NAPOLEON BONAPARTE is usually thought of solely as the resistless "man on horseback" who for nineteen years hypnotized France and intimidated all the world by military achievements which probably surpass those of Alexander, Hannibal, or Julius Cæsar. Or if not as the master of armies, he is studied as the supreme disposer of thrones throughout Europe, the creator and re-creator of all boundaries, the wizard at whose summons kingdoms appeared and as quickly vanished. His permanent work is sometimes imagined to be solely that of the "Destroyer," who shattered so completely the effigies of mediævalism on the Continent, that not all the malign genius of Metternich, and of his fellow reactionaries who watched the Corsican's downfall, could halt the march of mankind toward relative efficiency, happiness, and liberty.
All these things concerning Napoleon's foreign activities are true, but when we look solely at France it is important to realize that his universal genius allowed him to be a great civil innovator at home as well as a conqueror abroad. To Napoleon, France owes many peaceful institutions which were to endure a century after his victories and blood-stained "glory" had vanished into the cupboards of history. The "Kingdom of Westphalia" and the "Confederation of the Rhine" are dead forever. The Code Napoléon is still the law for many millions of enlightened Frenchmen. Therefore we devote this chapter, not to the details of military achievement, but to an examination of the Napoleonic Régime in France under the Consulate and the Empire. There is the more excuse for this because relatively few popular histories dwell on the achievements of the Corsican as a civil ruler. The Consulate, established after the revolution November 9, 1799, lasted until the 18th of May, 1804. In this period Bonaparte, as "First Consul," gave to France her fourth constitution, the "Constitution of the Year VIII," and followed this with a complete administrative, judicial, and financial reorganization of the nation. The Constitution then adopted, and partially modified in 1802 and again in 1804, lasted only to the downfall of the Empire in 1814; but the administrative, judicial, and financial organization exists to-day in France at least in its essential characteristics: its details are therefore far from possessing merely antiquarian interest. Such achievements and creations were of far greater moment than many of the Corsican's famous battles.
France at the time of the coup d'état of 1799 was again, thanks to the unrepaired mischief wrought by Revolutionary violence and the inefficiency of the Directors, partly submerged in anarchy. In appearance, she presented, according to reliable witnesses, "the aspect of a country devasted by a long war or abandoned after a number of years by its inhabitants." In the south the districts, painfully redeemed from the marshes, were again covered by water. In the east the port of Rochefort was blocked up with sand. In the north the dike which at Ostend protected a part of Flanders (then annexed) from the sea threatened to collapse. Everywhere the roads were practically impassable for want of repairs. In the environs of towns and villages the pavements even had been torn up by the inhabitants, who used the stones to repair their walls. In the open country the roads were also cut up by bogs where carriages were engulfed and sometimes ran the risk of disappearing. Bridges were collapsing everywhere.
The lack of public security and the general lawlessness was even more deplorable. Bands of brigands, particularly in the east, the center, and the southeast (where they were recruited from deserters), succeeded in rendering traveling nigh impossible. They pillaged the government strong boxes and halted the stage-coaches. The public coach from Nantes to Angers was once held up five times in a single journey in a distance of forty miles. The bandits robbed the travelers, kidnapped well-to-do peasants, whom they held to ransom, and attempted to storm isolated houses. In the east the brigands – the chauffeurs (firemen) – singed the feet of their prisoners to force them to reveal the hiding-place of their silver plate. At certain points, for example, in the Dordogne districts, even as more recently in Albania and Macedonia, travelers bought a safe-conduct in cash from the chiefs of the band. In the departments of Var, of the Lower-Alps, of the Mouths of the Rhone, and elsewhere the Directory, again like the Turkish Sultan, had to furnish to important travelers armed escorts in order to guarantee their safety.
Industry and commerce seemed practically ruined despite a certain recuperation. At Paris there could not be found in the workshops one eighth of the workmen employed before 1789. At Lyons the number of weavers in silk had decreased from eight thousand to fifteen hundred. At Marseilles the number of commercial transactions did not equal in one year the number of like exchanges in six weeks before the Revolution.
The power of the State was anything but respected. Taxes were not paid or were paid very slowly. On the day Napoleon seized power there were only 187,000 francs ($37,000) in the public treasury. Two years' arrears were owed to the national bondholders and pensioners. Patients died of hunger in some of the hospitals; in the hospital at Toulouse there were only seven pounds of food a day for eighty patients. The soldiers were receiving neither proper food, clothes, nor pay; they deserted by the thousands, or, while still in France, conducted themselves as in conquered territory. In the newly created departments of Belgium and in the borders of the Rhine they treated the inhabitants, according to an official report, "not as their fellow citizens, but as enemies disarmed or as prisoners." In these regions, too, the population, in all its prayers invoked its "liberators," that is, the Austrians. In a large number of the departments the conscripts refused to join their regiments. The Vendée and Brittany were again urged to insurrection in the name of Louis XVIII, and in Central France insurgent "Chouans," grouped into small armies under regular leaders, seemed virtually the masters.
Among the majority of the population there was a universal sense of weariness, of disgust for politics and the turbulence thereof, and of indifference even to startling news coming across the frontier. "It seems that in reading the account of our own battles we are reading the history of another people," an official report states. "The changes in our internal situation did not arouse much emotion." After ten years of convulsion the French, beyond anything else, felt the need of order, security, and repose. This disposition on the part of the public mind rendered more easy, however, the unescapably difficult task which the three provisional Consuls, Bonaparte, Sieyés, Roger Ducos, had assumed – a task in which Bonaparte, a man of genius in war, revealed himself a great statesman and a powerful civil organizer.
The Consuls and the parliamentary Commission appointed on the evening of the last coup d'état to draft a new Constitution set about their work without delay. Their deliberations lasted a little more than a month, and the Constitution was in the last analysis the personal work of Bonaparte. At the beginning it was thought that Sieyés had a project all in readiness. But he produced only two drafts which were decidedly confused, or, according to Bonaparte, he contributed "only shadows, the shadow of legislative, of judicial, of executive power." Bonaparte rejected them. He did the same with the two projects prepared by the assisting Commission because these seemed to him embarrassing to his ambition. In the end he himself dictated the principal clauses of the draft to which the commissioners were forced to acquiesce, and which became the "Constitution of the Year VIII." This Constitution was published December 24, 1799, and was immediately put into effect, without awaiting the results of the plebiscite – that is, the vote of the people, prescribed by the Constitution. This plebiscite only took place February 7, 1800. Less than sixteen hundred voters in all France voted "No," while the new Constitution was accepted (so it was announced) by more than three million votes. For the moment there could be no doubt of its success.
