This revolution was complete by adapting to the consulship for life, by a simple senatus-consultus, the constitution, already sufficiently despotic, of the temporary consulship. "Senators," said Cornudet, on presenting the new law, "we must for ever close the public path to the Gracchi. The wishes of the citizens, with respect to the political laws they obey, are expressed by the general prosperity; the guarantee of social rights absolutely places the dogma of the exercise of the sovereignty of the people in the senate, which is the bond of the nation. This is the only social doctrine." The senate admitted this new social doctrine, took possession of the sovereignty, and held it as a deposit till a favourable moment arrived for transferring it to Bonaparte.
The constitution of the 16th Thermidor, year X. (4th of August, 1802,) excluded the people from the state. The public and administrative functions became fixed, like those of the government. The first consul could increase the number of electors who were elected for life. The senate had the right of changing institutions, suspending the functions of the jury, of placing the departments out of the constitution, of annulling the sentences of the tribunals, of dissolving the legislative body, and the tribunate. The council of state was reinforced; the tribunate, already reduced by dismissals, was still sufficiently formidable to require to be reduced to fifty members.
Such, in the course of two years, was the terrible progress of privilege and absolute power. Towards the close of 1802, everything was in the hands of the consul for life, who had a class devoted to him in the clergy; a military order in the legion of honour; an administrative body in the council of state; a machinery for decrees in the legislative assembly; a machinery for the constitution in the senate. Not daring, as yet, to destroy the tribunate, in which assembly there arose, from time to time, a few words of freedom and opposition, he deprived it of its most courageous and eloquent members, that he might hear his will declared with docility in all the assemblies of the nation.
This interior policy of usurpation was extended beyond the country. On the 26th of August, Bonaparte united the island of Elba, and on the 11th of September, 1802, Piedmont, to the French territory. On the 9th of October he took possession of the states of Parma, left vacant by the death of the duke; and lastly, on the 21st of October, he marched into Switzerland an army of thirty thousand men, to support a federative act, which regulated the constitution of each canton, and which had caused disturbances. He thus furnished a pretext for a rupture with England, which had not sincerely subscribed to the peace. The British cabinet had only felt the necessity of a momentary suspension of hostilities; and, a short time after the treaty of Amiens, it arranged a third coalition, as it had done after the treaty of Campo-Formio, and at the time of the congress of Rastadt. The interest and situation of England were alone of a nature to bring about a rupture, which was hastened by the union of states effected by Bonaparte, and the influence which he retained over the neighbouring republics, called to complete independence by the recent treaties. Bonaparte, on his part, eager for the glory gained on the field of battle, wishing to aggrandize France by conquests, and to complete his own elevation by victories, could not rest satisfied with repose; he had rejected liberty, and war became a necessity.
The two cabinets exchanged for some time very bitter diplomatic notes. At length, Lord Whitworth, the English ambassador, left Paris on the 25th Floréal, year XI. (13th of May, 1803). Peace was now definitively broken: preparations for war were made on both sides. On the 26th of May, the French troops entered the electorate of Hanover. The German empire, on the point of expiring, raised no obstacle. The emigrant Chouan party, which had taken no steps since the affair of the infernal machine and the continental peace, were encouraged by this return of hostilities. The opportunity seemed favourable, and it formed in London, with the assent of the British cabinet, a conspiracy headed by Pichegru and Georges Cadoudal. The conspirators disembarked secretly on the coast of France, and repaired with the same secrecy to Paris. They communicated with general Moreau, who had been induced by his wife to embrace the royalist party. Just as they were about to execute their project, most of them were arrested by the police, who had discovered the plot, and traced them. Georges Cadoudal was executed, Pichegru was found strangled in prison, and Moreau was sentenced to two years' imprisonment, commuted to exile. This conspiracy, discovered in the middle of February, 1804, rendered the person of the first consul, whose life had been thus threatened, still dearer to the masses of the people; addresses of congratulation were presented by all the bodies of the state, and all the departments of the republic. About this time he sacrificed an illustrious victim. On the 15th of March, the duc d'Enghien was carried off by a squadron of cavalry from the castle of Ettenheim, in the grand-duchy of Baden, a few leagues from the Rhine. The first consul believed, from the reports of the police, that this prince had directed the recent conspiracy. The duc d'Engbien was conveyed hastily to Vincennes, tried in a few hours by a military commission, and shot in the trenches of the château. This crime was not an act of policy, or usurpation; but a deed of violence and wrath. The royalists might have thought on the 18th Brumaire that the first consul was studying the part of general Monk; but for four years he had destroyed that hope. He had no longer any necessity for breaking with them in so outrageous a manner, nor for reassuring, as it has been suggested, the Jacobins, who no longer existed. Those who remained devoted to the republic, dreaded at this time despotism far more than a counter-revolution. There is every reason to think that Bonaparte, who thought little of human life, or of the rights of nations, having already formed the habit of an expeditious and hasty policy, imagined the prince to be one of the conspirators, and sought, by a terrible example, to put an end to conspiracies, the only peril that threatened his power at that period.
