FIRST CONSUL OF FRANCE
Promptly and secretly Bonaparte slipped out of Egypt, and before the powers at home knew of his intention he was in France and the people were welcoming him as their deliverer. He was ready to be just that. It was no great trick for a man of his daring and sagacity, adored by the populace, to overturn a discredited and inefficient government and make himself dictator. It was done in a few weeks, and France had a new form of government, a consulate, of which the head was a first consul, and Bonaparte was the first consul.
The most brilliant and fruitful four years of Napoleon Bonaparte’s life followed; for it was then that he set out to bring order and peace to a country demoralized and exhausted by generations of plundering by privileged classes, followed by a decade of revolution against privileges. France needed new machinery of all kinds, and this Bonaparte undertook to supply. There were many people who regarded him as a great general; but to their amazement he now proved himself a remarkable statesman.
NAPOLEON THE STATESMAN
He attacked the question of the national income like a veteran financier. The first matter was reorganizing taxation. He succeeded in distributing the burden more justly than had ever been known in France. The taxes were fixed so that each knew what he had to pay, and the inordinate graft that tax collectors and police had enjoyed was cut off. New financial institutions were devised; among them the Bank of France. The economy he instituted in the government, the army, his own household, everywhere that his power extended, was rigid and minute; as he personally examined all accounts, there was no escape. The waste and parasitism that pervaded the country began to give way for the first time since the Revolution.
EMPRESS JOSEPHINE
From a painting by Pierre Paul Prud’hon.
Industries of all kinds had sickened in the long period of war. Bonaparte undertook their revival by one of the most severe applications ever made of the doctrine of protection,—he even attempted to make his women folk wear no goods not made in France! His interest in agriculture was as keen as in manufacturing, and his personal suggestions and interference of the same nature. The prosperity of the country was stimulated greatly by the public works Bonaparte undertook. One can go nowhere in France today without finding them. It was he who set the country at road building. Some of the most magnificent highways in Europe were laid out by him, including those over four Alpine passes. He paid great attention to improving harbors. Those now at Cherbourg, Havre, and Nice, as well as at Flushing and Antwerp, Bonaparte planned and began. As for Paris, his ambition for the city was boundless. He was responsible for some of her finest features and monuments.