This "Constitution" was a document all in favor of the coming autocrat. The difference between avowed monarchy and "liberty" became faint, indeed, but the time was not quite ripe to cry "Vite l'Empereur!" and Bonaparte prudently waited. Under this new type of "Republic" there was an executive of three "Consuls," but only the "First Consul" had genuine power. He, indeed, practically controlled the entire government and appointed and dismissed all important officials. The "Second" and "Third Consuls" were to be merely consulted by him in important matters: final decision lay with him alone. All three held office for ten years and then could be reëlected by popular vote.
Under this uncrowned autocrat there was a three-headed legislature – Council of State, "Tribunate" and "Legislative" body – pretentious assemblies, but with highly conflicting prerogatives and unable really to handle a single question not first submitted by the First Consul. There was, too, a pompous "Senate" to be the "Guardian of the Constitution." The French people did not have even the privilege of electing this weak and cumbersome legislature. The voters could only choose, by indirect and clumsy processes, a hierarchy of "notables." From this decidedly large number of "notables" (of various grades and distinctions) the First Consul selected, virtually at his own sweet will, the members for the legislative bodies, the Senate, and for the numerous government offices. Thus Bonaparte practically chose his own legislature. And yet Robespierre was barely six years dead! The "constitutional power" of the First Consul hardly fell short of the "divine power" of a Louis XIV. This resemblance to the days of royalty was made clearer by the reorganization of the local administration of France in 1800. The local elective officers of 1790 were replaced by appointive officers named by the Central Government. Over the department was now set the ubiquitous prefect, with the sub-prefects and communal mayors beneath him. Even the local councils were named by the central power. Thus was created a vast swarm of functionaries – agents and creations of the Paris Government, instantly removable by it, and completely subservient to its wishes. Prefects and sub-prefects had replaced the submissive intendants and sub-delegates of the Old Régime, their direct heirs in authority, allegiance, and servility. The Consulate thus restored the highly centralized form of government which the reformers of 1789 had labored to destroy. This burcaucratic, ministerial-controlled system has been maintained by all the Governments which have succeeded the Consulate. Amended somewhat after 1870 and under the Third Republic it still exists even in our own day. For no slight reason, therefore, we have dwelt on this great administrative change by Napoleon Bonaparte.
The reorganization of the judiciary closely followed the administrative reform (March 18, 1800). There, too, the electoral system was abolished except in the case of the justices of the peace. All other judges were named either by the First Consul or by the Senate. To assure their independence and selfrespect, however, in the face of the Government, there was established in the beginning the just rule that they were irremovable, except for crime. Like the administrative machinery, this judicial system substantially exists to-day. Again the Corsican was building something more permanent than many of his ephemeral kingdoms.
It was the same with the financial organization and the system for the collection of taxes. Here Bonaparte's quick intelligence produced prompt results even before the new Constitution had been drafted. He knew how wretched had been the financial plight of the Convention and the Directory and that this distress had been caused not only by the enormous expenses of the war and the depreciation of the paper assignats, but also by the poor system for the collection of the taxes. The task of assessing and of collecting these had been entrusted by the Constituent Assembly to the administrators of the communes and of the departments, who had utterly neglected their tasks. Here, as everywhere, Bonaparte substituted for these feeble bodies, elected by the citizens, agents named by himself. His power gained and also the comfort of all honest Frenchmen.
Thanks to the reforms of the Consulate the national finances were put on a firm foundation and the taxes collected in a way to be no menace to the country's prosperity.
The Constitution, the administrative reorganization, the judicial and the financial reforms were the labor of the first four months of the Consulate. These permitted the prompt reëstablishment of order throughout the entire country and, therefore, the rapid revival of France. All these things were put in force under the constant and active direction of Bonaparte with his selected officials. The civil officials the First Consul had recruited without concerning himself with their political theories, present or past, or whether even they had been Royalists or Republicans, considering only the services which they were capable of rendering the State; his ambition, as he stated much later, being only to impel into the service of the country all it talents.
Two other measures of great consequence mark the later history of the Consulate: the signing of the Concordat with the Pope and the drawing up of the Civil Code.
Since he was anxious to restore internal peace to France, Napoleon could not neglect to terminate the religious crisis so unfortunately provoked by the "Civil Constitution of the Clergy." In spite of the persecutions, which were brutally yenewed by the Directory after the year 1796, the majority of the people were probably still attached to the "non-juring" clergy and to Roman Catholicism. Therefore, one of the first acts of the Consul was to revoke the decrees of banishment against the priests and to assure them entire freedom of worship.
But more than this, Bonaparte was convinced that religion was the most valuable element of order. Concrete theological beliefs of his own, he hardly possessed; unless it were a blind faith in his destiny. He is alleged to have spoken respectfully at times of Jesus Christ, and it is not proper to call him an atheist. But as the ruler of France he went at the religious problem from a strictly utilitarian standpoint. The Church properly handled would serve to strengthen the new autocracy he was founding; therefore he must patronize and control it. "A society without religion is like a vase without a bottom," he said. "It is only that which gives to a state a firm and lasting support." The clergy, preaching love for all that is good and hatred for all evil in the name of the God of eternal justice, seemed to his mind the safest guardian of the public peace. He therefore undertook to order about priests just as he ordered about gendarmes.
To achieve this it was necessary to treat with the Pope, since the attempted organization of a national Church by the Revolutionists had failed disastrously. Pope Pius VII, a man of conciliatory spirit, favored rapprochement on his own side. The negotiations were commenced immediately after the signing of the Peace of Lunéville (February, 1801) through the mediation of Abbé Bernier, a Vendéan priest who before, at the beginning of the Consulate, had already negotiated and procured the submission of the insurgents of the Vendée and Brittany (January, 1800). These negotiations were carried on laboriously at Paris and finally ended on July 15, 1801, with the signing of the Concordat. By this treaty "the Government of the Republic recognized that Catholicism was the religion of the majority of the French people." It promised to insure its free and public exercise. On the other hand, the Church agreed to the reduction of the dioceses, which the Constituent Assembly had claimed the right of enforcing on its own authority. These were now set at only sixty, including ten archbishoprics. The Pope also consented, "for the sake of peace," to recognize the "assumption" by the State in 1789 of the property of the Church. In return the French Government promised, as it already had solemnly done through the Constituent Assembly, to assure adequate salaries to the bishops and the curés, and to authorize an endowment for the benefit of the Church.
