respect, the perfected period of the directory, from its commencement to the 18th Fructidor.

It was more especially after the peace Amiens that Bonaparte raised the foundation of his future power. He himself says, in the Memoirs published under his name, [Footnote: Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire de France sous Napoléon, écrits à Sainte Hélène, vol. i. p. 248.] "The ideas of Napoleon were fixed, but to realise them he required the assistance of time and circumstances. The organization of the consulate had nothing in contradiction with these; it accustomed the nation to unity, and that was a first step. This step taken, Napoleon was indifferent to the forms and denominations of the different constituted bodies. He was a stranger to the revolution. It was his wisdom to advance from day to day, without deviating from the fixed point, the polar star, which directed Napoleon how to guide the revolution to the port whither he wished to conduct it."

In the beginning of 1802, he was at one and the same time forming three great projects, tending to the same end. He sought to organize religion and to establish the clergy, which as yet had only a religious existence; to create, by means of the Legation of Honour, a permanent military order in the army; and to secure his own power, first for his life, and then to render it hereditary. Bonaparte was installed at the Tuileries, where he gradually resumed the customs and ceremonies of the old monarchy. He. already thought of placing intermediate bodies between himself and the people. For some time past he had opened a negotiation with Pope Pius VII., on matters of religious worship. The famous concordat, which created nine archbishoprics, forty-one bishoprics, with the institution of chapters, which established the clergy in the state, and again placed it under the external monarchy of the pope, was signed at Paris on the 16th of July, 1801, and ratified at Rome on the 15th of August, 1801.

Bonaparte, who had destroyed the liberty of the press, created exceptional tribunals, and who had departed more and more from the principles of the revolution, felt that before he went further it was necessary to break entirely with the liberal party of the 18th Brumaire. In Ventôse, year X. (March, 1802), the most energetic of the tribunes were dismissed by a simple operation of the senate. The tribunate was reduced to eighty members, and the legislative body underwent a similar purgation. About a month after, the 15th Germinal (6th of April, 1802), Bonaparte, no longer apprehensive of opposition, submitted the concordat to these assemblies, whose obedience he had thus secured, for their acceptance. They adopted it by a great majority. The Sunday and four great religious festivals were re-established, and from that time the government ceased to observe the system of decades. This was the first attempt at renouncing the republican calendar. Bonaparte hoped to gain the sacerdotal party, always most disposed to passive obedience, and thus deprive the royalist of the clergy, and the coalition of the pope.

The concordat was inaugurated with great pomp in the cathedral of Nôtre- Dame. The senate, the legislative body, the tribunate, and the leading functionaries were present at this new ceremony. The first consul repaired thither in the carriages of the old court, with the etiquette and attendants of the old monarchy; salvos of artillery announced this return of privilege, and this essay at royalty. A pontifical mass was performed by Caprara, the cardinal-legate, and the people were addressed by proclamation in a language to which they had long been unaccustomed. "Reason and the example of ages," ran the proclamation, "command us to have recourse to the sovereign pontiff to effect unison of opinion and reconciliation of hearts. The head of the church has weighed in his wisdom and for the interest of the church, propositions dictated by the interest of the state."

In the evening there was an illumination, and a concert in the gardens of the Tuileries. The soldiery reluctantly attended at the inauguration ceremony, and expressed their dissatisfaction aloud. On returning to the palace, Bonaparte questioned general Delmas on the subject. "What did you think of the ceremony? " said he. "A fine mummery" was the reply. "Nothing was wanting but a million of men slain, in destroying what you re-establish. "

A month after, on the 25th Floréal, year X. (15th of May, 1802), he presented the project of a law respecting the creation of a legion of honour. This legion was to be composed of fifteen cohorts, dignitaries for life, disposed in hierarchical order, having a centre, an organization, and revenues. The first consul was the chief of the legion. Each cohort was composed of seven grand officers, twenty commanders, thirty officers, and three hundred and fifty legionaries. Bonaparte's object was to originate a new nobility. He thus appealed to the ill- suppressed sentiment of inequality. While discussing this projected law in the council of state, he did not scruple to announce his aristocratic design. Berlier, counsellor of state, having disapproved an institution so opposed to the spirit of the republic, said that: "Distinctions were the playthings of a monarchy." "I defy you," replied the first consul, "to show me a republic, ancient or modern, in which distinctions did not exist; you call them toys; well, it is by toys that men are led. I would not say as much to a tribune; but in a council of wise men and statesmen we may speak plainly. I do not believe that the French love liberty and equality. The French have not been changed by ten years of revolution; they have but one sentiment—honour. That sentiment, then, must be nourished; they must have distinctions. See how the people prostrate themselves before the ribbons and stars of foreigners; they have been surprised by them; and they do not fail to wear them. All has been destroyed; the question is, how to restore all. There is a government, there are authorities; but the rest of the nation, what is it? Grains of sand. Among us we have the old privileged classes, organized in principles and interests, and knowing well what they want. I can count our enemies. But we, ourselves, are dispersed, without system, union, or contact. As long as I am here, I will answer for the republic; but we must provide for the future. Do you think the republic is definitively established? If so, you are greatly deceived. It is in our power to make it so; but we have not done it; and we shall not do it if we do not hurl some masses of granite on the soil of France." [Footnote: This passage is extracted from M. Thibaudeau's Mémoires of the Consulate. There are in these Mémoires, which are extremely curious, some political conversations of Bonaparte, details concerning his internal government and the principal sittings of the council of state, which throw much light upon this epoch.] By these words Bonaparte announced a system of government opposed to that which the revolution sought to establish, and which the change in society demanded.

Yet, notwithstanding the docility of the council of state, the purgation undergone by the tribunal and the legislative body, these three bodies vigorously opposed a law which revived inequality. In the council of state, the legion of honour only had fourteen votes against ten; in the tribunal, thirty-eight against fifty-six; in the legislative body, a hundred and sixty-six against a hundred and ten. Public opinion manifested a still greater repugnance for this new order of knighthood. Those first invested seemed almost ashamed of it, and received it with a sort of contempt. But Bonaparte pursued his counterrevolutionary course, without troubling himself about a dissatisfaction no longer capable of resistance.

He wished to confirm his power by the establishment of privilege, and to confirm privilege by the duration of his power. On the motion of Chabot de l'Allier, the tribunal resolved: "That the first consul, general Bonaparte, should receive a signal mark of national gratitude." In pursuance of this resolution, on the 6th of May, 1802, an organic senatus- consultus appointed Bonaparte consul for an additional period of ten years.

But Bonaparte did not consider the prolongation of the consulate sufficient; and two months after, on the 2nd of August, the senate, on the decision of the tribunate and the legislative body, and with the consent of the people, consulted by means of the public registers, passed the following decree:

"I. The French people nominate, and the senate proclaim Napoleon Bonaparte first consul for life.

"II. A statue of Peace, holding in one hand a laurel of victory, and in the other, the decree of the senate, shall attest to posterity the gratitude of the nation.

"III. The senate will convey to the first consul the expression of the confidence, love, and admiration of the French people."

This revolution was complete by adapting to the consulship for life, by a simple senatus-consultus, the constitution, already sufficiently despotic, of the temporary consulship. "Senators," said Cornudet, on presenting the new law, "we must for ever close the public path to the Gracchi. The wishes of the citizens, with respect to the political laws they obey, are expressed by the general prosperity; the guarantee of social rights absolutely places the dogma of the exercise of the sovereignty of the people in the senate, which is the bond of the nation. This is the only social doctrine." The senate admitted this new social doctrine, took possession of the sovereignty, and held it as a deposit till a favourable moment arrived for transferring it to Bonaparte.

The constitution of the 16th Thermidor, year X. (4th of August, 1802,) excluded the people from the state. The public and administrative functions became fixed, like those of the government. The first consul could increase the number of electors who were elected for life. The senate had the right of changing institutions, suspending the functions of the jury, of placing the departments out of the constitution, of annulling the sentences of the tribunals, of dissolving the legislative body, and the tribunate. The council of state was reinforced; the tribunate, already reduced by dismissals, was still sufficiently formidable to require to be reduced to fifty members.

Such, in the course of two years, was the terrible progress of privilege and absolute power. Towards the close of 1802, everything was in the hands of the consul for life, who had a class devoted to him in the clergy; a military order in the legion of honour; an administrative body in the council of state; a machinery for decrees in the legislative assembly; a machinery for the constitution in the senate. Not daring, as yet, to destroy the tribunate, in which assembly there arose, from time to time, a few words of freedom and opposition, he deprived it of its most courageous and eloquent members, that he might hear his will declared with docility in all the assemblies of the nation.

