without reluctance. The constitutional bishops had just dissolved their council, which Bonaparte had authorized in order to influence the Court of Rome; but he ordered its cessation as soon as the Concordat was signed. His resolution to place several constitutional priests among the new bishops annoyed and disturbed the Pope. The First Consul became angry, making charges of systematic delay which prevented him from publishing the Concordat, and introducing into their dioceses the prelates nominated during Lent. The legate quietly claimed the submission which the constitutional priests had promised. “There is haughtiness in asking it,” exclaimed Bonaparte; “there would be cowardice in submitting.” The conduct of the constitutional prelates remained doubtful: ten, however, were nominated. Cardinal Caprara was both less resolute and less clear-sighted than Consalvi: at one time frightened, at another easily persuaded. In spite of his resistance, “his cries and tears,” he at last yielded to the pressing demands of the First Consul. On the 18th April, 1802, Easter Sunday, the Concordat was proclaimed in the streets of Paris. At eleven o’clock an immense crowd thronged Notre Dame, curious to see the legate officiating, and gaze again on the pompous ritual of the Catholic service; but still more eager to look at the First Consul in the brilliancy of his triumph and power, surrounded by his companions in arms, all compelled by his will to assist at a ceremony at variance with the opinions of several of them. The concessions of the Court of Rome and the obedience of the generals could not conceal the vast gulf that separated Revolutionary France from the religious tradition of the past. Bonaparte felt this. He wished for the Concordat, understanding its lofty aim and practical utility; he had conceded more in appearance than he intended to grant in reality. The _Te Deum_ was chanted: the bishops were confirmed, and had now set out for their dioceses. In every district, along with the Concordat, and as if invested with the same sanction, the First Consul published a series of “organic articles,” regulating in detail the relations of the civil power with the religious authority. Already, when discussing the Concordat the representative of the Holy See had rejected most of Bonaparte’s pretensions on that subject; but he now reproduced them, transformed, by the power of his will alone, into administrative measures, voted like the Concordat by the Corps Législatif, and having equal force for the Catholic Church, the Protestant Church, and the Jewish form of worship. The anger and sorrow of the Court of Rome had no effect in modifying the resolution of the First Consul. Cardinal Caprara was constantly passing from submission to despair. “He who is fated to treat with the First Consul,” he wrote to Cardinal Consalvi, “must bear always in mind that he is treating with a man who is arbiter of the affairs of the world–a man who has paralyzed, one might say, all the other powers of Europe, who has conceived projects the execution of which seemed impossible, and who has conducted them with a success which astonishes the whole world. Nor should it be forgotten that I am appointed here in a nation where the Catholic religion has not a ruling power, even in peace. Here all the powerful personages are against her, and they strive as much as possible against the First Consul. He is the only man who watches over her. Unfortunately, her future depends on his intention, but at least that intention is sure of completion. When the First Consul is against us, things proceed with a frightful rapidity.” The Pope felt obliged to protest against the organic articles in an allocution to the Consistory, and to address his claims to the First Consul, who took no notice of them. In his communications with the religious authority in France, he proved imperious and insolent. “If the morality of the gospel is insufficient to direct a bishop,” he wrote Portalis, “he must act by policy, and by fear of the prosecution which government might institute against him as a disturber of the public peace. I could not be otherwise than full of sorrow at the conduct of certain bishops. Why have you not informed the _préfets_?”
The ecclesiastical organization in France would have been incomplete, had Bonaparte not extended his care to the Protestant churches. In a kindly report addressed to him on the subject, it was stated that “the government, in declaring that Catholicism was in a majority in France, had no wish to authorize in its favor any political or civil pre-eminence. Protestanism is a Christian communion, bringing together, in the same faith and to the same rites, a very large number of Frenchmen. In recent times the Protestants were in the foremost ranks under the standards of liberty, and have never abandoned them. All that is secured to the various Christian communions by the articles of agreement between his Holiness and the Government of the Republic is equally guaranteed to the Protestants, _with the exception of the pecuniary subvention_.”
The original idea of Bonaparte had, in fact, been to leave to the Protestants the full liberty of their internal government, as well as the charge of their worship. The principle, admitted by the Constituent Assembly, of compensating the Catholic clergy for the confiscation of their property, was not applicable to the Protestant Church. On a consideration of the administrative advantages of a church paid by the state, Bonaparte decided that the law of the 18th Germinal, year X., should be drawn up, regulating the nomination of pastors and consistories after the manner of the interior government of the Protestant Church. The principle which, in this respect, equalized the Protestant and Catholic modes of worship was hailed with satisfaction by the reformers. The Jews established in France were admitted to enjoy the same privileges.
At the same time that an alliance between religion and the state was being re-established in France, Chateaubriand, still a very young man, published his “Genius of Christianity.” The sense of the poetic beauty of Christianity then reawakening in men’s minds, the success of the book was deservedly great. It marked in recent history the epoch of literary admiration for the greatness and beauty of the gospel. We have since sadly learnt that it was only a shallow and barren admiration.
Peace seemed again established in the world and the church. In spite of several difficulties and suspicions, the definitive treaty with England was at last to be signed at Amiens. But rest seemed already to weigh heavily on the new master of France, and the increasing ambition of his power could not deceive men of foresight as to the causes of disturbance in Europe which were perpetually reappearing. Scarcely were the preliminaries of peace signed in London, when the Batavian Republic– recently composed, after the example of the French Republic, of a Directory and two Legislative Chambers–found itself again undergoing a revolution, the necessary reaction of what was being done in France. On a new constitution being proposed to the Chambers they rejected it. The Dutch Directory, with the assistance of General Augereau, effected at the Hague, in September, 1800, the _coup d’état_ which took place in Paris on the 18th Brumaire; the representatives were dismissed, and the people were assembled to pronounce upon the new constitution. Only 50,000 voters out of 400,000 electors presented themselves in the Assemblies. A president was chosen for three months. The absolute authority of the First Consul was secured in the Batavian Republic.
In Switzerland, an agitation diligently kept up throughout all the cantons, rendered a government there impossible. The French minister at Berne, “a powerless conciliator of the divided parties,” as Bonaparte called him, received secret instructions from him. “Citizen Verninac must, under all the circumstances, say publicly that the present government can only be considered provisional, and give them to understand that, not only does the French Government not rely upon it, but it is even dissatisfied with its composition and procedure. It is a mockery of nations to believe that France will acknowledge as the intention of the Helvetic people the will of the sixteen persons who compose the Legislative Body.” The French troops had evacuated Switzerland. The First Consul was scheming to annex the canton of Valais to the two departments of Mont Terrible and Léman, which he had already taken from the Helvetian territory. After several months passed, the seeds of discord began to bear fruit; and Aloys of Reding, formerly Landamman, being overthrown, Dolder, the leader of the radicals, was raised in his place. As a concession to the patriotic wishes of the Swiss, the French troops were suddenly recalled from their territory. When freed from that constant menace, interior dissensions burst forth; the Landamman Dolder, replaced at Berne by Mulinen, took refuge in Lausanne, where he founded a new government. The cantons were already taking sides, when the First Consul launched a proclamation as the natural arbiter of the destinies of Switzerland:–
“People of Helvetia, you have been disputing for three years without understanding each other. If you are left longer to yourselves, you will kill yourselves in three years without understanding each other any better. Your history, moreover, proves that your civil wars have never been finished unless by the efficacious intervention of France. I shall therefore be mediator in your quarrels, but my mediation will be an active one, such as becomes the great nation in whose name I speak. All the powers will be dissolved. The Senate alone, assembled at Berne, will send deputies to Paris; each canton can also send some; and all the former magistrates can come to Paris, to make known the means of restoring union and tranquillity and conciliating all parties. Inhabitants of Helvetia! revive your hopes!” At the same time Bonaparte said to Mulinen, who had already escaped to Paris, “I am now thoroughly persuaded of the necessity of some definitive measure. If in a few days the conditions of my proclamation are not fulfilled, 30,000 men will enter Switzerland under General Ney’s orders; and if they thus compel me to use force it is all over with Switzerland. It is time to put an end to that; and I see no middle course between a Swiss government strongly organized, and friendly to France, or no Switzerland at all.”
On the 15th October, 1802, General Ney received orders to enter Switzerland, and publish “a short proclamation in simple terms, announcing that the small cantons and the Senate had asked for the mediation of the First Consul, who had granted it; but a handful of men, friends of disorder, and indifferent to the evils of their country, having deceived and led astray a portion of the people, the First Consul was obliged to take measures to disperse these senseless persons, and punish them if they persisted in their rebellion.” At the same time, after an imperious summons, the chiefs of the Swiss aristocracy, Mulinen, Affry, and Watteville, joined the radical deputies in Paris. There could be no long discussion, as the plan of the Helvetic Constitution was decided upon in the mind of the First Consul. He had recognized the inconveniences arising from the “unitary government:” he next abolished the old independent institutions of the cantons, and systematically weakened the central power, as the Diet, composed of twenty-five deputies, was to sit by rotation in the six principal cantons; he at the same time nominated Affry as President of the Helvetian Confederation, after carefully securing his services. Henceforward the Swiss cantons, free in their internal government, fell as a state under the rule of France. “I shall never permit in Switzerland any other influence than my own, though it should cost me 100,000 men,” Bonaparte had said to the assembled deputies. “It is acknowledged by Europe that Italy, Holland, and Switzerland are at the disposition of France.” At the same time (11th September, 1802), and as if to justify this haughty declaration, the territory of Piedmont was divided into six French departments, the Isle of Elba was united to France, and the Duchy of Parma was definitively occupied by our troops.
For a long time the north of Italy was subjected to the laws of its conqueror, and he arrogantly made it bear the whole burden. When the Congress of Vienna had begun its sittings, Talleyrand absolutely forbade Joseph Bonaparte to allow the usurpations of France in Europe to be discussed. “You will consider it a fixed point that the French Government can listen to nothing regarding the King of Sardinia, the Stadtholder, or the internal affairs of Batavia, Germany, Helvetia, or the Italian republics. All these subjects are absolutely unknown to our discussions with England.”
England admitted the truce of which she stood in need. She tacitly accepted the reticences of the negotiators; and without any protest on her part the First Consul set out for Lyons, where he had summoned the 500 members of the Italian Consulte. Overwhelmed with the gifts of her conqueror, the Cisalpine Republic was now to receive from his hands a definitive constitution. Lombardy as far as the Adige, the Legations, the Duchy of Modena, had sent their deputies to France, prepared to vote by acclamation for the constitution, which had been carefully prepared by several leading Italians under the eyes of the First Consul. The Consulte of Milan had accepted it. Bonaparte reserved to himself the direction of the choice of functionaries, and the important nomination of the President of the Republic. Lyons was in grand holiday, crowded by the Italians and numerous bodies of troops. The old army of Italy, on arriving from Egypt, had been ordered to Lyons; and the populace hailed with delight the arrival of the First Consul, who was always popular personally. The Consulte opened its sittings with distinction; and soon the Italian deputies understood who was the president designed for them by the solicitude of General Bonaparte. They accepted without repugnance his proclamation:–“The Consulte has appointed a committee of thirty persons,” wrote the First Consul to his colleagues; “they have reported that, considering the internal and external circumstances of the Cisalpine, it was indispensable to allow me to conduct the first magistracy, till such time as the situation may permit, and I may judge it suitable, to name a successor.” To the request of the Consulte, in humble terms, the general replied, “I find no one among you who has sufficient claims upon public opinion–who would be sufficiently independent of local influences–who, in short, has rendered to his country sufficiently great services, for me to trust him with the first magistracy.” The Count Melzi accepted the vice-presidentship of the Republic. On the 28th January, after reviewing the army of Egypt, the First Consul, president of the Italian Republic, started again for Paris.
He was now waiting for news of the expedition which he had recently sent to St. Domingo. The horrors which signalized the violent emancipation of our negroes and their possession of the territory, was succeeded by a state somewhat regular, largely due to the unexpected authority of a black, recently a slave, who displayed faculties which are very unusual in his race. In his difficult government, Toussaint Louverture had given proofs of a generalship, foresight, courage, and gentleness which gave him the right to address Bonaparte, the object of his passionate admiration, in the following terms: “The first of the blacks to the first of the whites.” Toussaint Louverture loved France, and rendered homage to it by driving from the island the Spanish and English troops. He claimed the ratification of his Constitution, and sent his sons to France to be properly educated.
The instructions given by the First Consul to his brother-in-law, General Leclerc, are still secret. He had placed under his command 20,000 men, excellent troops, borrowed from the old army of the Rhine, the generals and officers of which were unwilling to resign during the peace. The squadron, in charge of Admiral Villaret-Joyeuse, was a large one. The English had been informed of the expedition, by a note signed by Talleyrand but drawn up by Bonaparte himself. “Let England know,” said he, “that in undertaking to destroy the government of the negroes at St. Domingo, I have been less guided by commercial and financial considerations than by the necessity of smothering in all parts of the world every kind of inquietude and disturbance–that one of the chief benefits of peace for England at the present moment was that it was concluded at a time when the French Government had not yet recognized the organization of St. Domingo, and afterwards the power of the negroes. The liberty of the blacks acknowledged at St. Domingo, and legitimized by the French Government, would be for all time a fulcrum for the Republic in the New World. In that case the sceptre of the New World must sooner or later have fallen into the hands of the negroes; the shock resulting for England is incalculable, whereas the shock of the empire of the negroes would, with reference to France, reckon as part of the Revolution.”
