World's Best Histories — Volume 7: France

by François Guizot; Madame de Witt

Five hundred thousand corpses of French soldiers were yet to strew the soil of Europe to serve the ambition of Bonaparte, without hindering that return of the House of Bourbon which he declared to be so disastrous. In 1800 the First Consul deigned to promise his benevolence to the descendants of Henry IV., and felt no fear as to royalist intrigues in France. Since the troubles had ceased in the west, only Georges Cadoudal had continued sometimes to attract his attention. A letter in the month of July had ordered Bernadotte to pursue him: "Have this miserable Georges arrested, and shot within twenty-four hours," he wrote. Georges had returned to England.

He was back again in France on the 24th December, 1800, when the coach of the First Consul was stopped in the Rue St. Nicaise by a small cart which barred the way; the coachman urged forward the horses, and passed it. At the same instant an explosion was heard; the dead and the wounded fell round the carriage of Bonaparte, shaken by the violence of the shock, all the windows being broken. Bonaparte stopped his carriage, and comprehended at once the cause of the accident. "Drive to the opera!" said he. Madame Bonaparte was waiting for him there. When the public was reassured by his presence, he returned to the Tuileries. A barrel of powder, loaded with grape-shot, had been placed upon the road; the victims were numerous, and the assassins escaped.

The general fright was of use to the anger and emotion of the First Consul. The enemies of Fouché denounced a police everywhere favorable to the old Jacobins. The suspicions of Bonaparte were all directed against these known and furious enemies of his person and his policy. He was enraged in his irritation, and disdained, according to his custom, the legal forms and the justice of the tribunals. "We must make the number of the convicted equal to the number of their victims," he said, "and transport all their adherents. I will not have all quarters of Paris successively undermined. There are always Septembrisers, miscreants covered with crimes, in square battalion against every successive government. It is necessary to make an end of them." Fouché, silent but imperturbable, for a long time on the traces of the conspiracy, persisted in seeing in the infernal machine the work of the agents of Chouannerie. The Council of State proposed to institute a military commission and authorize the First Consul to remove the men who appeared dangerous. Bonaparte was irritated by this slowness of justice. "The action of a special tribunal will be slow," said he; "it will not get hold of the truly guilty. It is not a question of judicial metaphysics. There are in France 10,000 miscreants who have persecuted all honest men, and who are steeped in blood. They are not all culpable in the same degree, far from it. Strike the chiefs boldly and the soldiers will disperse. There is no middle course here; it is necessary to pardon all, like Augustus, or else there must be a prompt and terrible vengeance proportionate to the crime. It is necessary to shoot fifteen or twenty of these miscreants, and transport 200 of them. I am so convinced of the necessity of purging France from these sanguinary dregs that I am ready to constitute myself sole tribunal—to bring forward the guilty, examine them, judge them, and have their condemnation carried into effect. It is not myself that I seek to avenge here. I am as ready to die as First Consul for the preservation of the Republic and the Constitution as to fall upon the field of battle; but it is necessary to reassure France, who will approve my policy."

The members of the council listened, struck with consternation at such absolutist and revolutionary violence, but already too much dismayed to defend the cause of the most elementary justice. Admiral Truguet alone suggested doubts as to the true authors of the crime. "It is desired," said he, "to defeat the miscreants who trouble the Republic, so be it; but the miscreants are of more than one kind. The returned emigrants menace those who have acquired national property, the Chouans infest the highways, the priests inflame the passions of the people, the public spirit is corrupted by pamphlets." The First Consul blushed violently at this allusion; the reminder of the unfortunate attempt of Lucien Bonaparte increased his anger. Advancing towards the admiral, "Of what pamphlets do you speak?" cried he. "You know as well as I do," without giving way, answered the brave sailor.

The First Consul paced the hall; the councillors of State watched him, vaguely recognizing in the outbursts of the anger of the master the powerful instinct of government, which discerned the permanent hostility of the revolutionaries without being able to divest itself of their principles or of their modes of action. "Do people take us for children?" he cried. "Do they expect to draw us aside with these declamations against the emigrants, the Chouans, and the priests? Because there are still a few partial attempts in Vendée, must we be called upon to declare the country in danger? If the Chouans commit crimes, I will have them shot. But must I commence proscribing for a quality? Must I strike these because they are priests, those because they are old nobles? Must I send away into exile 10,000 old men, who only ask to be allowed to live peaceably in obedience to the established laws? Do you not know, gentlemen, members of the council, that excepting two or three you all pass for royalists? You, Citizen Defermon, don't they take you for a partisan of the Bourbons? Must I send Citizen Portalis to Sinnamari, and Citizen Devaisne to Madagascar, and then must I make for myself a Babeuf council? No, no, Citizen Truguet, you won't get me to make any change; there are none to fear except the Septembrisers. They would not spare even you yourself, and it would be in vain for you to tell them that you defended them at the Council of State. They would cut your throat, just the same as mine or the throats of your colleagues."

