The royalists were happy, for they were naïve enough to believe that Napoleon would play the rôle of General Monk in a Bourbon restoration. On the whole, at Paris and in the country, the masses of the people were apathetic; some clubs here and there protested and called upon the citizens to arm themselves in defense of the dead government, while some departmental officials were dismissed, because they questioned the legality of the changes at Paris. But nowhere was there anything like an uprising in behalf of the Directory, which too forcibly recalled the terrible years of revolutionary experience.
IV
THE FIRST CONSUL
The provisional consuls remained in control from November 11 to December 24, 1799. Napoleon presided at the first meeting because his name began with “B,” it having been arranged that the consular power should be exercised in alphabetical order. The Consuls seemed to have no more authority than the Directors they had superseded. Governmental policy was still anonymous. Napoleon never appeared in public life except with his two colleagues, and his influence was exerted altogether in military affairs, in which he exercised the functions that Carnot had held under the Committee of Public Safety. He dressed as a civilian, not as a general. Moreover, the Consuls showed themselves most conciliatory; they published no magniloquent program and behaved as if the lawlessness which had ushered in their rule was something foreign to their own desires. No one talked of a military dictatorship; there was, indeed, a studied moderation in the new government. It is true a few Jacobins were placed under police supervision, but some of the members of the revolutionary convention were used as agents to reassure the good republicans throughout the country. Among the deputies who had been expelled on the famous 19th Brumaire, several made their peace with the government, while the irreconcilables carefully avoided any overt acts in opposing it. The republican tradition was maintained by manifestoes against superstition and the émigrés. An era of good feeling was now ushered in most auspiciously.
Napoleon seemed to be content with the rôle of a Washington, but the moment he saw there was no fear of resistance he took steps to secure the adoption of a constitution fitted to make him the master of France. The machinery for this purpose was near at hand in the two legislative commissions mentioned above. Siéyès was working hard on a model constitution which was to be a marvelous harmony of various democratic principles. According to this scheme the people were to draw up a list of candidates, while an elector chose from the list those who should carry on the administration. The government was placed in the hands of a Council of State, there were additional bodies to act as representatives or as checks to keep the proper balance and to repress personal ambition and demagoguery. There was, besides this, a scheme to revive the Directory with the names of its constituent parts changed.
Bonaparte, who saw no chance for personal rule in either of these proposals, organized a small sub-committee to which he presented a scheme of his own, that never really went before either of the committees in a regular session, but was signed individually by the members under pressure from him. It was carefully planned, but the project that had such an irregular origin was nothing more than a sham constitution. It contained no declaration of rights and had no reference to liberty of the press. But the most shrewdly planned scheme for centralizing the power in the hands of one man was revealed in the so-called electoral provisions, by which the citizens of each district prepared, by voting for one-tenth of their number, a communal list from which all officials were to be selected. This system was carried through several gradations, until a national list was reached, from which all the higher popular representatives were to be chosen. The right of nomination from these various lists was conferred, in vague and ambiguous language, upon the First Consul. After the lists were once drawn up no further change could be made in these provisions.
Bonaparte transferred to himself the right of appointing all the local officials, the members of municipal and departmental councils, and so by a stroke of his pen deprived France of all trace of local government. His plan brought into existence an intensified centralization such as the country had not known, even under the ancient monarchy. All laws had to be proposed by the executive government; among the various representative bodies, the Senate, Council of State, Tribunate, and Legislative bodies, power was so divided that no single one had an effective initiative.
All the real power was placed by the constitution under the control of the First Consul. According to Article 41, the First Consul promulgated the laws; he nominated and recalled at will the members of the Council of State, ministers, ambassadors and chief foreign agents, the officers of the army and navy, the members of the local administration, and the legal solicitors of the government. He named all the civil and communal judges of the Court of Appeal. As to the second and third Consuls, they had only a consultative share in the executive power; to the Senate was given the function of selecting the three Consuls, but the constitution itself designated those who were to be invested with the authority for the first period of ten years. They were Bonaparte, Cambacérès, and Le Brun.
The constitution was presented to the people for a “plébiscite;” that is each citizen was to inscribe opposite his name on a register “yes” or “no.” But this was not done everywhere on the same day; in fact, it lasted several weeks, and so there was time to put pressure on different localities, and also an arrangement was made by which the new government was installed before the plébiscite was completed. Most Frenchmen wanted peace at home and abroad, and as the government was adopting a general policy of reconciliation, they were glad to give it their support, all the more because they had no real constitutional traditions and were sick of emotionalism and rhetoric. The result of the voting was 3,011,007 ayes and only 1562 noes. Among those on the affirmative side were a number of sturdy Jacobins.
In his administration, Bonaparte relied chiefly on the Council of State; he was in close relations with them, because all laws had to be drawn up in this body. He often presided at their meetings and in his remarks to them explained his ideas and his program. He did not hesitate to treat their projects as actual laws, although the constitution provided for a submission to other representative bodies.
One of the first acts of the new régime was the passing of severe press laws. Thirteen papers were allowed in Paris, but they were threatened with suppression if they published articles contrary to the respect due to the social compact, the sovereignty of the people, and the glory of the armies; or if they published attacks on the government or on nations friendly or allied with the Republic, even if the articles in question were taken from the foreign press. This enactment of 27 Nivose, year VIII, may be justly said to have inaugurated the Napoleonic despotism.