“LUCIEN BONAPARTE, PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL OF THE FIVE HUNDRED, 18TH BRUMAIRE, 1799.”
CHAPTER VII
NAPOLEON AS STATESMAN AND LAWGIVER—THE FINANCES—THE INDUSTRIES—THE PUBLIC WORKS
“Now we must rebuild, and, moreover, we must rebuild solidly,” said Napoleon to his brother Lucien the day after the coup d’état which had overthrown the Directory and made him the temporary Dictator of France.
The first necessity was a new constitution. In ten years three constitutions had been framed and adopted, and now the third had, like its predecessors, been declared worthless. At Napoleon’s side was a man who had the draft of a constitution ready in his pocket. It had been promised him that, if he would aid in the 18th Brumaire, this instrument should be adopted. This man was the Abbé Sieyès. He had been a prominent member of the Constituent Assembly, but, curiously enough, his fame there had been founded more on his silence and the air of mystery in which he enveloped himself than on anything he had done. The superstitious veneration which he had won, saved him even during the Terror, and he was accustomed to say laconically, when asked what he did in that period, “I lived.”
It was he who, when Napoleon was still in Egypt, had seen the necessity of a military dictatorship, and had urged the Directory to order Napoleon home to help him reorganize the government—an order which was never received.
Soon after the 18th Brumaire, Sieyès presented his constitution. No more bungling and bizarre instrument for conducting the affairs of a nation was ever devised. Warned by the experience of the past ten years, he abandoned the ideas of 1789, and declared that the power must come from above, the confidence from below. His system of voting took the suffrage from the people; his legislative body was composed of three sections, each of which was practically powerless. All the force of the government was centered in a senate of aged men. The Grand Elector, as the figurehead which crowned the edifice was called, did nothing but live at Versailles and draw a princely salary.
Napoleon saw at once the weak points of the structure, but he saw how it could be re-arranged to serve a dictator. He demanded that the Senate be stripped of its power, and that the Grand Elector be replaced by a First Consul, to whom the executive force should be confided. Sieyès consented, and Napoleon was named First Consul.
The whole machinery of the government was now centered in one man. “The state, it was I,” said Napoleon at St. Helena. The new constitution was founded on principles the very opposite of those for which the Revolution had been made, but it was the only hope there was of dragging France from the slough of anarchy and despair into which she had fallen.
Napoleon undertook the work of reconstruction which awaited him, with courage, energy, and amazing audacity. He was forced to deal at once with all departments of the nation’s life—with the finances, the industries, the émigrés, the Church, public education, the codification of the laws.
The first question was one of money. The country was literally bankrupt in 1799. The treasury was empty, and the government practised all sorts of makeshifts to get money to pay those bills which could not be put off. One day, having to send out a special courier, it was obliged to give him the receipts of the opera to pay his expenses. And, again, it was in such a tight pinch that it was on the point of sending the gold coin in the Cabinet of Medals to the mint to be melted. Loans could not be negotiated; government paper was worthless; stocks were down to the lowest. One of the worst features of the situation was the condition of the taxes. The assessments were as arbitrary as before the Revolution, and they were collected with greater difficulty.
To select an honest, capable, and well known financier was Napoleon’s first act. The choice he made was wise—a Monsieur Gaudin, afterward the Duke de Gaëte, a quiet man, who had the confidence of the people. Under his management credit was restored, the government was able to make the loans necessary, and the department of finance was reorganized in a thorough fashion. Napoleon’s gratitude to Monsieur Gaudin was lasting. Once when asked to change him for a more brilliant man, he said:
“I fully acknowledge all your protégé is worth; but it might easily happen that, with all his intelligence, he would give me nothing but fresh water, whilst with my good Gaudin I can always rely on having good crown pieces.”
The famous Bank of France dates from this time. It was founded under Napoleon’s personal direction, and he never ceased to watch over it jealously.
Most important of all the financial measures was the reorganization of the system of taxation. The First Consul insisted that the taxes must meet the whole expense of the nation, save war, which must pay for itself; and he so ordered affairs that never, after his administration was fairly begun, was a deficit known or a loan made. This was done, too, without the people feeling the burden of taxation. Indeed, that burden was so much lighter under his administration that it had been under the old régime, that peasant and workman, in most cases, probably did not know they were being taxed.
