REVERSES OF FRANCE IN ITALY.—Here Bonaparte received information which determined him to leave the army under the command of Kléber, and himself to return to France. The European powers had once more taken up arms. Among the causes of the renewal of the war were the formation by the French of the Roman Republic out of the dominion of the Pope, the establishment of the Helvetian Republic in Switzerland, and the change of Genoa by its own act into the Ligurian Republic. Prussia, since 1795, from selfish motives had cooperated with France, and stood aloof from the new—the second—coalition. Paul I., emperor of Russia, was active against the French Republic, and Pitt was its indefatigable enemy. The Czar had been made Grand Master of the Knights of Malta, and made much of this empty dignity. The victory of Nelson at Aboukir cemented the union of the hostile powers, with whom the Sultan was now joined. The management of the French armies by the government at Paris was unskillful. Naples, to be sure, was overcome, and transformed into the Parthenopæan Republic. The king of Sardinia was driven out of Piedmont. But Jourdan was defeated by the Archduke Charles, and retreated across the Rhine. The Austrians and the Russian army under Suvoroff, a veteran officer, were victorious south of the Alps (June, 1799); Moreau and Macdonald were defeated at Trebbia. The French were defeated again at Novi (Aug. 15), and lost almost all Italy. The king of Naples came back, and thousands of republicans there were cruelly put to death,—a proscription in which Nelson had a part. It was the victory of Masséna, over the Russians at Zurich, that saved France itself from invasion.
OVERTHROW OF THE DIRECTORY: 18TH BRUMAIRE.—These reverses added to the unpopularity of the Directory. The discontent of the Jacobins with their government had given rise to strong measures of repression. On the other hand, the wealthy class were disgusted at the renewal of the war. A rising was threatened in La Vendee. The feeling was widely diffused, that there was need of a strong man at the helm to save the ship of state from another terrible shipwreck. At this juncture Napoleon appeared in Paris, and was greeted with enthusiasm. Sieyès and one other director, with a majority of the Ancients, agreed to another coup d'état which should make Bonaparte the first magistrate. The garrison of Paris was ready to lend its aid. The resistance of the Council of five Hundred at St. Cloud was baffled by Lucien Bonaparte, Napoleon's brother, their president, and by the use of military force. Thus there was accomplished the revolution of the 18th Brumaire (Nov. 9, 1799).
THE CONSULATE.—In the provisional government set up by the remnant of the council, Napoleon only gradually assumed the chief rôle. He was later enabled to take and to hold supreme power, because of the mutual fear of royalists and republicans, their common dread of Jacobinism, and a prevailing conviction that safety must be sought in the sway of an individual, representing neither extreme, and strong enough to hold all in check. Yet the event evinced the supremacy now gained by the military power. Napoleon immediately made excellent financial reforms, and repealed or softened the laws against the "emigrants" and the priests. By such mild and conservative measures, the prosperity of France began to be renewed. The constitution of the year VIII., as planned by Sieyès and modified by Bonaparte, kept up the semblance, without much of the reality, of democracy. The checks on the power of the First Consul were more nominal than real. The mass of the people had power only to vote for lists of citizens, out of whom all the higher officers were to be selected by successive steps. All legislation was initiated by the Council of State; the Tribunate of a hundred members could discuss proposals made thus, but could not act; the Legislative Chamber of three hundred could vote, but not discuss; and the Senate of eighty was chosen for life, with little to do. This constitution of 1799, in opposition to the communal system of 1789 and 1791, established a centralized administration which destroyed local liberty and self-government. France no longer represented in other countries the cause of liberty. In this character its armies had been hailed in Italy, where a yearning for national unity was awakened. Equality, not liberty, was all that the cause of France now represented.
Napoleon could not have expected that his overtures of peace would be accepted by Austria. The rough, impolitic response made by England, helped him by rousing resentment in France.
MARENGO: PEACE OF LUNGVILLE.—If Sieyès and others expected that Napoleon would merely direct military operations from Paris, they were soon undeceived. Masséna was at the head of the army in Italy, and found it most difficult to hold Genoa against the Austrians. Moreau was at the head of the army in Germany. Apart from other reasons for taking the field in person, it would not have been safe for the new ruler of France to allow himself to be eclipsed in military fame by Moreau. Napoleon, as usual veiling his purpose, gradually collected a large army, and between May 16 and 19, 1800, led his troops, and dragged his cannon, over the Great St. Bernard Pass into Italy, threw himself in the rear of Melas, the Austrian general, and entered Milan. He appears, however, to have used less than his usual caution, probably from fear that Melas might escape; so that he was attacked at Marengo (June 14), by that general, at a moment when the French forces were not sufficiently concentrated. What threatened to be a disastrous defeat for the French, however, was turned into a signal victory by the timely arrival of Desaix; and the name of Marengo rang through Europe. In December, Moreau won the great victory of Hohenlinden over the Archduke John. In February, 1801, the peace of Lunéville was concluded. France kept its "natural boundaries," Belgium and the west of the Rhine. The Italian republics, except Rome and Naples, were restored. Tuscany was to be given to a prince of Spain, a country now dependent on France. The German princes who lost territory were to be indemnified by "secularizing" German ecclesiastical states, and vied with one another in imploring favors of the conqueror.
