♦Attachment of the Jacobines to Buonaparte.♦
It suited the views of Buonaparte that his government should hold this language while he was negotiating the Concordat, for the sake of obtaining the papal sanction to his authority. Perhaps he was then hesitating whether to take the right hand way or the left; whether to build up again the ruined institutions of France, strengthen the throne on which he had resolved to take his seat by an alliance with the altar; and in restoring to the kingdom all that it was possible to restore while he retained the sovereignty to himself, engraft upon the new dynasty those principles which had given to the old its surest strength when it was strongest, and a splendour, of which no change of fortune could deprive it. Two parties would be equally opposed to this, the Jacobines and the Royalists. The latter it was impossible to conciliate: they would have stood by the crown even if it were hanging upon a bush; but their allegiance being founded upon principle and feeling, ... upon the sense of honour and of duty, ... would not follow the crown when it was transferred by violence and injustice from one head to another. He found the Jacobines more practicable. They indeed had many sympathies with Buonaparte: he favoured that irreligion to which they were fanatically attached, because it at once flattered their vanity and indulged their vices; his schemes of conquest offered a wide field for their ambition and their avarice: and what fitter agents could he desire than men who were troubled with no scruples of conscience or of honour; whom no turpitude could make ashamed; who shrunk from no crimes, and were shocked by no atrocities? Thus Buonaparte judged concerning them, and he reasoned rightly. The Jacobines both at home and abroad became his most devoted and obsequious adherents: they served him in England as partizans and advocates, denying or extenuating his crimes, justifying his measures, magnifying his power, and reviling his opponents; on the Continent they co-operated with him by secret or open treason, as occasion offered; in France they laid aside in his behalf that hatred to monarchy which they had not only professed but sworn, and swearing allegiance to a military despotism, gave that despotism their willing and zealous support.
♦A system of education necessary for his views.♦
Such persons were still a minority in France; but their activity, their arts, and their audacity supplied the want of numbers. It was essential to his views that a succession of such men should be provided, and that the French nation should by the sure process of education be moulded to his will, and made to receive the stamp of his iron institutions. Many of the clergy, when the proscription which had driven them from their country was removed, had opened schools on their return from exile, as the readiest means of obtaining a maintenance for themselves and of performing their Christian duties. Their success was incompatible with Buonaparte’s policy: he wanted not a moral and a religious[9], but a military people. After some preparatory attempts, all tending to the same object, the Imperial University was established; ... a name which, it was admitted, had altogether a different signification from what it bore under the old order of things. The legitimate principle was proclaimed, that the direction of public education belongs to the state; the intolerant one was deduced and put in practice, that therefore a monopoly of education should be vested in the new establishment.
♦Imperial University.♦
At the head of this University there was a Grand Master, for whom Buonaparte, indulging in such things his own taste as well as that of the French people, appointed a splendid costume; his civil-list was 150,000 francs, and he had the power of nominating to all the inferior appointments, ... an enormous influence, if it had been intended that he should be any thing more than the mere organ of the Emperor’s will. There were under him a chancellor, a treasurer, with salaries of 15,000 francs each; ten counsellors for life, twenty counsellors in ordinary, the former with salaries of 10, the latter of 6,000 francs; and thirty inspectors general, whose salary was 6,000 also, and whose travelling expenses were paid. Next in rank were the Rectors of Academies: this too was an old word with a new signification. There were to be as many Academies in the empire as there were courts of appeal. Each Rector had an establishment for his inferior jurisdiction analogous to that of the Grand Master; his salary was 6,000 francs, with 3,000 for his official expenses, and the additional emolument which he derived as Dean of the Faculties. He ranked with the Bishop of the diocese; and the rivalry which this pretension occasioned was in no degree mitigated by the spirit in which the Imperial University was founded and administered. The Faculties, or Schools of Theology, Jurisprudence, Medicine, Physical Sciences, and Literature, were under the Rector’s authority, as were the Lyceums, Colleges, Institutions, Pensions, and even the Primary Schools, which were not considered as beneath the cognizance of the University, although the government had taken care that even these should not be under the direction of the clergy, having committed them to the superintendence of a certain number of inhabitants, among whom the