Fiesinger, engraver, after Guérin. Published “29 Vendémiaire, l’an VII.” (1799). It is of this portrait that Taine writes: “Look now at this portrait by Guérin, this lean body, these narrow shoulders in their uniform creased by his brusque motions, this neck enveloped in a high wrinkled cravat, these temples concealed by long hair falling straight over them, nothing to be seen but the face; these hard features made prominent by strong contrasts of light and shade; these cheeks as hollow as the interior angle of the eye; these prominent cheek-bones; this massive protruding chin; these curving, mobile, attentive lips; these great, clear eyes deeply set under the overarching eyebrows; this fixed, incomprehensible look, sharp as a sword; these two straight wrinkles which cross the forehead from the base of the nose like a furrow of continual anger and inflexible will.”
“Before 1789,” says Taine, “out of one hundred francs of net revenue, the workman gave fourteen to his seignor, fourteen to the clergy, fifty-three to the state, and kept only eighteen or nineteen for himself. Since 1800, from one hundred francs income he pays nothing to the seignor or the Church, and he pays to the state, the department, and the commune but twenty-one francs, leaving seventy-nine in his pocket.” And such was the method and care with which this system was administered, that the state received more than twice as much as it had before. The enormous sums which the police and tax-collectors had appropriated now went to the state. Here is but one example of numbers which show how minutely Napoleon guarded this part of the finances. It is found in a letter to Fouché, the chief of police:
“What happens at Bordeaux happens at Turin, at Spa, at Marseilles, etc. The police commissioners derive immense profits from the gaming-tables. My intention is that the towns shall reap the benefit of the tables. I shall employ the two hundred thousand francs paid by the tables of Bordeaux in building a bridge or a canal....”
A great improvement was that the taxes became fixed and regular. Napoleon wished that each man should know what he had to pay out each year. “True civil liberty depends on the safety of property,” he told his Council of State. “There is none in a country where the rate of taxation is changed every year. A man who has three thousand francs income does not know how much he will have to live on the next year. His whole substance may be swallowed up by the taxes.”
Nearly the whole revenue came from indirect taxes applied to a great number of articles. In case of a war which did not pay its way, Napoleon proposed to raise each of these a few centimes. The nation would surely prefer this, to paying it to the Russians or Austrians. When possible the taxes were reduced. “Better leave the money in the hands of the citizens than lock it up in a cellar, as they do in Prussia.”
He was cautious that extra taxes should not come on the very poor, if it could be avoided. A suggestion to charge the vegetable and fish sellers for their stalls came before him. “The public square, like water, ought to be free. It is quite enough that we tax salt and wine.... It would become the city of Paris much more to think of restoring the corn market.”
An important part of his financial policy was the rigid economy which was insisted on in all departments. If a thing was bought, it must be worth what was paid for it. If a man held a position, he must do its duties. Neither purchases nor positions could be made unless reasonable and useful. This was in direct opposition to the old régime, of which waste, idleness, and parasites were the chief characteristics. The saving in expenditure was almost incredible. A trip to Fontainebleau, which cost Louis XVI. four hundred thousand dollars, Napoleon would make, in no less state, for thirty thousand dollars.
The expenses of the civil household, which amounted to five million dollars under the old régime, were now cut down to six hundred thousand dollars, though the elegance was no less.
A master who gave such strict attention to the prosperity of his kingdom would not, of course, overlook its industries. In fact, they were one of Napoleon’s chief cares. His policy was one of protection. He would have France make everything she wanted, and sell to her neighbors, but never buy from them. To stimulate the manufactories, which in 1799 were as nearly bankrupt as the public treasury, he visited the factories himself to learn their needs. He gave liberal orders, and urged, even commanded, his associates to do the same. At one time, anxious to aid the batiste factories of Flanders, he tried to force Josephine to give up cotton goods and to set the fashion in favor of the batistes; but she made such an outcry that he was obliged to abandon the idea. For the same reason he wrote to his sister Eliza: “I beg that you will allow your court to wear nothing but silks and cambrics, and that you will exclude all cottons and muslins, in order to favor French industry.”
Frequently he would take goods on consignment, to help a struggling factory. Rather than allow a manufactory to be idle, he would advance a large sum of money, and a quantity of its products would be put under government control. After the battle of Eylau, Napoleon sent one million six hundred thousand francs to Paris, to be used in this way.
To introduce cotton-making into the country was one of his chief industrial ambitions. At the beginning of the century it was printed in all the factories of France, but nothing more. He proposed to the Council of State to prohibit the importation of cotton thread and the woven goods. There was a strong opposition, but he carried his point.