At the same time, and in contradiction to the intentions which he announced to England, Bonaparte wrote to Toussaint Louverture: “We have conceived esteem for you, and we are pleased to recognize and proclaim the services which you have rendered to the French people. If their flag still floats over St. Domingo, it is to you and the brave blacks it is due. Called by your talents and the force of circumstances to the first command, you have overthrown the civil war, curbed the persecution of several fierce men, restored honor to religion and the worship to God, to whom everything is due. The Constitution which you have made contains many good things: the circumstances in which you are placed, surrounded on every side by enemies, without the power of being assisted or provisioned by the capital (mother country), have rendered legitimate the articles of the Constitution which otherwise are not so. We have informed your children and their tutor of our sentiments towards you. We shall send them back to you. Assist the general by your advice, your influence, and your talents. What can you desire? The liberty of the negroes? You know that in every country in which we have been, we have given it to the peoples who had it not. Hence consideration, honors, fortune! After the services which you have rendered, which you can render in this matter, with the personal feelings which we entertain for you, you ought not to be doubtful as to the position before you. Consider, general, that if you are the first of your color who has arrived at so great power, and is distinguished by his valor and military talents, you are also before God and before us the most responsible for their conduct. Count without reserve upon our esteem, and let your behavior be that which becomes one of the principal citizens of the greatest nation of the world.”
One of the incurable evils of a long state of slavery is the distrust begot in those who have undergone it, though it is also the defence and instinctive protection of weakness. Along with his admiration for the First Consul and his traditional attachment to France, Toussaint Louverture remained uneasy and suspicious as a slave. Already, under the orders of General Richepanse, the expedition was being prepared which was to re-establish slavery in Guadeloupe, in spite of the decrees of the Constituent Assembly and the formal declaration of the First Consul in a statement of the State of the Republic (November 30th, 1801). When the French squadron was signalled at St. Domingo, and the negro dictator ascertained the crushing force brought to impose upon him the will of the mother country, he made preparations for defence, entrusted his lieutenant, Christophe, with the guard of the shore and the town of Le Cap, ordering him to oppose the landing by threatening the white population with fire and sword should they offer to assist the French troops. Toussaint, counting upon the effect of threats, had not estimated the savage horror of slavery which animated his companions, nor the ferocity which could be displayed by men of his race when let loose upon their former masters. On entering the roads the French squadron began to fire; the negroes set the town on fire, put chains on some of the principal white men, and withdrew to the mountains or hills. Toussaint having preceded them, the army of negroes was again formed round him. The coast, however, being already taken by General Leclerc, the white population joined them; and a large number of the negroes, becoming alarmed, accepted the conditions offered by the general. Then, after offering some defence, several of Toussaint’s lieutenants, one after another, surrendered. The most ferocious of them, Dessalines, had just been driven from St. Marc, where he committed great atrocities. Toussaint was pursued to his retreat, and after his entrenchments were forced he accepted a capitulation, and withdrew to his plantation at Ennery. The climate of St. Domingo caused frightful ravages to the French army, and the consequent weakness of his troops greatly increased General Leclerc’s alarm. He had, moreover received peremptory orders, the severity of which he frequently modified. “Follow exactly my instructions,” General Bonaparte wrote to him on the 16th of March, 1802, “and as soon as ever you have got rid of Toussaint, Christophe, Dessalines, and the leading brigands, and the masses of the blacks are disarmed, send away all the blacks and men of color who shall have played any part in the civil troubles.” A certain agitation continued to reign among the blacks, and Leclerc seized upon this pretext to summon Toussaint to a conference. The vanity of the former dictator was flattered, and triumphed over his mistrust. “These white gentlemen who know everything still have need of the old negro,” said he, and he set out for the French camp (June 10, 1802). Immediately arrested and cast into a frigate, he was taken to the town of Le Cap; his family had been captured as well as himself, and he found them on board the vessel that carried him to France. He was alone when he was imprisoned in the Temple, and afterwards transferred to the fortress of Joux, in the icy casemates under the canopy of the mountains. The only question asked him was where he had hidden his treasures. The dictator of the blacks gave no answer; he had fallen into a deep lethargy. On the 27th April, 1803, he at last expired, the victim of cold, imprisonment, and solitude. A few months later (November, 1803) the mournful remains of our army evacuated St. Domingo, for ever lost to the power of France. General Leclerc was dead of fever, as well as the greater part of his officers, like Richepanse at Guadeloupe. The climate of his country had avenged Toussaint Louverture; the instruments of Bonaparte had perished, the enterprise had failed. The sister of General Bonaparte returned to France, ready for higher destinies; the wife and children of the dictator of St. Domingo pined away slowly in exile.
This check was insignificant in the midst of so much success for his armies, and so many easy triumphs over the subdued nations; but the jealous susceptibility of the First Consul kept increasing. He had punished Toussaint Louverture for the resistance he had encountered in St. Domingo; he was irritated against the remnants of isolated opposition which he encountered at times among a few members of the Tribunate. The treaties of peace, so brilliantly concluded after the signature of the preliminaries of London, had been ratified without difficulty by the Corps Législatif. A single article of the treaty with Russia raised strong objections; it was obscure, and assured the Czar of the repression of Polish plots in France. The republican pride was irritated at the word _subjects_ which, was found in the clause. “Our armies have fought for ten years because we were citizens,” cried Chenier, “and we have become subjects! Thus has been accomplished the desire of the double coalition!” The treaty was, nevertheless, ratified by an immense majority. But the anger of the master had been roused; “The tribunes are _dogs_ that I encounter everywhere,” he often exclaimed. The Tribunate and the Corps Législatif soon incurred his displeasure afresh–the one by discussing, the other by rejecting, a few preliminary articles of the new civil code. The First Consul was present at the discussions of the Council of State, often taking part in them with singular spirit and penetration, sometimes warped by personal or political prejudices. He had adopted as his own the work of the learned lawyers who had drawn up and compiled for the honor and utility of France the wisest and the simplest doctrines of civil and commercial law. “We can still risk two battles,” said Bonaparte, after the rejection of the first head of the code. “If we gain them we will continue the march we have commenced. If we lose them we will enter into our winter quarters, and will advise as to the course to be taken.”
The second head of the code was voted; the third, relative to the deprivation of civil rights, was excessive in its rigor; it was rejected. At the same time, and as if to give proof of its independence, the Corps Législatif, which had just chosen as its president Dupuis, author of a philosophical work, then famous, upon the “Origin of all Religions,” sent up as candidates for the Senate the Abbé Grégoire and Daunou. The former had been dismissed from his charge as constitutional bishop at the time of the Concordat, the second was honored of all men, moderate in a very firm opposition. The Abbé Grégoire was elected. The First Consul had presented Generals Jourdan, Lamartillière, and Berruyer, accompanying their candidature with a message. He broke out violently during a sitting of the Senate. “I declare to you,” he said, “that if you appoint Daunou senator, I shall take it as a personal injury, and you know that I never suffer that!” General Lamartillière was appointed, but the slight notion of independence in the constituent bodies had troubled and displeased Bonaparte; he recoiled before the risks that awaited the Concordat and the great project of public instruction presented for the acceptance of the Corps Législatif. On the 8th of January, 1802, a message was brought in during the sitting. “Legislators,” said the First Consul, “the government has resolved to withdraw the projects of law of the civil code. It is with pain that it finds itself obliged to defer to another period laws in which the interests of the nation are so much involved, but it is convinced that the time has not yet come when these great discussions can be carried on with that calm and unity of intention which they require.”
This was not enough to assure the repose of General Bonaparte and the docile acceptance of his wishes; Consul Cambacérès, clever at veiling absolute power with an appearance of legality, proposed to confide to the Senate the task of eliminating from the Tribunate and the Corps Législatif the fifth who ought regularly to be designated by lot. The legislative labors were suspended; the First Consul had set out for Lyons, in order to guide the destinies of the Italian Republic. He wrote thence to his colleagues: “I think that I shall be in Paris at the end of the decade, and that I shall myself be able to make the Senate understand the situation in which we find ourselves. I do not think it will be possible to continue to march forward when the constituted authorities are composed of enemies; the system has none greater than Daunou; and since, in fine, all these affairs of the Corps Législatif and the Tribunate have resulted in scandal, the least thing that the Senate can do is to remove the twenty and the sixty bad members, and replace them by well-disposed persons. The will of the nation is that the government may not be hindered from doing well, and that the head of Medusa may no longer be displayed in our Tribunes and in our Assemblies. The conduct of Sieyès in this circumstance proves perfectly that, after having concurred in the destruction of all the constitutions since 1791, he still wishes to try his hand against this one. It is very extraordinary that he does not see the folly of it. He ought to go and burn a wax taper at Notre Dame for having been delivered so happily and in a manner so unhoped for. But the older I grow the more I perceive that every one has to fulfil his destiny.”
When the First Consul returned to Paris, the opposition, more brilliant than effective, of a few eloquent members, had ceased in the Tribunate; the Corps Législatif had undergone the same purification. Faithful servants had been carefully chosen by the Senate–some capable of ill- temper and anger, like Lucien Bonaparte and Carnot; others distinguished by their administrative merit, like Daru–all fit to vote the great projects which the First Consul meditated. He did not, however, condescend to submit to them the general amnesty in favor of all the emigrants whose names had not yet been erased from the fatal list. Perhaps he still dreaded some remains of revolutionary passion. This act of justice and clemency was the object of a Senatus Consultum. The First Consul kept in his own hands the unsold confiscated property of emigrants–a powerful means of action, which he often exercised in order to attach to himself men and families of consideration by direct or personal restitution.
He created at the same time a new instrument of government the fruit of a powerful mind and profound acquaintance with human nature. Formerly the honorary orders successively founded by kings of France had been reserved for a small number of privileged persons; in this limited circle they had been the object of great ambition and of long intrigues. By the institution of the Legion of Honor, Bonaparte resolved to extend to the entire nation, in the camp and in civil life, that rivalry of hopes and that ardent thirst for honors which formerly animated the courtiers. He had proved the importance which the military attached to arms of honor, and he was impatient of the objections which the Council of State brought before him on this subject. “People call this kind of thing a bauble,” said he. “Well! it is with baubles that men are managed. I would not say it to a Tribune, but I do not believe that Frenchmen love liberty and equality; they have not been changed by ten years of Revolution; like the Gauls, they must have distinctions. It is one means more of managing men.” The experience of the rulers who have succeeded him has justified the far- seeing and cynical conception of Bonaparte. It has proved once more what abuses can be brought about, and what weaknesses can be created, by an institution originally intended to appeal to noble sentiments. The passion for equality was much stronger than the First Consul thought; the institution of the Legion of Honor encountered great opposition in the purified Tribunate and Corps Législatif, and was only voted by a small majority.
A great law on public instruction prepared the way for the foundation of the University, from that time one of the favorite ideas of the First Consul. Primary instruction remained neglected, as it had been practically by the Convention. The communes were entrusted with the direction and construction of schools; no salary was assured to the instructor beyond the school fees. The central schools were suppressed; their method of mixed instruction had succeeded badly. The project of the First Consul instituted thirty-two Lycées, intended for instruction in the classical languages and in the sciences. He had little taste for the free exercise of reflection and human thought; instruction in history and philosophy found no place in his programme. “We have ceased to make of history a particular study,” said M. Roederer, “because history properly so called only needs to be read to be understood.” The great revival of historic studies in France was soon to protest eloquently against a theory which separated the present from the past, and which left in consequence a most grievous blank in education. Military exercises were everywhere carefully organized. Six thousand four hundred scholarships, created by the State, were to draw the young into the new establishments, or into the schools already founded to which the State extended its grants and its patronage. Without being officially abolished, the freedom of secondary instruction was thus subjected to a destructive rivalry, and the action of the government penetrated into the bosom of all families. “What more sweet,” said M. Roederer, “than to see one’s children in a manner adopted by the State, at the moment when it becomes a question of providing for their establishment?” “This is only a commencement,” said the First Consul to Fourcroy, the principal author of the project, and its clever defender before the Corps Législatif; “by and by we shall do better.”