parochial priest had only a single voice. All seminaries, therefore, of every kind belonged to the University, and contributed in no small degree to its revenues. For it was not only required that every person who opened a Pension or Institution must be a graduate, but also that he must take out a brevet from the Grand Master, the price of which varied from 200 to 600 francs, and which was to be renewed at the same cost every ten years. Besides these decennial droits, a fourth part of the same sum was exacted annually; and a tax was levied upon the pupils of five per cent. upon what they paid to the master. It was the purpose of the government to discourage these schools, which, as being mostly in the hands of the clergy, were nowise congenial with the principles and views of Buonaparte: therefore they were thus heavily taxed; and lest they should be supported in spite of all discouragement, a decree was issued, declaring that the Lyceums might at any time fill up their numbers by taking from the nearest Pensions or Institutions as many pupils above the age of nine as would complete their complement. The precise effect of this iniquitous decree was, that exactly in proportion as any particular Lyceum was known to be ill conducted, and as parents were unwilling to entrust their children there, it became impossible for any better seminary to exist in its neighbourhood.
♦Communal Colleges.♦
There were two other kind of seminaries which it was in like manner the intention of the Imperial government to destroy by indirect means, ... the Communal Colleges and the Ecclesiastical Schools. More than four hundred of the former had been founded at the expense of their respective communes, as soon as any hope appeared that a settled order of things might be maintained in France. But because every thing far and near was regulated by the new despotism, the money which they levied upon themselves for this purpose went, like other imposts, to the capital: and was thrown into a common fund, from whence an allowance to each particular college was made, not according to its necessary expenditure, but according to the pleasure of the minister to whom the distribution was confided. Thus the design of starving the colleges, and rendering the communes weary of a voluntary tax from which no benefit was derived, was in most cases easily effected; and where the inhabitants of a town, being more desirous of supporting such an establishment, supplied the deficiency of the fund by fresh subscriptions, the University interfered, to harass and disgust them by means contradictory in appearance, but tending to the same end. Being vested with authority over the Regents, it appointed and superseded them at pleasure, removing to the Lyceums those who had deserved the confidence of the neighbourhood, and supplying their place by incompetent and worthless adventurers; it forced upon the colleges professors of sciences which were not taught there, or it forbade them to pursue the same branches of education if they were teaching them with success. Very few of these establishments, and those only in the remotest provinces, escaped the effects of this insidious hostility. ♦Ecclesiastical Schools.♦ The Ecclesiastical Schools had been instituted as seminaries for the priesthood by the Bishops, and were founded and supported by contributions. Some were placed in cities where they were under the Bishop’s immediate inspection, and became especial objects of his care; others were fixed in the country, that they might be removed from the corruption of great towns. The children of the poor who appeared by their talents and disposition to be fit subjects for the ministry, were educated there gratuitously; those of the wealthy for a moderate payment. The Romish clergy have always understood that where religious feeling exists, money is never wanting for religious purposes. Poor as Buonaparte had left the Gallican church, large buildings were now bought or erected for these seminaries, and furnished and supported with a liberality which manifested that in the provinces at least there was more religion than suited the wishes of the imperial government. Effectual means therefore were pursued for degrading and destroying them. It was decreed that not more than one should be allowed in a department, and that that one must be in a large town where there should be a Lyceum: all others were to be shut up within a fortnight after the promulgation of the law, and their property, moveable and immoveable, applied to the use of the University. The pupils were compelled to attend the Lyceums, and go through the same course of mathematical studies as if they had been designed for the army; they were not allowed to keep the church festivals as holidays, although they wore the habit of ecclesiastical students, and their masters were ranked below those of the meanest boarding-school. The object of the government in thus mortifying the teachers would be defeated by the wise policy of the Romish church, which has taught its ministers to regard every act of humiliation as adding to their stock of merits; the design of disgusting the students with their profession, by the contempt to which they were exposed in what were essentially military academies, and of unfitting them for their intended profession by an intercourse with military pupils, was likely to be more successful.