“As a result,” said Napoleon to Las Cases complacently, “we possess the three branches, to the immense advantage of our population and to the detriment and sorrow of the English; which proves that, in administration as in war, one must exercise character.... I occupied myself no less in encouraging silks. As Emperor, and King of Italy, I counted one hundred and twenty millions of income from the silk harvest.”
In a similar way he encouraged agriculture; especially was he anxious that France should raise all her own articles of diet. He had Berthollet look into maple and turnip sugar, and he did at last succeed in persuading the people to use beet sugar; though he never convinced them that Swiss tea equalled Chinese, or that chicory was as good as coffee.
One of the best portraits of the First Consul—the truest of all, perhaps. Unlike Bouillon, Van Brée, Géhotte, Isabey, Boilly painted him in his real aspect, without any striving after the ideal. This is really the determined little Corsican, tormented by ambition and a thirst for conquest. This fine portrait has been admirably etched by Duplessis-Bertaux.—A. D.
The works he insisted should be carried on in regard to roads and public buildings were of great importance. There was need that something be done.
“It is impossible to conceive, if one had not been a witness of it before and after the 18th Brumaire [said the chancellor Pasquier], of the widespread ruin wrought by the Revolution.... There were hardly two or three main roads [in France] in a fit condition for traffic; not a single one was there, perhaps, wherein was not found some obstacle that could not be surmounted without peril. With regard to the ways of internal communication, they had been indefinitely suspended. The navigation of rivers and canals was no longer feasible.
“In all directions, public buildings, and those monuments which represent the splendor of the state, were falling into decay. It must fain be admitted that if the work of destruction had been prodigious, that of restoration was no less so. Everything was taken hold of at one and the same time, and everything progressed with a like rapidity. Not only was it resolved to restore all that required restoring in various parts of the country, in all parts of the public service, but new, grand, beautiful and useful works were decided upon, and many were brought to a happy termination. This certainly constitutes one of the most brilliant sides of the consular and imperial régime.”
In Paris alone vast improvements were made. Napoleon began the Rue de Rivoli, built the wing connecting the Tuileries and the Louvre, erected the triumphal arch of the Carrousel, the Arc de Triomphe at the head of the Champs Elysées, the Column Vendôme, the Madeleine, began the Bourse, built the Pont d’Austerlitz, and ordered, commenced, or finished, a number of minor works of great importance to the city. The markets interested him particularly. “Give all possible care to the construction of the markets and to their healthfulness, and to the beauty of the Halle-aux-blés and of the Halle-aux-vins. The people, too, must have their Louvre.”
The works undertaken outside of Paris in France, and in the countries under her rule in the time that Napoleon was in power were of a variety and extent which would be incredible, if every traveller in Europe did not have the evidence of them still before his eyes. The mere enumeration of these works and of the industrial achievements of Napoleon, made by Las Cases, reads like a fairy story. “You wish to know the treasures of Napoleon? They are immense, it is true, but they are all exposed to light. They are the noble harbors of Antwerp and Flushing, which are capable of containing the largest fleets, and of protecting them against the ice from the sea; the hydraulic works at Dunkirk, Havre, and Nice; the immense harbor of Cherbourg; the maritime works at Venice; the beautiful roads from Antwerp to Amsterdam, from Mayence to Metz, from Bordeaux to Bayonne; the passes of the Simplon, of Mont Cenis, of Mount Genèvre, of the Corniche, which open a communication through the Alps in four different directions, and which exceed in grandeur, in boldness, and in skill of execution, all the works of the Romans (in that alone you will find eight hundred millions); the roads from the Pyrenees to the Alps, from Parma to Spezia, from Savona to Piedmont; the bridges of Jena, Austerlitz, Des Arts, Sèvres, Tours, Roanne, Lyons, Turin; of the Isère, of the Durance, of Bordeaux, of Rouen, etc.; the canal which connects the Rhine with the Rhone by the Doubs, and thus unites the North Sea with the Mediterranean; the canal which joins the Scheldt with the Somme, and thus joins Paris and Amsterdam; the canal which unites the Rance to the Vilaine; the canal of Arles; that of Pavia, and the canal of the Rhine; the draining of the marshes of Bourgoin, of the Cotentin, of Rochefort; the rebuilding of the greater part of the churches destroyed by the Revolution; the building of others: the institution of numerous establishments of industry for the suppression of mendicity; the gallery at the Louvre; the construction of public warehouses, of the Bank, of the canal of the Ourcq; the distribution of water in the city of Paris; the numerous drains, the quays, the embellishments, and the monuments of that large capital; the works for the embellishment of Rome; the reëstablishment of the manufactures of Lyons; the creation of many hundreds of manufactories of cotton, for spinning