On Sunday evening, Brumaire 19, Napoleon had been a desperate political
gambler, staking fortune and life upon a throw; on Monday morning
following he calmly seated himself in the armchair at the palace of the
Luxembourg and began to give laws to France. He took the first place
and held it, not by any trick or legal contrivance, but by his native
imperiousness and superiority. In genius, in cunning, in courage,
he was the master of the doctrinaire Sieyès, and of the second-rate
lawyer, Roger-Ducos; besides, he held the army in the hollow of his
hand.
The sad comfort of saying “I told you so,” was all that was left to
Sieyès. “Gentlemen, we have a master,” said he to his friends that
Monday evening; and the will of this imperious colleague he did not
seriously try to oppose. In the very first meeting of the consuls,
Napoleon had won the complete supremacy by refusing to share in the
secret fund which the Directors had hidden away for their own uses.
They had emptied the treasury, and had spent $15,000,000 in advance
of the revenues, yet they had laid by for the rainy day which might
overtake themselves personally the sum of 800,000 francs or about
$160,000. Sieyès blandly called attention to this fact, and proposed
that he, Ducos, and Napoleon should divide the fund. “Share it between
you,” said Napoleon, who refused to touch it.
[Illustration: NAPOLEON
As First Consul, at Malmaison. From a painting by J. B. Isabey]
* * * * *
Without the slightest apparent effort, Napoleon’s genius expanded to
the great work of reorganizing the Republic. Heretofore he had been
a man of camps and battle-fields; but he had so completely mastered
everything connected with the recruiting equipment and maintenance
of an army, had served so useful an apprenticeship in organizing the
Italian republics, and had been to school to such purpose in dealing
with politicians of all sorts, negotiating treaties, and sounding the
secrets of parties, that he really came to his great task magnificently
trained by actual experience.
In theory the new government of the three consuls was only
experimental, limited to sixty days. The two councils had not been
dissolved. Purged of about sixty violently anti-Bonaparte members,
the Ancients and the Five Hundred were but adjourned to the 19th of
February, 1800. If by that time the consuls had not been able to offer
to France a new scheme of government which would be accepted, the
councils were to meet again and decide what should be done. On paper,
therefore, Napoleon was a consul on probation, a pilot on a trial trip.
In his own eyes he was permanent chief of the State; and his every
motion was made under the impulse of that conviction.
Determined that there should be no reaction, that the scattered forces
of the opposition should have no common cause and centre of revolt, he
stationed his soldiers at threatened points; and then used all the art
of the finished politician to deceive and divide the enemy. To the
royalists he held out the terror of a Jacobin revival; to the Jacobin,
the dread of a Bourbon restoration. To the clergy he hinted a return
of the good old days when no man could legally be born, innocently
married, decently die, or be buried with hope of heaven, unless a
priest had charge of the functions. But above all was his pledge of
strong government, one which would quell faction, restore order, secure
property, guarantee civil liberty, and make the Republic prosperous and
happy. The belief that he would make good his word was the foundation
of the almost universal approval with which his seizure of power was
regarded. He was felt to be the one man who could drag the Republic
out of the ditch, reinspire the armies, cleanse the public service,
restore the ruined finances, establish law and order, and blend into a
harmonious nationality the factions which were rending France. Besides,
it was thought that a strong government would be the surest guarantee
of peace with foreign nations, as it was believed that the weakness
of the Directory was an encouragement to the foreign enemies of the
country.
One of Napoleon’s first acts was to proclaim amnesty for political
offences. He went in person to set free the hostages imprisoned in the
Temple. Certain priests and émigrés who had been cast into prison, he
released. The law of hostages, which held relatives responsible for the
conduct of relatives, he repealed.
The victims of Fructidor (September, 1797) who had been banished, he
recalled--Pichegru and Aubrey excepted.
Mr. Lanfrey says that this exception from the pardon is proof of
Napoleon’s “mean and cruel nature.” Let us see. Pichegru, a republican
general, in command of a republican army, had taken gold from the
Bourbons, and had agreed to betray his army and his country. Not only
that, he had purposely allowed that army to be beaten by the enemy. As
Desaix remarked, Pichegru was perhaps the only general known to history
who had ever done a thing of the kind. Was Napoleon mean and cruel in
letting such a man remain in exile? Had Washington captured and shot
Benedict Arnold, would that have been proof that Washington’s nature
was mean and cruel? In leaving Pichegru where he was, Napoleon acted as
leniently as possible with a self-convicted traitor.
As to Aubrey, he had held a position of the highest trust under the
Republic, while he was at heart a royalist; he had used that position
to abet royalist conspiracies; he had gone out of his way to degrade
Napoleon, had refused to listen to other members of the government in
Napoleon’s favor, and had urged against Napoleon two reasons which
revealed personal malice,--Napoleon’s youth, and Napoleon’s politics.
To pardon such a man might have been magnanimous; to leave him under
just condemnation was neither mean nor cruel.