As for the nomination of the bishops, this would be done jointly by the French Government and by the Pope. The Government would appoint them, the Pope would then "invest" them with their spiritual power, without which they had no authority in the eyes of the Church. They would be obliged to take an oath of allegiance to the head of the State. They could in turn nominate the curés of the canton without the assent of the Government. The nomination by the State, the salaries, and the oath transformed the bishops into public functionaries and practically placed them in the hands of the Government. So long as a Napoleon Bonaparte ruled France, the Papal control of the French Church, whatever the letter of the treaty, was almost insignificant.
The Concordat went into effect in April, 1802. It was destined to govern the relations between Church and State for more than a century, up to 1905. It was received with real satisfaction by the majority of France, and met with disfavor only among the old politicians of the Revolution and in a part of the army, where the prejudices and passions of 1793 were still strong.
Immediately after he had thus reorganized the State, the First Consul turned his attention to completing and solidifying the social work of the Revolution, by embodying its entire achievements into a single great "Code"; that is, a collection of the laws which governed the relations of individuals in the new society. The preparation of a code had, indeed, been ordained in 1790 by the Constituent Assembly and by the Convention, while the Council of the Five Hundred under the Directory had prepared several plans, none of which had materialized. But in August, 1800, Bonaparte appointed a commission of six members with Tronchet, the President of the Court of Cassation, as its chairman. In four months the Commission decided on a new project. This was first submitted to the legal bodies for examination and later was reviewed by the Council of State, where, according to Cambacères, the First Consul took the most active part in the discussion and often amazed the jurists by his strictly juridical viewpoints and by his real understanding of law. The various parts of the Code were then successively submitted to the Tribunate and voted on by the Legislative Chamber. The "Civil Code." inspired by Roman law and the royal ordinances as well as by the enactments of the Revolutionaries, was concluded on March 21, 1804. It later received, and the title was regularly applied to it abroad, the name, "the Napoleonic Code." It is in force in France to-day, and has been imitated or at least has had an important influence upon the legal systems of the majority of European States.
The political and administrative institutions, the Concordat, the Code, were only a part of the work accomplished from 1800 to 1804. No government, in fact, has abounded in more activities than that of the Consulate; and no other period in French history has been marked by so many lasting achievements. To mould future civil officials the First Consul went on to reorganize secondary education in the lycées (or high schools), providing them with numerous foundations for the maintenance of poor scholars. As a means of rewarding public services he instituted the Legion of Honor (1802), organized in military fashion and divided into cohorts with a hierarchy of knights, officers, commanders, and grand officers. To aid in the reconstruction of industry and commerce, a group of bankers, yet again on the initiative of the First Consul, founded the Bank of France (1800) whose bank notes were soon on a par with gold and silver money, and which later became, save possibly the Bank of England, the most powerful financial establishment in the world.
These were not all of the First Consul's schemes and projects; he was tossing about great plans for public works and the encouragement of industry and commerce when the renewal of the wars diverted all the energies of France.
At the time of his seizure of power the Royalists fondly imagined that Napoleon would work for the return of the Monarchy and would be glad to play the part of Monk who reëstablished Charles II in England. "Louis XVIII," at the time a refugee in Poland, had also written to the First Consul asking his support and offering to let him fix his own reward (1800). Far from dreaming, however, of restoring the Bourbons, Bonaparte was already aiming to perpetuate his own power and to create a dynasty in his own name. He reached this goal in two stages; in August, 1802, he succeeded in having himself appointed Consul for life; in May, 1804, he was named Emperor of France.
After being elected "Consul for life," by a plebiscite of all French voters (3,600,000 "Yes" against only 9000 "no," said the official announcement), the Constitution was immediately modified. To the former powers of the First Consul was now added the right to sign treaties with no other counter-sanction than that of a Privy Council named by himself. The lists of "notables" were abolished and replaced by equally dependable "electoral colleges"; supposed to be elected by cumbersome indirect processes by the citizens. The legislative bodies (especially the "Tribunate") were shorn of part of their already very limited powers. On the contrary, the numbers of Senators and their influence were increased. The Senate henceforth had the right to "interpret" the Constitution and to govern by decrees called, according to the old Roman expression, "Senatus consultum." This increase of power was bound, of course, to profit the First Consul, especially as he received the right to nominate directly one third of the members of the Senate, and could in any case count on a devoted majority of this pretentious body.
The establishment of the Life Consulate ruined the hopes of the Royalists. Already, after Napoleon Bonaparte had refused to assist them in the restoration, certain "emigrants" had essayed to slay the usurper. One evening in December, 1800, at the time when he was on his way to the Comédie Française, they had attempted his life by means of a barrel of powder concealed under a hand cart and thrust in the way of his carriage. The recollection of that attempt did not prevent the First Consul, however, from attempting to win over those of the old nobility who were in Paris. He went farther; he abrogated the Revolutionary decrees against the "emigrants." They were permitted to return to France on the condition that they take an oath of fidelity to the Republic, and the Consul caused such of their property as had not already been sold to be restored to them (April 26, 1802).
All this could not conciliate the extremists, however. In August, 1803, a group of "emigrants" living in England, among whom was the notorious Polignae, formed an elaborate conspiracy; the English Government furnished the funds for the execution of the plot. An old leader of the Royalist insurgents (Chouans), George Cadoudal, at the head of a resolute band, was to attack and kill the First Consul in the very midst of his bodyguard. Under cover of the disturbance caused by the death of the Consul, General Pichegru, who had alone over to the side of the Royalists in the days of the Directory, was prepared to restore the Bourbons by a military revolution. To accomplish this, Pichegru invited the coöperation of Moreau, another distinguished general who was at personal variance with the First Consul. Moreau declared himself ready to assist in the overthrow of Napoleon; but he refused to work for the restoration of Louis XVIII, preferring to play somehow for his own hand.
