The world's leading conquerors

by Wilson Lloyd Bevan

Bonaparte became the hero of peace as he had been already of war. His popularity, due to his splendid achievements on the battlefield, was now enhanced by the victories of French diplomacy. His rule was firmly established; a new era of harmony and happiness seemed to be opening up under his auspices. His unconstitutional methods of government were forgotten in the brilliancy of his successes. But there were many things that showed his anti-republican animus, and his mania for autocratic rule. Before he set out for the Austrian campaign three Paris papers were suppressed, and censorship for the theaters was reintroduced. His taking command of the army was a step not contemplated by the constitution of which he was the author. While he was absent, it is true that the executive power was placed in the hands of Cambacérès, who proved so efficient that Bonaparte hurried back to Paris, immediately after Marengo, in order to resume the reins of government.

The members of the Tribunate showed their feelings by eulogizing the heroism of Desaix and relegating the First Consul to a second place. But Bonaparte’s return from Italy called forth a great wave of enthusiasm throughout the masses of the nation, that showed him he could go far in repressing the opposition of the republican party, which was strongly intrenched in the Tribunate. On December 24, 1800, the life of the chief executive had been endangered by a plot, and while Bonaparte was driving to the opera there was an explosion by which four people were killed and sixty wounded near his carriage.

Though it was clear that the authors of the outrage were royalist sympathizers, Bonaparte insisted that the Jacobins were its instigators, and took this opportunity of diminishing the ranks of the opposition by an edict of the Council of State, executed without the sanction of the Tribunate and Legislative Body, that deported 130 republicans to distant colonial possessions. Towards other less known opponents harsh measures were used, some of them being executed on charges of conspiracy, trumped up by the police. Even the wives and widows of former revolutionary leaders were imprisoned without trial, and fifty-two citizens notorious for their democratic sentiments were forbidden to reside in Paris or its neighborhood.

In certain parts of the country royalist brigands were at work, wreaking vengeance on individuals who had taken an active part in the revolution or pillaging the houses of those who had bought confiscated property. Taking advantage of the demand for increased security against such outrages, Bonaparte created special tribunals, in which the judges were partly army officers, authorized to deal with all crimes of a nature calculated to disturb the government. With such elastic provisions, it was easy to turn the machinery of these courts against obnoxious republicans. There was no appeal against the decision made by this body except on the ground of jurisdiction. In this way a sort of revolutionary tribunal was erected, which Bonaparte could use for the purpose of wreaking his own personal vengeance.

Opposition in the so-called representative bodies was crippled by various clever devices. For example, after the return from Italy, when the period had come for the retirement by lot of a fixed number of representatives in the Tribunate and the Legislative Body, the Senate, which was loyal because filled by nomination of the second and third Consuls, intervened and designated those of the representative chambers who should continue to hold office. In this way 320 men, who had made themselves obnoxious by their criticism or by their opposition, were got rid of. Yet even after this purification all independence was not destroyed. It was necessary to employ devious methods to secure for Bonaparte, after the peace of Amiens, his appointment as Consul for life. When the matter was proposed by Cambacérès, so often used as the First Consul’s agent rather than as his colleague, the Tribunate intimated that the recompenses for the First Consul’s services should be purely honorary. Even the Senate contented itself with re-electing Bonaparte for another term as First Consul in advance of the expiration of his first term of office.

Upon this Bonaparte wrote to the Senate that he preferred to appeal to the people to know if he should impose upon himself the sacrifice of prolonging his magistracy. Using the more pliable Council of State, Cambacérès extracted from them an edict for a plébiscite to be submitted to the people, who were asked whether the First Consul should be named for life and whether he should be allowed to designate his successor. After these illegal preliminaries, for there was no formal authority for the plébiscite from the representative bodies, the single question of the consulate for life was voted upon on August 2, 1802, with the result that there were 3,568,885 affirmative votes and 8374 negative. The increase in affirmative votes of 500,000 over the plébiscite of two years before, shows how many royalists had rallied to the consular system, in response to the favor shown them by the amnesty lately given to émigrés and to manifest their appreciation of the Concordat by which the First Consul had made his peace with the Church.

It is significant that on the registers almost none of the names of members of the Constituent Assembly or of the Convention appear. The men of 1789 had accepted the Consulate two years before, but they now abstained from voting. Of the negative votes most came from the army. At Ajaccio, Bonaparte’s native city, out of 300 men of the garrison there were 66 noes. Among others, Lafayette voted against the project, stating in a letter to Bonaparte that the 19th Brumaire had saved France, that the dictatorship had healed its ills, but that he did not wish to accept, as the final result of the revolution, an “arbitrary government.”

The next step was to secure the right of appointing a successor. Bonaparte had shown at first an apparent reluctance to accept the suggestion, when it was made as a proposition to be submitted to the people. Now, when it was made a part of a measure entitled “Organic changes in the Constitution of the year VIII” (i.e., 1800), it was passed without any real debate by the Council of State and accepted by the Senate without discussion. At the same time it was arranged that nominations to the Senate were to be made from a list prepared by the First Consul; this practically meant, as the Senate’s membership was still far short of its full quota, that the right assigned to it of accepting or rejecting the successor of the First Consul was only nominal. This situation of dependence made the Senate a useful body to Bonaparte; accordingly its constitutional powers were increased, it being given among other new prerogatives the right of dissolving the Tribunate and the Legislative Body. The Senate’s omnipotence simply concealed the figure of the First Consul, who set his puppets there in motion.

So reconstructed, the whole machine worked marvelously. The Council of State, after showing signs of independence, was made a purely decorative body, its real power being handed over to a private council named by the First Consul. The Tribunate was to be reduced to fifty members after a short interval. All relics of direct popular election disappeared, and to the functions of the First Consul were added the rights of ratifying treaties and remitting judicial sentences.

As a sop to public opinion, the number of electors, who chose the lists of candidates from which were selected the officials in the local and central government, was increased, largely by doing away with the property qualification, a curious feature of the early more radical republican constitutions. There were, it is true, elections, electors, and elected candidates, but all were under the direct or indirect control of the arch manipulator, the First Consul, who crowned the whole system.