This interior policy of usurpation was extended beyond the country. On the 26th of August, Bonaparte united the island of Elba, and on the 11th of September, 1802, Piedmont, to the French territory. On the 9th of October he took possession of the states of Parma, left vacant by the death of the duke; and lastly, on the 21st of October, he marched into Switzerland an army of thirty thousand men, to support a federative act, which regulated the constitution of each canton, and which had caused disturbances. He thus furnished a pretext for a rupture with England, which had not sincerely subscribed to the peace. The British cabinet had only felt the necessity of a momentary suspension of hostilities; and, a short time after the treaty of Amiens, it arranged a third coalition, as it had done after the treaty of Campo-Formio, and at the time of the congress of Rastadt. The interest and situation of England were alone of a nature to bring about a rupture, which was hastened by the union of states effected by Bonaparte, and the influence which he retained over the neighbouring republics, called to complete independence by the recent treaties. Bonaparte, on his part, eager for the glory gained on the field of battle, wishing to aggrandize France by conquests, and to complete his own elevation by victories, could not rest satisfied with repose; he had rejected liberty, and war became a necessity.

The two cabinets exchanged for some time very bitter diplomatic notes. At length, Lord Whitworth, the English ambassador, left Paris on the 25th Floréal, year XI. (13th of May, 1803). Peace was now definitively broken: preparations for war were made on both sides. On the 26th of May, the French troops entered the electorate of Hanover. The German empire, on the point of expiring, raised no obstacle. The emigrant Chouan party, which had taken no steps since the affair of the infernal machine and the continental peace, were encouraged by this return of hostilities. The opportunity seemed favourable, and it formed in London, with the assent of the British cabinet, a conspiracy headed by Pichegru and Georges Cadoudal. The conspirators disembarked secretly on the coast of France, and repaired with the same secrecy to Paris. They communicated with general Moreau, who had been induced by his wife to embrace the royalist party. Just as they were about to execute their project, most of them were arrested by the police, who had discovered the plot, and traced them. Georges Cadoudal was executed, Pichegru was found strangled in prison, and Moreau was sentenced to two years' imprisonment, commuted to exile. This conspiracy, discovered in the middle of February, 1804, rendered the person of the first consul, whose life had been thus threatened, still dearer to the masses of the people; addresses of congratulation were presented by all the bodies of the state, and all the departments of the republic. About this time he sacrificed an illustrious victim. On the 15th of March, the duc d'Enghien was carried off by a squadron of cavalry from the castle of Ettenheim, in the grand-duchy of Baden, a few leagues from the Rhine. The first consul believed, from the reports of the police, that this prince had directed the recent conspiracy. The duc d'Engbien was conveyed hastily to Vincennes, tried in a few hours by a military commission, and shot in the trenches of the château. This crime was not an act of policy, or usurpation; but a deed of violence and wrath. The royalists might have thought on the 18th Brumaire that the first consul was studying the part of general Monk; but for four years he had destroyed that hope. He had no longer any necessity for breaking with them in so outrageous a manner, nor for reassuring, as it has been suggested, the Jacobins, who no longer existed. Those who remained devoted to the republic, dreaded at this time despotism far more than a counter-revolution. There is every reason to think that Bonaparte, who thought little of human life, or of the rights of nations, having already formed the habit of an expeditious and hasty policy, imagined the prince to be one of the conspirators, and sought, by a terrible example, to put an end to conspiracies, the only peril that threatened his power at that period.

The war with Britain and the conspiracy of Georges Cadoudal and Pichegru, were the stepping-stones by which Bonaparte ascended from the consulate to the empire. On the 6th Germinal, year XII. (27th March, 1804), the senate, on receiving intelligence of the plot, sent a deputation to the first consul. The president, François de Neufchâteau, expressed himself in these terms: "Citizen first consul, you are founding a new era, but you ought to perpetuate it: splendour is nothing without duration. We do not doubt but this great idea has had a share of your attention; for your creative genius embraces all and forgets nothing. But do not delay: you are urged on by the times, by events, by conspirators, and by ambitious men; and in another direction, by the anxiety which agitates the French people. It is in your power to enchain time, master events, disarm the ambitious, and tranquillize the whole of France by giving it institutions which will cement your edifice, and prolong for our children what you have done for their fathers. Citizen first consul, be assured that the senate here speaks to you in the name of all citizens."

On the 5th Floréal, year XII. (25th of April, 1804), Bonaparte replied to the senate from Saint-Cloud, as follows: "Your address has occupied my thoughts incessantly; it has been the subject of my constant meditation. You consider, that the supreme magistracy should be hereditary, in order to protect the people from the plots of our enemies, and the agitation which arises from rival ambitions. You also think that several of our institutions ought to be perfected, to secure the permanent triumph of equality and public liberty, and to offer the nation and government the twofold guarantee which they require. The more I consider these great objects, the more deeply do I feel that in such novel and important circumstances, the councils of your wisdom and experience are necessary to enable me to come to a conclusion. I invite you, then, to communicate to me your ideas on the subject." The senate, in its turn, replied on the 14th Floréal (3rd of May): "The senate considers that the interests of the French people will be greatly promoted by confiding the government of the republic to Napoleon Bonaparte, as hereditary emperor." By this preconcerted scene was ushered in the establishment of the empire.

The tribune Curée opened the debate in the tribunate by a motion on the subject. He dwelt on the same motives as the senators had done. His proposition was carried with enthusiasm. Carnot alone had the courage to oppose the empire: "I am far," said he, "from wishing to weaken the praises bestowed on the first consul; but whatever services a citizen may have done to his country, there are bounds which honour, as well as reason, imposes on national gratitude. If this citizen has restored public liberty, if he has secured the safety of his country, is it a reward to offer him the sacrifice of that liberty; and would it not be destroying his own work to make his country his private patrimony? When once the proposition of holding the consulate for life was presented for the votes of the people, it was easy to see that an after-thought existed. A crowd of institutions evidently monarchical followed in succession; but now the object of so many preliminary measures is disclosed in a positive manner; we are called to declare our sentiments on a formal motion to restore the monarchical system, and to confer imperial and hereditary dignity on the first consul.

"Has liberty, then, only been shown to man that he might never enjoy it? No, I cannot consent to consider this good, so universally preferred to all others, without which all others are as nothing, as a mere illusion. My heart tells me that liberty is attainable; that its regime is easier and more stable than any arbitrary government. I voted against the consulate for life; I now vote against the restoration of the monarchy; as I conceive my quality as tribune compels me to do."

But he was the only one who thought thus; and his colleagues rivalled each other in their opposition to the opinion of the only man who alone among them remained free. In the speeches of that period, we may see the prodigious change that had taken place in ideas and language. The revolution had returned to the political principles of the ancient regime; the same enthusiasm and fanaticism existed; but it was the enthusiasm of flattery, the fanaticism of servitude. The French rushed into the empire as they had rushed into the revolution; in the age of reason they referred everything to the enfranchisement of nations; now they talked of nothing but the greatness of a man, and of the age of Bonaparte; and they now fought to make kings, as they had formerly fought to create republics.

The tribunate, the legislative body, and the senate, voted the empire, which was proclaimed at Saint-Cloud on the 28th Floréal, year XII. (18th of May, 1804). On the same day, a senatus-consultum modified the constitution, which was adapted to the new order of things. The empire required its appendages; and French princes, high dignitaries, marshals, chamberlains, and pages were given to it. All publicity was destroyed. The liberty of the press had already been subjected to censorship; only one tribune remained, and that became mute. The sittings of the tribunate were secret, like those of the council of state; and from that day, for a space of ten years, France was governed with closed doors. Joseph and Louis Bonaparte were recognised as French princes. Bethier, Murat, Moncey, Jourdan, Masséna, Augereau, Bernadotte, Soult, Brune, Lannes, Mortier, Ney, Davoust, Bessières, Kellermann, Lefèvre, Pérignon, Sérurier, were named marshals of the empire. The departments sent up addresses, and the clergy compared Napoleon to a new Moses, a new Mattathias, a new Cyrus. They saw in his elevation "the finger of God," and said "that submission was due to him as dominating over all; to his ministers as sent by him, because such was the order of Providence." Pope Pius VII. came to Paris to consecrate the new dynasty. The coronation took place on Sunday, the 2nd of December, in the church of Notre-Dame.