The plot was uncovered in January, 1804. Moreau, Pichegru, and afterwards Cadoudal, who concealed themselves in Paris for several months, were successively arrested (February 15, March 7, 1804). Cadoudal confessed that he had been awaiting, before attempting his crime, for the arrival in France of a Prince of the royal family who was to be promptly on hand as soon as the First Consul had been disposed of.
A fatal concurrence of circumstances, a report of the police pointing out the mysterious journeys of the Duke d'Enghien (which reached the ears of Bonaparte at the same time as the confessions of Cadoudal), led the Consul to imagine that the Prince whom Cadoudal had expected was the selfsame Duke d'Enghien, son of the Prince of Condé. This exiled nobleman lived just across the Rhine from Strasbourg, at Ettenheim, in the Duchy of Baden. The Corsican's rage was furious. "Am I then a dog whom one can beat to death in the street?" he exclaimed. "I shall not allow myself to be killed without resistance. Verily I will cause those people to tremble and teach them how to hold their peace!"
In spite of the remonstrances of Cambacères and Lebrun, he had the Duke d'Enghien kidnapped from Badenese territory by a detachment of dragoons. The prisoner was transferred to a fort at Vincennes, where he was immediately brought before a court martial for having borne arms against France – a fact in which he gloried. He was condemned to die at midnight and was shot immediately in the moat of the citadel. His execution naturally terrified the Royalists and snuffed out the entire conspiracy. A little later Cadoudal was guillotined; Pichegru was strangled in prison; Moreau was banished. But the 'scutcheon of the conqueror was eternally stained by the death of d'Enghien who was nothing less than murdered. The conspiracy of Cadoudal hastened the transformation of the Consulate into an hereditary Monarchy. Several days after the arrest of the conspirators, the Senate at the suggestion of an old Jacobin Terrorist, Fouché, now the obsequious tool of the new "Cæsar," had requested that Napoleon, le grand homme, "should complete his work by rendering it as immortal as his glory!" A tribune put this request into more intelligible language; he demanded that Napoleon Bonaparte be proclaimed the "Emperor of the French" and that this imperial dignity be declared hereditary. Carnot, the old Terrorist war-chief, alone had the courage to resist this motion. It was adopted by the Senate that issued a "Senatus consultum" on the 18th of May, 1804, by virtue of which "the government of the Republic was entrusted to the Emperor Napoleon." The imperial title was hereditary, from father to son in the order of primogeniture in the Bonaparte family. In default of direct descendants, the brothers of Napoleon, Joseph and Louis, were named to succeed him. This new modification of the "Constitution of the Year VIII" was submitted to a plebiscite and was ratified by more than three and one half million votes; while not three thousand were officially counted as opposing it. France was, indeed, then completely hypnotized by the adventurer from Corsica. It was in a mood to vote him anything.
And so the wheel of fortune had completely turned. After the Old Monarchy, the Limited Monarchy of 1791; then the Radical Republic of 1793; then the Conservative Republic under the Directors of 1795; then the Dictatorship (for such the Consulate was) of 1799; and now a Monarchy again, with a ruler more masterful and powerful than Louis XIV. Surely in the Under- World the shades of the Bourbon monarchs must have indulged in ghostly laughter! It was a monarchy very different, however, from that of the Sun King which Napoleon I was founding.
The Empire lasted ten years – from May 18, 1804, to April 6, 1814. In so far as foreign affairs were concerned, they were ten years of continuous warfare. They opened with the French armies occupying the majority of the European capitals, they closed with the defeat of France and with the abdication of Napoleon, vanquished by Europe, at the castle of Fontainebleau. At home Napoleon, who had retained the institutions of the Consulate, completed the centralization of his absolutist government. He created, however, a few new institutions, whereof the most important and the most characteristic was the "University," founded in 1808.
The suppression of all political liberty and of all forms of popular control, and the return to the arbitrary rule of the Old Régime detached from Napoleon the support of the wealthy educated bourgeoisie. The violence of his measures against the Pope, caused by foreign political factors, added to the religious complications within France and detached from the Imperial Government the support of the clergy and the Catholics. The ceaseless levying of conscripts at last alienated even the masses of people, the artisans and the peasants, who had, nevertheless, remained faithful for a long time, because Napoleon maintained civil liberty and equality and assured them of the tranquil possession of their farms – in their eyes the most important acquisitions of the Revolution. By the time this internal revolution in public opinion was completed, the disaster of 1814 was of course near at hand. Napoleon was at length defeated because France had reached the limit of her willingness to make sacrifices for him.
The transformation of the Consulate for life into an hereditary Empire necessitated modifications and amendments to the "Constitution of the Year VIII." These changes had for their goal the surrounding of the new autocracy with all the external pomp and ceremony of the Ancient Monarchy, as well as that of increasing still more the powers of the sovereign. The Constitution, nevertheless, continued to be called the "Constitution of the Year VIII," albeit all its "Republican" reminiscences had almost vanished.
The Emperor, like Louis XVI, received a civil list of twentyfive million francs ($5,000,000). The Constitution created an imperial family and gave the title of French princes and princesses to the brothers and sisters of the Emperor. The Emperor, like the vanished kings, was surrounded by a hierarchy of august personages whose titles had been for the most part borrowed from the old court: the grand dignitaries, the marshals of France, the colonels-general, the grand officers of the Crown, etc. There were six "grand dignitaries": the Grand Elector, the Arch-Chancellor of the Empire, the Arch-Chancellor of the State, the Arch-Treasurer, the High Constable, the High Admiral – all these enjoyed glittering distinction. The marshals and the colonels-general were chosen by the Emperor from among the most illustrious generals of the Revolution. The grand officers of the Crown were known as the Grand Chaplain, the Grand Chamberlain, the Master of the Hounds, the Master of the Horse, the Grand Master of Ceremonies, and the Grand Marshal of the Palace. The royal residence under Louis XIV had not been more complete or more brilliant. Several of the grand officials were in fact men of the old court; the Grand Chamberlain was the former Bishop of Autun, Count Talleyrand, already Minister of Foreign Affairs; while the Grand Master of Ceremonies was the Count of Ségur, former Ambassador of Louis XVI to the court of Catherine II of Russia.
The Senate under the Empire lost the most important of its prerogatives, the right to pronounce on the constitutionality of laws. Its decisions in other like matters were only valid after ratification by the Emperor. As a result the Emperor henceforth had as much legislative as executive power: "Cæsar" would do everything!
