We have been already led to notice, that there existed no cordiality betwixt Buonaparte and the gifted daughter of Necker. Their characters were far from suited to each other. She had manifestly regarded the first consul as a subject of close and curious observation, and Buonaparte loved not that any one should make him the subject of minute scrutiny. Madame de Staël was the centre also of a distinguished circle of society in France, several of whom were engaged to support the cause of liberty; and the resolution of a few members of the Tribunate, to make some efforts to check the advance of Buonaparte to arbitrary power, was supposed to be taken in her saloon, and under her encouragement. For this she was only banished from Paris.[615] But when she was about to publish her excellent and spirited book on German manners and literature, in which, unhappily, there was no mention of the French nation, or its supreme chief, Madame de Staël's work was seized by the police, and she was favoured with a line from Savary, acquainting her that the air of France did not suit her health, and inviting her to leave it with all convenient speed.[616] While in exile from Paris, which she accounted her country, the worthy Prefect of Geneva suggested a mode by which she might regain favour. An ode on the birth of the King of Rome was recommended as the means of conciliation. Madame de Staël answered, she should limit herself to wishing him a good nurse; and became exposed to new rigours, even extending to the friends who ventured to visit her in her exile. So general was the French influence all over Europe, that to shelter herself from the persecutions by which she was everywhere followed, she was at length obliged to escape to England, by the remote way of Russia. Chenier, author of the Hymn of the Marseillois, though formerly the panegyrist of General Buonaparte, became, with other literary persons who did not bend low enough to his new dignity, objects of persecution to the first consul. The childish pertinacity with which Napoleon followed up such unreasonable piques, belongs indeed, chiefly, to the history of the Emperor, but it showed its blossoms earlier. The power of indulging such petty passions, goes, in a great measure, to foster and encourage their progress; and in the case of Buonaparte, this power, great in itself, was increased by the dangerous facilities which the police offered, for gratifying the spleen, or the revenge, of the offended sovereign.
THE CONCORDAT.
Another support of a very different kind, and grounded on the most opposite principles, was afforded to the rising power of Napoleon, through the re-establishment of religion in France, by his treaty with the Pope, called the Concordat. Two great steps had been taken towards this important point, by the edict opening the churches, and renewing the exercise of the Christian religion, and by the restoration of the Pope to his temporal dominions after the battle of Marengo. The further objects to be attained were the sanction of the first consul's government by the Pontiff on the one hand, and, on the other, the re-establishment of the rights of the Church in France, so far as should be found consistent with the new order of things.
This important treaty was managed by Joseph Buonaparte, who, with three colleagues, held conferences for that purpose with the plenipotentiaries of the Pope. The ratifications were exchanged on the 18th of September 1801; and when they were published, it was singular to behold how submissively the once proud See of Rome lay prostrated before the power of Buonaparte, and how absolutely he must have dictated all the terms of the treaty. Every article innovated on some of those rights and claims, which the Church of Rome had for ages asserted as the unalienable privileges of her infallible head.
I. It was provided, that the Catholic religion should be freely exercised in France, acknowledged as the national faith, and its service openly practised, subject to such regulations of police as the French Government should judge necessary. II. The Pope, in concert with the French Government, was to make a new division of dioceses, and to require of the existing bishops even the resignation of their sees, should that be found necessary to complete the new arrangement. III. The sees which should become vacant by such resignation, or by deprivation, in case a voluntary abdication was refused, as also all future vacancies, were to be filled up by the Pope, on nominations proceeding from the French Government. IV. The new bishops were to take an oath of fidelity to the Government, and to observe a ritual, in which there were to be especial forms of prayer for the consuls. V. The church-livings were to undergo a new division, and the bishops were to nominate to them, but only such persons as should be approved by the Government. VI. The Government was to make suitable provision for the national clergy, while the Pope expressly renounced all right competent to him and his successors, to challenge or dispute the sales of church property which had been made since the Revolution.[617]
Such was the celebrated compact, by which Pius VII. surrendered to a soldier, whose name was five or six years before unheard of in Europe, those high claims to supremacy in spiritual affairs, which his predecessors had maintained for so many ages against the whole potentates of Europe. A puritan might have said of the power seated on the Seven Hills—"Babylon is fallen,—it is fallen that great city!" The more rigid Catholics were of the same opinion. The Concordat, they alleged, showed rather the abasement of the Roman hierarchy than the re-erection of the Gallic Church.
The proceedings against the existing bishops of France, most of whom were of course emigrants, were also but little edifying. Acting upon the article of the Concordat already noticed, and caused, as the letter[618] itself states, "by the exigencies of the times, which exercises its violence even on us," the Pope required of each of these reverend persons, by an especial mandate, to accede to the compact, by surrendering his see, as therein provided. The order was peremptory in its terms, and an answer was demanded within fifteen days. The purpose of this haste was to prevent consultation or combination, and to place before each bishop, individually, the choice of compliance, thereby gaining a right to be provided for in the new hierarchy; or of refusal, in which case the Pope would be obliged to declare the see vacant, in conformity to his engagement with Buonaparte.
The bishops in general declined compliance with a request, which, on the part of the Pope, was evidently made by compulsion. They offered to lay their resignation at his Holiness's feet, so soon as they should be assured that there was regular canonical provision made for filling up their sees; but they declined, by any voluntary act of theirs, to give countenance to the surrender of the rights of the Church implied in the Concordat, and preferred exile and poverty to any provision which they might obtain, by consenting to compromise the privileges of the hierarchy. These proceedings greatly increased the unpopularity of the Concordat among the more zealous Catholics.
Others of that faith there were, who, though they considered the new system as very imperfect, yet thought it might have the effect of preserving in France some sense of the Christian religion, which, under the total disuse of public worship, stood a chance of being entirely extinguished in the minds of the rising generation. They remembered, that though the Jews in the days of Esdras shed tears of natural sorrow when they beheld the inferiority of the second Temple, yet Providence had sanctioned its erection, under the warrant, and by permission, of an unbelieving task-master. They granted, that the countenance shown by Buonaparte to the religious establishment, was entirely from motives of self-interest; but still they hoped that God, who works his own will by the selfish passions of individuals, was now using those of the first consul to recall some sense of religion to France; and they anticipated that religion, as the best friend of all that is good and graceful in humanity, was likely, in course of time, to bring back and encourage a sense of rational liberty.
The revolutionary part of France beheld the Concordat with very different eyes. The Christian religion was, as to the Jews and Greeks of old, a stumbling-block to the Jacobins, and foolishness to the philosophers. It was a system which they had attacked with a zeal even as eager as that which they had directed against monarchical institutions; and in the restoration of the altar, they foresaw the re-erection of the throne. Buonaparte defended himself among the philosophers, by comparing his Concordat to a sort of vaccination of religion, which, by introducing a slighter kind into the system of the state, would gradually prepare for its entire extinction.[619]