The Treaty of Amiens had already been signed several months (25th March, 1802), but it had not yet been presented for the ratification of the Corps Législatif; this was the supreme satisfaction reserved for it, and the brilliant consummation of its labors. It was at the same time the price paid in advance for a manifestation long prepared for, but which, however, still remained obscure even among those most trusted by the all-powerful master of France. The destinies of the nation rested in his hands, but the power had been confided to him for ten years only; it was necessary to insure the prolongation of this dictatorship, which all judged useful at the present moment, and of which few people had foreseen the danger. Bonaparte persisted in hiding his thought; he waited for the spontaneous homage of the constituent bodies in the name of the grateful nation. Cambacérès was acquainted with this desire, and he exerted himself to prepare the votes in the Senate. A certain mistrust reigned in some minds. The Tribunate, alone permitted to speak, at length took the initiative. Its President, Chabot de l’Allier, the friend of Cambacérès made this proposal:–“The Senate is invited to give the consuls a testimony of the national gratitude.” This wish, transmitted to the Senate, was at the same time carried to the Tuileries; Siméon was entrusted with presenting it to the First Consul. “I desire no other glory than that of having entirely completed the task which was imposed on me,” replied Bonaparte; “I am ambitious of no other recompense than the affection of my fellow-citizens; life is only dear to me for the services I can render to my country; death itself will have for me no bitterness, if I can only see the happiness of the Republic as well assured as its glory.”
So many protestations of disinterestedness deceived nobody; the thirst for power betrayed itself even in the most modest words. Through ignorance, or uneasiness as to the future, the Senate made a mistake as to the measure of an ambition that knew no limit. It voted for General Bonaparte a prolongation of his powers during ten years; Lanjuinais alone protested against the dictatorship, as he had formerly protested against demagogy. The officials, badly informed, ran with eagerness to the Tuileries; they were received with evident ill-temper. The first impulse of Bonaparte was to refuse the proposal of the Senate; prudent counsels opened to him another way.
It was from Malmaison, the pretty country-house dear to Madame Bonaparte, that the First Consul replied to the message of the Senate. “Senators,” said he, “the honorable proof of esteem embodied in your deliberation of the 18th will be always graven upon my heart. In the three years that have just passed away, fortune has smiled upon the Republic; but fortune is inconstant, and how many men whom she has loaded with her favors have lived more than a few years!
“The interest of my glory and that of my happiness would seem to assign as the term of my public life the moment when the peace of the world is proclaimed.
“But you judge that I ought to make a new sacrifice for the people; I will do it if the wish of the people commands what your suffrage authorizes.” In all times, and under all forms of arbitrary government, the appeal to the people has offered to power an easy resource; Cambacérès had cleverly suggested it to the First Consul. In explaining to the Council of State the reasons which rendered the vote of the Senate unacceptable, he formulated immediately the proposal which ought to be put before the nation: “Napoleon Bonaparte, shall he be consul for life?” To this first question Roederer proposed to add a second, immediately rejected by the explicit wish of the First Consul himself: “Shall he have the right of appointing his successor?” For three weeks, in all the cities and in all the villages, the registries of votes remained open. The Tribunate and the Corps Législatif presented themselves in a body at the Tuileries, in order to vote into the hands of the First Consul. The Senate had the honor of casting up the votes. It remained mute and powerless in consequence of its awkward proposal. “Come to the help of people who have made a mistake in trying to divine your purposes too deeply,” said Cambacérès to the First Consul. 3,577,259 “Yeas” had agreed to the Consulate for life. Rather more than 800 “Noes” alone represented the opposition. La Fayette refused his assent; he wrote upon the registry of votes, “I should not know how to vote for such a magistracy, inasmuch as political liberty will not be guaranteed.”
The feeble and insufficient guarantees of political liberty were about to undergo fresh restrictions. In receiving from the Senate the return of the votes, the First Consul said, “The life of a citizen is for his country. The French people wish mine to be entirely consecrated to it; I obey its will. In giving me a new pledge–a permanent pledge of its confidence, it imposes upon me the duty of basing the legal system on far-seeing institutions.” A Senatus Consultum, reforming the Constitution of the year VIII., substituted for the lists of notables, the formation of Cantonal Colleges, Colleges of Arrondissements, and Colleges of Departments, the members of which, few in number, and appointed for life by the cantonal assemblies, were to nominate candidates for selection by the executive authority. The Tribunate was limited to fifty members; the Council of State saw its importance diminished by the formation of a Privy Council. The number of senators was fixed at eighty, but the First Consul was left at liberty to add forty members at his pleasure. This assurance of the docility of the Assembly was not sufficient. The Senate was invested with the right of interpreting the constitution, of suspending it when necessary, or of dissolving the Tribunate and the Corps Législatif; but it might not adopt any measure without the initiative of the government. The First Consul reserved for himself the right of pardon and the duty of naming his successor. This last clause was forced on him by reasons of State policy, but he deferred it for a long time. His mind could only be satisfied with the principle of hereditary succession, and he had no children. Madame Bonaparte feared a divorce, the principle of which had been maintained by the First Consul in the Council of State with remarkable earnestness. The choice of a successor remained an open question, which encouraged many hopes. The brothers of the First Consul were loaded with honors; the family of the master took rank by themselves from the moment when the name they bore in common appeared with a freshness which was in part to eclipse its glory. In imitation of the Italian Consulate, the Senate proclaimed Napoleon Bonaparte Consul for life.
A few prudent friends of liberty in France began to feel uneasy at this unheard-of aggrandizement of power without a curb. To the fear which France in anarchy had caused in Europe already succeeded the disquietude inspired by an absolute master, little careful of rights or engagements, led by the arbitrary instincts of his own mind, susceptible by nature or by policy, and always disposed to use his advantages imperiously. Peace was already beginning to be irksome to him; he cherished hopes of new conquests; his temper became every day more exacting, and the feebleness of the English minister furnished him with occasions of quarrel. A stranger to the liberal spirit of the English constitution, a systematic enemy to the freedom of the press, Bonaparte required from Addington and Lord Hawkesbury that they should expel from England the revolutionary libellers, whose daily insults in the journals irritated him, and the emigrant Chouans, whose criminal enterprises he dreaded. To the demands of the French minister at London was added the official violence of the _Moniteur_, edited and inspired by Barère. “What result,” said the journal of the First Consul, “what result can the English Government expect by fomenting the troubles of the Church, by harboring, and re-vomiting on our territory, the scoundrels of the Côtes-du-Nord and Morbihan, covered with the blood of the most important and richest proprietors of those unfortunate departments? Does it not know that the French Government is now more firmly established than the English Government? Does it imagine that for the French Government reciprocity will be difficult? What might be the effect of an exchange of such insults–of this protection and this encouragement accorded to assassins?”
The irritation was real, and its manifestations sincere; but they cloaked more serious incentives to anger, and pretensions fatal to the repose of Europe. For a long time the First Consul had repelled with scorn any intervention of England in the affairs of the new States he had created, and which the English Government had constantly refused to recognize. The complaints of Lord Hawkesbury on the subject of the French mediation in Switzerland provoked an explosion of anger and threats. “Whatever may be said or not said,” wrote Talleyrand to Otto, “the resolution of the First Consul is irrevocable. He will not have Switzerland converted into a new Jersey. You will never speak of war, but you will not suffer any one to speak to you of it. With what war could they threaten us? With a naval war? But our commerce has only just started afresh, and the prey that we should afford the English would be scarcely worth while. Our West Indies are supplied with acclimatized soldiers! St. Domingo alone contains 25,000 of them. They might blockade our ports, it is true; but at the very moment of the declaration of war England would find herself blockaded in turn. The territory of Hanover, of Holland, of Portugal, of Italy, down to Tarento, would be occupied by our troops. The countries we are accused of domineering over too openly–Liguria, Lombardy, Switzerland, Holland– instead of being left in this uncertain situation, from which we sustain a thousand embarrassments, would be converted into French provinces, from which we should draw immense resources; and we should be compelled to realize that empire of the Gauls which is ceaselessly held up as a terror to Europe. And what would happen if the First Consul, quitting Paris for Lille or St. Omer, collecting all the flat-bottomed vessels of Flanders and Holland, and preparing the means of transport for 100,000 men, should plunge England into the agonies of an invasion–always possible, almost certain? Would England stir up a continental war? But where would she find her allies? In any case, if the war on the continent were to be renewed, it would be England who would compel us to conquer Europe. The First Consul is only thirty-three years old; he has as yet only destroyed States of the second rank. Who knows but that he might have time enough yet (if forced to attempt it) to change the face of Europe, and resuscitate the Empire of the West?”
The violence of these words went beyond the thought of the First Consul; he had not yet firmly made up his mind for the recommencement of hostilities. France submissive, Europe silent and resigned, accepting without a murmur the encroachments of his ambition–such were for him the conditions of peace; England could not accept them. With Piedmont and the island of Elba annexed to France, Holland and Switzerland subdued, and the Duchy of Parma occupied, England had eluded the agreements relative to the island of Malta. Profiting by the difficulties which opposed themselves to the reconstitution of the order of things guaranteed by the great powers, she had detained in her hands this pledge of empire in the Mediterranean. It was the object of continual complaints from the First Consul, and the pretext for his outburst of anger. “The whole Treaty of Amiens, and nothing but the Treaty of Amiens,” Otto kept constantly repeating to Lord Hawkesbury. The minister of foreign affairs responded by a declaration equally peremptory: “The condition of the continent at the time of the Treaty of Amiens, and nothing but that condition.” The mutual understandings and reticences which had enabled a truce to be arranged, little by little disappeared. The truth began to come to light. A mission of General Sébastiani to Egypt resulted in awakening general uneasiness.
The report of the First Consul’s envoy was textually published in the _Moniteur_; it enumerated the forces at the disposal of England and Turkey in the East, and in conclusion expressed its opinion that “6000 Frenchmen would now be sufficient to reconquer Egypt.”
This was, perhaps, saying more than Napoleon Bonaparte had resolved upon; and the ambassador’s desire to please had responded to the remote and vague desires of the master. England was much disturbed at it, and yet more so at the haughty declarations of the First Consul in a statement of the condition of the republic. “In England,” said he, “two parties contend for power. One has concluded peace and appears resolved on its maintenance; the other has sworn implacable hatred to France. Whilst this strife of parties lasts, there are measures which prudence dictates to the government. Five hundred thousand men ought to be, and shall be, ready to defend and to avenge her. Whatever be the success of her intrigues, England will not be able to draw other nations into new leagues, and the government declares with just pride that England alone could not now contend with France.” The spirited indignation of the English people prevailed over the moderation and weakness of the government. George III., in a message to his Parliament, said, “In view of the military preparations which are being made in the ports of France and Holland, the king has believed it to be his duty to adopt new measures of precaution for the security of his States. These preparations are, it is true, officially intended for colonial expeditions; however, as there exists important differences of sentiment between his Majesty and the French Government, his Majesty has felt it necessary to address his Parliament, counting on its concurrence in order to assure all the measures which the honor and interests of the English people require.” The public voice demanded the return to power of Pitt. “It is an astonishing and sorrowful fact,” said his old adversary, Sir Philip Francis, “that in a moment like this all the eminent men of England are excluded from its government and its councils. For calm weather an ordinary amount of ability in the pilot might suffice; the storm which is now brewing calls for men of greater experience. If the vessel founders, we shall all perish with her.”
The ambassador from England had just arrived at Paris. Lord Whitworth was a man of resolute and simple character, without either taste or ability for the complicated manoeuvres of diplomacy; he was well received by the First Consul, and conversation soon began. “He reproaches us above all with not having evacuated Egypt and Malta,” wrote the ambassador to Lord Hawkesbury. “‘Nothing will make me accept that,’ he said to me. ‘Of the two, I would sooner see you master of the Faubourg St. Antoine than of Malta. My irritation against England is constantly increasing. Every wind that blows from England bears to me the evidence of its hatred and ill- will. If I wanted to take back Egypt by force, I could have had it a month ago, by sending 25,000 men to Aboukir; but I should lose there more than I should gain. Sooner or later Egypt must belong to France, either by the fall of the Ottoman Empire, or by some arrangement concluded with it. What advantage should I derive from making war? I can only attack you by means of a descent upon your coasts. I have resolved upon it, and shall be myself the leader. I know well that there are a hundred chances to one against me; but I shall attempt it if I am forced to it; and I assure you that such is the feeling of the troops, that army after army will be ready to rush forward to the danger. If France and England understand each other, the one, with its army of 480,000 men which is now being got in readings, and the other with the fleet which has rendered it mistress of the seas, and which I should not be able to equal in less than ten years– they might govern the world; by their hostility they will ruin it. Nothing has been able to overcome the enmity of the English Government. Now we have arrived at this point: Do you want peace or war? It is upon Malta that the issue depends.'” Lord Whitworth attempted in vain a few protestations. “I suppose you want to speak about Piedmont and Switzerland? These are bagatelles! That ought to have been foreseen during the negotiations; you have no right to complain at this time of day.”
The warlike ardour of the Parliament and the English nation was the answer to the hostile declaration of the First Consul. He had counted upon a more confirmed desire for peace, and upon the disquietude his threats would produce. He attempted once more the effect produced by one of those outbursts of violence to which he was subject, and of which he was accustomed to make use.