All things considered, Napoleon has been the most formidable and commanding figure of Christian times. Outside of Julius Cæsar, there is almost none to be reckoned his compeer in all human history; whatever be the estimate put upon his character, "A man of mammoth proportions, fashioned in a mould apart." according to the description of Taine, "he could not be described, according to the remark of one of his enemies [Madame de Staë], in the words which have been accustomed to serve our purposes."
At the time of his taking the throne he was thirty-one years of age; and his genius and character had attained their full development. His striking characteristics were power of intellect and imagination, a passion for glory and power, combined with an extraordinary capacity for work.
His prodigious intellect, as spontaneous and lucid as it seems possible for a mortal to possess, was regulated and disciplined in a remarkable fashion. "Various matters," he said candidly, "are arranged in my head as in a cupboard. When I leave off one affair, I close its drawer and open up that of another. These do not become confused one with another and they never bother nor tire me." The intense objectivity of his spirit, always predominant, could not endure mere theories or theory-makers; such men he heartily detested, calling them, "Ideologues – a mere rabble!"
Nevertheless, his imagination was as remarkable as his intellect. "I never see more than two years ahead," he remarked, but it is evident enough that he had plenty of dreams and cherished visions. His reign was in large part consecrated – his enemies furnishing the pretexts and occasion – to the task of giving life to these children of his imagination. These dreams, revealed by him in various conversations, were to make of the French Empire "the mother country of other sovereignties." Napoleon, the heir of Charlemagne, the supreme ruler of Europe, was to distribute kingdoms among his generals, and he would even condescend to retain the Pope as his spiritual lieutenant. Paris was to become "the one and only city" (la ville unique), where the chief works of science and art and all those things which had rendered preceding centuries illustrious were to be treasured; she was to become the capital of capitals and "each king of Europe was to be forced to build a great palace," where he was to dwell on the coronation day of the Emperor of the French.
To this inordinate imagination was added the passion for glory and power, a passion so inordinate that it caused Napoleon to regard Europe as a "molehill" where nothing could be accomplished on a large scale. He openly regretted that "he had come too late" and that he had not lived in ancient times when "Alexander, after he had conquered Asia, announced to his people that he was the son of Jove, and was proclaimed to be such by the entire Orient." This power, which he desired in its entirety, was incapable of division; Napoleon never dreamed of having a colleague, or even a junior regent to share his vast responsibilities; everything must be done by him, even as all the nations must be bent under him. This passion for omnipotence increased ceaselessly up to the final catastrophe. Moreover, notwithstanding the fact that in the earliest stages of his career he had endeavored to surround himself entirely with men of merit and had solicited their counsel, from 1801 onward, he would allow no real advisers. In all of their activities he desired his subordinates to be simply his submissive servants, incapable of initiative, blind executioners of his wishes; as a result, he gathered all too many men of mean talent, and toward the close of his reign in the truest sense he was governing alone over half of Europe.
He performed this colossal task gracefully, as a result of that capacity for work such as has never perhaps been equaled by any other man, Colbert excepted. Louis XIV, the industrious king, when compared to Napoleon, seems almost a dilettante. "Work is my element," the Emperor remarked, and added that he had never realized "the limit of his capacity." He rarely labored less than eighteen hours a day, nearly always without any relaxation. He toiled everywhere and anywhere; while dining, during the fifteen minutes which he allowed for his meal, while walking, at the theater. He had the singular faculty of awaking and sleeping at will, and at night he would often interrupt the three or four hours which he devoted to slumber, by rising and resuming the endless reading and answering of dispatches. The task which occupied him for the moment absorbed him completely, to a point where he could forget everything else and render himself during such hours quite insensible to fatigue. Only he could have made the time suffice for all the multifarious things which he had to do; yet that he knew remarkably well how to distribute the precious hours was the testimony of those who worked with him. One of these helpers confessed admiringly that the Emperor could "accomplish more at governing in three years than the old kings in a hundred!"
Once a week on a fixed day Napoleon assembled all of his ministers. Each one gave an account of the affairs of his own department. No one could come to a decision on his own authority. Likewise all of the correspondence of these ten ministers was submitted daily to the Emperor. In fact, the ministers were reduced to the rôle of mere bureau chiefs, expected simply to present questions and to transmit commands. The Emperor dictated his orders in a conversational tone, while pacing to and fro in his cabinet, without ever repeating a word, and talking so swiftly that the expert secretaries – for he dictated several orders at the same time – sometimes had trouble in copying down one half of what he said. One can understand what a prodigious amount of labor Napoleon accomplished by merely considering that twenty-three thousand articles of correspondence in thirty volumes have been published, and that nevertheless there still remain, scattered about in the archives, nearly fifty thousand letters of his dictation.
The character of Napoleon explains alike the institutions and the collection of governmental measures which constitute the Imperial Régime.
His powerful imagination and, on the other hand, his conviction which laid hold on men, especially in France, by reason of personal vanity, urged "His Imperial Majesty" to surround himself with pomp and magnificence; therefore, he reconstituted the court and created a new nobility.
Jealous despot that he was, Napoleon would support nothing in the present which could threaten to become an obstacle in the future. He suppressed the Tribunate, developed the police system on a tremendous scale, reëstablished the state prisons, and abolished the freedom of the press. Henceforth he wished to be master of men's minds as well as their bodies, and therefore to mould their intellects to suit his own convenience. It was to this end that he created the "University."
