The complement of this negative measure was the creation of the right to transmit together, and for an indefinite time, a title and the realty on which its dignity reposed. Though the restoration of this institution was slightly anterior in time to the other as to its beginnings, yet the final decree was not published until 1808, and logically it is complementary and subsequent to it. To this day many men of ancient and honorable name in France have not ceased to bemoan the destruction of primogeniture by the Revolution and the Code Napoléon. They are proud to transmit their title untarnished to their descendants, are ready to make serious sacrifices in its behalf, to exercise the rigid self-denials of family control for its sake, and to engrave the motto of "noblesse oblige" on their hearts in order to sustain it; but they bitterly complain that without the majorat, and the transmission of outward, visible supports in land and houses to strengthen it, the empty sound carries little weight. The compulsory subdivision of estates at the death of the owner enables every scion to live, if not to thrive, on the home stock. The failure of France in colonization is largely due to the absence of men from good families among the colonizers, while England sends her younger sons to the ends of the earth, there to found new houses and perpetuate the old line under favorable conditions. Hence, too, the petty dimensions of aristocratic French life: little fortunes, little ambitions, little establishments, little families, among that very class in society which by cultivating the sentiment of honor should leaven the practical, materialistic temper of the multitude. At the present time, when the burghers amass in trade far greater fortunes than the aristocracy possess, when the learned secure greater power by intellectual vigor, when the demagogues grow mightier by the command of votes, titles alone carry little weight, and the virtues of honor, of chivalry, of elegance, can with difficulty display their example.
No argument can ever restore general confidence in the institution of primogeniture, but it dies hard, even in England. In the United States the absolute liberty of testamentary disposition enables a wealthy father to found a family almost as perfectly as if the right of entail existed, and the bulk of large fortunes is constantly left by will to the most capable son, in order that he may keep up the family name, the family estates, and the family pride. But under the provisions of the Code Napoléon such a course is impossible. As the lawgiver did not hesitate to contravene his own legislation in the case of the Jews, so he again disregarded it in order to consolidate that aristocracy of which he hoped to make another strong prop to his throne; for he already had the Church and the people. "The code," he said, "was made for the welfare of the people; and if that welfare demands other measures, we must take them." This was not difficult, because the imperial power had gradually shaped two instruments wherewith to act: one was the laws sanctioned by the legislature and pertaining ordinarily to abstract questions of jurisprudence; the other was the Emperor's personal decrees, which, though discussed by the council of state, were the expression of the Emperor's will, and covered in their scope the whole field of authority.
It was by the latter course that he had intended to create the new nobility. Ostensibly the measure was to be the last blow of the ax at the root of feudalism. The new dignities carried no privilege with them; they were, it was explained, a sort of civic crown to which any one might aspire, and their creation was therefore in no way derogatory to the principle of equality. The holders might become too independent and self-reliant, they might even display a class spirit; but the Emperor felt himself to be striving upward, these creatures of his would have to run fast before they could outstrip their master. At St. Helena the prisoner, recalling with bitterness the ingratitude of his beneficiaries, declared that he took the unfortunate step in order to reconcile France with the rest of Europe. He was by that time aware that though the Legion of Honor was, and would continue to be, an institution dear to the French heart, this one was not so, and needed an apology; for his imperial nobility had never been taken seriously or kindly by the people, who could not draw the nice distinction between a feudal and an imperial aristocracy. Even in the first steps of his enterprise he was made to feel the need of caution, and it was by statute, after all, not by decree, that the whole matter was finally regulated. So curious is popular fickleness that an Emperor who could boldly tyrannize in almost any other direction felt that he dared not take the risk of constituting himself a fountain of honor, such as legitimate monarchs were.