♦Lyceums.♦
It was through the Lyceums more than any other of his institutions that Buonaparte expected to perpetuate the new order of things: in these academies it was, that, by a system such as a Jesuit might have devised for the use of a Mamaluke Bey, he trained up the youth of France to become men after his own heart. It was laid down as a maxim by the government that all public education ought to be regulated upon the principles of military discipline, not on those of civil or ecclesiastical police. In the Lyceums, therefore, the pupils were distributed not in forms, or classes, but in companies, each having its serjeant and its corporal; and an officer-instructor, as he was called, taught the use of arms to all above twelve years of age, and drilled them in military manœuvres. He was present to superintend all their movements, which were so many evolutions, or marches. The punishments in use were arrest and imprisonment; and for their meals, their studies, their lessons, their sports, prayers, mass, going to bed, and getting up, signal was given by beat of drum. ♦First catechism.♦ The youth who were thus trained up in military habits had been taught, in their first catechism, that they owed to their Emperor Napoleon love, respect, obedience, fidelity, military services, and the contributions required for the preservation and defence of the empire, and of his throne: that God, who creates empires and disposes of them according to his will, had, by endowing Napoleon with a profusion of gifts as well in peace as in war, made him the minister of his power, and his image upon earth: to honour and serve the Emperor was therefore the same thing as to honour and serve God; and they who violated their duty towards him, would resist the order which God himself had established, and render themselves worthy of eternal damnation. The religious sanction which was thus given to his authority had its full effect in childhood, and when this feeling lost its influence, devotion to the Emperor had become a habit which every thing around them contributed to confirm and strengthen. There were 150 exhibitions, or burses, appointed for every Lyceum: twenty were of sufficient amount to cover the whole expense of the boys’ education and maintenance; the others were called half or three-quarter burses, and the relatives of those who obtained them made up the sum which was deficient. The money for these foundations was of course drawn from the public taxes: a third part was even raised by an extra and specific impost upon the respective communes. But in the eyes of the pupils every thing flowed from the Emperor himself: he was their immediate benefactor, as well as their future and sure patron; and they looked to him with gratitude and hope at an age when these generous feelings are the strongest. ♦Special military academies.♦ Two hundred and fifty chosen youths were transferred every year to the special military academies, where they were supported by the state; and from whence the army was supplied with a succession of young men, thoroughly educated for their profession, and thoroughly attached to the Emperor Napoleon. Others were appointed to such civil offices as they seemed best qualified to fill, and they carried with them the same attachment to revolutionary principles, and to the person of Buonaparte. This was not all. Buonaparte, far-sighted when not blinded by vanity, or dazzled by ambition, made use of the Lyceums to assist in securing his conquests. ♦Youths from the conquered countries.♦ Two thousand four hundred youths, chosen from the foreign territories which had been annexed to France, were educated in these academies at the public expense. This measure, said Fourcroy (by whom the scheme of the University was framed), was so congenial with the times, that its advantages would be perceived by all who were capable of understanding the existing circumstances. The inhabitants, he said, who spake a language of their own, and were accustomed to their own institutions, must relinquish their old usages, and adopt those of their new country: they had not the means at home of giving their children the education, the manners, and the character, which were to identify them with the French. What more advantageous destiny could be prepared for them than that which the new system offered? and what more efficacious resource could be given to the government, which had nothing more at heart than to bind these new citizens to the French empire?... Bound to it, indeed, they would thus be; the youths by the effect of the education which they received; the parents because the children were hostages for their forced allegiance.