The Emperor personally was very simple in his tastes. He lived like a high-rank officer, whose thousand military duties did not allow much personal nonsense. He was always in a uniform, usually the somber costume of a colonel of the light cavalry (colonel de chasseurs) – a green coat with white trousers. The soldiers saw him go about as one of the most shabbily dressed officers in the army. But those around him, the officers and members of the court, were decked out with plumes and bedizened with gold and embroideries. At the Tuileries, the ordinary residence of Napoleon, to a large extent, there had been reëstablished around the Empress Josephine, the ceremony of Versailles. The costume of the ancient court, the coat, the trousers, the sword, the shoes with buckles, the long-trained robes, were again in vogue. And, just as in 1789 there had existed in addition to the palace of the King, the palaces of the Queen and of the King's brother, so now in 1804 besides the Imperial palace there were those of the Empress, of the mother of Napoleon, and of the brothers and sisters of the Emperor, the Imperial Princes and Princesses. Nevertheless, there was no genuine return to the worst abuses of the Ancient Régime. Most vital fact of all, there was this profound difference between the royal and the imperial courts – the latter did not have any political importance and neither women nor mistresses had the slightest influence over the Government. After the triumphs at Austerlitz, Jena, and Friedland, and the defeat of the Austro-Russian and Russo-Prussian coalitions (1805-07), Napoleon in 1807 established an imperial nobility. The origins of this new noblesse often, indeed, could ill bear peevish scrutiny. We have seen the humble birth of some of Napoleon's most distinguished generals who now stood on the very footsteps of the throne. Of course many of the old nobility, who accepted the new régime, were welcomed to places of dignity; none the less the new court was really a court of parvenus. But these parvenus, as so often elsewhere, stood stiffly for their prerogatives and honors. It takes little time to create a pretentious "aristocracy" under an efficient and rewarding autocrat.
This nobility was one made up of officials. Just as in the famous tchin established by Peter the Great in Russia, there was a hierarchy of titles corresponding to the hierarchy of offices. The ministers, the Senators, the Councilors of State, the archbishops, various members of the Institute, and certain favored generals-of-division received the title of "count." The presidents of the High Court of Cassation, and of the various courts of appeal, the bishops, the presidents of the electoral colleges, and certain mayors rejoiced as "barons"; while the members of the Legion of Honor were made "knights." The titles of count and baron could under certain conditions be rendered hereditary in favor of the eldest sons of the original holders – thus perpetuating an aristocracy.
In the same manner the Emperor bestowed the titles of "dukes" and "princes" on many of the marshals and certain of the grand civil dignitaries. These titles awaited the marshals as a reward for their most illustrious services under the Republic and the Empire. Thus Kellermann, the old sword of the Jacobins, was made the "Duke of Valmy"; Augereau, the "Duke of Castiglione"; Lannes, "Duke of Montebello"; Ney, "Duke of Elchingen," and later "Prince of Moscow"; Davout, "Dukeof Auerstadt," of Auerstadt," later"Prince of Eckmuhl," etc. Among the civilians, Talleyrand, Minister of Foreign Affairs, received the title of "Prince of Benevento"; Fouché, the adroit and utterly unscrupulous Minister of the Police, that of the "Duke of Otranto." To each of these hereditary titles the Emperor added pensions, often decidedly large; Davout, for example, received nearly one million francs ($200,000) a year. Some of these pensions were still paid by the French Government to the heirs of the original holders until comparatively recently.
At the same time that he created an imperial nobility, the Emperor suppressed the unlucky "Tribunate" because in that assembly, Napoleon said, there were still evidences of "that restless and democratic spirit which so long had agitated France!" The fifty tribunes were seated in the Legislative Chamber. Later that Assembly too was practically destroyed; the duration of its sessions was reduced to a certain number of weeks, and there were even certain years in which the Legislative Chamber was not convoked. Napoleon then illegally demanded of the Senate, which was very subservient, the ratification of various acts, such as the levying of conscripts, the establishment of a budget, etc., for which, according to the Constitution, the vote of the legislative deputies had been indispensable. The Emperor also proceeded, in 1813, to draw up the budget himself and to establish new taxes on his own authority, in the precise manner of Louis XIV. Thus disappeared the most important of the political liberties acquired in 1789; the right of the people to determine for themselves their expenses and receipts. It would have been better to have abolished the pretense of a constitution altogether.
Under such a system, individual liberty was of course no longer respected. An enormous police system, so numerous and so active that a special minister had been instituted to direct it, held Paris and the departments in its clutch. The official agents, the "commissioners," in all the villages, and the "secret agents" everywhere, inspected, spied upon, denounced to the courts, and arrested luckless folk suspected of being hostile to the Empire. The state prisons were therefore reëstablished and citizens were interned without regular trial, "as a measure of safety," on a mere order of the Emperor, executed by the police, just as the subjects of the King before 1789 had been flung into the Bastile by virtue of a "lettre de cachet." In 1808, Napoleon issued an order to the Minister of Police, Fouché, to prepare for the sending of a certain number of young boys "whom their parents, former emigrants, maintained in vexatious idleness," to the military school of Saint-Cyr. "If any one makes objection," the Emperor added, he should make no other response than "this is His Majesty's good pleasure." That was almost exactly the formula of Louis XIV and the Absolute Monarchy.
The same "good pleasure" suppressed the freedom of the press, just as it had suppressed the men of the Terror and of the Directory. Many newspapers had been seized at the beginning of the Consulate. Over seventy-three political journals were appearing in Paris in 1799; sixty were immediately silenced. Of the thirteen others, four alone, in 1811, were authorized to continue their issues. Moreover, their editors-in-chief were named by the Emperor, and no article could be published without first having been submitted to a censor named by the Minister of Police. Outside of Paris, journals could be published in only eighty cities, and only one in each place. This solitary journal, likewise, was published under the surveillance of the prefect of the department and could insert only official announcements, various harmless items of news, accidents, fires, etc. Free discussion, even in a perfectly loyal spirit, was rigidly discouraged.
Books and printers were treated no better than newspapers and editors, and here again the Emperor restored the usages of the Absolute Monarchy. He established a censorship (1810) which even prohibited the publication of a translation of the Psalms of David, because, the censors said, "certain passages could be found in them which contained prophetic allusions to the conflict between Napoleon and the Pope." As for the printers, their number was limited. No one could become a printer without a license, that is, an imperial authorization. The Press, Napoleon frankly declared, is "an arsenal which must not descend to the level of the whole world, but only to those who are in the confidence of the Government." This was again going back to the days preceding Voltaire.
Napoleon desired above all things, however, that in the future the Government should have the confidence of the majority of Frenchmen. To accomplish this the Government must needs have control of their intellects, and must mould the same to its own good pleasure, taking charge of its citizens from their infancy by means of an elaborate system of education. This was a new idea which Napoleon had borrowed from the Assemblies of the Revolution. Under the Ancient Régime, in fact, the King had not interested himself in the education of his subjects. Practically all education worthy of the name was in the hands of ecclesiastics, frequently Jesuits; and a great fraction of the lower classes had been pitifully illiterate. The men of the Revolution and their leaders occupied themselves with preparing a scheme for instruction by the State. Napoleon built upon their work and attached the utmost importance to the development of this type of instruction, because "he wished to form," he declared, "a block of granite on which to build the strata of the new society." As Consul he had organized the high schools (lycées). As Emperor he established the "University."