The system was for the world outside like some fairy wonder completed overnight, since the duchies had been ready the year before. The Italian titles were the most honorable and the most highly endowed. They were either at once or later given as follows: Soult, Duke of Dalmatia; Mortier, Duke of Treviso; Savary, Duke of Rovigo; Bessières, Duke of Istria; Duroc, Duke of Friuli; Victor, Duke of Belluno; Moncey, Duke of Conegliano; Clarke, Duke of Feltre; Masséna, Duke of Rivoli; Lannes Duke of Montebello; Marmont, Duke of Ragusa; Oudinot, Duke of Reggio; Macdonald, Duke of Taranto; Augereau, Duke of Castiglione; Bernadotte, Prince of Ponte Corvo. In Germany there were created three similar duchies—Auerstädt for Davout, Elchingen for Ney, and Dantzic for Lefebvre. Berthier was made Prince of Neufchâtel. So much for the military officials. In civil life there were corresponding distinctions: Cambacérès, Duke of Parma; Maret, Duke of Bassano; Lebrun, Duke of Piacenza; Fouché, Duke of Otranto; Champagny, Duke of Cadore. The members of the senate, the councilors of state, the presiding officers of the legislature, and the archbishops were all created counts. Each one of these titles was, like the others, richly endowed with land from the public domains in Poland, Germany, and Italy. But the distinction bestowed on the soldiers was marked in the difference between the accompanying gifts to them and those to civilians. The only portion of the great force which had returned to France was the guard, who were instructed to keep themselves as exclusive as possible. A most lavish pension-system, as it was considered even in that age of military splendor, drew from the army chest five hundred francs a year for soldiers who had lost a limb; officers received as high as ten thousand francs, according to the nature of their disabilities. But the marshals were showered with gold. Berthier had a million; Ney, Davout, Soult, and Bessières, six hundred thousand each; Masséna, Augereau, Bernadotte, Mortier, and Victor, four hundred thousand apiece; and the rest two hundred thousand. But even this was nothing to what some of them secured later by holding several offices at once. At one time Berthier had a yearly income of a million three hundred and fifty-five thousand francs; Davout, of nine hundred and ten thousand; Ney, of seven hundred and twenty-eight thousand; Masséna, of six hundred and eighty-three thousand. The ministers were able to secure salaries averaging about two hundred thousand francs, and ambassadors had incomes corresponding to their dignity. Caulaincourt, the ablest of all the latter class, had eight hundred thousand francs at St. Petersburg wherewith to support the imperial state of France. It is interesting to note from Napoleon's letters that he had occasionally to admonish some of these gentlemen to make use of their titles.
The Revolution had chosen to find its artistic expression in the correct and strict severity of classical forms. Napoleon had from the beginning of his career been under the spell of Greek and Roman examples. Thus it happened that the art of the First Empire was what it is—heavy, conventional, and reminiscent. With the ever-growing rigidity of censorship, literature sometimes took refuge in abstractions, or, what is much the same thing, in the contemplation of events so remote that their discussion could give no offense. Sometimes authors accepted the curious task of defending the external forms and results of the Revolution as expressed in the Empire, while combating every principle from which the movement had sprung. Able men like Chénier published some of their writings, and locked others in their desks against a brighter day. In religion the Emperor's principle was that his subjects should hate the English because they were heretics, and the Pope because he was a fanatic. The "ideologues" and "metaphysicians" were anarchists, for the public order was endangered by their teachings. The newspapers were not only gagged, but metamorphosed—the "French Citizen" into the "French Courier," the "Journal of Debates" into the "Journal of the Empire." Their columns were filled with laudations of the Emperor; their political articles were virtually composed in the Foreign Office; and there was not a symptom of anything like the existence of party feeling. A certain journalist having been allowed to make statements concerning the luxury at court, the editor of the offending paper was given to understand that the Emperor would tolerate no such criticism nor any remarks contrary to his interests.[17]
But the crowning work of this period was the final realization of the plan for organizing public instruction in what was designated by the head of the state as the Imperial University. Though somewhat changed in name and character, it exists to-day virtually as it came from the maker's hand. Like the institution of the prefecture, it is a faultless machine of equalization and centralization, molding the mass of educated Frenchmen into one form, rendering them responsive and receptive to authoritative ideas from their youth upward, and passive in their attitude toward instruction. Joseph de Maistre used to preach that, all social order depending on the authority of beliefs as well as on the authority of behavior, no man who denied the supremacy of the Pope would permanently admit the sovereignty of the state. Napoleon furnished a standing refutation of this thesis. The whole system of public instruction in France has under the third republic not merely been secularized, but it has been made, and for a quarter of a century has remained, substantially infidel. Twenty-five academic generations of living French citizens, reckoning each year's output as a generation, have come out from its laboratory with a minimum of faith; but state supremacy and state socialism are, in a moderate form, more prevalent among them than among any similar body of men elsewhere.
The University of France means literally the totality of all instruction in the country, organized by successive stages into a single system, and rigidly controlled from above. The outlines sketched in the law passed in 1802, and supplemented in 1806, were carefully followed by Napoleon in his final step, and neither the theory nor the method need be again discussed. It is significant that it was an imperial decree, and not a statute, which on March seventeenth, 1808, created the organism. There was an endowment of four hundred million francs, and a separate budget, "in order that instruction might not suffer by passing disturbances in imperial finances." In order, also, that its doctrine might not feel the influence of every passing philosophical fashion, the corporation was subordinate to, but separate from, the ministry, with a grand master, chancellor, and treasurer of its own, and thirty members, of whom ten were appointed for life by the Emperor, the rest being annually designated by the grand master. They made rules for the discipline, revised the textbooks, and chose the instructors of all the institutions of learning in all France, except some of the great ecclesiastical seminaries and a few of the technical schools. At the outset it was ordered that all the masters, censors, and teachers in the great intermediate schools or lyceums should be celibates! The professors might marry, but in that case they could not live in the precincts of what was virtually a military barrack.