Preparations had been making for this ceremony for some time, and it was regulated according to ancient customs. The emperor repaired to the metropolitan church with the empress Josephine, in a coach surmounted by a crown, drawn by eight white horses, and escorted by his guard. The pope, cardinals, archbishops, bishops, and all the great bodies of the state were awaiting him in the cathedral, which had been magnificently decorated for this extraordinary ceremony. He was addressed in an oration at the door; and then, clothed with the imperial mantle, the crown on his head, and the sceptre in his hand, he ascended a throne placed at the end of the church. The high almoner, a cardinal, and a bishop, came and conducted him to the foot of the altar for consecration. The pope poured the three-fold unction on his head and hands, and delivered the following prayer:—"O Almighty God, who didst establish Hazael to govern Syria, and Jehu king of Israel, by revealing unto them thy purpose by the mouth of the prophet Elias; who didst also shed the holy unction of kings on the head of Saul and of David, by the ministry of thy prophet Samuel, vouchsafe to pour, by my hands, the treasures of thy grace and blessing on thy servant Napoleon, who, notwithstanding our own unworthiness, we this day consecrate emperor in thy name."

The pope led him solemnly back to the throne; and after he had sworn on the Testament the oath prescribed by the new constitution, the chief herald-at-arms cried in a loud voice—"The most glorious and most august emperor of the French is crowned and enthroned! Long live the emperor! " The church instantly resounded with the cry, salvoes of artillery were fired, and the pope intoned the Te Deum. For several days there was a succession of fêtes; but these fêtes by command, these fêtes of absolute power, did not breathe the frank, lively, popular, and unanimous joy of the first federation of the 14th of July; and, exhausted as the people were, they did not welcome the beginning of despotism as they had welcomed that of liberty.

The consulate was the last period of the existence of the republic. The revolution was coming to man's estate. During the first period of the consular government, Bonaparte had gained the proscribed classes by recalling them, he found a people still agitated by every passion, and he restored them to tranquillity by labour, and to prosperity by restoring order. Finally he compelled Europe, conquered for the third time, to acknowledge his elevation. Till the treaty of Amiens, he revived in the republic victory, concord, and prosperity, without sacrificing liberty. He might then, had he wished, have made himself the representative of that great age, which sought for that noble system of human dignity the consecration of far-extended equality, wise liberty, and more developed civilization. The nation was in the hands of the great man or the despot; it rested with him to preserve it free or to enslave it. He preferred the realization of his selfish projects, and preferred himself to all humanity. Brought up in tents, coming late into the revolution, he only understood its material and interested side; he had no faith in the moral wants which had given rise to it, nor in the creeds which had agitated it, and which, sooner or later, would return and destroy him. He saw an insurrection approaching its end, an exhausted people at his mercy, and a crown on the ground within his reach.

THE EMPIRE

CHAPTER XV

FROM THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE EMPIRE, 1804-1814

After the establishment of the empire, power became more arbitrary, and society reconstructed itself on an aristocratic principle. The great movement of recomposition, which had commenced on the 9th Thermidor went on increasing. The convention had abolished classes; the directory defeated parties; the consulate gained over men; and the empire corrupted them by distinctions and privileges. This second period was the opposite of the first. Under the one, we saw the government of the committees exercised by men elected every three months, without guards, honours, or representation, living on a few francs a day, working eighteen hours together on common wooden tables; under the other, the government of the empire, with all its paraphernalia of administration, it chamberlains, gentlemen, praetorian guard, hereditary rights, its immense civil list, and dazzling ostentation. The national activity was exclusively directed to labour and war. All material interests, all ambitious passions, were hierarchically arranged under one leader, who, after having sacrificed liberty by establishing absolute power, destroyed equality by introducing nobility.

The directory had erected all the surrounding states into republics; Napoleon wished to constitute them on the model of the empire. He began with Italy. The council of state of the Cisalpine republic determined on restoring hereditary monarchy in favour of Napoleon. Its vice-president, M. Melzi, came to Paris to communicate to him this decision. On the 26th Ventôse, year XIII. (17th of March, 1805), he was received with great solemnity at the Tuileries. Napoleon was on his throne, surrounded by his court, and all the splendour of sovereign power, in the display of which he delighted. M. Melzi offered him the crown, in the name of his fellow- citizens. "Sire," said he, in conclusion, "deign to gratify the wishes of the assembly over which I have the honour to preside. Interpreter of the sentiments which animate every Italian heart, it brings you their sincere homage. It will inform them with joy that by accepting, you have strengthened the ties which attach you to the preservation, defence, and prosperity of the Italian nation. Yes, sire, you wished the existence of the Italian republic, and it existed. Desire the Italian monarchy to be happy, and it will be so."

The emperor went to take possession of this kingdom; and, on the 26th of May, 1805, he received at Milan the iron crown of the Lombards. He appointed his adopted son, prince Eugene de Beauharnais, viceroy of Italy, and repaired to Genoa, which also renounced its sovereignty. On the 4th of June, 1805, its territory was united to the empire, and formed the three departments of Genoa, Montenotte, and the Apennines. The small republic of Lucca was included in this monarchical revolution. At the request of its gonfalonier, it was given in appanage to the prince of Piombino and his princess, a sister of Napoleon. The latter, after this royal progress, recrossed the Alps, and returned to the capital of his empire; he soon after departed for the camp at Boulogne, where a great maritime expedition against England was preparing.

This project of descent which the directory had entertained after the peace of Campo-Formio, and the first consul, after the peace of Lunéville, had been resumed with much ardour since the new rupture. At the commencement of 1805, a flotilla of two thousand small vessels, manned by sixteen thousand sailors, carrying an army of one hundred and sixty thousand men, nine thousand horses, and a numerous artillery, had assembled in the ports of Boulogne, Etaples, Wimereux, Ambleteuse. and Calais. The emperor was hastening by his presence the execution of this project, when he learned that England, to avoid the descent with which it was threatened, had prevailed on Austria to come to a rupture with France, and that all the forces of the Austrian monarchy were in motion. Ninety thousand men, under the archduke Ferdinand and general Mack, had crossed the Jura, seized on Munich, and driven out the elector of Bavaria, the ally of France; thirty thousand, under the archduke John, occupied the Tyrol, and the archduke Charles, with one hundred thousand men, was advancing on the Adige. Two Russian armies were preparing to join the Austrians. Pitt had made the greatest efforts to organize this third coalition. The establishment of the kingdom of Italy, the annexation of Genoa and Piedmont to France, the open influence of the emperor over Holland and Switzerland, had again aroused Europe, which now dreaded the ambition of Napoleon as much as it had formerly feared the principles of the revolution. The treaty of alliance between the British ministry and the Russian cabinet had been signed on the 11th of April, 1805, and Austria had acceded to it on the 9th of August.

Napoleon left Boulogne, returned hastily to Paris, repaired to the senate on the 23rd of September, obtained a levy of eighty thousand men, and set out the next day to begin the campaign. He passed the Rhine on the 1st of October, and entered Bavaria on the 6th, with an army of a hundred and sixty thousand men. Masséna held back Prince Charles in Italy, and the emperor carried on the war in Germany at full speed. In a few days he passed the Danube, entered Munich, gained the victory of Wertingen, and forced general Mack to lay down his arms at Ulm. This capitulation disorganized the Austrian army. Napoleon pursued the course of his victories, entered Vienna on the 13th of November, and then marched into Moravia to meet the Russians, round whom the defeated troops had rallied.

On the 2nd of December, 1805, the anniversary of the coronation, the two armies met in the plains of Austerlitz. The enemy amounted to ninety-five thousand men, the French to eighty thousand. On both sides the artillery was formidable. The battle began at sunrise; these enormous masses began to move; the Russian infantry could not stand against the impetuosity of our troops and the manoeuvres of their general. The enemy's left was first cut off; the Russian imperial guard came up to re-establish the communication, and was entirely overwhelmed. The centre experienced the same fate, and at one o'clock in the afternoon the most decisive victory had completed this wonderful campaign. The following day the emperor congratulated the army in a proclamation on the field of battle itself: "Soldiers," said he, "I am satisfied with you. You have adorned your eagles with immortal glory. An army of a hundred thousand men, commanded by the emperors of Russia and Austria, in less than four days has been cut to pieces or dispersed; those who escaped your steel have been drowned in the lakes. Forty flags, the standards of the Russian imperial guard, a hundred and twenty pieces of cannon, twenty generals, more than thirty thousand prisoners, are the result of this ever memorable day. This infantry, so vaunted and so superior in numbers, could not resist your shock, and henceforth you have no more rivals to fear. Thus, in two months, this third coalition has been defeated and dissolved." A truce was concluded with Austria; and the Russians, who might have been cut to pieces, obtained permission to retire by fixed stages.