and for weaving, which employ several millions of workmen; funds accumulated to establish upwards of four hundred manufactories of sugar from beet-root, for the consumption of part of France, and which would have furnished sugar at the same price as the West Indies, if they had continued to receive encouragement for only four years longer; the substitution of woad for indigo, which would have been at last brought to a state of perfection in France, and obtained as good and as cheap as the indigo from the colonies; numerous manufactories for all kinds of objects of art, etc.; fifty millions expended in repairing and beautifying the palaces belonging to the Crown; sixty millions in furniture for the palaces belonging to the Crown in France, in Holland, at Turin, and at Rome; sixty millions of diamonds for the Crown, all purchased with Napoleon’s money; the Regent (the only diamond that was left belonging to the former diamonds of the Crown) withdrawn from the hands of the Jews at Berlin, in whose hands it had been left as a pledge for three millions. The Napoleon Museum, valued at upwards of four hundred millions, filled with objects legitimately acquired, either by moneys or by treaties of peace known to the whole world, by virtue of which the chefs-d’oeuvres, it contains were given in lieu of territory or of contributions. Several millions amassed to be applied to the encouragement of agriculture, which is the paramount consideration for the interest of France; the introduction into France of merino sheep, etc. These form a treasure of several thousand millions which will endure for ages.”
The following inscription, written in French, by Dutertre, the official painter of the principal personages in the Egyptian expedition, appears on the reverse side of this medallion, which frames one of the most precious gems of Napoleonic iconography. “I, Dutertre, made this drawing of the general-in-chief from nature, on board the vessel ‘L’Orient,’ during the crossing of the expedition to Egypt in the year VII. (sic) of the Republic.” A short time ago the drawing came into the possession of the Versailles Museum.
Napoleon himself looked on these achievements as his most enduring monument. “The allied powers cannot take from me hereafter,” he told O’Meara, “the great public works I have executed, the roads which I made over the Alps, and the seas which I have united. They cannot place their feet to improve where mine have not been before. They cannot take from me the code of laws which I formed, and which will go down to posterity.”
Engraved by Elizabeth G. Berhan, after Guérin.
CHAPTER VIII
RETURN OF THE EMIGRES—THE CONCORDAT—LEGION OF HONOR—CODE NAPOLEON
But there were wounds in the French nation more profound than those caused by lack of credit, by neglect and corruption. The body which in 1789 made up France had, in the last ten years, been violently and horribly wrenched asunder. One hundred and fifty thousand of the richest, most cultivated, and most capable of the population had been stripped of wealth and position, and had emigrated to foreign lands.
Napoleon saw that if the émigrés could be reconciled, he at once converted a powerful enemy into a zealous friend. In spite of the opposition of those who had made the Revolution and gained their positions through it, he accorded an amnesty to the émigrés, which included the whole one hundred and fifty thousand, with the exception of about one thousand, and this number, it was arranged, should be reduced to five hundred in the course of a year. More, he provided for their wants. Most of the smaller properties confiscated by the Revolution had been sold, and Napoleon insisted that those who had bought them from the state should be assured of their tenure; but in case a property had not been disposed of, he returned it to the family, though rarely in full. In case of forest lands, not over three hundred and seventy-five acres were given back. Gifts and positions were given to many émigrés, so that the majority were able to live in ease.
A valuable result of this policy of reconciliation was the amount of talent, experience, and culture which he gained for the government. France had been run for ten years by country lawyers, doctors, and pamphleteers, who, though they boasted civic virtue and eloquence, and though they knew their Plutarch and Rousseau by heart, had no practical sense, and little or no experience. The return of the émigrés gave France a body of trained diplomats, judges, and thinkers, many of whom were promptly admitted to the government.
More serious than the amputation of the aristocracy had been that of the Church. The Revolution had torn it from the nation, had confiscated its property, turned its cathedrals into barracks, its convents and seminaries into town halls and prisons, sold its lands, closed its schools and hospitals. It had demanded an oath of the clergy which had divided the body, and caused thousands to emigrate. Not content with this, it had tried to supplant the old religion, first with a worship of the Goddess of Reason, afterwards with one of the Supreme Being.
But the people still loved the Catholic Church. The mass of them kept their crucifixes in their houses, told their beads, observed fast days. No matter how severe a penalty was attached to the observance of Sunday instead of the day which had replaced it, called the “decade,” at heart the people remembered it. “We rest on the decade,” said a workman once, “but we change our shirts on Sunday.”