The message of George III. to Parliament was known to the First Consul when, on Sunday, March 13, 1803, the ambassador of England presented himself at the Tuileries. Bonaparte was still in the apartment of his wife; when Lord Whitworth was announced, he entered immediately into the salon. The crowd was large; the entire corps diplomatique was present. The First Consul, advancing towards Lord Whitworth, said, “You have news from London;” then, without leaving the ambassador time to answer: “So you wish for war!” “No,” replied Lord Whitworth; “we know too well the advantages of peace.” “We have already made war for ten years; you wish to make it for another fifteen years; you force it upon me.” He strode with long steps before the amazed circle of diplomats. “The English wish for war,” said he, drawing himself up before the ambassadors of Russia and Spain– Markoff and Azara; “but if they are the first to draw the sword, I will not be the last to put it back in the scabbard. They will not evacuate Malta. Since there is no respect for treaties, it is necessary to cover them over with a black pall!” The First Consul returned to Lord Whitworth, who remained motionless in his place. “How is it they have dared to say that France is arming? I have not a single vessel of the line in our ports! You want to fight; I will fight also. France may be killed, my lord; but intimidated, never!” “We desire neither the one nor the other,” replied the ambassador; “we only aspire to live on a good understanding with her.” “Then treaties must be respected,” cried Bonaparte. “Woe to those who don’t respect treaties.”
He went away his eyes sparkling, his countenance full of wrath–when he stopped for a moment; the sentiment of decorum had again taken possession of his mind. “I hope,” said he to Lord Whitworth, “that the Duchess of Dorset [Footnote: Wife of Lord Whitworth.] is well, and that after having passed a bad season in Paris, she will be able to pass a good one there.” Then suddenly, and as if his former anger again seized him: “That depends upon England. If things so fall out that we have to make war, the responsibility, in the eyes of God and man, will rest entirely upon those who deny their own signature, and refuse to execute treaties.”
It was one of Bonaparte’s habits to calm himself suddenly after an outburst of violence. A few days were passed by Talleyrand and Lord Whitworth in sincere efforts to plan pacific expedients; the ambassador had received from the English Cabinet its ultimatum: “1. The cession of the isle of Lampedusa. 2. The occupation of Malta for ten years. 3. The evacuation of the Batavian Republic and Switzerland. 4. An indemnity for the King of Sardinia. On these conditions England would recognize the Kingdom of Etruria and the Cisalpine Republic.”
The warmth of public opinion in England had obliged the minister to take up a fixed attitude; the consequences could not be doubtful. In vain Lord Whitworth retarded to the utmost limits of his power the departure for which he had received orders. The advances of Talleyrand and the concessions of the First Consul did not seriously touch the essence of the questions in dispute. The decision of Napoleon remained the same: “I will not let them have two Gibraltars in the Mediterranean, one at the entrance and another in the middle.” The ambassador quitted Paris on the 12th of May, journeying by short stages, as if still to avert the inevitable rupture between the two nations; at the same time General Andréossy, accredited at the court of George III., quitted London. The two ambassadors separated on the 17th of May at Dover, sorrowful and grave, as men who had striven to avert indescribable sorrows and struggles from their country and the world.
It was the harsh and barbarous custom of the English navy to fall upon the merchant vessels of an enemy’s country immediately peace was broken. Two French ships of commerce were thus captured on the day following the departure of General Andréossy for Paris. The First Consul replied to this act of hostility by causing to be arrested, and soon afterwards interned at various places in his territory, all the English sojourning or travelling in France. Some had recently received from Talleyrand the most formal assurances of their safety. “Many English addressed themselves to me,” said Napoleon in his “Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène;” “I constantly referred them to their government. On it alone their lot depended.” England did not claim its citizens, it resolutely persisted in leaving upon its author the full weight of this odious act, disapproved by his most faithful adherents. No Frenchmen were annoyed on English soil.
Europe was agitated and disquieted, still entrenched in its neutrality, more or less malevolent, and terrified at the consequences it foresaw from the renewal of the strife between France and England. “If General Bonaparte does not accomplish the miracle that he is preparing at this moment,” said the Emperor of Germany, Francis II., “if he does not pass the straits, he will throw himself upon us, and will fight England in Germany.” “You inspire too much fear in all the world, for it to dream now of fearing England,” cried Philippe de Cobentzel, ambassador of Austria at Paris. It was upon this universal fear that the First Consul had counted. Already his troops had invaded Hanover, without England thinking it possible to defend the patrimonial domains of its sovereign. The Hanoverian army did not attempt to resist: Marshal de Walmoden concluded with General Mortier at Suhlingen a convention which permitted the former to retire beyond the Elbe with arms and baggage, on condition of not serving against France in the present war. These resolutions not having been ratified by George III., the Hanoverian army was disbanded after laying down its arms; 30,000 Frenchmen continued to occupy Hanover. The uneasiness of Germany continued to increase. The Emperor of Russia offered himself as mediator; the King of Prussia offered to arrange for the neutrality of the north; but the First Consul remained deaf to these advances. He sent Gouvion de Saint Cyr into the gulf of Tarento, formerly evacuated after the peace of Amiens. The forces intended for this expedition were to live at the expense of the kingdom of Naples. “I will no more suffer the English in Italy than in Spain or Portugal,” he had said to Queen Caroline. “At the first act of complicity with England, war will give me redress for your enmity.”
The attitude of Spain was doubtful, and its language little satisfactory. By the threat of invasion by Augereau, whose forces were already collected at Bayonne, the First Consul acted on the disgraceful terrors of the Prince de la Paix; he only exacted money from his powerless ally. As he now found it impossible to occupy Louisiana, Bonaparte conceived the idea of ceding it to the United States for a sum of 80,000,000 francs, which the Americans hastened to pay. Holland was to furnish troops and vessels, Etruria and Switzerland soldiers.
It was upon a maritime enterprise that the efforts and thoughts of the First Consul were at this moment entirely concentrated. The attempt at an invasion of England which the Directory had formerly wished to impose on him, and which he had rejected with scorn on the eve of the campaign in Egypt, had become the object of his most serious hopes. To throw 150,000 men into England on a calm day by means of a flotilla of flat-bottomed boats, which should be rowed across whilst the great vessels of the English navy would be immovable through the absence of wind–such was the primitive conception of the enterprise. Bonaparte prepared for it with that persevering activity, and that marvellous pre-arrangement of details with a view to the entire plan, which he knew how constantly to carry out in administration as in war. To the original project of the Directory he had added more masterly combinations, which still remained secret. A squadron was preparing at Brest, under the orders of Admiral Ganteaume; the Dutch vessels, commanded by Admiral Verhuell, were collected at Texel; Admiral Latouche-Tréville, clever and daring, was to direct the squadron of Toulon destined for a decisive manoeuvre. Admiral Brueix was entrusted with the conduct of the flotilla of the Channel; everywhere boats had been requisitioned, gun-boats and pinnaces were in course of construction; the departments, the cities, the corporate bodies, offered gifts of vessels or maritime provisions; the forests of the departments of the north fell under the axe. Camps had been formed at Boulogne, at Étaples, at St. Omer; fortifications rose along the coast; the First Consul undertook a journey through the Flemish and Belgian departments, accompanied by Madame Bonaparte and all the splendor of a royal household. The presence of the Legate in the _cortège_ was to impress with respect and confidence the minds of the devout populations of the north. The first point at which Napoleon Bonaparte stayed his progress was at Boulogne; he pressed forward the works, commenced, and ordered new ones. On his return from the triumphal march to Brussels and back, he resumed himself the direction of his great enterprise. Established in the little chateau of Pont de Briques at the gate of Boulogne, he hastened over to St. Cloud, and returned, with a rapidity which knew no fatigue. Without cessation, on the shore, in the workshops, in the camps, he animated the sailors, the workmen, and the soldiers with the indomitable activity of his soul. The minister of marine, Decrès, clever, penetrating, with a nature gloomy and mournful, suggested all the difficulties of the expedition, and yielded to the imperial will that dominated all France. Admiral Brueix, already ill, and soon afterwards dying, was installed in a little house which overlooked the sea, witnessing the frequent experiments tried on the new vessels, sometimes even the little encounter that took place with the English ships. The First Consul braved all inclemencies of weather; he was eager “to play his great game.” “I received your letter of the 18th Brumaire,” wrote he to Cambacérès. “The sea continues to be very bad, and the rain to fall in torrents. Yesterday I was on horseback or in a boat all day. That is the same thing as telling you I was continually wet. At this season nothing can be accomplished without braving the water. Fortunately for my purpose, it suits me perfectly, and I was never better in health.”
Already the night expeditions, intended to exercise the sailors and inure the soldiers, had commenced; the ardor of the chief spread to the army. On the 7th of January, 1804, the minister of marine wrote from Boulogne to the First Consul: “In the flotilla they are beginning to believe firmly that the departure will be more immediate than is generally supposed, and they have promised to prepare seriously for it. They shake off all thoughts of danger, and each man sees only Cæsar and his fortunes. The ideas of all the subalterns do not pass the limits of the roadstead and its currents. They argue about the wind, and the anchorage, and the line of bearing. As for the crossing, that is your affair. You know more about it than they do, and your eyes are worth more than their telescopes. They have implicit faith in everything that you do. The admiral himself is in just the same condition. He has never presented you any plan, because in fact he has none. Besides, you have not yet asked him for it; it will be the moment of execution which will decide him. Very possibly he will be obliged to sacrifice a hundred vessels to draw down the enemy upon them, whilst the rest, setting out at the moment of the defeat of the others, will go across without hindrance.”
The First Consul, ceasingly watching the sea which protected his enemies, wrote to Cambacérès on November 16th: “I have passed these three days in the midst of the camp and the port. I have seen from the heights of Ambleteuse the coasts of England, as one sees the Calvaire from the Tuileries. You can distinguish the houses, and the movements going on. It is a ditch, which shall be crossed as soon as we shall have the audacity to attempt it.”
So many preparations, pushed forward with such ardor, disquieted England. The most illustrious of her naval officers–Nelson, Lord Cornwallis, and Lord Keith–were ordered to blockade the French ports, and hinder the return of distant squadrons. Everywhere corps of volunteers were formed, and actively exercised on the coasts. Men of considerable note in the political or legal world–Pitt and Addington, as well as the great lords and the great judges–clothed themselves in uniform, and commanded regiments. Pitt proposed to fortify London. Insurrectionary movements were being fomented in Ireland; the French squadron at Brest was destined to aid them.
In the midst of this warlike and patriotic agitation, it was only natural that the excitement should gain a party, naturally restless and credulous. The French emigrants could not but feel a desire for action, in the hope of taking an active part in the general struggle waged against the enemy who kept them far from their country by the very fact of his existence and his power. The First Consul had offered an amnesty to all the emigrants, restored their property to some, and attracted a certain number of them round his own person; he had recalled the priests, and re-established the Catholic religion; but he had repelled the advances of the House of Bourbon. His hostility to the restoration of the monarchy had always been flagrant; the throne might be re-erected, but it should be for his own profit. He alone was the obstacle to the hopes cherished by the exiled princes and their friends, in presence of the re-establishment of order and the public prosperity. Delivered from his yoke, that pressed heavily upon her, France would salute with enthusiasm the return of her legitimate sovereign.
It was in England even, and amongst the circle that surrounded the Count d’Artois, that expression was given to these hopes and ignorant illusions as to the true state of men’s minds in France. The Princes of the House of Condé, recently enrolled with their little army in the service of England, held themselves ready to fight, without conspiring. Louis XVIII. lived in Germany, withdrawn from the centre of warlike preparations; he was cold, sensible, and prudent; he thought little of plots, and had a healthier judgment than his brother as to the chances which might restore his fortune. The actual resources, the noisy agents of the emigration, were collected in England: there were found the chiefs of the Chouans, with Georges Cadoudal at their head; there dwelt the generals who had had the misfortune to abandon their country or betray their honor–Willot, Dumouriez, Pichegru; there were hatched chimerical projects, impressed from the first with the fatal errors and the terrible ignorance which doom to inevitable sterility the hopes and the efforts of exiles.
By his counsels, or his orders, Georges Cadoudal had taken part in the plot which had been discovered in 1801. After the failure of the infernal machine of St. Réjant he had felt regret, and some repugnance, for such proceedings. He proposed to go to Paris, with twenty or twenty-five resolute men, to attack the guard of the First Consul while he passed along the street, and strike him in the midst of his defenders. In order to profit by this bold stroke intrigues were to be carried on beforehand with discontented generals, who might be able to dispose the forces necessary for the sudden overthrow of the consular government. Bonaparte dead, the Count d’Artois and his son the Duc de Berry, secretly brought into France, would rally their friends round them, and proclaim the restoration of the House of Bourbon.