The peace of Pressburg followed the victories of Ulm and Austerlitz; it was signed on the 26th of December. The house of Austria, which had lost its external possessions, Holland and the Milanese, was now assailed in Germany itself. It gave up the provinces of Dalmatia and Albania to the kingdom of Italy; the territory of the Tyrol, the town of Augsburg, the principality of Eichstett, a part of the territory of Passau, and all its possessions in Swabia, Brisgau, and Ortenau to the electorates of Bavaria and Wurtemberg, which were transformed into kingdoms. The grand duchy of Baden also profited by its spoils. The treaty of Pressburg completed the humiliation of Austria, commenced by the treaty of Campo-Formio, and continued by that of Lunéville. The emperor, on his return to Paris, crowned with so much glory, became the object of such general and wild admiration, that he was himself carried away by the public enthusiasm and intoxicated at his fortune. The different bodies of the state contended among themselves in obedience and flatteries. He received the title of Great, and the senate passed a decree dedicating to him a triumphal monument.

Napoleon became more confirmed in the principle he had espoused. The victory of Marengo and the peace of Lunéville had sanctioned the consulate; the victory of Austerlitz and peace of Pressburg consecrated the empire. The last vestiges of the revolution were abandoned. On the 1st of January, 1806, the Gregorian calendar definitively replaced the republican calendar, after an existence of fourteen years. The Panthéon was again devoted to purposes of worship, and soon even the tribunate ceased to exist. But the emperor aimed especially at extending his dominion over the continent. Ferdinand, king of Naples, having, during the last war, violated the treaty of peace with France, had his states invaded; and Joseph Bonaparte on the 30th of March was declared king of the Two Sicilies. Soon after (June 5th, 1806), Holland was converted into a kingdom, and received as monarch Louis Bonaparte, another brother of the emperor. None of the republics created by the convention, or the directory, now existed. Napoleon, in nominating secondary kings, restored the military hierarchical system, and the titles of the middle ages. He erected Dalmatia, Istria, Friuli, Cadore, Belluno, Conegliano, Treviso, Feltra, Bassano, Vicenza, Padua, and Rovigo into duchies, great fiefs of the empire. Marshal Berthier was invested with the principality of Neufchâtel, the minister Talleyrand with that of Benevento. Prince Borghese and his wife with that of Guastalla, Murat with the grand-duchy of Berg and Clèves. Napoleon, not venturing to destroy the Swiss republic, styled himself its mediator, and completed the organization of his military empire by placing under his dependence the ancient Germanic body. On the 12th of July, 1806, fourteen princes of the south and west of Germany united themselves into the confederation of the Rhine, and recognized Napoleon as their protector. On the 1st of August, they signified to the diet of Ratisbon their separation from the Germanic body. The empire of Germany ceased to exist, and Francis II. abdicated the title by proclamation. By a convention signed at Vienna, on the 15th of December, Prussia exchanged the territories of Anspach, Clèves, and Neufchâtel for the electorate of Hanover. Napoleon had all the west under his power. Absolute master of France and Italy, as emperor and king, he was also master of Spain, by the dependence of that court; of Naples and Holland, by his two brothers; of Switzerland, by the act of mediation; and in Germany he had at his disposal the kings of Bavaria and Wurtemberg, and the confederation of the Rhine against Austria and Prussia. After the peace of Amiens, by supporting liberty he might have made himself the protector of France and the moderator of Europe; but having sought glory in domination, and made conquest the object of his life, he condemned himself to a long struggle, which would inevitably terminate in the dependence of the continent or in his own downfall.

This encroaching progress gave rise to the fourth coalition. Prussia, neutral since the peace of Basle, had, in the last campaign, been on the point of joining the Austro-Russian coalition. The rapidity of the emperor's victories had alone restrained her; but now, alarmed at the aggrandizement of the empire, and encouraged by the fine condition of her troops, she leagued with Russia to drive the French from Germany. The cabinet of Berlin required that the French troops should recross the Rhine, or war would be the consequence. At the same time, it sought to form in the north of Germany a league against the confederation of the south. The emperor, who was in the plenitude of his prosperity and of national enthusiasm, far from submitting to the ultimatum of Prussia, immediately marched against her.

The campaign opened early in October. Napoleon, as usual, overwhelmed the coalition by the promptitude of his marches and the vigour of his measures. On the 14th of October, he destroyed at Jena the military monarchy of Prussia, by a decisive victory; on the 16th, fourteen thousand Prussians threw down their arms at Erfurth; on the 25th, the French army entered Berlin, and the close of 1806 was employed in taking the Prussian fortresses and marching into Poland against the Russian army. The campaign in Poland was less rapid, but as brilliant as that of Prussia. Russia, for the third time, measured its strength with France. Conquered at Zurich and Austerlitz, it was also defeated at Eylau and Friedland. After these memorable battles, the emperor Alexander entered into a negotiation, and concluded at Tilsit, on the 21st of June, 1807, an armistice which was followed by a definitive treaty on the 7th of July.

The peace of Tilsit extended the French domination on the continent. Prussia was reduced to half its extent. In the south of Germany, Napoleon had instituted the two kingdoms of Bavaria and Wurtemberg against Austria; further to the north, he created the two feudatory kingdoms of Saxony and Westphalia against Prussia. That of Saxony, composed of the electorate of that name, and Prussian Poland, called the grand-duchy of Warsaw, was given to the king of Saxony; that of Westphalia comprehended the states of Hesse-Cassel, Brunswick, Fulde, Paderborn, and the greatest part of Hanover, and was given to Jerome Napoleon. The emperor Alexander, acceding to all these arrangements, evacuated Moldavia and Wallachia. Russia, however, though conquered, was the only power unencroached upon. Napoleon followed more than ever in the footsteps of Charlemagne; at his coronation, he had had the crown, sword, and sceptre, of the Frank king carried before him. A pope had crossed the Alps to consecrate his dynasty, and he modelled his states on the vast empire of that conqueror. The revolution sought the establishment of ancient liberty; Napoleon restored the military hierarchy of the middle ages. The former had made citizens, the latter made vassals. The one had changed Europe into republics, the other transformed it into fiefs. Great and powerful as he was, coming immediately after a shock which had exhausted the world by its violence, he was enabled to arrange it for a time according to his pleasure. The grand empire rose internally by its system of administration, which replaced the government of assemblies; its special courts, its lyceums, in which military education was substituted for the republican education of the central schools; its hereditary nobility, which in 1808 completed the establishment of inequality; its civil discipline, which rendered all France like an army obedient to the word of command; and externally by its secondary kingdoms, its confederate states, its great fiefs, and its supreme chief. Napoleon, no longer meeting resistance anywhere, could command from one end of the continent to the other.

At this period all the emperor's attention was directed to England, the only power that could secure itself from his attacks. Pitt had been dead a year, but the British cabinet followed with much ardour and pertinacity his plans with respect to France. After having vainly formed a third and a fourth coalition, it did not lay down arms. It was a war to the death. Great Britain had declared France in a state of blockade, and furnished the emperor with the means of cutting off its continental intercourse by a similar measure. The continental blockade, which began in 1807, was the second period of Bonaparte's system. In order to attain universal and uncontested supremacy, he made use of arms against the continent, and the cessation of commerce against England. But in forbidding to the continental states all communication with England, he was preparing new difficulties for himself, and soon added to the animosity of opinion excited by his despotism, and the hatred of states produced by his conquering domination, the exasperation of private interests and commercial suffering occasioned by the blockade.

Yet all the powers seemed united in the same design. England was placed under the ban of continental Europe, at the peace. Russia and Denmark in the Northern Seas; France, Spain, and Holland, in the Mediterranean and the ocean, were obliged to declare against it. This period was the height of the imperial sway. Napoleon employed all his activity and all his genius in creating maritime resources capable of counter-balancing the forces of England, which had then eleven hundred ships of war of every class. He caused ports to be constructed, coasts to be fortified, ships to be built and prepared, everything for combating in a few years upon this new battle-field. But before that moment arrived, he wished to secure the Spanish peninsula, and to found his dynasty there, for the purpose of introducing a firmer and more favourable policy. The expedition of Portugal in 1807, and the invasion of Spain in 1808, began for him and for Europe a new order of events.