The Imperial University was founded (March 17, 1808), in order, the decree stated, "to assure uniformity of instruction and to mould for the State citizens devoted to their religion, their prince, their fatherland, and their families." It was to teach "faithfulness to the Emperor and to the Imperial Monarchy, the guardian of the prosperity of the people."
Under the direction of a "Grand Master," who ranked among the principal dignitaries of the Empire, and who later became the Minister of Public Instruction, the University comprised a graded system with three types of instruction – primary, secondary, and higher. For the sake of administration it was divided into academies, each supervised by a Rector. This hierarchy of instruction and administrative organization exist to-day just as they were established by Napoleon.
Primary education was not, indeed, organized by the State. The Emperor entrusted it to the care of the "Brothers of the Christian Faith." They received an annual subsidy of only 4250 francs. This was the entire budget for primary instruction! All this meant that elementary instruction, too elementary to convey any political knowledge, was turned over to the Church and its charities. So far as Napoleon was involved, it did not greatly matter if ploughmen and vine-dressers remained illiterate.
Secondary instruction, however, was organized with great care, because it was to mould the future military and civil officials through whom the Emperor was to control France. This instruction was given in the colleges and high schools (lycées). The programmes were stripped almost completely of all those studies which might tend to create or develop the critical spirit: philosophy and history, etc. The professors and pupils were subjected to military discipline. The ordinary high schools were governed by a uniform regulation, where their entire programme was carried out to the tap from the drum, and had all the aspect of military schools.
Higher education was given in the "Faculties" (Facultés) – the faculties of theology, law, medicine, sciences, and literature. In all of these the instruction was of a purely practical character. The aim was to fashion not only men of science, capable of contributing to the progress of human knowledge, but also specialists – magistrates, advocates, physicians, professors – fitted to carry on their professions. The specialized establishments reorganized or created by the Revolution (the Collège de France, the École Normale) for the preparation of professors of the sciences and literature were also skillfully woven into this great centralized system. It is idle to deny that, whatever Napoleon's motives, many of these arrangements for the highest learning were to prove of great utility to France and to all civilization.
Secondary and higher education thus became the monopoly of the State; they could be given only in government establishments taught by government professors. The pupils of the lower "free schools" were constrained to follow the course of study of the high school if they hoped to continue their programme. This monopoly by the University was to be maintained for almost half a century, clear up to the Second Republic and the Law of Falloux (1850). It greatly affected the life and thought of France, but of course military disasters had toppled down the Empire long before all educated Frenchmen had been drilled to believe that "Napoleon the Great" was their only possible ruler.
Napoleon essayed to make the Church as useful to him as the University for controlling the minds of the younger generation. The catechism, alongside of the "duties owed to God," enumerated those also due to the Emperor, and stated them to be: "love, respect, obedience, fidelity, military service, and the taxes imposed for the preservation and the defense of the Empire." "Those who disregarded these duties to our Emperor," the catechism stated, invoking the authority of St. Paul, "resisted the order established by God himself and rendered themselves liable to eternal damnation." The doctrine was plain that the conscript who refused to join his regiment, the merchant who would not pay for his license, exposed themselves forever to the torments of hell!
However, it was not merely the French clergy ("his clergy" according to Napoleon's own expression), but the Pope himself, whom the Emperor endeavored to harness into the service of his statecraft. As a result there was a conflict between Pius VII and Napoleon which commenced in 1806 and lasted down to the end of the Empire and which reveals with remarkable vividness the despotic instincts of the Emperor and the brutality of his character.
When the war against England recommenced, Napoleon treated the Pope, an independent sovereign, as he treated his own prefects. He enjoined him at first to expel the English who were living in the Papal States, and later he ordered him to close his ports to all forms of English merchandise (November, 1806). To justify himself for this high-handed procedure, Napoleon referred to Charlemagne, "his august predecessor," the donor of the patrimony of St. Peter, and supreme master of Rome. "Your Holiness is the Pope of Rome, but, as for me, I am the Emperor," he wrote to the Pope. Pius VII affected to remain neutral, whereupon Napoleon first occupied the Pontifical States (1807); later he annexed them outright to the Empire (May, 1809). The Pope excommunicated him, upon which act the Pontiff was immediately arrested and transferred to Savona. He was there treated as a criminal; he was deprived of everything with which to write and a police officer posted to guard him day and night.
These events had their reaction on France. The Pope, while prisoner, refused to give spiritual investiture to the bishops appointed by Napoleon and twenty-seven dioceses were therefore vacant. The Emperor attempted to induce the French bishops to forego their Papal investiture. In spite of his threats, however, and the imprisonment of several bishops in the dungeon at Vincennes, they all, even the most devoted and obedient to Napoleon, announced that their highest allegiance was to the Pope. Napoleon attempted to break that allegiance by a great struggle. In 1812 he transferred Pius VII, then in very frail health, to Fontainebleau. Through deception he wrested from him a new Concordat (1813) which reduced the authority of the Pope to nothing and made him, now formally domiciled in France, merely a kind of spiritual lieutenant of the Emperor.
But the aged Pius VII recovered his physical strength enough to disavow the signature which had been forced from him during his illness. As for the rest, successive military defeats shortly forced Napoleon to restore the Pope to liberty (1814) and Pius VII promptly retook possession of Rome. In 1815 he magnanimously offered an asylum to the Bonapartes who had been forced to flee from France, and a little later he intervened among the allied sovereigns to obtain a mitigation of the sentence which banished Napoleon to St. Helena. This was a Christian vengeance worthy of the heir of St. Peter.
This religious struggle had its political consequences. The clergy and the Catholics who were favorable to "Napoleon, Restorer of the Faith," speedily became hostile to "Napoleon, the Persecutor of the Pope." The fear which the Corsican inspired to the very last of his reign prevented that hostility from manifesting itself in public acts. But the clergy were already reconciled to the recall of the Bourbons, and the royal restoration in 1814-15 found among its ranks most devoted partisans.