Napoleon understood the popular heart, and he proposed the reëstablishment of the Catholic Church. The Revolutionists, even his warmest friends among the generals, opposed it. Infidelity was a cardinal point in the creed of the majority of the new régime. They not only rejected the Church, they ridiculed it. Rather than restore Catholicism, they advised Protestantism. “But,” declared Napoleon, “France is not Protestant; she is Catholic.”
In the Council of State, where the question was argued, he said: “My policy is to govern men as the greatest number wish to be governed.... I carried on the war of Vendée by becoming a Catholic; I established myself in Egypt by becoming a Mussulman; I won over the priests in Italy by becoming Ultramontane. If I governed Jews I should reëstablish the temple of Solomon.... It is thus, I think, that the sovereignty of the people should be understood.”
Evidently this was a very different way of understanding that famous doctrine from that which had been in vogue, which consisted in forcing the people to accept what each idealist thought was best, without consulting their prejudices or feelings. In spite of opposition, Napoleon’s will prevailed, and in the spring of 1802 the Concordat was signed. This treaty between the Pope and France is still in force in France. It makes the Catholic Church the state church, allows the government to name the bishops, compels it to pay the salaries of the clergy, and to furnish cathedrals and churches for public worship, which, however, remain national property. The Concordat provided for the absolution of the priests who had married in the Revolution, restored Sunday, and made legal holidays of certain fête days. This arrangement was not made at the price of intolerance towards other bodies. The French government protects and contributes towards the support of all religions within its bounds, Catholic, Protestant, Jew, or Mohammedan. The Concordat was ridiculed by many in the government and army, but undoubtedly it was one of the most statesmanlike measures carried out by Napoleon.
By Gérard. The original is at Versailles.
“The joy of the overwhelming majority of France silenced even the boldest malcontents,” says Pasquier; “it became evident that Napoleon, better than those who surrounded him, had seen into the depths of the nation’s heart.”
It is certain that in reëstablishing the Church Napoleon did not yield to any religious prejudice, although the Catholic Church was the one he preferred. It was purely a question of policy. In arranging the Concordat he might have secured more liberal measures—measures in which he believed—but he refused them.
“Do you wish me to manufacture a religion of caprice for my own special use, a religion that would be nobody’s? I do not so understand matters. What I want is the old Catholic religion, the only one which is imbedded in every heart, and from which it has never been torn. This religion alone can conciliate hearts in my favor; it alone can smooth away all obstacles.”
In discussing the subject at St. Helena he said to Las Cases:
“When I came to the head of affairs, I had already formed certain ideas on the great principles which hold society together. I had weighed all the importance of religion; I was persuaded of it, and I had resolved to reëstablish it. You would scarcely believe in the difficulties that I had to restore Catholicism. I would have been followed much more willingly if I had unfurled the banner of Protestantism.... It is sure that in the disorder to which I succeeded, in the ruins where I found myself, I could choose between Catholicism and Protestantism. And it is true that at that moment the disposition was in favor of the latter. But outside the fact that I really clung to the religion in which I had been born, I had the highest motives to decide me. By proclaiming Protestantism, what would I have obtained? I should have created in France two great parties about equal, when I wished there should be longer but one. I should have excited the fury of religious quarrels, when the enlightenment of the age and my desire was to make them disappear altogether. These two parties in tearing each other to pieces would have annihilated France and rendered her the slave of Europe, when I was ambitious of making her its mistress. With Catholicism I arrived much more surely at my great results. Within, at home, the great number would absorb the small, and I promised myself to treat with the latter so liberally that it would soon have no motive for knowing the difference.
“Without, Catholicism saved me the Pope; and with my influences and our forces in Italy I did not despair sooner or later, by one way or another, of finishing by ruling the Pope myself.”
When the Church fell in France, the whole system of education went down with her. The Revolutionary governments tried to remedy the condition, but beyond many plans and speeches little had been done. Napoleon allowed the religious bodies to reopen their schools, and thus primary instruction was soon provided again; and he founded a number of secondary and special schools. The greatest of his educational undertakings was the organization of the University. This institution was centralized in the head of the state as completely as every other Napoleonic institution. It exists to-day but little changed—a most efficient body, in spite of its rigid state control. This university did nothing for woman.
“I do not think we need trouble ourselves with any plan of instruction for young females,” Napoleon told the Council. “They cannot be brought up better than by their mothers. Public education is not suitable for them, because they are never called upon to act in public. Manners are all in all to them, and marriage is all they look to. In times past the monastic life was open to women; they espoused God, and, though society gained little by that alliance, the parents gained by pocketing the dowry.”