Portugal had for some time been a complete English colony. The emperor, in concert with the Bourbons of Madrid, decided by the treaty of Fontainebleau, of the 27th of October, 1807, that the house of Braganza had ceased to reign. A French army, under the command of Junot, entered Portugal. The prince-regent embarked for Brazil, and the French took possession of Lisbon on the 30th of November, 1807. This invasion was only an approach towards Spain. The royal family were in a state of the greatest anarchy. The favourite, Godoy, was execrated by the people, and Ferdinand, prince of the Asturias, conspired against the authority of his father's favourite. Though the emperor had not much to fear from such a government, he had taken alarm at a clumsy armament prepared by Godoy during the Prussian war. No doubt, at this time he formed the project of putting one of his brothers on the throne of Spain; he thought he could easily overturn a divided family, an expiring monarchy, and obtain the consent of a people whom he would restore to civilization. Under the pretext of the maritime war and the blockade, his troops entered the peninsula, occupied the coasts and principal places, and encamped near Madrid. It was then suggested to the royal family to retire to Mexico, after the example of the house of Braganza. But the people rose against this departure; Godoy, the object of public hatred, was in great risk of losing his life, and the prince of the Asturias was proclaimed king, under the title of Ferdinand VII. The emperor took advantage of this court revolution to bring about his own. The French entered Madrid, and he himself proceeded to Bayonne, whither he summoned the Spanish princes. Ferdinand restored the crown to his father, who in his turn resigned it in favour of Napoleon; the latter had it decreed on his brother Joseph by a supreme junta, by the council of Castille, and the municipality of Madrid. Ferdinand was sent to the Château de Valençay, and Charles VI. fixed his residence at Compiègne. Napoleon called his brother-in-law, Murat, grand- duke of Berg, to the throne of Naples, in the place of Joseph.

At this period began the first opposition to the domination of the emperor and the continental system. The reaction manifested itself in three countries hitherto allies of France, and it brought on the fifth coalition. The court of Rome was dissatisfied; the peninsula was wounded in its national pride by having imposed upon it a foreign king; in its usages, by the suppression of convents, of the Inquisition, and of the grandees; Holland suffered in its commerce from the blockade, and Austria supported impatiently its losses and subordinate condition. England, watching for an opportunity to revive the struggle on the continent, excited the resistance of Rome, the peninsula, and the cabinet of Vienna. The pope had been cold towards France since 1805; he had hoped that his pontifical complaisance in reference to Napoleon's coronation would have been recompensed by the restoration to the ecclesiastical domain of those provinces which the directory had annexed to the Cisalpine republic. Deceived in this expectation, he joined the European counter-revolutionary opposition, and from 1807 to 1808 the Roman States became the rendezvous of English emissaries. After some warm remonstrances, the emperor ordered general Miollis to occupy Rome; the pope threatened him with excommunication; and Napoleon seized on the legations of Ancona, Urbino, Macerata, and Camerino, which became part of the Italian kingdom. The legate left Paris on the 3rd of April, 1808, and the religious struggle for temporal interests commenced with the head of the church, whom Napoleon should either not have recognised, or not have despoiled.

The war with the peninsula was still more serious. The Spaniards recognised Ferdinand VII. as king, in a provincial junta, held at Seville, on the 27th of May, 1808, and they took arms in all the provinces which were not occupied by French troops. The Portuguese also rose at Oporto, on the 16th of June. These two insurrections were at first attended with the happiest results; in a short time they made rapid progress. General Dupont laid down arms at Baylen in the province of Cordova, and this first reverse of the French arms excited the liveliest hope and enthusiasm among the Spaniards. Joseph Napoleon left Madrid, where Ferdinand VII. was proclaimed; and about the same time, Junot, not having troops enough to keep Portugal, consented, by the convention of Cintra, to evacuate it with all the honours of war. The English general, Wellington, took possession of this kingdom with twenty-five thousand men. While the pope was declaring against Napoleon, while the Spanish insurgents were entering Madrid, while the English were again setting foot on the continent, the king of Sweden avowed himself an enemy of the European imperial league, and Austria was making considerable armaments and preparing for a new struggle.

Fortunately for Napoleon, Russia remained faithful to the alliance and engagements of Tilsit. The emperor Alexander had at that time a fit of enthusiasm and affection for this powerful and extraordinary mortal. Napoleon wishing to be sure of the north, before he conveyed all his forces to the peninsula, had an interview with Alexander at Erfurt, on the 27th September, 1808. The two masters of the north and west guaranteed to each other the repose and submission of Europe. Napoleon marched into Spain, and Alexander undertook Sweden. The presence of the emperor soon changed the fortune of the war in the peninsula. He brought with him eighty thousand veteran soldiers, just come from Germany. Several victories made him master of most of the Spanish provinces. He made his entry into Madrid, and presented himself to the inhabitants of the peninsula, not as a master, but as a liberator. "I have abolished," he said to them, "the tribunal of the Inquisition, against which the age and Europe protested. Priests should direct the conscience, but ought not to exercise any external or corporal jurisdiction over the citizens. I have suppressed feudal rights; and every one may set up inns, ovens, mills, fisheries, and give free impulse to his industry. The selfishness, wealth, and prosperity of a few did more injury to your agriculture than the heats of the extreme summer. As there is but one God, one system of justice only should exist in a state. All private tribunals were usurped and opposed to the rights of the nation. I have suppressed them. The present generation may change its opinion; too many passions have been brought into play; but your grandchildren will bless me as your regenerator; they will rank among their memorable days those in which I appeared among you, and from those days will Spain date its prosperity."

Such was indeed the part of Napoleon in the peninsula, which could only be restored to a better state of things, and to liberty, by the revival of civilization. The establishment of independence cannot be effected all at once, any more than anything else; and when a country is ignorant, poor, and backward, covered with convents, and governed by monks, its social condition must be reconstructed before liberty can be thought of. Napoleon, the oppressor of civilized nations, was a real regenerator for the peninsula. But the two parties of civil liberty and religious servitude, that of the cortes and that of the monks, though with far different aims, came to an understanding for their common defence. The one was at the head of the upper and the middle classes, the other of the populace; and they vied with each other in exciting the Spaniards to enthusiasm with the sentiments of independence or religious fanaticism. The following is the catechism used by the priests: "Tell me, my child, who you are? A Spaniard by the grace of God.—Who is the enemy of our happiness? The emperor of the French.—How many natures has he? Two: human and diabolical.—How many emperors of the French are there? One true one, in three deceptive persons.—What are their names, Napoleon, Murat, and Manuel Godoy.—Which of the three is the most wicked? They are all three equally so.—Whence is Napoleon derived? From sin.—Murat? From Napoleon. —And Godoy? The junction of the two.—What is the ruling spirit of the first? Pride and despotism.—Of the second? Rapine and cruelty.—Of the third? Cupidity, treason, and ignorance.—Who are the French? Former Christians become heretics.—Is it a sin to kill a Frenchman? No, father; heaven is gained by killing one of these dogs of heretics.—What punishment does the Spaniard deserve who has failed in his duty? The death and infamy of a traitor.—What will deliver us from our enemies? Confidence in ourselves and in arms."

Napoleon had engaged in a long and dangerous enterprise, in which his whole system of war was at fault. Victory, here, did not consist in the defeat of an army and the possession of a capital, but in the entire occupation of the territory, and, what was still more difficult, the submission of the public mind. Napoleon, however, was preparing to subdue this people with his irresistible activity and inflexible determination, when the fifth coalition called him again to Germany.

Austria had turned to advantage his absence, and that of his troops. It made a powerful effort, and raised five hundred and fifty thousand men, comprising the Landwehr, and took the field in the spring of 1809. The Tyrol rose, and king Jerome was driven from his capital by the Westphalians; Italy wavered; and Prussia only waited till Napoleon met with a reverse, to take arms; but the emperor was still at the height of his power and prosperity. He hastened from Madrid in the beginning of February, and directed the members of the confederation to keep their contingents in readiness. On the 12th of April he left Paris, passed the Rhine, plunged into Germany, gained the victories of Eckmühl and Essling, occupied Vienna a second time on the 15th of May, and overthrew this new coalition by the battle of Wagram, after a campaign of four months. While he was pursuing the Austrian armies, the English landed on the island of Walcheren, and appeared before Antwerp; but a levy of national guards sufficed to frustrate the expedition of the Scheldt. The peace of Vienna, of the 11th of October, 1809, deprived the house of Austria of several more provinces, and compelled it again to adopt the continental system.