Two principal actors were indispensable to the execution of the project; Georges at Paris, unknown to the prying police of the First Consul; and General Moreau, favorable to the fall of Bonaparte, if not to his assassination. A nearly complete rupture had succeeded to the professed regard which for a long time covered the secret jealousy of the First Consul with respect to his glorious companion-in-arms. At the summit of his power and glory, Napoleon Bonaparte was never exempt from a recollection of rivalry with regard to the former chiefs of the republican army, his old rivals, and who had not bowed before the prestige of his recognized superiority. He liked neither Kléber, nor Masséna, nor Gouvion St. Cyr. As regards Moreau, he experienced a concealed uneasiness; it was the only military name that had been mentioned as that of a possible successor to himself. Wounded susceptibilities, and the quarrels of women, had aggravated a situation naturally delicate and strained. Moreau was spirited as well as modest; he felt himself injured; he dwelt in the country, living in grand style, sought after by the discontented, and speaking of Bonaparte without much reserve. The emigrant conspirators believed that circumstances were favorable for engaging him in their plans. General Pichegru had formerly been his friend. Moreau had long concealed the proofs of the former treason; perhaps he regretted having given them up at the moment of his comrade’s just disgrace: he was known to be favorable to the return of Pichegru to France. It was in the name of Pichegru, and for his interests, that Moreau was to be approached. The first agent sent to Moreau was soon arrested; he has said in his “Mémoires,” “Moreau would have nothing to do with conspiracy, and said, ‘he must cease to waste men and things.'” Other emissaries had no better success. An active intriguer, General Lajolais, an old friend of Pichegru, meanwhile left Paris for London; he repeated the bitter words of Moreau respecting the First Consul–words which created illusions and hopes. On the 21st August, 1803, Georges landed at the cliff of Biville, crossing the rocks by the footpaths of smugglers. The police had for some time been on the traces of the conspiracy: they were, perhaps, actively concerned in it. A few Chouans, obscure companions of Cadoudal, were arrested and put in prison, without their trial being proceeded with; their chief succeeded in reaching Paris safely, where he hid himself. Two successive arrivals completed the band of conspirators; on January 16th, 1804, General Pichegru, the Marquis de la Rivière, Jules and Armand de Polignac, landed in France. On the same day, and by a coincidence which suggests the idea of a certain knowledge of the situation, the First Consul said in his statement as to the condition of the republic,–
“The British Government will attempt to cast, and has perhaps already cast upon our shores, a few of those monsters which it has nourished during the peace, in order to injure the land which gave them birth. But they will no longer find the impious bands who were the instruments of their first crimes; terror has dissolved them, or justice has purged our country of their presence. They will no longer find that credulity they abused, or that hatred which once sharpened their daggers. Surrounded everywhere by the public power, everywhere within the grasp of the tribunals, these horrible wretches will be able henceforth neither to make rebels, nor to resume with impunity their profession as brigands and assassins.”
The conspirators succeeded in assuring themselves that, contrary to the hopes of some English diplomatists, an insurrection was no longer possible in Vendée or Brittany. Already a certain amount of discouragement was influencing their minds as to the success of their perilous enterprise. At their first interview, by night, on the Boulevard of La Madeleine, Moreau showed himself cold towards Pichegru. Georges, who had accompanied the latter, was dissatisfied and gloomy. “This looks bad,” said he, at once. The two generals conferred. Moreau displayed no repugnance towards the overthrow of the First Consul; he would form no project of conspiracy, but he believed himself sure of becoming the master of power if Bonaparte happened to disappear; he was, and he remained, a republican. He reproached Pichegru with being mixed up with men unworthy of him. The general had more than once bitterly felt this. “You are with us (_avec nous_),” the Chouans used to say to him. “No gentlemen,” cried Pichegru, one day; “I am in your company (_chez vous_).”
“Poor man!” said the conqueror of Holland, on quitting the conqueror of Hohenlinden, “he also has his ambition, and wishes to have a turn at governing France: he would not be its master for twenty-four hours.” Georges Cadoudal laughed scornfully; “Usurper for usurper! I love better the one who is ruling now than this Moreau, who has neither heart nor head!” The conspirators felt their danger. Their preliminary interviews had led to no result; the murmurs of discontent had not developed into serious promises, still less into effective actions. La Rivière lost hope every day; the First Consul every day became better informed as to what was going on.
He had recently suppressed the ministry of police; Fouché continued, without authority, the profession which he had always practised with enthusiasm; he informed Napoleon as to the result of his researches. The latter had ardently cherished a hope of pursuing, and striking down at one blow, enemies of diverse origin, dangerous on different accounts. Amongst the Chouans arrested in the month of August, two had remained obstinately silent, and had been shot; a third was less courageous. “I have secret information which makes me believe that they only came here to assassinate me,” wrote Bonaparte to Cambacérès. Querelle revealed all he knew of the plot; he named the place of disembarkation; General Savory was sent there in disguise, ordered to wait for that arrival of a prince, as had been promised to the conspirators. Already his doom was determined on in the mind of the First Consul.
Fresh arrests had taken place in Paris, for a servant of Georges had given information. One of his principal officers, Bouvet de Lozier, vainly attempted to kill himself; rescued from death, he asked to see the chief judge. Régnier sent in his place Réal, the counsellor of state, more penetrating and more clever than himself. It is supposed that the latter was no stranger to the drawing up of the deposition of Bouvet, who implicated General Moreau in the gravest manner. “Here is a man who comes back from the gates of the tomb, still surrounded by the shadows of death, who demands vengeance upon those who by their perfidy have thrown him and his party into the abyss where they now find themselves. Sent to sustain the cause of the Bourbons, he finds himself compelled either to fight for Moreau, or to renounce an enterprise which was the sole object of his mission. Monsieur was to pass into France, to put himself at the head of the royalist party. Moreau promised to unite himself to the cause of the Bourbons; the royalists arrived in France, and Moreau retracts. He proposes to them to work for him, and to get him named Dictator. Hence the hesitation, the dissension, and the almost total loss of the royalist party. I know not what weight you will attach to the assertions of a man snatched an hour ago from the death to which he had devoted himself, and who sees before him the fate which an offended government has in reserve for him. But I cannot withhold the cry of despair, or refrain from attacking the man who has reduced me to this.”
Réal hastened to the Tuileries. The First Consul was less astonished than himself; he was acquainted with the interviews of Moreau and Pichegru. He was well aware that the opinions of Moreau were quite opposed to any thought of monarchical restoration. The general returned to Paris, after a visit to Grosbois, on the morning of the 15th of February; he was arrested on the bridge of Charenton, and taken to the Temple. Lajolais was arrested at the same time. The trial was directed to take place before the civil tribunal of the Seine. Cambacérès had proposed a military commission. “No,” said the First Consul; “it would be said that I desire to disembarrass myself of Moreau, and to get him judicially assassinated by own creatures.” The jury was chosen in the department of the Seine; a report upon the causes of the arrest of Moreau was sent to the Senate, the Corps Législatif, and the Tribunate.
The commotion in Paris was great, and the public instinct was favorable to General Moreau. The presumed accomplices of his crime had not yet fallen into the hands of the government. People refused to believe him guilty, a traitor to the opinions of a lifetime, and mixed up in a royalist conspiracy. The attitude of the general was firm and calm. For a moment, the First Consul conceived the idea of seeing him. “I pardon Moreau,” said he; “let him own everything to me, and I will forget the errors of a foolish jealousy.” General Lajolais had recounted the details of the interviews of Moreau with Pichegru; the accused persisted in denying everything. “Ah, well,” replied Napoleon, “since he will not open with me, it will be necessary for him to yield to justice.” Anger broke forth, in spite of the efforts of the First Consul to preserve the appearance of a sorrowful justice. The brother of Moreau, was a member of the Tribunate; he had loudly pleaded in favor of the accused. “I declare,” cried he, “to the assembly, to the entire nation, that my brother is innocent of the atrocious crimes that are imputed to him. Let him be given the means of justifying himself, and he will do so. I demand that he may be judged by his natural judges,” The president of the Tribunate dared to style the accusation against Moreau a _denunciation_; the First Consul warmly criticised this expression. “The greatness of the services rendered by Moreau is not a sufficient motive for screening him from the rigor of the laws,” cried he. “There is no government in existence where a man by reason of his past services may screen himself from the law, which ought to have the same grasp on him as on the meanest individual. What! Moreau is already guilty in the eyes of the highest powers of the State, and you will not even consider him as accused!” “Paris and France have only one sentiment, only one opinion,” wrote he to Comte Melzi, vice-president of the Italian Republic.
The pursuit had become rigorous. It was known that Pichegru and Georges were hidden in Paris; the gates of the city were closed, egress by the river watched by armed vessels. The Corps Législatif voted a measure condemning to death whoever should conceal the conspirators, to the number of sixty. Whoever should be cognizant of them without denouncing them, was liable to six years in irons. One night General Pichegru went to ask asylum of Barbé-Marbois, formerly intendant of St. Domingo, transported, like himself, to Sinnamari, and now become a minister of the First Consul. Barbé-Marbois did not hesitate to receive him. When he avowed it afterwards to Napoleon, the latter warmly congratulated him upon it.
A few days passed by; General Pichegru, shamefully betrayed by one of his former officers, was arrested on the 28th of February, bravely resisting the agents of the police. Georges, seized in the street on the 9th of March, blew out the brains of the first gendarme who seized the bridle of his horse. La Rivière and Polignac were also in prison. Moreau had given up his system of absolute denials; at the prayer of his wife and his friends he wrote to the First Consul, simply recounting his relations with Pichegru, without asking pardon, and without denying the past transactions, seeking to disengage his cause from the Royalist conspiracy –less haughty, however, than he had till then appeared. Bonaparte had the letter affixed to the process of the trial. He appeared moved at the situation of Pichegru. “A fine end!” said he to Réal: “A fine end for the conqueror of Holland. It will not do for the men of the Revolution to devour each other. I have long had a dream about Cayenne; it is the finest country in the world for founding a colony. Pichegru has been proscribed, as he knows; ask him how many men and how much money he wants to create a great establishment; I will give them to him, and he will retrieve his glory by rendering a service to France.” The general did not reject the proposition, but he persisted in his silence. “I will speak before the tribunal,” said he. Before the supreme day when the trial was about to take place before human justice, Pichegru had appeared before a more august tribunal; on the morning of the 6th of April he was found dead in his bed, strangled, it was said, by his own hands.
The royalist conspirators at first proudly avowed the aim of their enterprise. “What did you come to do in Paris?” asked the prefect of the police of Georges Cadoudal. “I came to attack the First Consul.” “What were your means?” “I had as yet little enough; I counted on collecting them.” “Of what nature were your means of attack?” “By means of living force.” “Where did you count on finding this force?” “In all France.” “And what was your project?” “To put a Bourbon in the place of the First Consul.” “Had you many people with you?” “No, because I was not to attack the First Consul until there was a French prince in Paris, and he has not yet arrived.”
This was the prince for whom General Savary had been, waiting in vain for nearly a month on the cliff of Biville. The anger of the First Consul continued to increase. “The Bourbons think they can get me killed like a dog,” said he. “My blood is worth more than theirs; I shall make no more of their case than of Moreau or Pichegru; the first Bourbon prince who falls into my hands, I will have shot remorselessly.” The Comte d’Artois and the Duc de Berry were announced, and did not arrive. Napoleon stretched forth his arm to seize an innocent prince, whose misfortune it was to be within his reach. On the 10th of March, 1804, he wrote to General Berthier: “You will do well, citizen minister, to give orders to General Ordener, whom I place at your disposal, to repair at night, by post, to Strasburg. He will travel under another name than his own, and see the general of division. The aim of his mission is to throw himself upon Ettenheim, invest the city, and carry away from it the Duc d’Enghien, Dumouriez, an English colonel, and any other individual who may be in their suite. The general of division, the marshal of the barracks of gendarmes, who has been to reconnoitre Ettenheim, as well as the commissary of police, will give him all necessary information.”
The young Duc d’Enghien, son of the Duc de Bourbon, and grandson of the Prince of Condé, resided in fact at Ettenheim, in the grand duchy of Baden. Drawn at times to Strasburg, by his taste for the theatre, he was held fast in this little city by a passionate attachment for the Princess Charlotte of Rohan, who lived there. He was young and brave, and was waiting for the call from England to take part in the war. He was not implicated in the plot hatched round the Comte d’Artois, and was absolutely ignorant of it. A few emigrants–very few in numbers, and without political importance–resided near him; one of them was the Marquis de Thumery, whose name, mispronounced with a German accent, gave rise to the error which supposed the presence of Dumouriez at Ettenheim. This supposition might for a moment deceive the First Consul as to the complicity of the Duc d’Enghien; it was cleared up when, after having violated the territory of the Grand Duke of Baden (for which Talleyrand was careful to apologize), he learnt the arrival of the unfortunate prince at Strasburg; all the papers seized at Ettenheim were in his hands.