He went out without giving time for any one to answer him. Cambacérès, moderate and prudent, equally clever in giving counsel and at yielding when counsels were useless, deemed the anger of the First Consul too passionate to admit of contradiction. The Council of State, several times consulted, was brought over with repugnance to the idea of an extraordinary measure. The First Consul wished a law; it was decided to involve the great bodies of the State in the arbitrary act which he was about to commit. "The consuls do not know what may happen," said he. "So long as I am alive I am not afraid of any one daring to ask me an account of my actions; but I may be killed, and then I cannot answer for my two colleagues. You are not very firmly placed in your stirrups," he added, turning to Cambacérès, with a smile. "Better to have a law now as well as for the future." The Council of State hesitated from a repugnance to form a proscription list, assuring him that it would be rejected by the Tribunate and the Legislative Body. "You are always afraid of the Tribunate," said Bonaparte, "because it rejected one or two of your laws; but there are only a few Jacobins in the Legislative Body, ten or twelve at most. The others know well that but for me they would all have been massacred. The law will be passed."

At last, Talleyrand, who had previously remained silent, said that since there was a Senate, some use should be made of it. The proscription list was sent to the Senate. It had been written by Fouché, who knew the real criminals; and the statement of reasons were drawn up by the two sections of the Council of State who were at first unanimously opposed to the measure: the Senate voted, the First Consul having signed the act. "All these men have not taken the dagger in their hands," said the preamble, "but they are all universally known to be capable of sharpening it and taking it." Two days afterwards 133 Jacobins sailed from Nantes for Guiana—formerly members of the Convention and the Commune, proved or supposed to have had a part in the massacres of September, all certainly loaded with crime, and worthy of the punishment which they underwent, strangers to the attempt to assassinate the First Consul, and condemned without regard to moral or legal justice. At the same time, and as if to clear off all old accounts with the conspirators, the four men accused in October, Aréna, formerly a representative, and recently employed by the Committee of Public Safety, and the artists Ceracchi and Topino-Lebrun, were at last tried, and condemned to perish on the scaffold. Chauveau- Lagarde defended them, as he had formerly defended Charlotte Corday and the men of Nantes denounced by Carrier. His efforts were not crowned with success; whether acknowledged or only suspected, the Jacobin conspiracy was everywhere repressed with the same rigor.

Nevertheless, Fouché had at last recovered the temporarily lost traces of the real criminals. Two assistants of Georges Cadoudal, Limoëlan and St. Réjant, who had formerly taken part in the civil wars, entered into partnership with a man of the lower orders named Carbon, who bought them the cart, the horse, and powder. He was found concealed in Paris; Limoëlan had fled abroad. St. Réjant, who had let off the infernal machine, had not yet recovered from the injuries caused by it; and Carbon having betrayed his place of concealment, and all the details of the plot, they were both executed. Fouché's penetration on this occasion gained him still greater confidence with the First Consul. "He was right," repeated Bonaparte: "his opinion was better than that of the others. The returned emigrants, the royalist plotters, and people of that sort, ought to be closely watched. I am pleased, however, to be rid of the Jacobin staff."

Neither the banishment of the old revolutionists, nor the condemnation of those who had contrived the infernal machine, had disturbed the repose of public opinion, then in close alliance with the steady and firm power which ruled France. The abstract principles of justice were no longer thought of by men in general: the desire for permanent freedom had given place to the longing for rest and quiet, and all were pleased with the energy which the government had shown against disturbers of the peace; and the oppressive laws being modified, prosperity was reappearing. The state of the finances became more satisfactory: a part of the public funds had been paid, and that which still remained had just been registered in the "Great Ledger;" the fundholders accepted without too much difficulty the delay in paying the first dividend. The national property not yet sold was set apart for the liquidation, excepting what was assigned for public instruction and the support of the Invalides. Everywhere roads were being made or repaired, canals dug, and three bridges were built over the Seine. In spite of the formation of extraordinary tribunals, the great Code of Civil Law was being slowly made—destined to rule France and extend her useful action. An agent, almost unknown at Rome and only recently arrived in Paris, was already discussing with Abbé Bernier those great questions of order and organization which were afterwards to introduce the concordat. Peace, even when partial and precarious, was everywhere bearing its fruits; at home, France displayed that wonderful recuperative power so frequently and painfully put to the proof by the severe shocks of our modern history; abroad, her importance in Europe was daily increasing, and caused more disquiet to all her enemies. The government of England, however, was soon to pass from Pitt's hands: the whole English nation called loudly to stop a war of which they had financially borne the burden, even though their armies had generally had little share in it.

In the south of Europe the First Consul, while negotiating with the Pope, and occupying Piedmont without diplomacy, had no longer any enemy to subdue worthy of his power. Murat had invaded the kingdom of Naples, causing so great terror that the queen herself was on the point of accepting an armistice by which the ports of the Two Sicilies were closed to the English. The treaty of definitive peace was signed at Florence on the 18th of March, 1801, the conditions being the same as those of the armistice, with the important addition that the territory of Elba, a dependency of the kingdom of Naples, was to be ceded. By a secret article, the sovereign of the Two Sicilies was obliged to receive and maintain a body of fifteen thousand men, which the First Consul intended to transport to Egypt, important armaments being prepared in our ports in order to be sent to the same place, their real destination being yet concealed. A Franco-Spanish expedition, nominally commanded by Prince de la Paix but really directed by General Gouvion St. Cyr, was to attempt in April the conquest of Portugal. In spite of repeated promises, the government of that small State remained obstinately faithful to England.