The decisive moment had arrived. Would the soldiers, enthusiastic as they seemed, really obey if ordered to take violent measures? Among the generals were many anxious, troubled faces. After his incursion upon the Ancients, Bonaparte had rushed into the antechamber where his commanders sat, exclaiming, "There must be an end to this." During his second absence, Sérurier took the cue, and marched up and down, declaiming, "They were going to kill your general, but be calm!" In the Orangery Lucien accomplished a miracle, calmed the assemblage, steadily refused to put the motion for outlawry, and demanded a hearing for his brother. His plea being of no avail, he finally left the chair, and with the despairing cry, "There is no liberty here!" rushed from the room. The dreary honors of the day were to be his. Bonaparte despatched a file of soldiers to escort him through the throng. The drums rolled for silence, and a horse was brought, which he mounted. Presenting himself then to the troops, he declared, as president of the Five Hundred, that the majority of the legislature were honorable men, but that in the room from which he had come were a few assassins, English hirelings, who held the rest in terror. "Hurrah for Bonaparte!" cried the soldiers; but they made no motion to clear the Orangery, and Napoleon uttered no command. This was the historic moment. Lucien, seizing the drawn sword of a bystander, and pointing it at Napoleon's breast, exclaimed: "I swear I would strike down my own brother should he ever endanger the liberties of the French!" There was at last a movement in the lines. "Shall we enter the hall?" said Murat to Bonaparte. "Yes," was the reply; "and if they resist, kill, kill! Yes; follow me! I am the god of the day!" Fortunately, these hysterical words were heard only by a few. "Keep still!" said Lucien. "Do you think you are talking to the Mamelukes?" With that the order rang out, the rolling drums drowned the roar of talk, action began, and with the brothers on horseback at their head, the grenadiers advanced. There was no resistance, the deputies fled swiftly through doors and windows into the dark, and in a few moments the disordered room was empty.
If Bonaparte were to be neither a Cæsar nor a Cromwell, it was Sieyès, as the civilian and the constitution-maker, who should have swayed the legislative councils in behalf of reform; but his heart was no more engaged in Bonaparte's support now than it had ever been. Anxious to be a leader, and to impose on France a constitution which by its "perfection" should command authority, he had ever been relegated to a second place. Instead of seizing this, his greatest opportunity as a lawgiver, he and Roger-Ducos had softly withdrawn to their carriage. The "perfect" constitution he had prepared would, in view of what had just happened, consequently rest, like the one overthrown, upon military force. Nevertheless, he thoroughly understood that Bonaparte had gone too far, and that his mistake must be retrieved. The country was not ripe for a military despot who, like Charles XII of Sweden, would send his boot to preside over the representatives of the people, or else turn them out of doors without a qualm. Accordingly, the few Bonapartist delegates, who had fled with the rest and had found refuge in the taverns or private houses of the neighborhood, were by his advice, but with some difficulty, found and summoned by Lucien to meet, late as it was, in their respective places, cold and uncomfortable as these were. Upward of fifty out of the Five Hundred—some impartial witnesses have put the number as high as one hundred and twenty—ventured to come, and the semblance of representative government was restored. To them the new, impossible, and clumsy constitution made by Sieyès was presented for consideration.
Meantime Bonaparte had thoroughly recovered his self-control. He declared at St. Helena that all the conspiracies of the time were alike without a head because they needed a "sword"; and that, possessing one, he alone could choose what pleased him best. To Mme. de Rémusat he said: "It was one of the epochs in my life when I was most skilful. I saw the Abbé Sieyès, and promised to put his wordy constitution into operation. I received the Jacobin leaders, and the agents of the Bourbons. I refused no one's advice, but I gave only such as was in the interest of my plans. I withdrew from the people's observation because I knew that when the time arrived curiosity to see me would throw them under my feet. Every one fell into my toils, and when I became head of the state there was not a party in France which did not cherish some hope for my success." Mme. de Staël, returning on the eighteenth of Brumaire from Switzerland to Paris, saw Barras driving to his country-seat of Grosbois. On her arrival men talked no longer of abstractions, of the Constituent Assembly, of the people, or of the Convention: it was all of a person—of what General Bonaparte had done. Her own feelings, she says, were mixed. If the battle were joined, and the Jacobins victorious, she might turn about and fly, for blood would flow once more. Still, at the thought of Bonaparte's triumph she felt a prophetic sadness. She could not mourn for liberty, for liberty had never existed in France. This was the voice of the dispirited and disheartened constitutional republicans, who knew and proposed no remedy. The royalists were fully aware of what they desired. They had been sighing for a despot in France, for another Richelieu, a fierce, intractable master, wielding a rod of iron, without which the inhabitants could never be reconstructed into a nation. In the words of a letter written somewhat earlier from Coblentz, their city of refuge on the Rhine, they desired "the union of powers in the hands of an imperious master, ... who, by a splendid and brilliant Cromwellism, would hold in awe the people whom he forced to respect and bless their own servitude." The mass of the nation were tired of war and eager for a peace that would bring prosperity, pleasure, and glory. The few honest and austere radicals went down with their greedy and noisy fellows; the Jacobin party was no more. There had been a complete rearrangement of factors in the French problem.