The first movement of the Duc d’Enghien had been to defend himself. “Are you compromised?” asked a German officer who was at his house. “No!” replied the young man with astonishment. Resistance was useless; he surrendered. There was one single ground of accusation against him: like all the princes of his house, and thousands of emigrants, he had borne arms against France. Nearly all the nobility had been permitted again to tread the soil of their country: he alone was about to expiate the fault of all. The minister of France at Baden, Massias, felt compelled to bear witness that “the conduct of the Prince had always been innocent and guarded.” A few days later the _Moniteur_ had to announce the assembling of emigrants, with a staff of officers and bureaux of officials round a prince of the House of Bourbon. Massias had beforehand given the lie to this rumor. The Duc d’Enghien was brought to Paris; detained for a few hours at the barriers, he was then conducted to the chateau of Vincennes. On the same morning the First Consul had sent this order to his brother- in-law, General Murat, whom he had just named governor of Paris: “General, in accordance with the orders of the First Consul, the Duc d’Enghien is to be conducted to the castle of Vincennes, where arrangements are made to receive him. He will probably arrive at his destination to-night. I pray you to make such arrangements as shall provide for the safety of this prisoner at Vincennes, as well as on the road from Meaux by which he comes. The First Consul has ordered that the name of this prisoner, and everything relative to him, shall be kept a profound secret. In consequence, the officer entrusted with his guard ought not to be made acquainted with the name and rank of his prisoner; he travels under the name of Plessis.”
Bonaparte was at Malmaison, gloomy and agitated; since the day when the order had been given to arrest the Duc d’Enghien, the intimate companions of the First Consul had no doubt as to his fatal resolution. Cambacérès had warmly insisted upon the deplorable consequences of such an act; Madame Bonaparte had cast herself at his feet, but he raised her up ill- temperedly. “You have grown very saving over the blood of the Bourbons,” said he bitterly to Cambacérès. “I shall not allow myself to be killed without being able to defend myself.” The fatal moment approached. Madame de Remusat, playing at chess with Napoleon, heard him repeating in a low voice the noble words of Augustus pardoning Cinna, and she believed the prince saved: he had just entered the castle of Vincennes, and already the judges were awaiting him.
Murat had loudly declared his repugnance for the functions imposed on him by his brother-in-law. “He wants to stain my uniform with blood,” said he with anger. He was not called to Vincennes. General Savary, devoted without reserve to the First Consul, had set out with a corps of gendarmes. Already the Duc d’Enghien, weighed down by fatigue, was asleep; he was roused up at midnight. A captain, as judge advocate, was entrusted with a first examination. He being asked his names, Christian names, age, and place of birth, in reply said “he was named Louis-Antoine-Henri de Bourbon, Duc d’Enghien, born at Chantilly, the 2nd of August, 1772.” Being asked at what time he quitted France, in reply he said, “I cannot say precisely, but I think it was on the 16th July, 1789, that I set out with the Prince de Condé my grandfather, my father the Comte d’Artois, and the children of the Comte d’Artois.” Being asked where he had resided since leaving France, in reply he said, “On leaving France I passed with my parents, whom I always accompanied, by Mons and Brussels; thence we returned to Turin, to the palace of the king, where we remained nearly sixteen months. Thence, always with my parents, I went to Worms and the neighborhood, upon the banks of the Rhine. Lastly the Condé corps was formed, and I was with it throughout the war. I had before that made the campaign of 1792, in Brabant, with the Bourbon corps, in the army of Duke Albert. We terminated the last campaign in the environs of Grätz, and I asked permission of the Cardinal de Rohan to go into his country, to Ettenheim, in Brisgau, the former bishopric of Strasburg. For two years and a half I remained in this country, with the permission of the Elector of Baden.” Being asked if he had ever passed into England, and if that power had always accorded him a grant of money, in reply he said he had never been there; that England always accorded him a grant of money, and that he had only that to live upon. Being asked if he kept up correspondence with the French princes in London, and if he had seen them for some time, he said that naturally he kept up a correspondence with his grandfather, and that equally naturally he corresponded with his father, whom he had not seen, so far as he could recollect, since 1794 or 1795. Being asked if he knew General Pichegru, and if he had any relations with him, he said, “I believe I have never seen him; I have had no relations with him. I know that he has desired to see me. I am thankful not to have known him, after the vile means of which it is said he has desired to make use, if it is true.” Being asked if he knew the ex-general Dumouriez, and if he had had relations with him, he said, “On the contrary, I have never seen him.” Being asked if, since the peace, he had not kept up correspondence with the interior of the republic, he said, “I have written to a few friends who are still attached to me, who have been my companions in war, about their affairs and my own; these correspondences are not, I think, those to which it is intended to refer.”
Upon the minute of the examination, beneath his signature, the Duc d’Enghien wrote, “I earnestly entreat to have a private audience with the First Consul. My name, my rank, my way of thinking, and the horror of my situation, make me hope that he will not refuse me my request.” The request was foreseen, and the answer, according to instructions given, that under no pretext would the First Consul be willing to receive the Duc d’Enghien. At two o’clock in the morning the military commission was assembled, presided over by General Hullin, formerly life-guard of Louis XVI., and one of the insurgent leaders before the Bastille. The same questions were addressed to the prince, more briefly–less explicitly, as if the time was short, and the enemy threatening. Sometimes the president interfered with an appearance of rude benevolence. General Savary did not speak. When the examination was finished he rose up. “Now this is my concern,” said he. The judges deliberated a moment. The sentence, signed in blank, was already in their hands. The Governor of Vincennes, Harel, appeared at the gate carrying a light. He had formerly delivered to Bonaparte the conspirators of the plot of Aréna and Topino-Lebrun; to-day he preceded in the sombre corridors the prisoner, escorted by a piquet of troops. The prince did not pale; he reiterated his request for an audience, which was harshly denied. Already the grave was dug in the ditch of the chateau; a detachment of gendarmes waited for the condemned.
The Duke stopped. “Comrades,” said he loudly, “there is without doubt among you a man of honor who will charge himself with receiving and transmitting my last thoughts.” And as a young officer stepped out of the ranks, “Has any one here a pair of scissors?” asked the Prince. He cut a lock of his hair, and joining it in the form of a ring, he pronounced in low tones the name of the person for whom he intended this souvenir; then pushing back with his hands the bandage with which they wished to cover his eyes, he made one step towards the soldiers: they fired, and he was dead. General Savary went to tell his master that he was obeyed.
Shakespeare has depicted remorse with that terrible truthfulness which carries home to our minds the horror of crime. Lady Macbeth passes before us haunted by a vision, and ceaselessly washing her blood-stained hands. During all his life, even in his exile, Napoleon vainly sought to wash off the innocent and illustrious blood which he caused to flow in the fosse of Vincennes on the 20th of March, 1804. The men whom he had employed as the instruments of his heinous crime struggled like himself under this terrible responsibility. In vain has Bonaparte reproached Talleyrand with having perfidiously urged him on in the fatal path; in vain has Réal affirmed that an order reached his house during the night assuring to the prisoner a new examination, unfortunately forestalled by his death. All explanations, and all accusations have failed before the severe justice of history and the infallible instinct of the public conscience. The odious burden of a cowardly assassination was constantly weighing upon him who had ordered it. The blood of his victim created round him an abyss that all the efforts of supreme power could never succeed in filling up.
When the news spread in Paris, on March 21st, it was received with stupor; people wept, even at Malmaison. Caulaincourt, previously entrusted with the explanatory letter for the Elector of Baden, complained bitterly of the stain upon his honor. Fourcroy was sent to dissolve the Corps Législatif; Fontanes, who presided over the assembly, replied to the counsellor of state without making allusion to the catastrophe, the intelligence of which the latter had mixed up with matters of business. His speech was modified in the _Moniteur_. Fontanes had the courage to protest against the approbation which had been attributed to him. The same journal contained the judgment of the military commission which had condemned the Duc d’Enghien; like the speech of Fontanes, the wording had been altered.
Alone amongst the public functionaries of every rank or origin, young Chateaubriand, minister of France to the republic of Valais, felt himself constrained to give in his resignation. Louis XVIII. sent back the collar of the Golden Fleece to the King of Spain, who remained the ally of Napoleon. The courts of Russia and Sweden put on mourning for the Duc d’Enghien.
Thus was preparing in Europe, under the impulse of public opinion, the third coalition, which was to unite all the sovereigns against France. Alone till then, England had hatched against us the plots in which its diplomatic agents were found compromised; but the denunciations of the First Consul against Spencer and Drake vanish, and lose all importance in presence of the crime committed at Vincennes. Prussia, long and obstinately faithful to its policy of neutrality, and recently disposed to draw nearer to us, began to incline towards Russia, with whom she soon concluded an alliance. Austria evinced neither regret nor anger, but the action of the German powers was silently influencing her. The First Consul broke out against the Emperor Alexander, violently hurling a gross insult at him. “When England meditated the assassination of Paul I., if it had been known that the authors of the plot could be found at a place on the frontiers, would not you have been inclined to have them seized?” General Hédouville, ambassador of France at St. Petersburg, received the order to set out in forty-eight hours. “Know for your direction,” said he to the chargé d’affaires, “that the First Consul does not wish for war, but he does not fear it with anybody.”
In presence of this general perturbation of Europe, of the loud indignation of some and the dull uneasiness of others–in order to respond to the denunciations of the royalists, who understood the fatal consequences of the blow that Bonaparte had dealt to his own glory, the First Consul resolved to take at length the last step which separated him from supreme greatness. A year before he had been appointed Consul for life of the French Republic: the murderer of a prince of the house of Bourbon, he raised again on his own account the overturned throne. Still without children, he founded in his person an hereditary monarchy, assured of finding in the nation the assent of admiration as of lassitude and fear. Eight days had scarcely passed since the execution of the Duc d’Enghien; the brothers of the First Consul were absent and discontented. Cambacérès was opposed to the projects which he had divined in the mind of Napoleon Bonaparte. In his place, Fouché, always eager to serve the man whose favor he courted, cleverly prepared the minds of the Senate. No equivocation was possible as to the desires of Napoleon. On March 27th the first assembly of the state addressed to the supreme chief this humble request: “You found a new era,” said the Senate, “but you ought to make it eternal. Splendor is nothing without duration. You are harassed by circumstances, by conspirators, by the ambitious. You are also in another sense harassed by the uneasiness which agitates all Frenchmen. You can conquer the times, master circumstances, put a curb on conspirators, disarm the ambitious, tranquillize all France, by giving it institutions which shall cement your edifice, and prolong for the children what you have done for the fathers. In town and country if you could interrogate all Frenchmen one after another, no one would speak otherwise than we. Great Man, complete your work by rendering it as immortal as your glory; you have drawn us forth from the chaos of the past, you make us blessed in the benefits of the present–make us sure of the future.”
The clever manoeuvre of Fouché gave Napoleon the opportunity of declaring himself; he wished to be invited to speak. His answer was not, and could not, be ready; he asked of the Senate time to reflect. Meanwhile he set himself to sound the courts of Europe. On the morrow of the insult he had offered to all the sovereigns by the murder of the Duc d’Enghien, their good-will was doubtful: the earnest adhesion of Prussia and Austria astonished and satisfied him; he was at war with England, embroiled with Russia; the rest of Europe seemed to be at his feet. Clever at managing those of whom he had need, he wished to assure himself of the disposition of the army still agitated by the arrest of Moreau. He wrote to General Soult, who commanded the camp of Saint Omer: “Citizen General Soult, I have received your letter. The Councils-General of the departments, the Electoral Colleges, and all the great bodies of the State, ask that an end should be at last put to the hopes of the Bourbons, by placing the republic in safety from the shocks of elections and the uncertainty of the life of a single man. But up to this moment I have decided upon nothing; meanwhile I desire that you should instruct me in great detail as to the opinion of the army on a measure of this nature. You perceive that I would not be drawn into it except with the sole object of the nation’s interest, for the French people have made me so great and so powerful that I can desire nothing more.”
The malcontents in the army were silent; the ambitious, the courtiers, the faithful and devoted servants of the great general, brought him the protestation of their devotion; the addresses from the departments succeeded each other in great numbers. On April 25 the First Consul sent a message to the Senate: “Your address of the 6th Germinal has not ceased to be present to my thoughts,” said he. “You have judged the hereditary succession of the chief magistrate to be necessary to shelter the French people from the plots of our enemies, and the agitation born of rival ambitions. Many of our institutions have at the same time appeared to you to require to be improved in order to assure without reversal the triumph of equality and public liberty, and to offer to the government and the nation the double guarantee of which they have need. In proportion as I have fixed my attention on these great objects, I have perceived more and more that, under circumstances as novel as they are important, the counsels of your wisdom and of your experience are necessary to me in order to fix all my ideas. I invite you then to let me become completely acquainted with all your thoughts. I desire that on the 14th July this year we shall be able to say to the French people: Fifteen years ago, by a spontaneous movement, you rushed to arms; you required liberty, equality, and glory. To-day, this best of all national wealth, assured to you without fear of reversal, is protected from all tempests. Institutions conceived and commenced in the midst of the storms of internal and external war, developed with constancy, have been brought to their climax amidst the noise of the efforts and plots of our mortal enemies, by the adoption of all that the experience of ages and of peoples has demonstrated as fit to guarantee the laws which the nation has judged necessary for its dignity, its liberty, and its honor.”
