He had no intention to abide at home the onset of his enemies; but the situation of civil affairs was such as to embarrass him, in the prospect of departure, with difficulties which, in former days, were not used to perplex the opening of his campaigns.
Hard indeed was his task from the beginning—to conciliate to himself heartily the political faction who detested, and had assisted in overthrowing the government of the Bourbons, and this without chilling the attachment of the military, who despised these coadjutors, both as theorists and as civilians, and had welcomed Napoleon only as the certain harbinger of war, revenge, and plunder. How little his soldiery were disposed to consider him as owing anything to a civil revolution, appeared almost from the commencement of his march from Cannes. It was observed that these haughty bands moved on in contemptuous silence whenever the populace cheered his approach, and shouted Vive l'Empereur only when there were no pequin[71] voices to mingle in the clamour. Every act of Napoleon after he reached Paris, that was meant to conciliate the common people of the capital, was the theme of angry comment among these martial circles. Such measures as he adopted in deference to the prejudices of the old republican party, were heard of with equal contempt. The pacific language of his first proclamations was considered as a fair stratagem—and no more. To them the man was nothing but as the type of the system: they desired to hear of nothing in France but the great Cæsar, and the legions to whom he owed his greatness, and who had the same right to a new career of battles, as he to his Imperial crown, at once the prize of past, and the pledge of future victories.
With the views of these spirits, eager for blood and plunder, and scornful of all liberty but the licence of the camp, Napoleon was engaged in the endeavour to reconcile the principles and prejudices of men who had assisted in rebuilding his throne, only because they put faith in the assertions of himself and his friends, that he had thoroughly repented of the despotic system on which he had formerly ruled France—that ten months of exile and reflection had convinced him how much better it was to be the first citizen of a free state, than the undisputed tyrant of half the world—in a word, that his only remaining ambition was to atone for the violence of his first reign by the mildness of his second. As a first step to fasten the goodwill of these easy believers, he, immediately on arriving in Paris, proclaimed the freedom of the press; but he soon repented of this concession. In spite of all the watchfulness, and all the briberies of his police, he could never bend to his own service the whole of this power. The pure republicans—even the pure royalists—continued to have their organs; and the daily appeals of either to the reason and the passions of a people so long strange to the exercise of such influence, otherwise than in subservience to the government of the time, whatever that might be, produced such effects, that, almost from the time in which he bestowed the boon, he was occupied with devising pretexts for its recall. He ere long caused, perhaps, more resentment by some efforts to thwart the conduct of the press, than would have resulted from the absolute prolongation of its slavery. Some even of the decrees of Lyons were hard to be reconciled with the professions of one who disclaimed any wish to interfere with the sacred right of the nation to frame its constitution for itself. But in almost every act of his government after he reached Paris, he furnished additional evidence how imperfectly his mind had divested itself of the ancient maxims. Even the edict, emancipating the press from all control, was an assumption on his part of the complete power of legislation. The same might be said of another decree, abolishing negro slavery and the slave trade, which he published shortly after: but this second measure exposed him to other comments. Who could seriously believe that at that moment of tumult, ere France was even in semblance entirely his, and while all Europe was openly arming against him, he had leisure for the affairs of the negroes? This display of philanthropy was set down universally for a stage-trick; and men quickened their eyes, lest such unsubstantial shows in the distant horizon might be designed to withdraw their attention from the foreground.