Liberal culture, so far as given, was provided in the lyceums, and they really form the heart of the university. Under the Empire their instruction was largely in mathematics, with a sprinkling of Latin. It is now greatly broadened and elevated. The pupils of the primary schools felt a quasi-dependence on the Emperor; those of the lyceums were the very children of patronage, for the cheapness of their education, combined with their semi-military uniforms and habits, impressed at every turn on them and their families the immanence of the Empire. They entered by government examinations; all their letters passed through the head master's hands; they were put under a threefold system of espionage culminating in the grand master; the one hundred and fifty scholarships and bourses in each were paid by the state; the punishments were, like those of soldiers, arrest and imprisonment. With the acquisition of military habits the young lycéen could look forward to military promotion, for two hundred and fifty of the most select were sent every year to the military schools, where they lived at the Emperor's expense, expecting professional advancement by the Emperor's patronage. Others of less merit were detached for the civil service, and in that also their careers were at the imperial mercy. They were daily and hourly reminded of Napoleon's greatness, for twenty-four hundred foreigners from the vassal states of the Empire were scattered among these institutions, where they were turned into Frenchmen and docile subjects at the Emperor's expense, while being virtually held as hostages for the good behavior of their parents. These powerful engines did not work in vain. During the comparatively short existence of the Empire their product assumed enormous proportions, and largely modified the temper of society throughout France. The youth educated by priests or tutors were found unable to keep pace with their favored contemporaries from the government schools, and from the first no prophet was needed to foretell the destiny of private institutions and ecclesiastical seminaries. Little by little they made way for or became annexed to the lyceums which one after another were founded wherever needed. The charges of the latter were, and are, very low; and thrifty fathers appreciate the fact. The state is at enormous cost to support them; but public sentiment, preferring indirect to direct taxation, approves of the expenditure, while crafty statesmen, whether royalist, imperialist, or republican, employ them to create citizens of the kind in power at the time.
Throughout the late summer and autumn of 1807 the imperial court was more stately than ever before. The old nobility became assiduous in their attendance, and, as one of the Empress's ladies in waiting is said to have remarked they "received good company." On his return Napoleon had found Josephine's extravagance to be as unbounded as ever; but he could not well complain, because, although for the most part frugal himself, he had latterly encouraged lavishness in his family. Still, it was not agreeable to have dressmakers' bills flung into his carriage when driving in state with his consort, and on one occasion he sent an unprincipled but clever milliner to the prison of Bicêtre for having disobeyed his orders in furnishing her wares to the Empress at exorbitant prices. The person was so indispensable to the court ladies, however, that they crowded her cell, and she was soon released. At St. Cloud, Malmaison, the Tuileries, and Fontainebleau the social vices of courts began to appear; but they were sternly repressed, especially high play. By way of contrast, the city of Paris was at that very moment debauched by a profusion of gambling-hells and houses of prostitution, all licensed at an enormous figure by Fouché and producing great revenues for the secret police. The gorgeous state uniforms of the marshals, the rich and elegant costumes of the ladies, the bespangled and begilt coats of the household, dancing, theatricals, concerts, and excursions—all these elements should have combined to create brilliancy and gaiety in the imperial circle, but they did not.
There was something seriously amiss with the central figure. He was often sullen and morose, often violent and even hysterical. To calm his nervous agitation the court physician ordered warm baths, which he spent hours in taking. Then again he was irregular in his habits, being often somnolent during the daytime, but as frequently breaking his rest at midnight to set the pens of his secretaries scampering to keep pace with the flow of his speech. With old friends he was coarse and severe: even the brutal Vandamme confessed that he trembled before that "devil of a man," while Lannes was the only human being who still dared to use the familiar "thou" in addressing his old comrade. To the face of his generals the Emperor was merely cold: behind their backs he sneered—saying, for instance, of Davout that he might give him never so much renown, he would not be able to carry it; of Ney that he was disposed to ingratitude and turbulence; of Bessières, Oudinot, and Victor that they were mere mediocrities. Among all these dazzling stars he himself moved in simple uniform and in a cocked hat ornamented with his favorite cheap little cockade. It was a well-calculated vanity, for with increasing corpulence plainness of dress called less attention to his waddling gait and growing awkwardness of gesture.