On the day following the 14th of July, 1789, the Duc de Rochefoucauld said, with prophetic sadness, “It is very difficult to enter into true liberty by such a gate.” General Bonaparte was destined to confirm this solemn truth, so often and so sorrowfully misunderstood by our country. France, exhausted and disgusted by the enthusiasms of demagogy and the bloody tyranny of the Terror, had been tossed by shock after shock into the arms of the conqueror who promised her order and energy in government; she had forgotten for a time those great and salutary conquests of the liberty which she unreservedly yielded up at his feet.
By a tardy return towards the convictions of the past, Carnot alone raised his voice in the Tribunate to recall the Republic, abandoned by all, in the name of that liberty which he wrongly attributed to it. “Was liberty then always to be shown to man without his being able to enjoy it? Was it ceaselessly offered for his desires, like a fruit to which he could not stretch forth his hand without being in danger of death? No! I cannot consent to regard this gift, so universally preferable to all others, without which the others are nothing, as a simple illusion. My heart tells me that liberty is possible, that its rule is easy and more stable than any arbitrary or oligarchic government. You say that Bonaparte has effected the salvation of his country, that he has restored public liberty; is it then a recompense to offer up to him this same liberty as a sacrifice?”
On the 3rd of May, on the proposal of Curée and the report of Jard- Panvillier, the Tribunate sent to the Senate a proposal to the effect: “Firstly, that Napoleon Bonaparte, at present Consul for life, be appointed Emperor, and in this capacity entrusted with the government of the French Republic. Secondly, that the title of Emperor and the imperial power be hereditary in his family, from male to male, in order of primogeniture. Thirdly and lastly, that in deciding as regards the organization of the constituted authorities upon the modifications required by the establishment of hereditary power–equality, liberty, and the rights of the people, be preserved in their integrity.”
The Senate was resolved not to lose the fruits of its initiative; the project of the senatus-consultum was ready, and was immediately carried to the First Consul, accompanied by the views of all the great bodies of the State. When it returned to the Senate, amended and modified by the will of the supreme chief, the authority which the senators had sought to arrogate to themselves had been taken away. “The senators, if they were allowed to do it, would go on to absorb the Corps Législatif, and, who knows? perhaps even to restore the Bourbons,” said the First Consul to the Council of State. “They wish at once to legislate, to judge, and to govern. Such a union of powers would be monstrous; I shall not suffer it!” The Tribunate ceased to exist as an assembly, and could no longer discuss except in sections; the Corps Législatif were permitted to debate in secret committees only. A High Court was to be constituted, to judge the crimes of personages too important for the jurisdictions of ordinary tribunals. In order to satisfy the vanity of Joseph and Louis Bonaparte, alone entitled to the succession of the empire, two officers were borrowed from the constitution devised by Sieyès, and from mediaeval history; the one became Grand Elector, and the other Constable. Sagacious and docile counsellor of the First Consul in their apparent equality, Cambacérès was appointed arch-chancellor of the empire, and Lebrun became arch-treasurer. Four honorary marshals [Footnote: Kellermann, Pérignon, Lefèvre, Sérurier.] and fourteen active marshals [Footnote: Murat, Berthier, Masséna, Lannes, Soult, Brune, Ney, Augereau, Moncey, Mortier, Davout, Jourdan, Bernadotte, Bessières.] were grouped around the restored throne. Alone and beforehand the Senate decided upon the destinies of France, arrogantly called upon to ratify decisions over which it exercised no authority; on May 19th, 1804, at the close of the sitting, all the senators went together to St. Cloud, and by the voice of Cambacérès prayed his _Imperial Majesty_ that the organic arrangements might come into force immediately. “For the glory, as for the happiness of the country, we proclaim at this very moment Napoleon Bonaparte Emperor of the French.”
Those present cried, “Long live the Emperor!” Only the sanction of the law of hereditary succession was submitted to the popular vote. By the force of his genius as much as by the splendor of his military glory, Napoleon had conquered France more completely than Italy or Egypt.
CHAPTER VIII.
GLORY AND SUCCESS (1804-1805).
On the eve of the declaration of the Senate in favor of the empire, Cambacérès had said to Lebrun, “All is over! the monarchy is re- established! But I have a presentiment that what they are now constructing will not be durable. We made war upon Europe to give it republics, which should be daughters of the French Republic; now we shall make it to give Europe monarchs, sons or brothers of ours; and France, exhausted, will finally succumb to such fatal attempts.”
A year before that, when the consulship for life was proclaimed, the wise and virtuous Tronchet, when a sorrowful witness of the revolutionary crimes against which he had defended King Louis XVI., had shown the same inquietude and fatal presentiment. “This young man begins like Caesar,” he said of General Bonaparte; “I am afraid he may end as he did.”
The daggers of the Roman conspirators had arrested Caesar in his course. Napoleon had found neither a Brutus nor a Cassius: he reigned without contest, by a triumphal acclamation of 3,572,329 suffrages against 2569 “Noes.” The country was eager to salute its new master, with a curiosity mixed with confidence in the unexpected resources of his genius. The courtiers alone around him who had found no place in the prodigal distribution of honors, muttered their murmurs. They served him nevertheless; and Talleyrand remained minister of foreign affairs, even when all the important posts of the empire had escaped his desires.
With more calmness and pride than the courtiers, Moreau and the royalist conspirators waited in prison for their verdict. Napoleon was as eager as they were, being in haste to rid himself of an embarrassment which could become a danger. In proportion as the trial proceeded, Moreau’s case was more and more kept distinct from that of the other prisoners. The mode of defence adopted by the royalists tended entirely to prove his innocence. “We entered France,” they said, “deceived by false reports, and with the hope of securing our restoration: General Moreau refused us his assistance, and our project failed.” The general did not appear disturbed by the irregular jurisdiction to which his case was to be referred. “Strive,” he wrote to his wife, “to make sure that those who are to judge me are just men, incapable of betraying their conscience. If I am judged by persons of honor, I cannot complain, although they have apparently suppressed the jury.”
The public interest was lively, and openly shown, in spite of the evident annoyance of the emperor. The friends of the royalist prisoners were numerous and ardent; and, whether from admiration or indifference, the public believed General Moreau innocent of all conspiracy, and made excuse for the dissatisfaction or ambition which he might have manifested. The sharers of his renown–Dessoles, Gouvion St. Cyr, Macdonald, Lecourbe– were faithfully present at every sitting. I borrow from the interesting recollections of Madame Récamier the picture of the spectacle then seen in the hall of the Palace of Justice, every approach to which was choked by the crowd. “The prisoners, of whom there were forty-seven, were for the most part unknown to each other, and filled the raised seats facing those where the judges sat. Each prisoner was seated between two gendarmes; those near Moreau were full of respect. When I raised my veil the general recognized me, and rose to salute me. I returned his salute with emotion and respect. I was deeply touched at seeing them treat as a criminal that great general whose reputation was then so glorious and unstained. It was no longer a question of republic and republicans. Excepting Moreau, who I am certain was an entire stranger to the conspiracy, it was the royalist loyalty that alone was on its defence against the new power. This cause of the ancient monarchy had as its head a man of the people, Georges Cadoudal.
“That fearless Georges! We looked at him with the thought that that head, so freely and energetically devoted, must fall on the scaffold; or that he alone, probably, would not escape death, as he did nothing for that purpose. Disdaining to defend himself, he only defended his friends; and when they tried to persuade him to ask for pardon, as the other prisoners had done, he replied, ‘Do you promise me a fairer opportunity of dying?’
“In the ranks of the accused, Polignac and Rivière were still noticeable, interesting from their youth and devotion. Pichegru, whose name will remain historically united with Moreau’s, was missing at his side–or rather, one believed his shade was visible there, because it was known that he also was not in the prison.
“Another recollection, the death of the Duc d’Enghien, increased the sorrow and terror of many minds, even among the most devoted partisans of Bonaparte.”
Taken as a whole, and in spite of the embarrassment caused by the persistence of two or three of the accusers, the public judicial examination was favorable to General Moreau. On being accused of having agreed to a reconciliation with the traitor Pichegru, he replied, “Since the beginning of the Revolution there have been many traitors. There were some who were traitors in 1789, without being so in 1793; there were others who were so in ’93 but were not in ’95, others who were so in ’95 but have not been so since. Many were republicans who are not so now. General Pichegru may have had an understanding with Condé in the year IV.; I believe that he had; but he was included in the proscription of Fructidor, and must be considered as one of those who were then proscribed. When I saw other Fructidorians at the head of the authorities of state–when Condé’s army filled the Parisian drawing-rooms and those of the First Consul, I might very well take a share in restoring to France the conqueror of Holland. I am credited with the absurd idea of making use of royalists in the hope of regaining power if they were successful. I have made war for ten years, and during those ten years I am not aware of having done absurd things.” When they laid emphasis on his interview with Pichegru and Georges, he said, “A quarter of an hour is but little for the discussion of a plan of government. It is said that Pichegru was dissatisfied; probably we were not of the same mind.” On the president regretting that he had not denounced Pichegru and the royalists, saying that he owed it to a government that loaded him with benefits, Moreau exclaimed, “The conqueror of Hohenlinden is not a denouncer, M. le President. Do not put my services and my fortune in the same balance, for there is no possible comparison between the things. I should have fifty millions to-day, had I made the same use of victory which many others have done!”
Moreau wished to plead himself the cause of his life and renown. “It is only by my counsel,” he said, “that I wish to address justice”–here the illustrious general looked round upon the attentive multitude–“but I feel that both on your account and mine I ought to speak myself. Unfortunate circumstances, produced by chance or caused by hatred, may for an instant obscure the life of the most honorable man; and a clever criminal may keep off suspicion and the proof of his crimes. The whole life of a prisoner is always the most certain testimony against him and for him. I therefore set my whole life to witness against my accusers and prosecutors; it has been public enough to be known: I shall only recall a few of its epochs: and the witnesses whom I shall summon will be the French people, and the people whom France has conquered. I was devoted to the study of law at the beginning of that revolution which was to establish the liberty of the French people; and the object of my life being thus changed, I devoted it to arms. I became a warrior because I was a citizen: I bore this character beneath our standards, and have always preserved it. I was promoted quickly, but always from step to step without passing any; always by serving my country, never by flattering the committees. On being appointed commander, when victory obliged us to march through the countries of our enemies, I was as anxious that our character should be respected as that our arms should be dreaded. War, under my orders, was a calamity only on the battlefield. I have the presumption to think that the country has not forgotten my services then, nor the ready devotion which I showed when fighting as a subordinate; nor how I was appointed to the command-in-chief by the reverses of our arms, and, in one sense, named general by our misfortunes. It is still remembered how I twice recomposed the army from the fragments of those which had been scattered, and how, after having twice restored it to a condition of being able to cope with the Russians and Austrians, I twice laid down the command to take another of greater responsibility. I was not during that period of my life more republican than during the others, though I seemed so. It is well known that there was a proposal to put me at the head of a movement similar to that of the 18th Brumaire. I refused, believing that I was made to command armies, and having no desire to command a Republic. I did more; on the 18th Brumaire I was in Paris. That revolution, instigated by others, could not disturb my peace of mind; but directed by a man surrounded by great renown, I might have hoped for happy results from it. I took part in it to assist it, whilst some other parties urged me to lead them in opposing it. I received in Paris General Bonaparte’s orders, and, in seeing them executed, I assisted in raising him to that high degree of power which circumstances rendered necessary. When, shortly afterwards, he offered me the command of the army of the Rhine, I accepted it from him with as much devotion as from the hands of the Republic itself. Never had my successes been more rapid, more numerous, or more decisive, than during that period; and their renown was reflected upon the government which accuses me. What a moment for conspiring, if such a scheme had ever entered my mind! Would an ambitious man, or a conspirator, have let slip the opportunity when at the head of an army of 100,000 men so often victorious? I only thought of disbanding the army before returning to the repose of civil life.
“During that rest, which has not been without glory, I enjoyed my honors (such honors as no human power can deprive me of), the recollections of what I had done, the testimony of my conscience, the esteem of my country and of foreigners, and, to be candid, the flattering and pleasant presentiment of the esteem of posterity. My mind and disposition were so well known, and I kept myself so far aloof from any ambitious project, that from the victory of Hohenlinden till my arrest my enemies were never able to accuse me of any crime except freedom in speaking. Do conspirators openly find fault with that which they do not approve? So much candor is scarcely reconcilable with political secrets and plots. If I had wished to adopt and follow the plans of any conspirators, I should have concealed my sentiments, and solicited every appointment which might have restored me to power. As a guide on such a route, in default of the political talent which I have never had, there were examples known to all the world and rendered imposing by success. I might have known that Monk retained command of his armies when he wished to conspire, and that Cassius and Brutus came nearer Caesar’s heart in order to pierce it.”