The great assemblage of Champ-de-Mai had been originally announced for the 10th of May; and its principal business as the formation of a new constitution. The meeting did not take place so early, and the task of proposing a constitutional scheme for its consideration, proved far more difficult than the Emperor had contemplated. He had the assistance, in this labour, of Carnot and Sieyes, whose names would have carried great weight with the republican party—had not both of these old jacobins and regicides accepted, on entering the Emperor's service, high rank in his peerage—a proceeding in direct violation of all the professions of their lives. He was further favoured with the aid of his brother Lucien, who, in spite of all previous misunderstandings, returned on this occasion to Paris; influenced, probably, by the same egregious vanity which made him fancy himself a poet, and hoping, under existing circumstances, to impress Napoleon with such a sense of his value as might secure him henceforth a commanding influence in the government of France. The Abbé Sieyes, and Lucien also, had had some experience ere now of Napoleon in the character of a constitution-maker. He was no longer so powerful as he had been when they formerly toiled together upon such a task: disputes arose; and the Emperor, to cut these short, and give a decisive proof of his regard for freedom of debate, soon broke up the discussion, retired from the Tuileries to the small palace called the Elysée, and there drew up the scheme which pleased himself, and which was forthwith published under the title of "Act Additional to the Constitutions of the Empire."
This title gave great offence, because it seemed to recognise many anterior enactments, wholly irreconcilable with the tenor of the document itself; and the mode of its promulgation furnished even more serious ground of objection. This constitution was, on the face of it, not a compact between the prince and the people, but the record of boons conceded by the former to the latter. In a word, all they that had condemned Louis XVIII. for his royal charter, were compelled to acknowledge that their own imperial champion of freedom was beginning his new career by a precisely similar display of presumption.
The substance of the "additional act" disappointed all those who hankered after the formal exposition of first principles; but it must be allowed that its provisions seem to include whatever is needful for the arrangement of a free representative constitution; hereditary monarchy; a hereditary peerage; a house of representatives, chosen by the people, at least once within every five years; yearly taxes, levied only by the whole legislature; responsible ministers; irremovable judges; and, in all criminal cases whatever, the trial by jury. The act, however, was published; the electoral colleges accepted of it, as they had done of all its predecessors; and it by degrees came out that the business of the Champ-de-Mai was to be—not even the discussion of the imperial scheme, but only to swear submission to its regulations, and witness a solemn distribution of eagles to those haughty bands who acknowledge no law but that of the sword.
This promised assemblage was preceded by one of the rabble of Paris, convoked in front of the Tuileries on the 17th of May, and there feasted and harangued by Napoleon—a condescension which excited lively displeasure among his soldiery. He himself looked and spoke as one thoroughly ashamed of what he had done and was doing. It had been his desire to stimulate among these people something of the old zeal of the revolutionary period, in case Paris should be once more threatened by a foreign enemy; but he had the double mortification to find that the army considered their touch as contamination, and that among themselves the name of Louis was almost as popular as his own. Even the Dames des halles, so conspicuous in the revolutionary tumults, screamed royalist ditties in his ear as they drank his wine; and the only hearty cheers were those of the day-labourers, who had profited by his resumption of some great public works suspended by the King's government.
The Champ-de-Mai itself, which, despite its name, fell on the 1st of June, turned out hardly a more successful exhibition. Napoleon, his brothers, and the great civil functionaries, appeared in theatric dresses, in the midst of an enormous amphitheatre, where the deputies, sent from the departments to swear allegiance to the Emperor and the "additional act," were almost lost in the military among whom the eagles were to be distributed. The enthusiasm was confined to these. The same ominous silence which prevailed at the coronation of 1804 was preserved among the people. The sun shone bright, and the roar of cannon filled every pause of the martial music. It was a brilliant spectacle; but Napoleon retired from it in visible dejection.
Three days after, the two houses met; and while that of the peers, composed of persons who all owed their rank, and most of them much besides, to Napoleon, showed every disposition to regulate their conduct by his pleasure, there appeared from the beginning a marked spirit of independence in a considerable proportion of the representative body. The Emperor's address to both was moderate and manly. He requested their support in the war which circumstances had rendered unavoidable, and professed his desire that they should consider the "additional act" and all other subjects of national interest, and suggest whatever alterations might appear to them improvements. Some debates, by no means gratifying to Napoleon, ensued; but he had no leisure for witnessing much of their proceedings. It was now needful that he should appear once more in his own element.