[Sidenote: Character of Bonaparte]
How Bonaparte utilized his reputation in order to make himself master of his adopted country has already been related. It was due in large part to an extraordinary opportunity which French politics at that time offered. But it was due, likewise, to certain characteristic qualities of the young general. In the first place, he was thoroughly convinced of his own abilities. Ambitious, selfish, and egotistical, he was always thinking and planning how he might become world-famous. Fatalistic and even superstitious, he believed that an unseen power was leading him on to higher and grander honors. He convinced his associates that he was "a man of destiny." Then, in the second place, Bonaparte possessed an effective means of satisfying his ambition, for he made himself the idol of his soldiers. He would go to sleep repeating the names of the corps, and even those of some of the individuals who composed them; he kept these names in a corner of his memory, and this habit came to his aid when he wanted to recognize a soldier and to give him a cheering word from his general. He spoke to the subalterns in a tone of good fellowship, which delighted them all, as he reminded them of their "common feats of arms." Then, in the third place, Bonaparte was a keen observer and a clever critic. Being sagacious, he knew that by 1799 France at large was weary of weak government and perpetual political strife and that she longed to have her scars healed by a practical man. Such a man he instinctively felt himself to be. In the fourth place, Bonaparte was a politician to the extreme of being unscrupulous. Knowing what he desired, he was ready and willing to employ any means to attain his ends. No love for theories or principles, no fear of God or man, no sentimental aversion from bloodshed, nothing could deter him from striving to realize his vaulting but self-centered ambition. Finally, there was in his nature an almost paradoxical vein of poetry and art which made him human and often served him well. He dreamed of empires and triumphs. He reveled in the thought of courts and polished society. He entertained a sincere admiration for learning. His highly colored speeches to his soldiers were at once brilliant and inspiriting. His fine instinct of the dramatic gave the right setting to all his public acts. And in the difficult arts of lying and deception, Bonaparte has never been surpassed.
[Sidenote: The Government Of The Consulate: Constitution Of The Year
VIII]
Such was the man who effected the coup d'état of 18 Brumaire (November, 1799). His first work in his new rôle was to publish a constitution, which he prepared in conjunction with the Abbé Sieyès and which was to supersede the Constitution of the Year III. It concealed the military despotism under a veil of popular forms. The document named three "consuls," the first of whom was Bonaparte himself, who were to appoint a Senate. From lists selected by general election, the Senate was to designate a Tribunate and a Legislative Body. The First Consul, in addition to conducting the administration and foreign policies and having charge of the army, was to propose, through a Council of State, all the laws. The Tribunate was to discuss the laws without voting on them. The Legislative Body was then to vote on the laws without discussing them. And the Senate, acting as a kind of supreme court, was to decide all constitutional questions. Thus a written constitution was provided, and the principle of popular election was recognized, but in last analysis all the power of the state was centered in the First Consul, who was Napoleon Bonaparte.
The document was forthwith submitted for ratification to a popular vote, called a plebiscite. So great was the disgust with the Directory and so unbounded was the faith of all classes in the military hero who offered it, that it was accepted by an overwhelming majority and was henceforth known in French history as the Constitution of the Year VIII.
[Sidenote: Foreign Danger Confronting France]
One reason why the French nation so readily acquiesced in an obvious act of usurpation was the grave foreign danger that threatened the country. As we have noted in another connection, the armies of the Second Coalition in the course of 1799 had rapidly undone the settlement of the treaty of Campo Formio, and, possessing themselves of Italy and the Rhine valley, were now on the point of carrying the war into France. The First Consul perceived at a glance that he must face essentially the same situation as that which confronted France in 1796.
[Sidenote: Dissolution of the Second Coalition]
The Second Coalition embraced Great Britain, Austria, and Russia. Bonaparte soon succeeded by flattery and diplomacy not only in securing the withdrawal of Russia but in actuating the half-insane Tsar Paul to revive against Great Britain an Armed Neutrality of the North, which included Russia, Prussia, Sweden, and Denmark. Meanwhile the First Consul prepared a second Italian campaign against Austria. Suddenly leading a French army through the rough and icy passes of the Alps, he descended into the fertile valley of the Po and at Marengo in June, 1800, inflicted an overwhelming defeat upon the enemy. French success in Italy was supplemented a few months later by a brilliant victory of the army under Moreau at Hohenlinden in southern Germany. Whereupon Austria again sued for peace, and the resulting treaty of Lunéville (1801) reaffirmed and strengthened the provisions of the peace of Campo Formio.
[Sidenote: Truce between France and Great Britain: Treaty of Amiens, 1802]