When the pleading was finished, the emperor and the public anxiously waited for the sentence. The fact of the royalist plot being proved, the condemnation of the prisoners was certain, and the inquietude and hopes of all were concentrated on Moreau. “Towards the close of the trial,” said Madame Récamier, “all business was stopped, the entire population were out of doors, they talked of nothing but Moreau.” The emperor had informed the judges that he would not demand that the general be condemned to death unless in the interest of justice, and as a salutary example, his fixed intention being to grant him pardon. One of the members of the tribunal, Clavier, a man of great virtue and learning, said, on hearing General Murat’s proposition, “And who will pardon us ourselves, if we pass judgment and condemnation against our consciences?” At the first deliberation of the tribunal, seven judges out of twelve voted for acquittal pure and simple: being afraid of Napoleon’s anger, they sentenced Moreau to two years’ imprisonment. “Why, that’s a punishment for a pickpocket!” exclaimed the emperor in a passion. By wise counsel he was induced to show a prudent clemency. Moreau, nearly ruined by the expense of the trial, and as annoyed by the sentence as Napoleon was, refused to ask any favor. “If it was certain that I took part in the conspiracy,” he exclaimed, “I ought to have been condemned to death as a leader. I undergo the extremity of horror and disgrace. Nobody will believe that I played the part of a corporal.”
His young and handsome wife, being near confinement, asked for and obtained permission to sail to America with her husband, and when delayed at Cadiz by child-birth, was urged to set out on the voyage through Fouché’s influence in the Spanish court. “Four years ago about this time,” wrote the general, “I gained the battle of Hohenlinden. That event, so glorious for my country, procured for my fellow-countrymen a repose which they had long wanted. I alone have been unable to obtain it. Will they refuse it me at the extremity of Europe, 500 leagues from my native land?”
Moreau carried with him into exile the cruel recollection of the name “brigand” (ruffian), which had been formerly abusively replied to him, and that keen desire for vengeance which was one day to prove so fatal to his renown.
Of the royalist prisoners, twenty were condemned to death. In spite of Murat’s eager pleading, eleven perished on the scaffold with Georges Cadoudal, equal to him in the imperturbability of their political and religious faith. Rivière and Polignac, General Lajolais, and four others owed their lives to the supplications of their families, judiciously assisted by the kindness of the Empress Josephine. They were all sent to prison.
Napoleon felt with more justice than Moreau himself that the conscience of the judges had been opposed to his supreme will. In spite of the silence which he imposed upon the organs of the press, more and more roughly treated by him, public opinion remained equally stirred up against the murder of the Duc d’Enghien. A thought which had arisen in his mind from the day of his elevation to the empire, gained fresh forces from the feeling of silent disapprobation of all honorable men. He wished to place a religious stamp upon his greatness, and instructed Cardinal Caprara to ask the Pope to come to Paris to consecrate him. “It is most unlikely,” said he, “that any power will make objection to it either in right or in fact. Therefore broach the subject, and when you have transmitted the reply, I shall make the suitable and necessary arrangements with the Pope.”
As in the case of the Concordat, the emperor’s confidential advisers were not favorable to the idea of consecration. The discussion in the Council of State was lively, characterized by all the philosophical and revolutionary suspicion as to the pretensions of a power being invited to bestow the crown and thus probably believing it had the power to withdraw it. Napoleon had formed a better judgment of the profound and permanent effect of the condescension which he asked from the Pope. “Gentlemen,” said he to his council, “you are deliberating in Paris in the Tuileries; suppose that you were deliberating in London in the British cabinet, that in a word, you were ministers of the King of England, and that you were told that at this moment the Pope was crossing the Alps to consecrate the Emperor of the French, would you consider that as a triumph for England or for France?”
The council had not insisted, and the court of Rome felt their force of resistance becoming weaker every day. The death of the Duc d’Enghien had caused the Pope much sorrow:–“My tears now,” said Pius VII., “at the death of the one and the attempt upon the other.” The French bishops who had not resigned had renewed their protestations against the Concordat. The Sacred College, when consulted as to the journey of the holy father, were divided in their opinion. Five cardinals declared that by so doing the Pope would ratify all the usurpations of which the new Emperor of the French had rendered himself culpable; fifteen showed less severity, but all insisted upon surrounding the solicited favor with numerous conditions. “The actual advantage to religion expressly professed in the invitation which his Holiness is about to accept, but actually injured in the result, can alone excuse in the eyes of Catholics the temporary abandonment of the holy seat,” wrote Cardinal Consalvi to Cardinal Caprara: “the dignity and honor of the head of religion both require it.” He also wrote, “The form of oath taken by the emperor raises great difficulties. We cannot admit the oath _to respect and caused to be respected the laws of the Concordat_, which is the same thing as saying that one must respect the organic articles and cause them to be respected. _To respect the liberty of worship_ supposes an engagement not to tolerate and allow, but to sustain and protect, and extends not only to persons, but to the thing, that is to say to all forms of worship. But a Catholic cannot defend the error of false forms of worship.”
Cardinal Caprara, as papal legate in Paris, and Cardinal Fesch, as French ambassador in Rome, explained away or avoided the difficulties. The legate, always timid and easily persuaded, gave grounds for hopes which he was not always able to realize; the cardinal, haughty and violent, divided between devotion to his all-powerful nephew and his own restoration to ecclesiastical practices and sentiments, was at Rome lavish of presents and threats. He at the same time advised the court of Rome to claim the Legations, whatever were the scruples of the Pope to confound temporal questions with spiritual concessions. Skilful in making use of the real Intentions or wishes which he was aware of, without compromising his government by any formal engagement, Cardinal Fesch at last triumphed over the repugnances of the Pope by avoiding most of the conditions of the Holy College, and on the 30th September, 1804, he presented to Pius VII. General Caffarelli, the emperor’s deputy at Rome, instead of the two bishops formerly insisted upon. Still less explicit than his ambassador, Napoleon gave no hopes to the holy father of the important concessions with which the latter was fondly flattering himself.
“Very Holy Father,” said the emperor, “the happy result evinced in the morality and character of my people by the re-establishment of the Christian religion, leads me to pray your Holiness to give me a new proof of the interest which your Holiness takes in my destiny and that of this great nation, in one of the most important periods shown in the annals of the world. I beg your Holiness to come and give a religious character of the highest degree to the ceremony of the consecration and coronation of the first Emperor of the French. That ceremony will acquire a new lustre if done by your Holiness. It will bring upon us and our peoples the blessing of God, whose decrees govern according to His will the lot of empires and of families.
“Your Holiness knows the friendly feeling which I have long had towards you, and must therefore infer the pleasure which I shall have in giving you fresh proofs.
“Thereupon we pray God, most holy father, that He may keep you for many years in the rule and government of our mother the holy Church.
“Your devoted son,
“Napoleon.”
The Pope had determined to set out, being convinced that resistance was impossible, and harassed by a serious inquietude the importance of which was afterwards confirmed, and by the vague fears of a sickly old man. He was offended by the contemptuous terms which the foreign ambassadors applied to the condescension of him whom they called the “French emperor’s chaplain.” His Italian subtilty was disturbed, and his natural kindness chafed by the dryness of the emperor’s message. “This is poison which you have brought to me,” said he to General Caffarelli, after reading Napoleon’s letter. He set out nevertheless, obstinately refusing to take with him Cardinal Consalvi, in whose hands he had placed his abdication. “If they keep me here,” said he one day in Paris, “they will find that they only have in their power a wretched monk called Barnabus Chiaramonti.”
The Pope’s departure had been much hastened by the repeated urgency of the emperor, and his journey was so also. The time for the ceremony was fixed without consulting him. As Cardinal Consalvi said in his Memoirs, “they made the holy father gallop from Rome to Paris like an almoner summoned by his master to say mass.”
On the 25th November, 1804, about mid-day, the emperor was hunting in the forest of Fontainebleau, and went towards Croix St. Herem at the moment when the Pope’s carriage just reached that spot. The carriage stopped, and “the holy father stepped out in his white dress; as the road was muddy he could not soil his silk stockings by stepping on the ground.” He got out, however, whilst the emperor, leaping from his horse, advanced to him and embraced him. The meeting had been skilfully arranged in order that the new master of France might be spared the annoyance of a deference which he considered excessive. Both doors of the emperor’s carriage were opened at once, and Napoleon entering by the right, Pius VII. naturally took the left. The empress and imperial family were waiting for the Pope at the great portico of the palace. The emperor seemed triumphant. The Pope was full of emotion, affected by the kind reception he had met with by the people during his journey. “I have passed through a population all on their knees,” said he.
The Emperor Napoleon was not on his knees, and Pius VII. was even sensible of it. Several questions had remained undecided before the holy father’s departure for France: Napoleon had resolutely disposed of them, and yielded only on one point. Still bandied about between his own uncertainty, the love which he still felt for the Empress Josephine, the intrigues of her family, who were opposed to him, and the passionate longing to have a son to inherit his crown, he had been on the point of demanding a divorce a few days previously, but on the empress making the Pope her confidant their union was confirmed, and on the eve of the coronation, with the greatest secrecy, the religious marriage of the emperor with Josephine was celebrated by Cardinal Fesch. Pius VII. declared that it was impossible for him to proceed with the ceremony of the double consecration so long as that act of reparation remained unaccomplished.
Those who had charge of the arrangements for the great spectacle, the Abbé Bernier, lately appointed Bishop of Orleans, and the Arch-chancellor Cambacérès, had frequently discussed the ceremonial of the coronation properly so-called. In France the peers, in Italy the bishops, formerly held the crown above the head of the sovereign, who then received it from the hands of the pontiff. “All the French emperors, all those of Germany who have been consecrated by the popes were at the same crowned by them. The holy father, in order to decide as to the journey, must receive from Paris the assurance that in this case there will be no innovation contrary to the honor and dignity of the sovereign pontiff.” At Rome the replies bad been vague; at Paris the emperor had calmed the zeal and inquietude of his servants. “I shall arrange that myself,” said he. On the 2nd December, 1804, the ceremony of consecration took place according to the solemn ceremonial, and the emperor, after being anointed with the holy oil, held out his hand towards the crown which the Pope had just taken from the altar. Pius VII., completely taken by surprise, made no resistance, and Napoleon himself placing on his head the emblem of sovereign power, then crowned with his own hands the empress, who was in tears kneeling before him. Mounting his throne whilst his brothers held up his robe, being compelled to that act of humility by his imperious will, and their sisters bore the train of the empress, the Pope pronounced the solemn formula, “Vivat in aeternum Augustus!” And under the very eyes of the holy pontiff, the Emperor Napoleon took the oath in the form which had been so much opposed in Rome. His victory was complete: he triumphed over the old revolutionary prejudices, whilst at the same time confirming in Notre Dame, in spite of the scruples of the court of Rome, the principles of liberty acquired by the French Revolution.
When the Pope, sad and discouraged, at last set out for Rome, 4th April, 1805, he had obtained none of the favors which he thought he had a right to expect. The emperor was inflexible on the question of the “organic articles,” making no concession as to their application. The statement presented by the Pope and drawn up by Cardinal Antonelli, the most enthusiastic of his councillors, was on Napoleon’s orders replied to by Portalis, who was skilful in concealing the refusal under the grave phraseology of legal and Christian language. Urged to extremity, Pius VII. applied to the emperor himself to ask the restoration of the Legations. Talleyrand wrote in reply, “France has very dearly bought the power which she enjoys. It is not in the emperor’s power to take anything from an empire which is the fruit of ten years’ war and bloodshed, continued with an admirable courage and accompanied with the most unhappy agitation and an unexampled constancy. It is still less in his power to diminish the territory of a foreign state which, by entrusting him with the care of governing, had laid upon him the duty of protecting it.” A few sentences added by the emperor to the diplomatic document left room for vague hopes of certain consolations. The illusions of Pius VII. began to disappear; without compensation or recompense, he had worked to consolidate for a short time the throne of the conqueror; the conquests which he had won were not of this world; the complete submission of the constitutional bishops, and the genuine respect with which the French people constantly surrounded him were due to the personal veneration which he inspired. When at last he crossed the mountains the Emperor Napoleon had reached Italy before him, as if to indicate more emphatically the condescension which the sovereign pontiff had shown to him. It was at Turin that he finally took leave of Pius VII., letting him return to Rome while he took in the cathedral of Milan the iron crown of the Lombard kings, and placed it on his head before an immense crowd of on-lookers, using the traditional words of the ancient Lombard monarchy, “God has given it me, who dare touch it?”
The Cisalpine Republic no longer existed, and the Emperor of the French, King of Italy, boasted of the moderation he had evinced in keeping the two crowns apart. At one time he intended raising his brother Joseph to the new throne, but the latter was afraid of compromising his right to succeed to the imperial crown. Louis Bonaparte refused to govern in the name of the child which he had by Hortense de Beauharnais, daughter of the Empress Josephine by her first marriage, whom he had married with regret. Compelled to unite, on his own head, the two crowns of France and Italy, Napoleon entrusted the care of the government to his son-in-law, Eugène de Beauharnais. His protestations of respect for the independence of the