The system of Buonaparte, as it combined great art with an apparent generosity and liberality, proved eminently successful among the people of France, when subjected to the semblance of a popular vote. The national spirit was exhausted by the changes and the sufferings, the wars and the crimes, of so many years; and in France, as in all other countries, parties, exhausted by the exertions and vicissitudes of civil war, are in the very situation where military tyranny becomes the next crisis. The rich favoured Buonaparte for the sake of protection,—the poor for that of relief,—the emigrants, in many cases, because they desired to return to France,—the men of the Revolution, because they were afraid of being banished from it;—the sanguine and courageous crowded round his standard in hope of victory,—the timid cowered behind it in the desire of safety. Add to these the vast multitude who follow the opinions of others, and take the road which lies most obvious, and is most trodden, and it is no wonder that the 18th Brumaire, and its consequences, received the general sanction of the people. The constitution of the year Eight, or Consular Government, was approved by the suffrages of nearly four millions of citizens,[511]—a more general approbation than any preceding system had been received with. The vote was doubtless a farce in itself, considering how many constitutions had been adopted and sworn to within so short a space; but still the numbers who expressed assent, more than doubling those votes which were obtained by the constitution of 1792 and of the year Three, indicate the superior popularity of Buonaparte's system.
To the four millions who expressly declared their adherence to the new Consular constitution, must be added the many hundreds of thousands and millions more, who were either totally indifferent upon the form of government, providing they enjoyed peace and protection under it, or who, though abstractedly preferring other rulers, were practically disposed to submit to the party in possession of the power.
Such and so extended being the principles on which Buonaparte selected the members of his government, he manifested, in choosing individuals, that wonderful penetration, by which, more perhaps than any man who ever lived, he was enabled at once to discover the person most capable of serving him, and the means of securing his attachment. Former crimes or errors made no cause of exclusion; and in several cases the alliance between the first consul and his ministers might have been compared to the marriages between the settlers on the Spanish mainland, and the unhappy females, the refuse of great cities, sent out to recruit the colony.—"I ask thee not," said the bucanier to the wife he had selected from the cargo of vice, "what has been thy former conduct; but, henceforth, see thou continue faithful to me, or this," striking his hand on his musket, "shall punish thy want of fidelity."
CAMBACÉRÈS—LEBRUN—TALLEYRAND.
For second and third consuls, Buonaparte chose Cambacérès,[512] a lawyer, and a member of the moderate party, with Lebrun,[513] who had formerly co-operated with the Chancellor Maupeou. The former was employed by the chief consul as his organ of communication with the Revolutionists, while Lebrun rendered him the same service with the Royal party; and although, as Madame de Staël observes, they preached very different sermons on the same texts,[514] yet they were both eminently successful in detaching from their original factions many of either class, and uniting them with this third, or government party, which was thus composed of deserters from both. The last soon became so numerous, that Buonaparte was enabled to dispense with the bascule, or trimming system, by which alone his predecessors, the directors, had been enabled to support their power.
In the ministry, Buonaparte acted upon the same principle, selecting and making his own the men whose talents were most distinguished, without reference to their former conduct. Two were particularly distinguished, as men of the most eminent talents, and extensive experience. These were Talleyrand and Fouché. The former, noble by birth, and Bishop of Autun, notwithstanding his high rank in church and state, had been deeply engaged in the Revolution. He had been placed on the list of emigrants, from which his name was erased on the establishment of the Directorial government, under which he became minister of foreign affairs. He resigned that office in the summer preceding 18th Brumaire; and Buonaparte, finding him at variance with the Directory, readily passed over some personal grounds of complaint which he had against him, and enlisted in his service a supple and dexterous politician, and an experienced minister; fond, it is said, of pleasure, not insensible to views of self-interest, nor too closely fettered by principle, but perhaps unequalled in ingenuity. Talleyrand was replaced in the situation of minister for foreign affairs, after a short interval, assigned for the purpose of suffering the public to forget his prominent share in the scandalous treaty with the American commissioners, and continued for a long tract of time one of the closest sharers of Buonaparte's councils.[515]
If the character of Talleyrand bore no strong traces of public virtue or inflexible morality, that of Fouché was marked with still darker shades. He had been dipt in some of the worst transactions of the Reign of Terror, and his name is found among the agents of the dreadful crimes of that unhappy period. In the days of the Directory, he is stated to have profited by the universal peculation which was then practised, and to have amassed large sums by shares in contracts and brokerage in the public funds. To atone for the imperfections of a character stained with perfidy, venality, and indifference to human suffering, Fouché brought to Buonaparte's service a devotion, never like to fail the first consul unless his fortunes should happen to change; and a perfect experience with all the weapons of revolutionary war, and knowledge of those who were best able to wield them. He had managed under Barras's administration the department of police; and, in the course of his agency, had become better acquainted perhaps than any man in France with all the various parties in that distracted country, the points which they were desirous of reaching, the modes by which they hoped to attain them, the character of their individual leaders, and the means to gain them over or to intimidate them. Formidable by his extensive knowledge of the revolutionary springs, and the address with which he could either put them into motion, or prevent them from operating, Fouché, in the latter part of his life, displayed a species of wisdom which came in place of morality and benevolence.
Loving wealth and power, he was neither a man of ardent passions, nor of a vengeful disposition; and though there was no scruple in his nature to withhold him from becoming an agent in the great crimes which state policy, under an arbitrary government, must often require, yet he had a prudential and constitutional aversion to unnecessary evil, and was always wont to characterise his own principle of action, by saying, that he did as little harm as he possibly could. In his mysterious and terrible office of head of the police, he had often means of granting favours, or interposing lenity in behalf of individuals, of which he gained the full credit, while the harsh measures of which he was the agent, were set down to the necessity of his situation. By adhering to these principles of moderation, he established for himself at length a character totally inconsistent with that belonging to a member of the revolutionary committee, and resembling rather that of a timid but well-disposed servant, who, in executing his master's commands, is desirous to mitigate as much as possible their effect on individuals. It is, upon the whole, no wonder, that although Siêyes objected to Fouché, from his want of principle, and Talleyrand was averse to him from jealousy, interference, and personal enmity, Napoleon chose, nevertheless, to retain in the confidential situation of minister of police, the person by whom that formidable office had been first placed on an effectual footing.[516]
Of the other ministers, it is not necessary to speak in detail. Cambacérès retained the situation of minister of justice,[517] for which he was well qualified; and the celebrated mathematician, Laplace, was preferred to that of the Interior, for which he was not, according to Buonaparte's report, qualified at all.[518] Berthier, as we have already seen, filled the war department, and shortly afterwards Carnot; and Gaudin administered the finances with credit to himself. Forfait, a naval architect of eminence,[519] replaced Bourdon in the helpless and hopeless department of the French Admiralty.
A new constitution having been thus formed, and the various branches of duty distributed with much address among those best capable of discharging them, other changes were at the same time made, which were designed to mark that a new era was commenced, in which all former prejudices were to be abandoned and done away.