It was with the education of the daughters of soldiers, civil functionaries, and members of the Legion of Honor, who had died and left their children unprovided for, that he concerned himself, establishing schools of which the well known one at St. Denis is a model. The rules were prepared by Napoleon himself, who insisted that the girls should be taught all kinds of housework and needlework—everything, in fact, which would make them good housekeepers and honest women.
The military schools were also reorganized at this time. Remembering his own experience at the Ecole Militaire, Napoleon arranged that the severest economy should be practised in them, and that the pupils should learn to do everything for themselves. They even cleaned, bedded, and shod their own horses.
The destruction of the old system of privileges and honors left the government without any means of rewarding those who rendered it a service. Napoleon presented a law for a Legion of Honor, under control of the state, which should admit to its membership only those who had done something of use to the public. The service might be military, commercial, artistic, humanitarian; no limit was put on its nature; anything which helped France in any way was to be rewarded by membership in the proposed order. In fact, it was the most democratic distinction possible, since the same reward was given for all classes of service and to all classes of people.
Now the Revolutionary spirit spurned all distinction; and as free discussion was allowed on the law, a severe arraignment of it was made. Nevertheless, it passed. It immediately became a power in the hands of the First Consul, and such it has remained until to-day in the government. Though it has been frequently abused, and never, perhaps, more flagrantly than by the present Republic, unquestionably the French “red button” is a decoration of which to be proud.
The greatest civil achievement of Napoleon was the codification of the laws. Up to the Revolution, the laws of France had been in a misty, incoherent condition, feudal in their spirit, and by no means uniform in their application. The Constituent Assembly had ordered them revised, but the work had only been begun. Napoleon believed justly that the greatest benefit he could render France would be to give her a complete and systematic code. He organized the force for this gigantic task, and pushed revision with unflagging energy.
1800.
Engraved in London, by C. Turner, after a painting by J. Masquerier.
His part in the work was interesting and important. After the laws had been well digested and arranged in preliminary bodies, they were submitted to the Council of State. It was in the discussion before this body that Napoleon took part. That a man of thirty-one, brought up as a soldier, and having no legal training, could follow the discussions of such a learned and serious body as Napoleon’s Council of State always was, seems incredible. In fact, he prepared for each session as thoroughly as the law-makers themselves. His habit was to talk over, beforehand generally with Cambacérès and Portalis, two legislators of great learning and clearness of judgment, all the matters which were to come up.
“He examined each question by itself,” says Roederer, “inquiring into all the authorities, times, experiences; demanding to know how it had been under ancient jurisprudence, under Louis XIV., or Frederick the Great. When a bill was presented to the First Consul, he rarely failed to ask these questions: Is this bill complete? Does it cover every case? Why have you not thought of this? Is that necessary? Is it right or useful? What is done nowadays and elsewhere?”
At night, after he had gone to bed, he would read or have read to him authorities on the subject. Such was his capacity for grasping any idea, that he would come to the Council with a perfectly clear notion of the subject to be treated, and a good idea of its historical development. Thus he could follow the most erudite and philosophical arguments, and could take part in them. He stripped them at once of all conventional phrases and learned terms, and stated clearly what they meant. He had no use for anything but the plain meaning. By thus going directly to the practical sense of a thing, he frequently cleared up the ideas of the revisers themselves.
In framing the laws, he took care that they should be worded so that everybody could understand them. Thus, when a law relating to liquors was being prepared, he urged that wholesale and retail should be defined in such a way that they would be definite ideas to the people. “Pot and pint must be inserted,” he said. “There is no objection to those words. An excise act isn’t an epic poem.”
Napoleon insisted on the greatest freedom of speech in the discussions on the laws, just as he did on “going straight to the point and not wasting time on idle talk.” This clearheadedness, energy, and grasp of subject, exercised over a body of really remarkable men, developed the Council until its discussions became famous throughout Europe. One of its wisest members, Chancellor Pasquier, says of Napoleon’s direction that “it was of such a nature as to enlarge the sphere of one’s ideas, and to give one’s faculties all the development of which they were capable. The highest legislative, administrative, and sometimes even political matters were taken up in it (the Council). Did we not see, for two consecutive winters, the sons of foreign sovereigns come and complete their education in its midst?”