The Imperial Government ended at last with discontent spreading widely among the majority of the French people. About 1809, scarcely five years after the establishment of the Empire, practically all classes of society began to detach themselves from the selfsame Napoleon, who had been so popular during the time of his Consulate. This disaffection lasted pretty generally up to his actual overthrow in 1814. The suppression of all political liberty, the elaborate system of inquisition by the police, the despotism which claimed the right to rule even the thoughts of men, encountered the intense dissatisfaction of the educated bourgeoisie. The Continental Blockade paralyzed commerce on a large scale, and if it favored the development of industry, it also favored immoral speculation. As a result in 1811 there was a terrible economic crisis, numerous bankruptcies, with general dissatisfaction in all circles, especially of manufacturers, shipowners, and merchants.
On the other hand, the Government of the Empire never ceased its aggrandizements and ended by comprising one hundred and thirty departments with sixty million inhabitants, until by constant annexations of very alien lands it stretched from Rome to Hamburg, from Brest to Ragusa on the eastern Adriatic. The cost of maintaining the Empire was enormous even though expenditures were very carefully regulated. Likewise, although the immediate costs of the wars were largely imposed upon the vanquished, the cost of constantly equipping new armies could not but react terribly upon the imperial budget. The amount which direct taxes yielded speedily proved insufficient, and the Government sought new resources. As a result a system of indirect taxes was established; in 1805 France found herself under heavy imposts on liquor, on cards, and on vehicles; in 1806 appeared an impost on salt, and in 1811, a monopoly on tobacco. The revival of these taxes abolished by the Revolution, the return to the old "aides," and especially to the salt tax, the very memory of which was odious, irritated all those who were put under the burden.
But the principal and most general cause of the dissatisfaction was the continual levying of conscripts, made necessary by the incessant wars. Conscription was unpopular from the beginning, because all danger of invasion appeared now to be very remote, and consequently the necessity for military service was not understood in France. At the time of the Consulate, Napoleon had attempted to make the burden lighter by not levying more than a small part of the entire contingent, some 30,000 men from a total of 200,000 or 250,000 nominally available. He established a lottery system under which all those conscripts drawing the "lucky numbers" – that is, the highest numbers – were freed from service. Presently, too, he authorized substitutions; that is, he permitted a wealthy conscript to "buy a man" to serve in his place. But at the beginning of 1805 the disadvantages of this system were evident. The contingents which had already been levied were increasing annually and the levies became more frequent. The Emperor decided not only to take men by entire groups, but also to recall conscripts previously discharged and to levy the various classes one and even two years in advance of the legal age. The levies in 1813 amounted to very nearly twelve hundred thousand men. As early as the beginning of 1808 young men by the thousands attempted to escape service either by mutilating themselves or by fleeing into the mountains or the forests. Quite futilely Napoleon endeavored to make kinsmen responsible for deserters; he fined them severely – in a single year 170,000,000 francs ($34,000,000) – or he quartered soldiers among them who were to be maintained at their expense, billeting the gendarmes and bailiffs upon the offenders, even as Louis XIV had coerced the Protestants. In spite of all this, there were 160,- 000 refractory conscripts in 1810, and 55,000 men, organized into small columns, were employed to chase them down. In 1813 in Paris, while Napoleon was walking along in the suburb Saint-Antoine, a conscript insulted him; and women attacked the agents of the police who arrested the offender. Complaints were arising on all sides, and everywhere the antipathy had penetrated. Men flung at the Emperor the epithet of "The Ogre." It took the cruelties committed by the Allies when they invaded France in 1814, the national humiliation of the first Treaty of Paris, and the blunders of the Bourbons after the first Restoration to make Frenchmen forget their hatred and to restore Napoleon to his former popularity.
The Emperor, however, was at no time entirely the despot. He continued very energetically the reorganization of France which he had projected during the Consulate. In the matter of legislation he added to the Civil Code a Code of Civil Procedure (1805-07), a Commercial Code (1807), a Code of Criminal Cases (1808), and a Penal Code (1810), all of which, in their essential character, are still in force.
Likewise, even more than under the Consulate, he now proffered encouragements to industry in the form of bonuses to inventors and to manufacturers, or of profitable orders to stimulate them, or even at times of direct financial assistance. For example, he lent a million and a half francs ($300,000) to Richard Lenoir, who established the cotton industry in France; and during the commercial crisis of 1811 he secretly advanced the salaries of their workmen to the master weavers of Amiens. The Continental Blockade, as a matter of fact, created a need for such benevolence; the entrance of English products into France was prohibited, and France was forced to provide herself all kinds of manufactured articles, a good share of which she had formerly bought in England. The old woolen and silk manufactures as well as the new cotton, iron, and beet sugar industries, in particular, were aided by the Government. Napoleon not only desired France to be self-supporting, but he wanted her to provide all the manufactured articles required by Europe. It was all part of his scheme for world empire.
Lastly the Emperor carried on the great public works which he had inaugurated during the Consulate. At Paris there was, for example, the opening up of the Rue de Rivoli, the construction of many noble bridges over the Seine, the building of the "Temple of Victory" – to-day the church of the Madeleine – of the Bourse, of the Arch of Triumph, the completion of the passage from the Louvre to the Tuileries, and the erection of the Vendôme Column made from the bronze of the cannon captured at Austerlitz. In the departments there could be reckoned the embellishing of Lyons, the completion of the Canal de Saint-Quentin, and also of the canal from Nantes to Brest, and from the Rhone to the Rhine; likewise the large additions to the ports of Brest and Cherbourg, and other great havens. To the public works in France were added the public enterprises in Italy: in Milan, Venice, and Rome and on the Adriatic even beyond Dalmatia. Nor can any deny that wherever the French rule spread it brought with it good roads, elegant public buildings, the sweeping away of feudal abuses and inefficiency, and the advent of law and order.
The methods of Napoleon's proconsuls and generals were not always nice, but they did not come solely as plunderers and destroyers. To many regions of wretched Italian or Germanic peasants French administration often meant the first just and efficient rule the subject population had ever known. All these were the achievements of less than ten years; enterprises, too, that were undertaken amid constant wars, when the Emperor was spending his major energies in violent campaigning and preoccupying diplomacy. Consequently these great public works, more than anything one can write, are the tangible proofs of the Corsican's prodigious activity and of the abounding versatility of his genius.
When touching upon Napoleon, whether for praise or for blame, almost perforce one must write in superlatives.