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 The Consuls seemed to have no more authority than the Directors they had superseded.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.
Another law presented and accepted was a measure which destroyed all communal and local rights, and turned over the whole administration in town and country to prefects and sub-prefects, appointed by, and responsible to, the central government. Mayors, acting mayors, and town and county councilmen were all appointed by either the First Consul or his appointees, the prefects.
The body known as the Tribunate, which discussed the laws and gave its opinion upon them, and the Legislative Chamber, which voted upon them without discussion, adopted this measure, the first with a strong minority against it, who voiced, by vigorous speeches, their protests against the suppression of all liberty. But the press was muzzled, and there was general satisfaction because of the admirable selection made by Napoleon for the subordinate officials. The new administration was simple and effective, and had not yet shown the possibilities of tyranny it contained.
As to the First Consul, though he took up his residence in the Tuileries, there was no consular court; republican etiquette was observed, and the title of citizen was still retained. When the news of Washington’s death reached Paris, mourning was ordered in the name of the principles of liberty and equality. But the new tendencies were shown in the favor extended by the First Consul to men of strong monarchical sympathies. Napoleon, however, was soon occupied with more momentous questions than the discovery of fresh means to paralyze republican institutions in France.
After the withdrawal of Russia from the anti-French coalition,—a step which was due to the victories of Masséna,—Austria, England, and some of the lesser states of Italy and Germany, kept up the conflict. Bonaparte had no desire to see the war terminated, but he so far bowed to public sentiment as to write letters to the King of England and to Francis II, the Emperor, suggesting a cessation of hostilities. England refused to make peace except on the condition that the Bourbons should be restored, and Austria declined to take any action without the consent of her ally. The publication of the correspondence appealed to French patriotism, and the answer of the nation was a vote of 200,000 conscripts to carry on the war.
For the purpose of invading France, Austria had two armies in the field, each of 120,000 men. The French forces under Moreau and Masséna were told off to keep the Austrians in check in Germany and along the Italian Riviera; Bonaparte himself planned with a third army to drive them out of Italy, in a second campaign which was to be the replica of his first in Italy. Both Moreau and Masséna showed great capacity in carrying out the strategical plans assigned to them. Bonaparte gathered together an army of 60,000 and suddenly crossed the St. Bernard pass by a march in which the French engineers showed remarkable skill in overcoming the natural difficulties of the way. The commander-in-chief made the passage on the back of a mule, as many tourists still do, led by a peasant-guide of the neighborhood. On the top, the soldiers were hospitably received at the famous monastery. The chief problem was to get the artillery over, and this was done by dismounting the guns and fastening them within hollowed-out trunks of trees. They were then dragged along the precipitous path by relays of 100 men.
While the Austrian general, Melas, was looking for the French along the Riviera road, Bonaparte was making his entrance into Milan, where the stupid excesses of recent Austrian rule had made the population forget the more intelligent or subtle tyranny of the French conqueror. Instead of rescuing Masséna, who was suffering the extremities of a siege at Genoa, he preferred to leave him to his fate and to risk deciding the campaign by a pitched battle with an enemy much stronger in numbers than himself. These hazards were plainly seen in the engagement that followed at Marengo on June 14, 1800. Three times the French were forced to withdraw, and Melas was sending off couriers to announce his victory, when Desaix, who had been sent, the day before, to Novi to prevent a turning movement on the part of the Austrians, heard the cannonading and came to the aid of his leader. A fresh charge was made, and the ground that had been lost was regained. The first to fall was Desaix, the man who had saved the day. The effect of the victory was instantaneous, for the day afterward, Melas signed an armistice, by which warfare was to be stopped for five months, in which time the Austrians were to evacuate the whole of Italy as far as the Mincio.
When the war was resumed later, French successes continued, until finally the whole of the Italian peninsula was brought once more under French control. After Marengo, the decisive battle of the campaign, which brought Austria to sue for peace, was Moreau’s victory at Hohenlinden, the 2d of December, 1800, on which occasion the Austrians lost in killed and wounded 20,000 men. The victory brought forth from Bonaparte the public acknowledgment, made before the legislative body, that Hohenlinden was one of the finest achievements in history, and he also wrote to Moreau saying that he, Bonaparte himself, had been outdone. He afterwards criticised Moreau, and ascribed his victory to mere chance, saying that his opponent, the archduke, had shown greater strategical ability than the commander of the French army.
As the result of these various operations, came the peace of Lunéville, February, 1801, which marked the complete humiliation of Austria. In its main lines it followed the stipulations of Campo Formio, but it added the demand that the Dutch and Swiss republics should be recognized as states under French protection. Moreover, the Pope was allowed to retain some of his territory, and the King of Naples also benefited by Napoleon’s moderation towards monarchical governments.
England, now left alone as the sole enemy of France, had been enabled, by her control of the sea, to make a clean sweep of the French colonies. She acquired Malta, and forced the French to abandon Egypt. But English supremacy at sea was resented on the Continent, a league of neutrals was formed, and the Russian government showed distinct signs of drawing towards France, after the refusal of England to restore Malta to its ancient owners, the Knights of St. John. Portugal was detached from England, and Spain was brought into such friendly relations that she ceded to France the territory of Louisiana, which had been in her possession since 1763.
