World's Best Histories — Volume 7: France

by François Guizot; Madame de Witt

"Martinico not having been conquered by the English arms, but placed by the inhabitants in the hands of the English till France should have a government, cannot be considered an English possession. France will never give it up.

"All that now remains is for the British Government to make known the course they wish to adopt; and if these conditions do not satisfy them, it will be at least proved before the eyes of the world that the First Consul has left nothing undone, and has shown himself disposed to make any sacrifice, in order that peace may be restored and humanity spared the tears and bloodshed which must inevitably result from a new campaign."

The concessions were in fact great, the First Consul abandoning points which had long been disputed,—Egypt, Malta, and Ceylon; and he showed extreme annoyance when Lord Hawkesbury refused to admit the principle of complete restitution in America. Several threatening articles were inserted in the Moniteur, and Bonaparte urgently hurried the preparation of a fleet of gun-boats at Boulogne, which were supposed to be intended for the invasion of England. It had long been an idea of the First Consul's thus to intimidate the English Government, but it was only the people on the coast who were really alarmed. Nelson wrote immediately to the Admiralty, that "even on leaving the French harbors the landing is impossible were it only for the difficulties caused by the tides: and as to the notion of rowing over, it is impracticable humanly speaking." An attempt to land a large army on the English coast was soon to become a fixed idea in Bonaparte's mind; but then he used his armaments to disquiet the British Government. Twice Nelson attempted to destroy our fleet, and twice he failed completely: in the second attack, which was begun at night, and vigorously carried on to boarding, Admiral Latouche-Tréville compelled the English ships to withdraw, after inflicting severe losses upon them. Nevertheless, England still insisted on obtaining possession of the island of Trinidad, which belonged to Spain. The First Consul refused for a long time, but the Prince de la Paix had betrayed the hopes of his imperious ally. Bonaparte had guaranteed the throne of "Etruria" to the young Duke of Parma, and recently received in Paris the new sovereign, and his wife, the daughter of the King of Spain, and showed the nation that the prince was a simple lad, to be easily bent to his purposes. In return for so many favors, the Spanish troops had with difficulty conquered a few provinces, and King Charles IV., already reconciled to his son-in-law, the King of Portugal, concluded the treaty of Badajoz, which closed the harbors to the English, and granted an indemnity of twenty millions to France. The First Consul was extremely indignant, having counted on the threat of a war in Portugal to exercise a preponderating influence in the negotiations in London. At first he insisted that the treaty must be broken. "At the very time," said he, "when the First Consul places a prince of the house of Spain on a throne which is the fruit of the victories of the French nation, the French Republic is treated as the Republic of San Marino might with impunity be treated. Let the Prince de la Paix know that if he has been bought by England, and has drawn the king and queen into measures contrary to the honor and interest of the Republic, the last hour of the Spanish monarchy has struck."

The Prince de la Paix made ample excuses, but refused to break the treaty of Badajoz. The real intention of the First Consul was to have peace: he had three vessels granted him by Portugal, and abandoned the island of Trinidad to the demands of the English Government. At one time England also claimed Tobago, but the very terms of the treaty were displeasing to Bonaparte's pride, and he assumed the insulting tone which he had been accustomed to use with foreign diplomatists. "The following is what I am directed to tell you," wrote Talleyrand: "excepting Trinidad, the First Consul will not yield, not only Tobago, but even a single rock, if there is one, with only a village of a hundred people; and the ground of the First Consul's conduct is, that in the treaty he has yielded to England to the last limit of honor, and that further there would be for the French nation dishonor. He will grant nothing more, even if the English fleets were anchored before Chaillot."

Lord Hawkesbury withdrew his demands as to Tobago, and the First Consul modified his threats, both nations being eagerly desirous of peace. The preliminaries were at last signed in London, on the 1st October, 1801; and when, two days afterwards, the ratifications were brought from Paris by Colonel Lauriston, the welcome news caused an irresistible outburst of joy amongst the populace. The horses of the French envoy's carriage were unharnessed, that he might be drawn in triumph to Lord Hawkesbury's house; and everywhere in the streets there were shouts of "Long live Bonaparte!" At the banquets the First Consul's health was drunk, and cheered as loudly as the speeches in favor of the friendship of the two nations. The same excessive delight was shown in Paris, which was soon crowded with the foreigners whom war had long kept away; and Fox was received by the First Consul with such flattering attentions as made a deep impression on his mind. Party feeling had so influenced the mind of the illustrious orator as to partially efface his patriotic sentiments. A few days after the preliminaries were signed, he wrote to his friend Lord Grey, "I confess to you that I go farther than you in my hatred of the English Government: the triumph gained by France excites in me a joy I can scarcely conceal."

The public joy and hopes, both in France and England, were founded on motives superior to those which inspired Fox's satisfaction, but they were not more permanent, or better founded. On the day after signing the preliminaries of London, and as if to increase the renown of his successes, the First Consul took pleasure in concluding successively treaties with Portugal, the Sublime Porte, the Deys of Algiers and Tunis, Bavaria, and finally Russia. One clause of the last treaty stipulated that both sovereigns should prevent criminal conduct on the part of emigrants from either country. The House of Bourbon and the Poles were thus equally deprived of important protection. The situation of the King of Sardinia was to be regulated in every way according to actual circumstances. Each of the conventions, and especially the treaty of peace with England contained reticences and obscurities, which were fertile in pretexts for war and in unfriendly interpretations. The First Consul wished to secure an interval of rest and leisure, to consolidate his conquests at home and abroad. He had not renounced the glorious and ill-defined project of the imperial government which he affected to exercise over Europe. "If England made a new coalition," he wrote to M. Otto, "the only result would be a renewal of the history of the greatness of Rome."