The war with Britain and the conspiracy of Georges Cadoudal and Pichegru, were the stepping-stones by which Bonaparte ascended from the consulate to the empire. On the 6th Germinal, year XII. (27th March, 1804), the senate, on receiving intelligence of the plot, sent a deputation to the first consul. The president, François de Neufchâteau, expressed himself in these terms: "Citizen first consul, you are founding a new era, but you ought to perpetuate it: splendour is nothing without duration. We do not doubt but this great idea has had a share of your attention; for your creative genius embraces all and forgets nothing. But do not delay: you are urged on by the times, by events, by conspirators, and by ambitious men; and in another direction, by the anxiety which agitates the French people. It is in your power to enchain time, master events, disarm the ambitious, and tranquillize the whole of France by giving it institutions which will cement your edifice, and prolong for our children what you have done for their fathers. Citizen first consul, be assured that the senate here speaks to you in the name of all citizens."
On the 5th Floréal, year XII. (25th of April, 1804), Bonaparte replied to the senate from Saint-Cloud, as follows: "Your address has occupied my thoughts incessantly; it has been the subject of my constant meditation. You consider, that the supreme magistracy should be hereditary, in order to protect the people from the plots of our enemies, and the agitation which arises from rival ambitions. You also think that several of our institutions ought to be perfected, to secure the permanent triumph of equality and public liberty, and to offer the nation and government the twofold guarantee which they require. The more I consider these great objects, the more deeply do I feel that in such novel and important circumstances, the councils of your wisdom and experience are necessary to enable me to come to a conclusion. I invite you, then, to communicate to me your ideas on the subject." The senate, in its turn, replied on the 14th Floréal (3rd of May): "The senate considers that the interests of the French people will be greatly promoted by confiding the government of the republic to Napoleon Bonaparte, as hereditary emperor." By this preconcerted scene was ushered in the establishment of the empire.
The tribune Curée opened the debate in the tribunate by a motion on the subject. He dwelt on the same motives as the senators had done. His proposition was carried with enthusiasm. Carnot alone had the courage to oppose the empire: "I am far," said he, "from wishing to weaken the praises bestowed on the first consul; but whatever services a citizen may have done to his country, there are bounds which honour, as well as reason, imposes on national gratitude. If this citizen has restored public liberty, if he has secured the safety of his country, is it a reward to offer him the sacrifice of that liberty; and would it not be destroying his own work to make his country his private patrimony? When once the proposition of holding the consulate for life was presented for the votes of the people, it was easy to see that an after-thought existed. A crowd of institutions evidently monarchical followed in succession; but now the object of so many preliminary measures is disclosed in a positive manner; we are called to declare our sentiments on a formal motion to restore the monarchical system, and to confer imperial and hereditary dignity on the first consul.
"Has liberty, then, only been shown to man that he might never enjoy it? No, I cannot consent to consider this good, so universally preferred to all others, without which all others are as nothing, as a mere illusion. My heart tells me that liberty is attainable; that its regime is easier and more stable than any arbitrary government. I voted against the consulate for life; I now vote against the restoration of the monarchy; as I conceive my quality as tribune compels me to do."
But he was the only one who thought thus; and his colleagues rivalled each other in their opposition to the opinion of the only man who alone among them remained free. In the speeches of that period, we may see the prodigious change that had taken place in ideas and language. The revolution had returned to the political principles of the ancient regime; the same enthusiasm and fanaticism existed; but it was the enthusiasm of flattery, the fanaticism of servitude. The French rushed into the empire as they had rushed into the revolution; in the age of reason they referred everything to the enfranchisement of nations; now they talked of nothing but the greatness of a man, and of the age of Bonaparte; and they now fought to make kings, as they had formerly fought to create republics.