England’s isolation was unpopular at home because the enormous accumulation of war debts was dreaded, and the threats of Napoleon to invade the country were taken seriously, after he had established an armed camp at Boulogne. William Pitt, the soul of resistance to France, had left the government on account of differences over the Irish question. His successor, Addington, was not averse to coming to an agreement. After the signing of certain preliminaries in London the terms of peace, as the result of a five months’ discussion between Lord Cornwallis and Joseph Bonaparte at Amiens, took the form of a treaty named from that place on March 25, 1802, between France, Spain, and the Dutch republic on one side, and England on the other. Most of the colonial conquests made by England were restored to their owners. Egypt was returned to Turkey, and England agreed to return Malta to the Knights of St. John and at the same time undertook not to interfere in the internal affairs of Holland, Germany, Switzerland, and the Italian republics.
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.
From this period begins the departure from the external signs of republican simplicity. The First Consul was no longer Citizen Bonaparte, but Napoleon Bonaparte; the anniversary of his birth was celebrated by a ministerial decree. Like a sovereign the new ruler had his civil list, and in his residence, the Tuileries, he began to display the ostentatious character of court life. Military dress was abandoned, and it began to be the fashion again to wear one’s hair in a cue and to use powder, although the First Consul still appeared with his own hair dressed in the revolutionary manner. Josephine took much interest in reorganizing her household after the model of the old régime; in the exercise of her taste she was allowed to go far, but it was remarked that women had no political influence in the new court.
Judged by contemporary opinion, one of the plainest steps taken by Bonaparte towards a monarchy was the inauguration of the Legion of Honor, having at its head the First Consul, assisted by a great council, subordinate to which there were 1500 posts, each with 27 officers of various degrees, and 350 legionaries. This institution, which was endowed by national funds, was composed of members distinguished by their services to the Republic either as soldiers or as civilians. They pledged themselves among other things to oppose any enterprise tending to re-establish the feudal system, or proposing to reproduce the titles and the characteristics by which feudalism was marked, and to do everything in their power to maintain liberty and equality.
But these republican sentiments did not protect the measure from criticism. It was opposed both in the Council of State and in the Tribunate, where there was only a majority of sixteen in its favor when it was finally passed. Even the Legislative Body made difficulties, as is seen in their recorded vote of 170 for and 110 against. But it was not only from such shadows of representative government as were still permitted to linger on, that opposition came to Bonaparte’s personal rule. Moreau, the hero of the Hohenlinden campaign, was known to have sturdy republican sentiments. Moreover, there was Bernadotte, the commander of the eastern army, who was openly discontented and was supposed by many to have instigated a plot against the First Consul at Rennes. There were, indeed, a series of military plots at this time, but the knowledge of their existence was suppressed by the government, whose object it was to impress on public opinion at home and abroad the popularity of the consular system.
The Legislative Body and the Tribunate busied themselves with subordinate affairs such as laws governing the practice of medicine and the organization of a notary public system. In the Senate the hand of the First Consul was seen in the liberal financial provisions for certain senators, who were allowed a suitable house and 25,000 francs annual income. Of course the selection of the beneficiaries of these favors was left to the First Consul. There was no reluctance in voting money and troops for the defense of the state, for by this time Bonaparte’s personal policy and the national interests were closely identified.
This feeling of loyalty was all the more intensified when, after war broke out again with England, the British government took a hand in encouraging the schemes of various royalist groups. Among these were some irreconcilable survivors of the Vendéan insurrection, led by Cadoudal, who planned to remove Bonaparte by assassination, after which it was assumed that a Bourbon restoration would follow as a matter of course. Pichegru, an old revolutionary general, was an accomplice, and the conspirators made an effort to secure the coöperation of Moreau, but failed. Learning through his spies of this invitation, and glad of a plea to rid himself of a rival, Bonaparte had Moreau arrested, though he knew his innocence, and instigated a bitter press campaign against him. Police agents encouraged the plot, hoping that some of the Bourbon princes, certain of its success, might cross from England to France, in expectation of Bonaparte’s death.
In this atmosphere of plots, Bonaparte seems to have lost his head, and to have descended to the weapons of revenge handed down among the clansmen of his native island when they settled their domestic feuds. One member of the Bourbon house was from this point of view as good as any other, when it was a question of proving the capacity of the government to deal with its monarchical enemies. The nearest victim was selected for a stroke worthy of Cæsar Borgia—the Duke d’Enghien, a distant relative of the direct heirs of the old monarchy, who had been living quietly for two years at Ettenheim in Baden. A detachment of dragoons was sent across the frontier, into the territory of a small state, at peace with France, and arrested the young prince, March 15, 1804. The papers that were found showed clearly that the Duke was not involved in the plot in any way, but in spite of this evidence of non-culpability, he was tried by a commission made up of colonels of the regiments of the Paris garrison.
The prisoner was shot six days after his arrest, the sentence being executed at the château of Vincennes. Though freed from any complicity in the Pichegru plot, the Duke d’Enghien had tried to enter the service of England against France; he had also fought against the French Republic as an émigré, so whatever may be said in criticism of the abject subservience of the officers who acted as judges in the court-martial, it must be remembered that the law of the revolutionary period, by which the death penalty was inflicted upon any Frenchman engaged in open warfare against his country, had never been abrogated. Probably it was to this justification of his act that Napoleon referred when he refused to listen to Josephine’s entreaties in behalf of the Bourbon prince. “I am,” he said, “a man of the State. I am the French Revolution, and I shall uphold it.” These words were spoken in a moment of typical exaltation. After many years had passed he commented in the following way on his action: “The deserved death of the Duc d’Enghien hurt Napoleon in public opinion, and was of no use to him politically.” There soon followed a report of Pichegru’s suicide in his prison, a way of accounting for his death which, after the execution of the Bourbon Duke, it was hard to accept as satisfactory. Many believed that he was assassinated at Bonaparte’s command because the publicity of an open trial was dreaded.