This period was remarkable for the new character of the struggle. It began the reaction of Europe against the empire, and announced the alliance of dynasties, people, nations, the priesthood, and commerce. All whose interests were injured made an attempt at resistance, which at first was destined to fail. Napoleon, since the peace of Amiens, had entered on a career that must necessarily terminate in the possession or hostility of all Europe. Carried away by his character and position, he had created against the people a system of administration of unparalleled benefit to power; against Europe, a system of secondary monarchies and grand fiefs, which facilitated his plans of conquest; and, lastly, against England, the blockade which suspended its commerce, and that of the continent. Nothing impeded him in the realization of those immense but insensate designs. Portugal opened a communication with the English: he invaded it. The royal family of Spain, by its quarrels and vacillations, compromised the extremities of the empire: he compelled it to abdicate, that he might reduce the peninsula to a bolder and less wavering policy. The pope kept up relations with the enemy: his patrimony was diminished. He threatened excommunication: the French entered Rome. He realized his threat by a bull: he was dethroned as a temporal sovereign in 1809. Finally, after the battle of Wagram, and the peace of Vienna, Holland became a depot for English merchandise, on account of its commercial wants, and the emperor dispossessed his brother Louis of that kingdom, which, on the 1st of July, 1810, became incorporated with the empire. He shrank from no invasion, because he would not endure opposition or hesitation from any quarter. All were compelled to submit, allies as well as enemies, the chief of the church as well as kings, brothers as well as strangers; but, though conquered this time, all who had joined this new league only waited an opportunity to rise again.

Meantime, after the peace of Vienna, Napoleon still added to the extent and power of the empire. Sweden having undergone an internal revolution, and the king, Gustavus Adolphus IV., having been forced to abdicate, admitted the continental system. Bernadotte, prince of Ponte-Corvo, was elected by the states-general hereditary prince of Sweden, and king Charles XIII. adopted him for his son. The blockade was observed throughout Europe; and the empire, augmented by the Roman States, the Illyrian provinces, Valais, Holland, and the Hanse Towns, had a hundred and thirty departments, and extended from Hamburg and Dantzic to Trieste and Corfu. Napoleon, who seemed to follow a rash but inflexible policy, deviated from his course about this time by a second marriage. He divorced Josephine that he might give an heir to the empire, and married, on the 1st of April, 1810, Marie-Louise, arch-duchess of Austria. This was a decided error. He quitted his position and his post as a parvenu and revolutionary monarch, opposing in Europe the ancient courts as the republic had opposed the ancient governments. He placed himself in a false situation with respect to Austria, which he ought either to have crushed after the victory of Wagram, or to have reinstated in its possessions after his marriage with the arch-duchess. Solid alliances only repose on real interests, and Napoleon could not remove from the cabinet of Vienna the desire or power of renewing hostilities. This marriage also changed the character of his empire, and separated it still further from popular interests; he sought out old families to give lustre to his court, and did all he could to amalgamate together the old and the new nobility as he mingled old and new dynasties. Austerlitz had established the plebeian empire; after Wagram was established the noble empire. The birth, on the 20th of March, 1811, of a son, who received the title of King of Rome, seemed to consolidate the power of Napoleon by securing to him a successor.

The war in Spain was prosecuted with vigour during the years 1810 and 1811. The territory of the peninsula was defended inch by inch, and its was necessary to take several towns by storm. Suchet, Soult, Mortier, Ney, and Sebastiani made themselves masters of several provinces; and the Spanish junta, unable to keep their post at Seville, retired to Cadiz, which the French army began to blockade. The new expedition into Portugal was less fortune. Masséna, who directed it, at first obliged Wellington to retreat, and took Oporto and Olivença; but the English general having entrenched himself in the strong position of Torres-Vedras, Masséna, unable to force it, was compelled to evacuate the country.

While the war was proceeding in the peninsula with advantage, but without any decided success, a new campaign was preparing in the north. Russia perceived the empire of Napoleon approaching its territories. Shut up in its own limits, it remained without influence or acquisitions; suffering from the blockade, without gaining any advantage by the war. This cabinet, moreover, endured with impatience a supremacy to which it itself aspired, and which it had pursued slowly but without interruption since the reign of Peter the Great. About the close of 1810, it increased its armies, renewed its commercial relations with Great Britain, and did not seem indisposed to a rupture. The year 1811 was spent in negotiations which led to nothing, and preparations for war were made on both sides. The emperor, whose armies were before Cadiz, and who relied on the co-operation of the West and North against Russia, made with ardour preparations for an enterprise which was intended to reduce the only power as yet untouched, and to carry his victorious eagles even to Moscow. He obtained the assistance of Prussia and Austria, which engaged by the treaties of the 24th of February and the 14th of March, 1812, to furnish auxiliary bodies; one of twenty, and the other of thirty thousand men. All the unemployed forces of France were immediately on foot. A senatus-consultus divided the national guard into three bodies for the home service, and appropriated a hundred of the first line regiments (nearly a hundred thousand men) for active military service. On the 9th of March, Napoleon left Paris on this vast expedition. During several months he fixed his court at Dresden, where the emperor of Austria, the king of Prussia, and all the sovereigns of Germany, came to bow before his high fortune. On the 22nd of June, war was declared against Russia.

In this campaign, Napoleon was guided by the maxims he had always found successful. He had terminated all the wars he had undertaken by the rapid defeat of the enemy, the occupation of his capital, and concluded the peace by parcelling out his territory. His project was to reduce Russia by creating the kingdom of Poland, as he had reduced Austria by forming the kingdoms of Bavaria and Wurtemberg, after Austerlitz; and Prussia, by organizing those of Saxony and Westphalia, after Jena. With this object, he had stipulated with the Austrian cabinet by the treaty of the 14th of March, to exchange Gallicia for the Illyrian provinces. The establishment of the kingdom of Poland was proclaimed by the diet of Warsaw, but in an incomplete manner, and Napoleon, who, according to his custom, wished to finish all in one campaign, advanced at once into the heart of Russia, instead of prudently organizing the Polish barrier against it. His army amounted to about five hundred thousand men. He passed the Niemen on the 24th of June, took Vilna, and Vitepsk, defeated the Russians at Astrowno, Polotsk, Mohilev, Smolensk, at the Moskva, and on the 14th of September, made his entry into Moscow.

The Russian cabinet relied for its defence not only upon its troops, but on its vast territory and on its climate. As the conquered armies retreated before ours, they burnt all the towns, devastated the provinces, and thus prepared great difficulties for the foe in the event of reverses or retreat. According to this plan of defence, Moscow was burnt by its governor Rostopchin, as Smolensk, Dorigoboui, Viasma, Gjhat, Mojaisk, and a great number of other towns and villages had already been. The emperor ought to have seen that this war would not terminate as the others had done; yet, conqueror of the foe, and master of his capital, he conceived hopes of peace which the Russians skilfully encouraged. Winter was approaching, and Napoleon prolonged his stay at Moscow for six weeks. He delayed his movements on account of the deceptive negotiations of the Russians, and did not decide on a retreat till the 19th of October. This retreat was disastrous, and began the downfall of the empire. Napoleon could not have been defeated by the hand of man, for what general could have triumphed over this incomparable chief? what army could have conquered the French army? But his reverses were to take place in the remote limits of Europe; in the frozen regions which were to end his conquering domination. He lost, with the close of this campaign, not by a defeat, but by cold and famine, in the midst of Russian snows and solitude, his old army, and the prestige of his fortune.

The retreat was effected with some order as far as the Berezina, where it became one vast rout. After the passage of this river, Napoleon, who had hitherto accompanied his army, started in a sledge for Paris, in great haste, a conspiracy having broken out there during his absence. General Mallet, with a few others, had conceived the design of overthrowing this colossus of power. His enterprise was daring; and as it was grounded on a false report of Napoleon's death, it was necessary to deceive too many for success to be probable. Besides, the empire was still firmly established, and it was not a plot, but a slow and general defection which could destroy it. Mallet's plot failed, and its leaders were executed. The emperor, on his return, found the nation astounded at so unusual a disaster. But the different bodies of the state still manifested implicit obedience. He reached Paris on the 18th of December, obtained a levy of three hundred thousand men, inspired a spirit of sacrifice, re-equipped in a short time, with his wonderful activity, a new army, and took the field again on the 15th of April, 1813.

