World's Best Histories — Volume 7: France

by François Guizot; Madame de Witt

"You understand that the cardinal is not sent to Paris to sign that which the Pope has refused to sign at Rome; but being the prime minister of his Holiness, and his favorite, it is with the Pope's mind that you will be in communication. I hope the result will be an agreement as to the modifications. It is a matter of phrases and words, which can be turned in so many meanings that at last the good meaning is got hold of."

The First Consul had resolved to make from the very first an impression on the mind of the pontifical envoy by the display of his power. Scarcely had the cardinal stepped out of his carriage when he received a visit from Abbé Bernier, whom he at once employed to ask an audience for him. The same day, at the Tuileries, before the crowd of courtiers who were thronging to one of the grand receptions, Cardinal Consalvi was presented to the First Consul. "My astonishment," says he in his correspondence, "was like that felt in the theatre by the sudden scene-shifting, when a cottage, prison, or wood is unexpectedly changed to the dazzling spectacle of the most magnificent court. You can easily imagine that a person arriving at Paris on the night preceding, without being told beforehand, without knowing anything of the habits, customs, and dispositions of those before whom he appeared, and who was in a measure considered responsible for the bad success of the negotiations so far as they had been carried, must, at the sight of such grandeur, as imposing as it was unexpected, have felt not only profound emotion, but even a too evident embarrassment." As the cardinal approached the three consuls, alone in the midst of a magnificent drawing-room filled with a brilliant throng, Bonaparte left him no time to speak. "I know the object of your journey to France," said he. "I wish the conferences to be immediately opened. I leave you five days' time; and I tell you beforehand that if at the expiration of the fifth day the negotiations are not finished, you must return to Rome; whilst as for me, I have decided what to do in that case."

Consalvi came to Paris ardently wishing to bring to a successful completion the difficult negotiations which had been entrusted to him. His Italian cunning was not deceived as to the motive of the display of magnificence, and the rough reception of himself which signalized his first audience. He was conscientious and resolute without narrowness of mind, and he understood the immense importance to religion and politics of the restoration of agreement between France and the Court of Rome. He appeared neither astonished nor disturbed with reference to the First Consul. When they came to the discussion of the questions which had brought him to Paris, the Pope's envoy showed himself easily influenced on most of the points. Bonaparte himself summarized the whole of the Concordat in a few words: "Fifty emigrant bishops, paid by England, manage all the French clergy, and their influence must be destroyed. The authority of the Pope is necessary for that. He deprives them of their charge, or obliges them to resign. As it is said that the Catholic religion is that of the majority of the French, the exercise of it should be organized. The First Consul nominates the fifty bishops; the Pope institutes them; they name the curés, and the State pays their salaries. They take the oath: the priests who refuse to submit are removed, and those who preach against the government are referred to their superiors. After all, enlightened men will not rise against Catholicism; they are indifferent."

A rather keen opposition, however, was raised among the courtiers and in the army against the Concordat, which assisted in hampering the progress of the negotiations. Most of the military men were still imbued with the spirit of the Revolution, and suspicious of the influence of the priests. The constitutional clergy, who had no serious objection to the Concordat, the only means of securing them a regular ecclesiastical standing, feared lest they should be sacrificed in favor of the priests who had refused to take the oath. Several of them were married, and had thus increased the difficulties of their position by new ties. So many personal interests and different motives kept the First Consul's advisers in a state of hostility to the claims of the Holy See. Even the preamble of the Concordat gave room to long discussions. On the refusal to apply the title "State religion" to the Catholic religion, Cardinal Consalvi agreed to the simple statement of the fact that the Catholic Apostolic and Roman religion was the religion of the great majority of the French people. On the other hand, the Pope admitted the great advantage that religion should derive from the re-establishment of Catholic worship in France, and from the personal profession of it made by the consuls of the republic. He at the same time agreed to ask the old titular bishops to resign. The resignation of the constitutional bishops had been already secured. The First Consul wrote to Pius VII.: "Most holy Father, Cardinal Consalvi has showed me your Holiness' letter, and I recognize the evangelical sentiments which distinguish it. The cardinal will inform your Holiness of my intention to do all that may contribute to your happiness. It will depend only on you to find again in the French Government the support which it has always granted to your predecessors, when they have classed with their principal duties the preaching of maxims which help to confirm peace, morality, and obedience to the civil power.

"It only depends on me that the tears of Europe cease to flow, that the revolutions and wars be followed by general peace and order.

"On all occasions, I beg your Holiness to reckon upon the assistance of your devoted son."

Cardinal Consalvi had made several concessions; the French negotiators had more than once extended as they chose the exact sense of his concessions; but he refused absolutely to entrust the regulation of the public worship to the civil authority. In view of the cardinal's conscientious obstinacy, the First Consul at last agreed to important modifications of this point. When the day for signing arrived, Joseph Bonaparte, who had always a share in diplomatic negotiations, being one of the appointed signatories, the cardinal went to his house with the Abbé Bernier, both bringing a copy of the act. At the moment when the papal envoy was taking the pen, he cast his eyes over the text of the convention, and saw that the article referring to the exercise of worship had been restored to the form which he had objected to. Reading further, and finding other changes and additions, the cardinal protested against it. Joseph Bonaparte declared that he knew nothing of it. "The First Consul wished it to be so," said Bernier with some confusion, "declaring that anything may be changed so long as it is not signed. Besides, the draft agreed upon did not please him; and he insists upon the articles being so modified."