THE NORTHERN ALLIANCE: THE PEACE OF AMIENS.—England now stood alone against France. Her navies were supreme, and had captured most of the Dutch as well as French colonies. The French army in Egypt had been driven to capitulate on the condition that it should be transported in English vessels to France. Russia, Sweden, and Denmark made (1800) a defensive alliance of armed neutrality on the sea, to maintain the right of neutrals to trade with belligerents, and the doctrine that the neutral ship protects its freight (not being munitions of war) against seizure. England succeeded in ruining this alliance. Pitt now retired from office. He had accomplished the legislative union of England and Ireland, by which the separate Irish Parliament had ceased to exist (1800). But he had encouraged the Irish Catholics to expect that they would be delivered from the restrictions which excluded them from the House of Commons and from many other offices. When the king refused to consent to the fulfillment of these expectations, Pitt resigned (1801). Addington became prime minister. England was tired of the war. Peace was concluded at Amiens (March, 1802). France was to retain all her conquests on the Continent. England surrendered to France and her allies all conquests except Trinidad and Ceylon. Malta was to be given back by England to the Knights of Malta. A third great civil triumph of Napoleon, added to Luneville and Amiens, was the Concordat with the Pope.
REFORMS OF NAPOLEON.—Napoleon now was free to give his attention to internal reforms in France. He called into his counsels the ablest men in all departments of knowledge. In the reconstruction of political and social order, his own clear perceptions and energy were everywhere seen. He brought back from the old institutions whatever was good and valuable which the tempest of revolution had swept away. He reformed the judicial system. He caused to be framed the famous Code which bears his name, and which still forms the basis of law in several European countries. He reduced the power of the communes, and centralized the administration of government by the system of prefects and sub-prefects. Through the Concordat, he renewed the connection of the Catholic Church of France with Rome, reserving, however, to the executive the nomination of archbishops and bishops, whom the government was to support, and guarding, in the spirit of the Gallican theory, the supremacy of the civil authority. Full toleration was secured for non-Catholics. Napoleon personally participated in the religious ceremonies which attended the formal restoration of the old system of worship where "the Goddess of Reason" had been enthroned during the Terror. The ultimate effect of the Concordat was to build up the ultramontane, or papal, theory and sway within the church of France. Education was organized by the establishment of the university, the comprehensive name for the entire educational system of the country. All branches of technical instruction were carefully fostered. The devotees of science were encouraged with an enlightened sympathy and liberal aid. A better organization and discipline were brought into the army.
CHARACTER OF THE CHANGES.—The changes made by Napoleon, while they secured the equality of all Frenchmen before the law, did nothing to rescue civil liberty, such as the republicans had aimed to secure. They were all in the direction of monarchy. Distinctions, like the Legion of Honor, were invented; titles were instituted; a new aristocracy, made up of relics of the old noblesse and of fresh recruits, was created; Napoleon was declared to be consul for life, and the mechanism of the government was converted into a practical dictatorship. Unsparing in his treatment of Jacobins, he aimed still to moderate the passions of party. His activity was seen in an excellent system of public works, such as canals and noble highways, in new towns, and in magnificent buildings which he erected in Paris. At the same time, he went as far as it was safe to go in bringing in monarchical manners and luxuries. He himself adopted a regal way of living. He had no faith in democracy, and spoke with unaffected scorn of "ideology," or the theoretical statesmanship which based itself on ideas of "human rights" in the matter of exercising government. The press was placed under stringent police regulation. Napoleon's family began to contend, with "Corsican shamelessness," for high honors. A feud soon came to exist between them and the Beauharnais,—the family of Josephine. Was the principle of heredity to come back?
RENEWED WAR WITH ENGLAND.—In 1803 the war was renewed with England. That Napoleon was resolved to dictate in European affairs, as he was practical dictator in the French Republic, was plain. He controlled the republics dependent on France. He annexed Piedmont. He made the Spanish Bourbons do his bidding. He intervened in Germany; among other things, offending Austria by enlarging the bounds of Prussia. He exercised over the minor German states the influence of which Austria had been robbed. He complained of the strictures of the English press, and of the asylum granted in England to conspirators against his rule. He was angry that Malta was not given up, which England refused to do on account of an aggrandizement of France not consistent with the Peace of Amiens. There were provocations on both sides, and war was inevitable.
PLAN OF INVADING ENGLAND.—Napoleon seized Hanover. He talked of making a descent on England. He gathered a vast army near Boulogne, and constructed an immense flotilla for the transportation of it across the Channel. His design was to decoy away the British fleet, and then to concentrate enough ships of his own in the Channel to protect the passage of his forces.