It was the genius of the head of the state, however, which was the most impressive feature of the Council of State. De Molleville, a former minister of Louis XVI., said once to Las Cases:
“It must be admitted that your Bonaparte, your Napoleon, was a very extraordinary man. We were far from understanding him on the other side of the water. We could not refuse the evidence of his victories and his invasions, it is true; but Genseric, Attila, Alaric had done as much; so he made more of an impression of terror on me than of admiration. But when I came here and followed the discussions on the civil code, from that moment I had nothing but profound veneration for him. But where in the world had he learned all that? And then every day I discovered something new in him. Ah, sir, what a man you had there! Truly, he was a prodigy.”
The modern reader who looks at France and sees how her University, her special schools, her hospitals, her great honorary legion, her treaty with the Catholic Church, her code of laws, her Bank—the vital elements of her life, in short—are as they came from Napoleon’s brain, must ask, with De Molleville, How did he do it—he a foreigner, born in a half-civilized island, reared in a military school, without diplomatic or legal training, without the prestige of name or wealth? How could he make a nation? How could he be other than the barbaric conqueror the English and the émigrés first thought him.
Those who look at Napoleon’s achievements, and are either dazzled or horrified by them, generally consider his power superhuman. They call it divine or diabolic, according to the feeling he inspires in them; but, in reality, the qualities he showed in his career as a statesman and lawgiver are very human ones. His stout grasp on subjects; his genius for hard work; his power of seeing everything that should be done, and doing it himself; his unparalleled audacity, explain his civil achievements.
The comprehension he had of questions of government was really the result of serious thinking. He had reflected from his first days at Brienne; and the active interest he had taken in the Revolution of 1789 had made him familiar with many social and political questions. His career in Italy, which was almost as much a diplomatic as a military career, had furnished him an experience upon which he had founded many notions. In his dreams of becoming an Oriental lawgiver he had planned a system of government of which he was to be the centre. Thus, before the 18th Brumaire made him the Dictator of France, he had his ideas of centralized government all formed, just as, before he crossed the Great Saint Bernard, he had fought, over and over, the battle of Marengo, with black- and red-headed pins stuck into a great map of Italy spread out on his study floor.
BONAPARTE, 1ER CONSUL DE LA RÉP. FRANÇ.
NAPOLEON WHILE FIRST CONSUL OF FRANCE.
Engraved in 1801 by Audouin, after a design by Bouillon.
His habit of attending to everything himself explains much of his success. No detail was too small for him, no task too menial. If a thing needed attention, no matter whose business it was, he looked after it. Reading letters once before Madame Junot, she said to him that such work must be tiresome, and advised him to give it to a secretary.
“Later, perhaps,” he said, “Now it is impossible; I must answer for all. It is not at the beginning of a return to order that I can afford to ignore a need, a demand.”
He carried out this policy literally. When he went on a journey, he looked personally after every road, bridge, public building, he passed, and his letters teemed with orders about repairs here, restorations there. He looked after individuals in the same way; ordered a pension to this one, a position to that one, even dictating how the gift should be made known so as to offend the least possible the pride of the recipient.
When it came to foreign policy, he told his diplomats how they should look, whether it should be grave or gay, whether they should discuss the opera or the political situation.
The cost of the soldiers’ shoes, the kind of box Josephine took at the opera, the style of architecture for the Madeleine, the amount of stock left on hand in the silk factories, the wording of the laws, all was his business.
He thought of the flowers to be scattered daily on the tomb of General Régnier, suggested the idea of a battle hymn to Rouget de l’Isle, told the artists what expression to give him in their portraits, what accessories to use in the battle pieces, ordered everything, verified everything. “Beside him,” said those who looked on in amazement, “the most punctilious clerk would have been a bungler.”
Without an extraordinary capacity for work, no man could have done this. Napoleon would work until eleven o’clock in the evening, and be up again at three in the morning. Frequently he slept but an hour, and came back as fresh as ever. No secretary could keep up to him, and his ministers sometimes went to sleep in the Council, worn out with the length of the session. “Come, citizen ministers,” he would cry, “we must earn the money the French nation gives us.” The ministers rarely went home from the meetings that they did not find a half-dozen letters from him on their tables to be answered, and the answer must be a clear, exact, exhaustive document. “Get your information so that when you do answer me, there shall be no ‘buts,’ no ‘ifs,’ and no ‘becauses,’” was the rule Napoleon laid down to his correspondents.