But since the retreat of Moscow, Napoleon had entered on a new series of events. It was in 1812 that the decline of the empire manifested itself. The weariness of his domination became general. All those by whose consent he had risen, took part against him. The priests had conspired in secret since his rupture with the pope. Eight state prisons had been created in an official manner against the dissentients of his party. The national masses were as tired of conquest as they had formerly been of factions. They had expected from him consideration for private interests, the promotion of commerce; respect for men; and they were oppressed by conscriptions, taxes, the blockade, provost courts, and duties which were the inevitable consequences of this conquering system. He had no longer for adversaries the few who remained faithful to the political object of the revolution, and whom he styled idéologues, but all who, without definite ideas, wished for the material advantages of better civilization. Without, whole nations groaned beneath the military yoke, and the fallen dynasties aspired to rise again. The whole world was ill at ease; and one check served to bring about a general rising. "I triumphed," says Napoleon himself, speaking of the preceding campaigns, "in the midst of constantly reviving perils. I constantly required as much address as voice. Had I not conquered at Austerlitz, all Prussia would have been upon me; had I not triumphed at Jena, Austria and Spain would have attacked my rear; had I not fought at Wagram, which action was not a decided victory, I had reason to fear that Russia would forsake, Prussia rise against me, and the English were before Antwerp." [Footnote: Mémorial de Saint Hélène, tome ii. p. 221.] Such was his condition; the further he advanced in his career, the greater need he had to conquer more and more decisively. Accordingly, as soon as he was defeated, the kings he had subdued, the kings he had made, the allies he had aggrandized, the states he had incorporated with the empire, the senators who had so flattered him, and even his comrades in arms, successively forsook him. The field of battle extended to Moscow in 1812, drew back to Dresden in 1813, and to Paris in 1814: so rapid was the reverse of fortune.

The cabinet of Berlin began the defections. On the 1st of March, 1813, it joined Russia and England, which were forming the sixth coalition. Sweden acceded to it soon after; yet the emperor, whom the confederate powers thought prostrated by the last disaster, opened the campaign with new victories. The battle of Lützen, won by conscripts, on the 2nd of May, the occupation of Dresden, the victory of Bautzen, and the war carried to the Elbe, astonished the coalition. Austria, which, since 1810, had been on a footing of peace, was resuming arms, and already meditating a change of alliance. She now offered to act as mediator between the emperor and the confederates. Her mediation was accepted; an armistice was concluded at Plesswitz, on the 4th of June, and a congress assembled at Prague to negotiate peace. It was impossible to come to terms. Napoleon would not consent to diminished grandeur; Europe would not consent to remain subject to him. The confederate powers, joined by Austria, required that the limits of the empire should be to the Rhine, the Alps, and the Meuse. The negotiators separated without coming to an agreement. Austria joined the coalition, and war, the only means of settling this great contest, was resumed.

The emperor had only two hundred and eighty thousand men against five hundred and twenty thousand; he wished to force the enemy to retire behind the Elbe, and to break up, as usual, this new coalition by the promptitude and vigour of his blows. Victory seemed, at first, to second him. At Dresden, he defeated the combined forces; but the defeats of his lieutenants deranged his plans. Macdonald was conquered in Silesia; Ney, near Berlin; Vandamme, at Kulm. Unable to obstruct the enemy, pouring on him from all parts, Napoleon thought of retreating. The princes of the confederation of the Rhine chose this moment to desert the cause of the empire. A vast engagement having taken place at Leipzic between the two armies, the Saxons and Wurtembergers passed over to the enemy on the field of battle. This defection to the strength of the allied powers, who had learned a more compact and skilful mode of warfare, obliged Napoleon to retreat, after a struggle of three days. The army advanced with much confusion towards the Rhine, where the Bavarians, who had also deserted, attempted to prevent its passage. But it overwhelmed them at Hanau, and re-entered the territory of the empire on the 30th of October, 1813. The close of this campaign was as disastrous as that of the preceding one. France was threatened in its own limits, as it had been in 1799; but the enthusiasm of independence no longer existed, and the man who deprived it of its rights found it, at this great crisis, incapable of sustaining him or defending itself. The servitude of nations is, sooner or later, ever avenged.

Napoleon returned to Paris on the 9th of November, 1813. He obtained from the senate a levy of three hundred thousand men, and made with great ardour preparations for a new campaign. He convoked the legislative body to associate it in the common defence; he communicated to it the documents relative to the negotiations of Prague, and asked for another and last effort in order to secure a glorious peace, the general wish of France. But the legislative body, hitherto silently obedient, chose this period to resist Napoleon.

It shared the common exhaustion, and without desiring it, was under the influence of the royalist party, which had been secretly agitating ever since the decline of the empire had revived its hopes. A commission, composed of MM. Lainé, Raynouard, Gallois, Flaugergues, Maine de Biran, drew up a very hostile report, censuring the course adopted by the government, and demanding that all conquests should be given up, and liberty restored. This wish, so just at any other time, could then only favour the invasion of the foe. Though the confederate powers seemed to make the evacuation of Europe the condition of peace, they were disposed to push victory to extremity. Napoleon, irritated by this unexpected and harassing opposition, suddenly dismissed the legislative body. This commencement of resistance announced internal defections. After passing from Russia to Germany, they were about to extend from Germany and Italy to France. But now, as before, all depended on the issue of the war, which the winter had not interrupted. Napoleon placed all his hopes on it; and started from Paris on the 25th of January, for this immortal campaign.

The empire was invaded in all directions. The Austrians entered Italy; the English, having made themselves masters of the peninsula during the last two years, had passed the Bidassoa, under general Wellington, and appeared on the Pyrenees. Three armies pressed on France to the east and north. The great allied army, amounting to a hundred and fifty thousand men, under Schwartzenberg, advanced by Switzerland; the army of Silesia, of a hundred and thirty thousand, under Blücher, by Frankfort; and that of the north, of a hundred thousand men, under Bernadotte, had seized on Holland and entered Belgium. The enemies, in their turn, neglected the fortified places, and, taking a lesson from the conqueror, advanced on the capital. When Napoleon left Paris, the two armies of Schwartzenberg and Blücher were on the point of effecting a junction in Champaigne. Deprived of the support of the people, who were only lookers on, Napoleon was left alone against the whole world with a handful of veterans and his genius, which had lost nothing of its daring and vigour. At this moment, he stands out nobly, no longer an oppressor; no longer a conqueror; defending, inch by inch, with new victories, the soil of his country, and at the same time, his empire and renown.

He marched into Champaigne against the two great hostile armies. General Maison was charged to intercept Bernadotte in Belgium; Augereau, the Austrians, at Lyons; Soult, the English, on the Spanish frontier. Prince Eugene was to defend Italy; and the empire, though penetrated in the very centre, still stretched its vast arms into the depths of Germany by its garrisons beyond the Rhine. Napoleon did not despair of driving these swarms of foes from the territory of France by means of a powerful military reaction, and again planting his standards in the countries of the enemy. He placed himself skilfully between Blücher, who was descending the Marne, and Schwartzenberg, who descended the Seine; he hastened from one of these armies to the other, and defeated them alternately; Blücher was overpowered at Champ-Aubert, Montmirail, Château-Thierry, and Vauchamps; and when his army was destroyed, Napoleon returned to the Seine, defeated the Austrians at Montereau, and drove them before him. His combinations were so strong, his activity so great, his measures so sure, that he seemed on the point of entirely disorganizing these two formidable armies, and with them annihilating the coalition.

But if he conquered wherever he came, the foe triumphed wherever he was not. The English had entered Bordeaux, where a party had declared for the Bourbon family; the Austrians occupied Lyons; the Belgian army had joined the remnant of that of Blücher, which re-appeared on Napoleon's rear. Defection now entered his own family, and Murat had just followed, in Italy, the example of Bernadotte, by joining the coalition. The grand officers of the empire still served him, but languidly, and he only found ardour and fidelity in his subaltern generals and indefatigable soldiers. Napoleon had again marched on Blücher, who had escaped from him thrice: on the left of the Marne, by a sudden frost, which hardened the muddy ways amongst which the Prussians had involved themselves, and were in danger of perishing; on the Aisne, through the defection of Soissons, which opened a passage to them, at a moment when they had no other way of escape; and Laon, by the fault of the duke of Ragusa, who prevented a decisive battle, by suffering himself to be surprised by night. After so many fatalities, which frustrated the surest plans, Napoleon, ill sustained by his generals, surrounded by the coalition, conceived the bold design of transporting himself to Saint-Dizier and closing on the enemy the egress from France. This daring march so full of genius, startled for a moment the confederate generals, from whom it cut off all retreat; but, excited by secret encouragements, without being anxious for their rear, they advanced on Paris.

