Napoleon: A Sketch of His Life, Character, Struggles, and Achievements

by Thomas E. Watson

There yet remained in the hands of the government a large amount of the confiscated land, and some of this was sold. To these sources of revenue were soon added the contributions levied upon neighboring and dependent states, such as Genoa, Holland, and the Hanse towns.

Under the Directory, tax-collecting and recruiting for the army had been badly done because the work had been left to local authorities. The central government could not act upon the citizen directly; it had to rely upon these local authorities. When, therefore, the local authorities failed to act, the machinery of administration was at a standstill. Napoleon changed all this, and devised a system by which the government dealt directly with the citizen. It was a national officer, assisted by a council, who assessed and collected taxes. The prefects appointed by Napoleon took the place of the royal intendants of the Bourbon system. Holding office directly from the central government, and accountable to it alone, these local authorities became cogs in the wheel of a vast, resistless machine controlled entirely by the First Consul. So perfect was the system of internal administration which he devised, that it has stood the shock of all the changes which have since occurred in France.

Keeping himself clear of parties, and adhering steadily to the policy of fusion, Napoleon gave employment to men of all creeds. He detested rogues, speculators, embezzlers. He despised mere talkers and professional orators. He wanted workers, strenuous and practical. He cared nothing for antecedents, nor for private morals. He knew the depravity of Fouché and Talleyrand, yet used them. He gave employment to royalists, Jacobins, Girondins, Deists, Christians, and infidels. “Can he do the work, and will he do it honestly?” these were the supreme tests. No enmity would deprive him of the service of the honest and capable. No friendship would tolerate the continuance in office of the dishonest or incompetent. Resolute in this policy of taking men as he found them, of making the most of the materials at hand, he gave high employment to many a man whom he personally disliked. He gave to Talleyrand the ministry of foreign affairs, to Fouché that of the police, to Carnot that of war. To Moreau he gave the largest of French armies; Augereau, Bernadotte, Jourdan, he continued to employ. “I cannot create men; I must use those I find.” Again he said, “The 18th of Brumaire is a wall of brass, separating the past from the present.”

If they were capable, if they were honest, it did not matter to Napoleon whether they had voted to kill the King or to save him; he put them to work for France. Once in office, they must work. No sinecures, no salaries paid as hush money, or indirect bribe, or pension for past service, or screen for the privileged; without exception all must earn their wages. “Come, gentlemen!” Napoleon would say cheerfully to counsellors of State who had already been hammering away for ten or twelve hours, “Come, gentlemen, it is only two o’clock! Let us get on to something else; we must earn the money the State pays us.” He himself labored from twelve to eighteen hours each day, and his activity ran the whole gamut of public work,—from the inspection of the soldier’s outfit, the planning of roads, bridges, quays, monuments, churches, public buildings, the selection of a sub-prefect, the choice of a statue for the palace, the review of a regiment, the dictation of a despatch, or the details of a tax-digest, to the grand outlines of organic law, national policy, and the movements of all the armies of the Republic.

Under the Directory, the military administration had broken down so completely that the war office had lost touch with the army. Soldiers were not fed, clothed, or paid by the State. They could subsist only by plundering friends and foes alike. Frightful ravages were committed by civil and military agents of the French Republic in Italy, Switzerland, and along the German frontier. When Napoleon applied to the late minister of war, Dubois de Crancé, for information about the army, he could get none. Special couriers had to be sent to the various commands to obtain the most necessary reports. Under such mismanagement, desertions had become frequent in the army, and recruiting had almost ceased. The old patriotic enthusiasm had disappeared; the “Marseillaise” performed at the theatres, by order of the Directory, was received with hoots. To breathe new life into Frenchmen, to inspire them again with confidence, hope, enthusiasm, was the great task of the new government. The Jacobin was to be made to tolerate the royalist, the Girondin, the Feuillant, and the priest. Each of these in turn must be made to tolerate each other and the Jacobin. The noble must consent to live quietly within the Republic which had confiscated his property, and by the side of the man who now owned it. The republican must dwell in harmony with the emigrant aristocracy which had once trodden him to the earth, and which had leagued all Europe against France in the efforts to restore old abuses. In the equality created by law, the democrat must grow accustomed to the sight of nobles and churchmen in office; and the man of the highest birth must be content to work with a colleague whose birth was of the lowest. Ever since the Revolution began, there had been alternate massacres of Catholics by revolutionists, and of revolutionists by Catholics. It is impossible to say which shed the greatest amount of blood—the Red Terror of the Jacobins, or the White Terror of the Catholics. Fanaticism in the one case as in the other had shown a ferocity of the most relentless description. The cruel strife was now to be put down, and the men who had been cutting each other’s throats were to be made to keep the peace.