He had audacity. He dared do what he would. He had no conventional notions to tie him, no master to dictate to him. The Revolution had swept out of his way the accumulated experience of centuries—all the habits, the prejudices, the ways of doing things. He commenced nearer the bottom than any man in the history of the civilized world had ever done, worked with imperial self-confidence, with a conviction that he “was not like other men;” that the moral laws, the creeds, the conventions, which applied to them, were not for him. He might listen to others, but in the end he dared do as he would.
CHAPTER IX
OPPOSITION TO THE CENTRALIZATION OF THE GOVERNMENT—GENERAL PROSPERITY
The centralization of France in Napoleon’s hands was not to be allowed to go on without interference. Jacobinism, republicanism, royalism, were deeply-rooted sentiments, and it was not long before they began to struggle for expression.
Early in the Consulate, plots of many descriptions were unearthed. The most serious before 1803 was that known as the “Opera Plot,” or “Plot of the 3d Nivôse” (December 24, 1800), when a bomb was placed in the street, to be exploded as the First Consul’s carriage passed. By an accident he was saved, and, in spite of the shock, went on to the opera.
Madame Junot, who was there, gives a graphic description of the way the news was received by the house:
“The first thirty measures of the oratorio were scarcely played, when a strong explosion like a cannon was heard.
“‘What does that mean?’ exclaimed Junot with emotion. He opened the door of the loge and looked into the corridor.... ‘It is strange; how can they be firing cannon at this hour?’ And then ‘I should have known it. Give me my hat; I am going to find out what it is....’
“At this moment the loge of the First Consul opened, and he himself appeared with Generals Lannes, Lauriston, Berthier, and Duroc. Smiling, he saluted the immense crowd, which mingled cries like those of love with its applause. Madame Bonaparte followed him in a few seconds....
“Junot was going to enter the loge to see for himself the serene air of the First Consul that I had just remarked, when Duroc came up to us with troubled face.
“‘The First Consul has just escaped death,’ he said quickly to Junot. ‘Go down and see him; he wants to talk to you.’ ... But a dull sound commenced to spread from parterre to orchestra, from orchestra to amphitheatre, and thence to the loges.
“‘The First Consul has just been attacked in the Rue Saint Nicaise,’ it was whispered. Soon the truth was circulated in the salle; at the same instant, and as by an electric shock, one and the same acclamation arose, one and the same look enveloped Napoleon, as if in a protecting love.
“What agitation preceded the explosion of national anger which was represented in that first quarter of an hour, by that crowd whose fury for so black an attack could not be expressed by words! Women sobbed aloud, men shivered with indignation. Whatever the banner they followed, they were united heart and arm in this case to show that differences of opinion did not bring with them differences in understanding honor.”
It was such attempts, and suspicion of like ones, that led to the extension of the police service. One of the ablest and craftiest men of the Revolution became Napoleon’s head of police in the Consulate, Fouché. A consummate actor and skilful flatterer, hampered by no conscience other than the duty of keeping in place, he acted a curious and entertaining part. Detective work was for him a game which he played with intense relish. He was a veritable amateur of plots, and never gayer than when tracing them.
Napoleon admired Fouché, but he did not trust him, and, to offset him, formed a private police to spy on his work. He never succeeded in finding anyone sufficiently fine to match the chief, who several times was malicious enough to contrive plots himself, to excite and mislead the private agents.
The system of espionage went so far that letters were regularly opened. It was commonly said that those who did not want their letters read, did not send them by post; and though it was hardly necessary, as in the Revolution, to send them in pies, in coat-linings, or hat-crowns, yet care and prudence had to be exercised in handling all political letters.
It was difficult to get officials for the post-office who could be relied on to intercept the proper letters; and in 1802, the Postmaster-General, Monsieur Bernard, the father of the beautiful Madame Récamier, was found to be concealing an active royalist correspondence, and to be permitting the circulation of a quantity of seditious pamphlets. His arrest and imprisonment made a great commotion in his daughter’s circle, which was one of social and intellectual importance. Through the intercessions of Bernadotte, Monsieur Bernard was pardoned by Napoleon. The cabinet noir, as the department of the post-office which did this work was called, was in existence when Napoleon came to the Consulate, and he rather restricted than increased its operations. It has never been entirely given up, as many an inoffensive foreigner in France can testify.
The theatre and press were also subjected to a strict censorship. In 1800 the number of newspapers in Paris was reduced to twelve; and in three years there were but eight left, with a total subscription list of eighteen thousand six hundred and thirty. Napoleon’s contempt for journalists and editors equalled that he had for lawyers, whom he called a “heap of babblers and revolutionists.” Neither class could, in his judgment, be allowed to go free.