The time was short, the First Consul having announced his intention of announcing publicly the signature of the Concordat at a great banquet the same evening. The outbursts of his anger even reached the cardinal's ears. He had torn the Concordat, and threatened to declare the rupture of the negotiations if Consalvi did not consent to give way. "I underwent the agonies of death," said the cardinal. But he was convinced of his duty, and went to the Tuileries as unbending in his resolution as the First Consul in his imperious will. Bonaparte came to him as he entered the drawing-room, and called loudly, "Well, cardinal, you wish then to break! I have no need of Rome! Let it be so! I have no need of the Pope! If Henry VIII., who had not the twentieth part of my power, was able to change the religion of his country, I am much more able to do so! By that change of religion I shall change the religion through nearly the whole of Europe, wherever the influence of my power extends. Rome will be sensible of the losses she brings on herself. She will lament them, but there will be no remedy. You wished to break…. Very well! let it be so, since you wished it. When do you set out?" "After dinner, general," replied the cardinal with calmness.

Consalvi did not set out. Next day, in spite of the reiterated attempt made to influence him, in spite of the weakness of the majority of his legation, the Pope's secretary of state held firm. The First Consul gave way, or pretended it, in order afterwards to withdraw the concessions granted, but sufficiently to satisfy the conscience of the cardinal, and persuade him to put his signature to the Concordat. The ratification at Rome quickly succeeded, and a legate was sent to Paris, chosen at the First Consul's express desire. After Cardinal Caprara's arrival, the publication of the Concordat was still delayed by the choosing of the new bishops. Thirteen of the former prelates, who had taken refuge in England, alone refused to resign at the command of the Holy See; and thirty-three bishops, still abroad or already returned to France, obeyed generously and without reluctance. The constitutional bishops had just dissolved their council, which Bonaparte had authorized in order to influence the Court of Rome; but he ordered its cessation as soon as the Concordat was signed. His resolution to place several constitutional priests among the new bishops annoyed and disturbed the Pope. The First Consul became angry, making charges of systematic delay which prevented him from publishing the Concordat, and introducing into their dioceses the prelates nominated during Lent. The legate quietly claimed the submission which the constitutional priests had promised. "There is haughtiness in asking it," exclaimed Bonaparte; "there would be cowardice in submitting." The conduct of the constitutional prelates remained doubtful: ten, however, were nominated. Cardinal Caprara was both less resolute and less clear-sighted than Consalvi: at one time frightened, at another easily persuaded. In spite of his resistance, "his cries and tears," he at last yielded to the pressing demands of the First Consul. On the 18th April, 1802, Easter Sunday, the Concordat was proclaimed in the streets of Paris. At eleven o'clock an immense crowd thronged Notre Dame, curious to see the legate officiating, and gaze again on the pompous ritual of the Catholic service; but still more eager to look at the First Consul in the brilliancy of his triumph and power, surrounded by his companions in arms, all compelled by his will to assist at a ceremony at variance with the opinions of several of them. The concessions of the Court of Rome and the obedience of the generals could not conceal the vast gulf that separated Revolutionary France from the religious tradition of the past. Bonaparte felt this. He wished for the Concordat, understanding its lofty aim and practical utility; he had conceded more in appearance than he intended to grant in reality. The Te Deum was chanted: the bishops were confirmed, and had now set out for their dioceses. In every district, along with the Concordat, and as if invested with the same sanction, the First Consul published a series of "organic articles," regulating in detail the relations of the civil power with the religious authority. Already, when discussing the Concordat the representative of the Holy See had rejected most of Bonaparte's pretensions on that subject; but he now reproduced them, transformed, by the power of his will alone, into administrative measures, voted like the Concordat by the Corps Législatif, and having equal force for the Catholic Church, the Protestant Church, and the Jewish form of worship. The anger and sorrow of the Court of Rome had no effect in modifying the resolution of the First Consul. Cardinal Caprara was constantly passing from submission to despair. "He who is fated to treat with the First Consul," he wrote to Cardinal Consalvi, "must bear always in mind that he is treating with a man who is arbiter of the affairs of the world—a man who has paralyzed, one might say, all the other powers of Europe, who has conceived projects the execution of which seemed impossible, and who has conducted them with a success which astonishes the whole world. Nor should it be forgotten that I am appointed here in a nation where the Catholic religion has not a ruling power, even in peace. Here all the powerful personages are against her, and they strive as much as possible against the First Consul. He is the only man who watches over her. Unfortunately, her future depends on his intention, but at least that intention is sure of completion. When the First Consul is against us, things proceed with a frightful rapidity." The Pope felt obliged to protest against the organic articles in an allocution to the Consistory, and to address his claims to the First Consul, who took no notice of them. In his communications with the religious authority in France, he proved imperious and insolent. "If the morality of the gospel is insufficient to direct a bishop," he wrote Portalis, "he must act by policy, and by fear of the prosecution which government might institute against him as a disturber of the public peace. I could not be otherwise than full of sorrow at the conduct of certain bishops. Why have you not informed the préfets?"

The ecclesiastical organization in France would have been incomplete, had Bonaparte not extended his care to the Protestant churches. In a kindly report addressed to him on the subject, it was stated that "the government, in declaring that Catholicism was in a majority in France, had no wish to authorize in its favor any political or civil pre-eminence. Protestanism is a Christian communion, bringing together, in the same faith and to the same rites, a very large number of Frenchmen. In recent times the Protestants were in the foremost ranks under the standards of liberty, and have never abandoned them. All that is secured to the various Christian communions by the articles of agreement between his Holiness and the Government of the Republic is equally guaranteed to the Protestants, with the exception of the pecuniary subvention."