Napoleon, in less than a year, had completely triumphed over the difficulties of his position. The machinery of state was working with resistless vigor throughout the realm. The taxes were paid, the laws enforced, order reëstablished, brigandage put down, La Vendée pacified, civil strife ended. The credit of the government was restored, public funds rose, confidence returned. Men of all parties, of all creeds, found themselves working zealously to win the favor of him who worked harder than any mortal known to history.

Meanwhile Sieyès and the two commissions had been at work on the new constitution. Dreading absolute monarchy on the one hand, and unbridled democracy on the other, Sieyès had devised a plan of government which, as he believed, combined the best features of both systems. There was to be universal suffrage. Every tax-paying adult Frenchman who cared enough about the franchise to go and register should have a vote. But these voters did not choose office-holders. They simply elected those from whom the office-holders should be chosen. The great mass of the people were to elect one-tenth of their number, who would be the notables of the commune. These would, in turn, elect one-tenth of their number, who would be the notables of the department. These again would elect one-tenth, who would be the national notables. From these notables would be chosen the office-holders,—national, departmental, and communal. This selection was made, not by the people, but by the executive. There was to be a council of state working immediately with the executive by whom its members were appointed. This council acting with the executive would propose laws to the tribunate, an assembly which could debate these prepared measures and which could send three of its members to the legislative council to favor or oppose the law. This legislature could hear the champions of the tribunate, and also the delegates from the council of state; and after the speeches of these advocates, pro and con, the legislature, as a constitutional jury which heard debate without itself debating, could vote on the proposed law. Besides, there was to be a Senate, named by the executive, holding office for life. This Senate was to choose the members of the legislative council and of the tribunate, as well as the judges of the high court of appeals. In the Senate was lodged the power of deciding whether laws were constitutional.

According to the Sieyès plan, there were to have been two consuls, of war and of peace respectively; and these consuls were to have named ministers to carry on the government through their appointees. Above the two consuls was to be placed a grand elector, who should be lodged in a palace, maintained in great state, magnificently salaried, but who should have no power beyond the choice of the consuls. If the Senate should be of the opinion, at any time, that the grand elector was not conducting himself properly, it could absorb him into its own body, and choose another.

Sieyès had been one of the charter members of the revolutionary party, had helped to rock the cradle when the infant was newly born, had lived through all the changes of its growth, manhood, madness, and decline. Much of the permanent good work of the Revolution was his. He now wished to frame for the French such a fundamental law as would guard their future against the defects of their national character, while it preserved to them what was best in the great principles of the Revolution.

Once a churchman himself, he knew the Church and dreaded it. He feared that the priests, working through superstitious fears upon the minds of ignorant masses, would finally educate them into hostility to the new order—train them to believe that the Old Régime had been the best, and should be restored. To get rid of this danger (the peril of royalists and priests from above acting upon the ignorant masses below), the far-sighted statesman, dealing with France as it was, did not favor popular sovereignty. Only by indirection were the masses to be allowed to choose their rulers. The people could choose the local notables from whom the local officers must be taken; and these local notables could vote for departmental notables from whom departmental officers should be chosen; and those departmental notables would select from their own numbers the national notables from whom holders for national positions must be taken.