“When I came to the head of affairs, I had already formed certain ideas on the great principles which hold society together. I had weighed all the importance of religion; I was persuaded of it, and I had resolved to reëstablish it. You would scarcely believe in the difficulties that I had to restore Catholicism. I would have been followed much more willingly if I had unfurled the banner of Protestantism.... It is sure that in the disorder to which I succeeded, in the ruins where I found myself, I could choose between Catholicism and Protestantism. And it is true that at that moment the disposition was in favor of the latter. But outside the fact that I really clung to the religion in which I had been born, I had the highest motives to decide me. By proclaiming Protestantism, what would I have obtained? I should have created in France two great parties about equal, when I wished there should be longer but one. I should have excited the fury of religious quarrels, when the enlightenment of the age and my desire was to make them disappear altogether. These two parties in tearing each other to pieces would have annihilated France and rendered her the slave of Europe, when I was ambitious of making her its mistress. With Catholicism I arrived much more surely at my great results. Within, at home, the great number would absorb the small, and I promised myself to treat with the latter so liberally that it would soon have no motive for knowing the difference.
“Without, Catholicism saved me the Pope; and with my influences and our forces in Italy I did not despair sooner or later, by one way or another, of finishing by ruling the Pope myself.”
When the Church fell in France, the whole system of education went down with her. The Revolutionary governments tried to remedy the condition, but beyond many plans and speeches little had been done. Napoleon allowed the religious bodies to reopen their schools, and thus primary instruction was soon provided again; and he founded a number of secondary and special schools. The greatest of his educational undertakings was the organization of the University. This institution was centralized in the head of the state as completely as every other Napoleonic institution. It exists to-day but little changed—a most efficient body, in spite of its rigid state control. This university did nothing for woman.
“I do not think we need trouble ourselves with any plan of instruction for young females,” Napoleon told the Council. “They cannot be brought up better than by their mothers. Public education is not suitable for them, because they are never called upon to act in public. Manners are all in all to them, and marriage is all they look to. In times past the monastic life was open to women; they espoused God, and, though society gained little by that alliance, the parents gained by pocketing the dowry.”
It was with the education of the daughters of soldiers, civil functionaries, and members of the Legion of Honor, who had died and left their children unprovided for, that he concerned himself, establishing schools of which the well known one at St. Denis is a model. The rules were prepared by Napoleon himself, who insisted that the girls should be taught all kinds of housework and needlework—everything, in fact, which would make them good housekeepers and honest women.
The military schools were also reorganized at this time. Remembering his own experience at the Ecole Militaire, Napoleon arranged that the severest economy should be practised in them, and that the pupils should learn to do everything for themselves. They even cleaned, bedded, and shod their own horses.
The destruction of the old system of privileges and honors left the government without any means of rewarding those who rendered it a service. Napoleon presented a law for a Legion of Honor, under control of the state, which should admit to its membership only those who had done something of use to the public. The service might be military, commercial, artistic, humanitarian; no limit was put on its nature; anything which helped France in any way was to be rewarded by membership in the proposed order. In fact, it was the most democratic distinction possible, since the same reward was given for all classes of service and to all classes of people.
Now the Revolutionary spirit spurned all distinction; and as free discussion was allowed on the law, a severe arraignment of it was made. Nevertheless, it passed. It immediately became a power in the hands of the First Consul, and such it has remained until to-day in the government. Though it has been frequently abused, and never, perhaps, more flagrantly than by the present Republic, unquestionably the French “red button” is a decoration of which to be proud.
The greatest civil achievement of Napoleon was the codification of the laws. Up to the Revolution, the laws of France had been in a misty, incoherent condition, feudal in their spirit, and by no means uniform in their application. The Constituent Assembly had ordered them revised, but the work had only been begun. Napoleon believed justly that the greatest benefit he could render France would be to give her a complete and systematic code. He organized the force for this gigantic task, and pushed revision with unflagging energy.