It was to the honor of the First Consul, in the midst of this brilliant political and military renown, and in spite of his impulsive and ungovernable disposition, that he understood that the restoration of peace, the joy of victory, and the hope of a regular government, were unable to satisfy all the wants or regulate all the movements of the human soul. Personally without experience of religious prejudices or feelings, free from any connection with philosophical coteries, Bonaparte did not limit himself to a sense of the support which religion could lend in France to the new order which he wished to establish: he understood the higher wants of minds and consciences, and the supreme law which assigns to Heaven the regulation of human life. The doctrines of Christianity, as well as the divisions of the Christian Church, were indifferent to him; he did not understand their importance, and would have thought little of them; but he knew that, in spite of the efforts of the eighteenth century philosophy—in spite of the ravages caused by the French Revolution, the attachment and respect of many for the Catholic religion had still great power. He knew also that Catholicism could not be re-established in France, under his auspices, without the assistance and good will of the Court of Rome. No impression was made on his mind by the attempts made to persuade him to found in France an independent church freed from all connection with the Papacy, or by the arguments used in favor of Protestantism. His traditional respect, as well as the religious sentiment of the mass of the French nation, were in favor of Catholicism. His good sense, as well as his profound instinct of the means of action in government, had long urged him towards religious toleration. During his last campaign in Italy, a circular to the curés of Milan had revived the hopes of the Roman Court; and after Pope Pius VII. returned to his capital, on its evacuation by the Neapolitan troops, M. Spina, at first envoy at Turin, had followed the First Consul to Paris. He treated with Abbé Bernier who had skilfully negotiated to bring about the pacification of Vendée—a man of great ambition, determined to serve the government which could raise him to the episcopal purple. The pourparlers were prolonged; the situation was difficult; the new powers founded in France by the Revolution and by victory raised pretensions which were contrary to the Roman tradition. They were, moreover, embarrassed by the unequal position of the ecclesiastics who were performing in France their sacred functions, some having submitted to the republican demands rather than leave their country and their flocks, others believing it was their duty to sacrifice everything to their former oaths. Proscribed and outlawed, they had for a long time preached, said mass, and given the sacraments in spite of an unrelenting persecution. A large number had decided to take to flight, but having now returned, the faithful were divided between them and the priests who had remained in France. Almost alone in Paris, and among those men whose opinion he was accustomed to consult, the First Consul persevered in his idea of again joining the French Church to the general Catholic body. His patience, however, was exhausted by the delay of the Holy College, and he resolved to have recourse to means which were more efficacious, and more in accordance with his character. On the 13th May, 1801, he wrote to M. Cacault, French minister at Rome, that he had determined to accept no longer the irresolution and dilatory procedure of the Court of Rome; if in five days the scheme sent from Paris, and long discussed by the Sacred College, was not accepted, Cacault must leave Rome to join, in Florence, General Murat, the commander-in-chief of the army of Italy.

The emotion at the Vatican was great. Shortly before, when giving Cacault his final instructions, the First Consul said, "Forget not to treat the Pope as if he had 200,000 men at his orders." The French minister had faithfully observed this injunction, which agreed with his personal opinions: he knew the obstacles which still separated the new master of France from the Roman Court. The scheme of ecclesiastical organization proposed by Bonaparte was simple: sixty bishops named by the civil power and confirmed by the Pope, the clergy salaried by the State, the ecclesiastical jurisdiction transferred to the Council of State, and the official management of religious bodies to the temporal authority. Pius VII. agreed to accept this new condition of the Church exclusively restored to her spiritual functions. The situation in the Church of the priests who had taken the oath to the civil constitution of 1789, their reconciliation to the papacy, the tacit admission of the appropriation by the State of the ecclesiastical property, the nomination of new bishops and consequent resignation or deprivation of those already holding the titles,—such were the various questions which occupied Pope Pius VII. and his skilful minister Cardinal Consalvi. Cacault tried to persuade them that the cardinal himself must go to Paris. "Most Holy Father," said the French minister, "it is necessary that Consalvi himself carry your reply to Paris. What alarms me most is the character of the First Consul; that man is never open to persuasion. Believe me, something stronger than cold reason advises me in this matter: a mere animal instinct some would call it, but it never deceives. What inconvenience if somehow or other you appear yourself? You are blamed. What did they say? They wish for a 'Concordat' of religion; we anticipate them and bring it, there it is!"

Pope Pius VII. had long felt for General Bonaparte an attraction caused by a mixed feeling of alarm and confidence. Alarm reigned in the mind of his minister, who made up his mind to set out for Paris as if he were going to martyrdom. "Since a victim is necessary," said he, "I devote myself, and go to see the First Consul: let the will of God be done!" He rode in Cacault's carriage from Rome to Florence, whence the French minister wrote to Talleyrand,—

"Citizen Minister, here I am, arrived in Florence. The cardinal secretary of state set out with me from Rome, and we have travelled together in the same carriage. We were looked upon everywhere with great astonishment. The cardinal was much afraid people should think I had withdrawn on account of a rupture, and kept saying to everybody, 'This is the French minister.' This country, crushed under the recent evils of war, shudders at the least thought of military disturbance. The Roman Government has still greater fear of its own dissatisfied subjects, especially those who have been allured to authority and pillage by the sort of revolution just gone through…. The cardinal set out this morning for Paris, and will arrive shortly before my despatch, as he goes extremely quickly. The wretched man feels that if he fails he will be irretrievably lost, and that all will be lost for Rome. He is eager to know his lot. I tried at Rome to bring the Pope to sign the Concordat only; and if he had granted me that point, I should not have left Rome; but that idea was unsuccessful.