This great city, the only capital of Europe which had not been the theatre of war, suddenly saw all the troops of Europe enter its plains, and was on the point of undergoing the common humiliation. It was left to itself. The empress, appointed regent a few months before, had just left it to repair to Blois. Napoleon was at a distance. There was not that despair and that movement of liberty which drive a people to resistance; war was no longer made on nations, but on governments, and the emperor had centred all the public interest in himself, and placed all his means of defence in mechanical troops. The exhaustion was great; a feeling of pride, of very just pride, alone made the approach of the stranger painful, and oppressed every Frenchman's heart at seeing his native land trodden by armies so long vanquished. But this sentiment was not sufficiently strong to raise the masses of the population against the enemy; and the measures of the royalist party, at the head of which the prince of Benevento placed himself, called the allied troops to the capital. An action took place, however, on the 30th of March, under the walls of Paris; but on the 31st, the gates were opened to the confederate forces, who entered in pursuance of a capitulation. The senate consummated the great imperial defection by forsaking its old master; it was influenced by M. de Talleyrand, who for some time had been out of favour with Napoleon. This voluntary actor in every crisis of power had just declared against him. With no attachment to party, of a profound political indifference, he foresaw from a distance with wonderful sagacity the fall of a government; withdrew from it opportunely; and when the precise moment for assailing it had arrived, joined in the attack with all his talents, his influence, his name, and his authority, which he had taken care to preserve. In favour of the revolution, under the constituent assembly; of the directory, on the 18th Fructidor; for the consulate, on the 18th Brumaire; for the empire, in 1804, he was for the restoration of the royal family, in 1814; he seemed grand master of the ceremonies for the party in power, and for the last thirty years it was he who had dismissed and installed the successive governments. The senate, influenced by him, appointed a provisional government, and declared Napoleon deposed from his throne, the hereditary rights of his family abolished, the people and army freed from their oath of fidelity. It proclaimed him tyrant whose despotism it had facilitated by its adulation. Meantime, Napoleon, urged by those about him to succour the capital, had abandoned his march on Saint-Dizier, and hastened to Paris at the head of fifty thousand men, in the hope of preventing the entry of the enemy. On his arrival (1st of April), he heard of the capitulation of the preceding day, and fell back on Fontainebleau, where he learned the defection of the senate, and his deposition. Then finding that all gave way around him in his ill fortune, the people, the senate, generals and courtiers, he decided on abdicating in favour of his son. He sent the duke of Vicenza, the prince of the Moskva, and the duke of Tarento, as plenipotentiaries to the confederates; on their way, they were to take with them the duke of Ragusa, who covered Fontainebleau with a corps.

Napoleon, with his fifty thousand men, and strong military position, could yet oblige the coalition to admit the claim of his son. But the duke of Ragusa forsook his post, treated with the enemy, and left Fontainebleau exposed. Napoleon was then obliged to submit to the conditions of the allied powers; their pretensions increased with their power. At Prague, they ceded to him the empire, with the Alps and the Rhine for limits; after the invasion of France, they offered him at Châtillon the possessions of the old monarchy only; later, they refused to treat with him except in favour of his son; but now, determined on destroying all that remained of the revolution with respect to Europe, its conquest and dynasty, they compelled Napoleon to abdicate absolutely. On the 11th of April, 1814, he renounced for himself and children the thrones of France and Italy, and received the little island of Elba in exchange for his vast sovereignty, the limits of which had extended from Cadiz to the Baltic Sea. On the 20th, after an affecting farewell to his old soldiers, he departed for his new principality.

Thus fell this man, who alone, for fourteen years, had filled the world. His enterprising and organising genius, his power of life and will, his love of glory, and the immense disposable force which the revolution placed in his hands, have made him the most gigantic being of modern times. That which would have rendered the destiny of another extraordinary, scarcely counts in his. Rising from an obscure to the highest rank; from a simple artillery officer becoming the chief of the greatest of nations, he dared to conceive the idea of universal monarchy, and for a moment realized it. After having obtained the empire by his victories, he wished to subdue Europe by means of France, and reduce England by means of Europe, and he established the military system against the continent, the blockade against Great Britain. This design succeeded for some years; from Lisbon to Moscow he subjected people and potentates to his word of command as general, and to the vast sequestration which he prescribed. But in this way he failed in discharging his restorative mission of the 18th Brumaire. By exercising on his own account the power he had received, by attacking the liberty of the people by despotic institutions, the independence of states by war, he excited against himself the opinions and interests of the human race; he provoked universal hostility. The nation forsook him, and after having been long victorious, after having planted his standard in every capital, after having during ten years augmented his power, and gained a kingdom with every battle, a single reverse combined the world against him, proving by his fall how impossible in our days is despotism.

Yet Napoleon, amidst all the disastrous results of his system, gave a prodigious impulse to the continent; his armies carried with them the ideas and customs of the more advanced civilization of France. European societies were shaken on their old foundations; nations were mingled by frequent intercourse; bridges thrown across boundary rivers; high roads made over the Alps, Apennines, and Pyrenees, brought territories nearer to each other; and Napoleon effected for the material condition of states what the revolution had done for the minds of men. The blockade completed the impulse of conquest; it improved continental industry, enabling it to take the place of that of England, and replaced colonial commerce by the produce of manufactures. Thus Napoleon, by agitating nations, contributed to their civilization. His despotism rendered him counter-revolutionary with respect to France; but his spirit of conquest made him a regenerator with respect to Europe, of which many nations, in torpor till he came, will live henceforth with the life he gave them. But in this Napoleon obeyed the dictates of his nature. The child of war—war was his tendency, his pleasure: domination his object; he wanted to master the world, and circumstances placed it in his hand, in order that he might make use of it.

Napoleon has presented in France what Cromwell presented for a moment in England; the government of the army, which always establishes itself when a revolution is contended against; it then gradually changes, and from being civil, as it was at first, becomes military. In Great Britain, internal war not being complicated with foreign war, on account of the geographical situation of the country, which isolated it from other states, as soon as the enemies of reform were vanquished, the army passed from the field of battle to the government. Its intervention being premature, Cromwell, its general, found parties still in the fury of their passions, in all the fanaticism of their opinions, and he directed against them alone his military administration. The French revolution taking place on the continent saw the nations disposed for liberty, and sovereigns leagued from a fear of the liberation of their people. It had not only internal enemies, but also foreign enemies to contend with; and while its armies were repelling Europe, parties were overthrowing each other in the assemblies. The military intervention came later; Napoleon, finding factions defeated and opinions almost forsaken, obtained obedience easily from the nation, and turned the military government against Europe.

This difference of position materially influenced the conduct and character of these two extraordinary men. Napoleon, disposing of immense force and of uncontested power, gave himself up in security to the vast designs and the part of a conqueror; while Cromwell, deprived of the assent which a worn out people could give, and, incessantly attacked by factions, was reduced to neutralise them one by the other, and keep himself to the end the military dictator of parties. The one employed his genius in undertaking; the other in resisting. Accordingly, the former had the frankness and decision of power; the other, the craft and hypocrisy of opposed ambition. This situation would destroy their sway.

All dictatorships are transient; and however strong or great, it is impossible for any one long to subject parties or long to retain kingdoms. It is this that, sooner or later, would have led to the fall of Cromwell (had he lived longer,) by internal conspiracies; and that brought on the downfall of Napoleon, by the raising of Europe. Such is the fate of all powers which, arising from liberty, do not continue to abide with her. In 1814, the empire had just been destroyed; the revolutionary parties had ceased to exist since the 18th Brumaire. All the governments of this political period had been exhausted. The senate recalled the old royal family. Already unpopular on account of its past servility, it ruined- itself in public opinion by publishing a constitution, tolerably liberal, but which placed on the same footing the pensions of senators and the guarantees of the nation. The Count d'Artois, who had been the first to leave France, was the first to return, in the character of lieutenant- general of the kingdom. He signed, on the 23rd of April, the convention of Paris, which reduced the French territory to its limits of the 1st of January, 1792, and by which Belgium, Savoy, Nice, and Geneva, and immense military stores, ceased to belong to us. Louis XVIII. landed at Calais on the 24th of April, and entered Paris with solemnity on the 3rd of May, 1814, after having, on the 2nd, made the Declaration of Saint Omer, which fixed the principles of the representative government, and which was followed on the 2nd of June by the promulgation of the charter.

At this epoch, a new series of events begins. The year 1814 was the term of the great movement of the preceding five and twenty years. The revolution had been political, as directed against the absolute power of the court and the privileged classes, and military, because Europe had attacked it. The reaction which arose at that time only destroyed the empire and brought about the coalition in Europe, and the representative system in France; such was to be its first period. Later, it opposed the revolution, and produced the holy alliance against the people, and the government of a party against the charter. This retrograde movement necessarily had its course and limits. France can only be ruled in a durable manner by satisfying the twofold need which made it undertake the revolution. It requires real political liberty in the government; and in society, the material prosperity produced by the continually progressing development of civilization.