For this reason the escaped legislators who reached Paris that night found little or no comfort as they told their dreary tale. Everywhere there was perfect calm, here and there signs of great satisfaction with what was likely to happen or had happened. The great city went about its affairs as usual, and when late in the evening Fouché issued a manifesto to the effect that Bonaparte in his effort to denounce "counter-revolutionary" measures before the Five Hundred had barely escaped assassination, the paper was read on the stage of all the theaters to eager audiences which in every instance applauded with almost frenzied enthusiasm. Paris and all France was weary of the Directory, it was eager for new things, for authority, for order, for foreign and home policies which would safely anchor the civil liberties won by the Revolution but jeopardized by the violence, self-seeking, and incapacity of the adventurers who had been holding the helm of state.
CHAPTER XII[13]
Bonaparte the First Consul
Bonaparte's Position — The Absence of Enthusiasm — The Provisional Consulate — Measures of Security — The New Constitution — An Autocratic Executive — The Plebiscite — Bonaparte the First Consul — New Officials — Efforts to Appease the Church — The Feeling in France — Confidence Restored — Financial Stability.
When Bonaparte returned to Paris on the evening of the eighteenth of Brumaire he was the arbiter of French destiny; for the great powers of government, both executive and legislative, were in the hands of himself and his creatures. To the multitude it was not, perhaps, much of a feat to disperse by force a legislature which rested on force, and by means of the army to turn the tables on the very Jacobins who had themselves been ever ready to appeal to the army. Moreover, in their minds another constitution more or less was of small importance: the next one would doubtless be only a rearrangement of the old devices. The Revolution was in the hands of its friends, and the world must go its way. Talleyrand and the royalists understood that the day's work had turned the oligarchy of the Directory into a powerful monarchy of some kind: a temporary one, they hoped, which would enable them eventually to bring back the Bourbons.
But Napoleon Bonaparte was, as ever, wise in his generation, and, as he understood himself, knew that though both these notions were illusory, he must proceed cautiously. As a gambler he had staked everything, and had won: he meant to pocket the stakes. But yet how narrowly had he won! The shouts of "traitor" and "outlaw" were still in his ears; no doubt the terrible alternative to his perilous escape was in his mind. Though determined to go on, he was nevertheless sobered. There was temporary exultation in the army and the people. He knew that among the latter it would soon die out, as it did. Already it was rumored that although Mme. Bonaparte had been in pecuniary straits, her husband had thirty millions on deposit in various banks. This was certainly untrue, because the general had recourse to the brokers of Paris for the funds needed to reward his abettors. The merciless extortion of the lenders engendered in him a bitterness against their class which he entertained to the latest day of his life. It was estimated that the day had cost him one and a half millions; every man under his command had received a new uniform, twelve francs in cash, and a drink of spirits; the rest was spent in rewarding his generals and political supporters. The constitutional and moderate republicans felt that their cause and the fate of the nation were in the balance. The royalists were the only faction which would have been glad to see Bonaparte usurp the power at once. He and his friends understood that a nation still infatuated with the Revolution in theory must be led by a parade of constitutional measures.
The mutilated chambers began work on the very night of their reassembling at St. Cloud. Lucien harangued them on the familiar theme of Roman liberties, recalling the commonwealth in which the consular fasces had been the symbol of freedom. The country would approve and its enemies would be disarmed if these insignia should again be displayed. Boulay de la Meurthe presented the temporary plan: a provisional consulate composed of Bonaparte, Sieyès, and Roger-Ducos; the adjournment of the legislature until February twentieth, 1800; the appointment of two committees of twenty-five, one from each council, to aid the consuls in the proposed renovation; the proscription of fifty-seven delegates who had made themselves obnoxious. To preserve the appearance of legality and historic continuity, the committee from the Five Hundred was to propose, that of the Ancients to adopt; the new constitution must uphold the one and indivisible republic, respect popular sovereignty, and secure representative government with the division of powers, while property, liberty, and equality must be guaranteed beyond a peradventure. After a formal declaration that the Directory had ceased to exist, each of these measures was duly adopted by both houses in turn, and the consuls were sworn in, promising unswerving fidelity to popular sovereignty, to the French republic one and indivisible, to liberty and equality, and to representative government. With a resolution that Bonaparte had that day deserved well of his country, the chambers adjourned at an early hour in the morning. When the sun rose over Paris and France, the land had found its despot; to all appearances he was to be a beneficent despot. The consuls met that very day in the Luxembourg palace: the general's name came first in alphabetical order, and on the suggestion of Roger-Ducos he took the presidency and the executive for the twenty-four hours, the others to follow in turn. Their first work was the construction of a provisional ministry: three of the old members were without discussion retained: Cambacérès for justice, Bourdon for the navy, and Reinhard for foreign affairs. Dubois-Crancé was replaced by Berthier for war, Robert Lindet by Gaudin for finance, Quinette by Laplace for the interior. There was much debate concerning Fouché as minister of police, but on Bonaparte's urgent representations he was reappointed. It was rumored that the Jacobins intended to rally at Toulouse, and Lannes was ordered to take command in that city at once. To the public a simple and safe announcement was issued, promising better days for the republic.