Napoleon was indefatigable in his endeavors to reorganize in the Tuileries the splendors of a court. The French people were like children who needed to be amused, and Napoleon took good care to provide amusement for them. His ante-chambers were filled with chamberlains, pages, and esquires. Servants, in brilliant liveries, loitered in the halls and on the staircases. Magnificent entertainments were provided, at which Josephine presided with surpassing grace and elegance. Balls, operas, and theatres, began to be crowded with splendor and fashion, and the gay Parisians were delighted. Napoleon personally took no interest whatever in these things. All his energies were engrossed in the accomplishment of magnificent enterprises for the elevation of France. "While they are discussing these changes," said he, "they will cease to talk nonsense about my politics, and that is what I want. Let them amuse themselves. Let them dance. But let them not thrust their heads into the councils of government. Commerce will revive under the increasing expenditure of the capital. I am not afraid of the Jacobins. I never was so much applauded as at the last parade. It is ridiculous to say that nothing is right but what is new. We have had enough of such novelties. I would rather have the balls of the opera than the saturnalia of the Goddess of Reason."[4]
While Napoleon was thus engaged in reconstructing society in France, organizing the army, strengthening the navy, and conducting the diplomacy of Europe, he was maturing and executing the most magnificent plans of internal improvements. In early life he had conceived a passion for architectural grandeur, which had been strengthened and chastened by his residence among the time-honored monuments of Italy and Egypt. With inconceivable activity of mind, he planned those vast works of utility and of beauty in Paris, and all over the empire, which will forever remain the memorials of his well-directed energies, and which will throw a lustre over his reign which never can be sullied. He erected the beautiful quay on the banks of the Seine, in front of the Tuileries. He swept away the buildings which deformed the Place Carrousel, and united the Louvre and the Tuileries, forming a magnificent square between those splendid edifices. He commenced the construction of a fourth side for the great square opposite the picture gallery. It was a vast and a noble undertaking; but it was interrupted by those fierce wars, which the allied kings of Europe waged against him. The Bridge of Arts was commenced. The convents of the Feuillans and Capucines, which had been filled with victims during the revolution, were torn down, and the magnificent Rue de Rivoli, now one of the chief ornaments of Paris, was thrown open. Canals, bridges, turnpike-roads, all over the empire, were springing into existence. One single mind inspired the nation.
The most inveterate opponents of Napoleon are constrained to the admission that it is impossible to refuse the praise of consummate prudence and skill to these, and indeed to all the arrangements he adopted in this great crisis of his history. "We are creating a new era," said he. "Of the past we must forget the bad, and remember only the good."
In one of the largest and most populous provinces of France, that of La Vendee, many thousand royalists had collected, and were carrying on a most desperate civil war. England, with her ships, was continually sending to them money, ammunition, and arms, and landing among them regiments of emigrant troops formed in London. They had raised an army of sixty thousand men. All the efforts of the Directory to quell the insurrection had been unavailing. The most awful atrocities had disgraced this civil conflict. As soon as Napoleon was firmly seated in his consular chair, he sent an invitation for the chiefs of these royalist forces in La Vendee to visit him in Paris, assuring them of a safe return. They all accepted the invitation. Napoleon met them in his audience-chamber with the utmost kindness and frankness. He assured them that it was his only object to rescue France from the ruin into which it had fallen; to bring peace and happiness to his distracted country. With that laconic logic which he had ever at command, he said, "Are you fighting in self-defense? You have no longer cause to fight. I will not molest you. I will protect you in all your rights. Have you taken arms to revive the reign of the ancient kings? You see the all but unanimous decision of the nation. Is it honorable for so decided a minority to attempt, by force of arms, to dictate laws to the majority?"
Napoleon's arguments were as influential as his battalions. They yielded at once, not merely their swords but their hearts' homage. One alone, George Cadoudal, a sullen, gigantic savage, who preferred banditti marauding above the blessings of peace, refused to yield. Napoleon had a private interview with him. The guard at the door were extremely alarmed lest the semi-barbarian should assassinate the First Consul. Napoleon appealed to his patriotism, his humanity, but all in vain. Cadoudal demanded his passports and left Paris. "Why did I not," he afterward often said, as he looked at his brawny, hairy, Samson-like arms, "strangle that man when I had him in my power?" He went to London, where he engaged in many conspiracies for the assassination of Napoleon, and was finally taken in France, and shot.
NAPOLEON AND THE VENDEEAN CHIEF.
Civil war was now at an end, and with most singular unanimity all France was rejoicing in the reign of the First Consul. Napoleon loved not war. He wished to build up, not to tear down. He desired the glory of being the benefactor and not the scourge of his fellow-men. Every conflict in which he had thus far been engaged was strictly a war of self-defense. The expedition to Egypt can not be considered an exception, for that enterprise was undertaken as the only means of repelling the assaults of the most determined and powerful enemy France has ever known. Napoleon was now strong. All France was united in him. With unobstructed power he could wield all her resources, and guide all her armies. Under these circumstances most signally did he show his love of peace, by adopting the very characteristic measure of writing directly to the King of England and to the Emperor of Austria, proposing reconciliation. It was noble in the highest degree for him to do so. Pride would have said, "They commenced the conflict; they shall be the first to ask for peace." To the King of England he wrote,
"Called, Sire, by the wishes of the French nation, to occupy the first magistracy of the Republic, I judge it well, on entering my office, to address myself directly to your Majesty. Must the war, which for the four last years has devastated the world, be eternal? Are there no means of coming to an understanding? How can the two most enlightened nations of Europe, stronger already and more powerful than their safety or their independence requires, sacrifice to ideas of vain-glory the well-being of commerce, internal prosperity, and the repose of families! How is it that they do not feel peace to be the first of necessities as the first of glories? These sentiments can not be strangers to the heart of your Majesty, who governs a free people with the sole aim of rendering it happy.
"Your Majesty will perceive only, in this overture, the sincerity of my desire to contribute efficaciously, for a second time, to the general pacification, by this prompt advance, perfectly confidential and disembarrassed of those forms, which, perhaps necessary to disguise the dependence of weak states, reveal, when adopted by strong states, only the wish of mutual deception. France and England by the misuse of their powers, may yet, for a long period, retard, to the misery of all nations, their exhaustion. But I venture to say that the fate of the civilized world is connected with the termination of a war, which has set the whole world in flames."