Under the law of that time, there were about 142,000 émigrés who
had forfeited life and estate. They had staked all in opposition to
the Revolution, had lost, and had been put under penalty. Almost
immediately, Napoleon began to open the way for the return of these
exiles and for the restoration of their property. As rapidly as
possible, he broadened the scope of his leniency until all émigrés had
been restored to citizenship save the very few (about one thousand) who
were so identified with the Bourbons, or who had so conspicuously made
war on France, that their pardon was not deemed judicious.
Priests were gradually relieved from all penalties and allowed to
exercise their office. Churches were used by Christians on the
seventh-day Sabbath, and by Theophilanthropists on the Decadi--the
tenth-day holiday. The one sect came on the seventh day with holy
water, candles, holy image, beads, crucifix, song, prayer, and sermon
on faith, hope, and charity,--with the emphasis thrown on the word,
Faith. The other sect came on the tenth day with flowers for the altar,
hymns and addresses in honor of those noble traits which constitute
lofty character, and with the emphasis laid upon such words as
Brotherhood, Charity, Mercy, and Love.
It was not a great while, of course, before the Christians (so recently
pardoned) found it impossible to tolerate the tenth-day people; and
they were quietly suppressed in the Concordat.
One of the Directors, Larévellière, was an ardent Theophilanthropist,
and he had made vigorous effort to enroll Napoleon on that side, soon
after the Italian campaign. The sect, being young and weak, found no
favor whatever in the eyes of the ambitious politician; and he who in
Egypt sat cross-legged among the ulemas and muftis, demurely taking
lessons from the Koran, had no hesitation in repelling the advances of
Theosophy.
Going, perhaps, too far in his leniency to the émigrés (Napoleon
said later that it was the greatest mistake he ever made!), the new
government certainly erred in its severity toward the Jacobins. Some
fifty-nine of these were proscribed for old offences, and sentenced to
banishment. Public sentiment declared against this arbitrary _ex post
facto_ measure so strongly that it was not enforced.
The men of the wealthy class were drawn to the government by the
repeal of the law called the Forced Loan. This was really an income
tax, the purpose of which was to compel the capitalists to contribute
to the support of the State. The Directors, fearing that the rich men
who were subject to the tax might not make true estimates and returns,
assessed it by means of a jury. Dismal and resonant wails arose from
among the stricken capitalists.
Although the government created the tax as a loan, to be repaid
from the proceeds of the national domain, the antagonism it excited
was intense. In England, Mr. Pitt had (1798) imposed a tax upon
incomes,--very heavy in its demands, and containing the progressive
principle of the larger tax for the larger income,--but the Directors
were too feeble to mould the same instrument to their purpose in
France. Faultily assessed, stubbornly resisted, irregularly collected,
it yielded the Directory more odium than cash.
The five per cent funds which had fallen to one and a half per cent
of their par value before the 18th of Brumaire, had risen at once to
twelve per cent, and were soon quoted at seventeen.
Confidence having returned, Napoleon was able to borrow 12,000,000
francs for the immediate necessities of the State. The income tax
having been abolished, an advance of twenty-five per cent was made in
the taxes on realty, personalty, and polls. Heretofore, these taxes
had been badly assessed, badly collected, imperfectly paid into the
treasury. Napoleon at once remodelled the methods of assessment,
collection, and accounting. Tax collectors were required to give bonds
in cash; were made responsible for the amount of the taxes legally
assessed; were given a certain time within which to make collection,
and were required to give their own bills for the amount assessed.
These bills, backed by the cash deposit of the collectors, became good
commercial paper immediately, and thus the government was supplied with
funds even before the taxes had been paid.
It was with this cash deposit of the collectors that Napoleon paid for
the stock which the government took in the Bank of France which he
organized in January, 1800.
There yet remained in the hands of the government a large amount of
the confiscated land, and some of this was sold. To these sources of
revenue were soon added the contributions levied upon neighboring and
dependent states, such as Genoa, Holland, and the Hanse towns.
Under the Directory, tax-collecting and recruiting for the army had
been badly done because the work had been left to local authorities.
The central government could not act upon the citizen directly; it
had to rely upon these local authorities. When, therefore, the local
authorities failed to act, the machinery of administration was at a
standstill. Napoleon changed all this, and devised a system by which
the government dealt directly with the citizen. It was a national
officer, assisted by a council, who assessed and collected taxes. The
prefects appointed by Napoleon took the place of the royal intendants
of the Bourbon system. Holding office directly from the central
government, and accountable to it alone, these local authorities became
cogs in the wheel of a vast, resistless machine controlled entirely by
the First Consul. So perfect was the system of internal administration
which he devised, that it has stood the shock of all the changes which
have since occurred in France.
Keeping himself clear of parties, and adhering steadily to the
policy of fusion, Napoleon gave employment to men of all creeds. He
detested rogues, speculators, embezzlers. He despised mere talkers
and professional orators. He wanted workers, strenuous and practical.
He cared nothing for antecedents, nor for private morals. He knew the
depravity of Fouché and Talleyrand, yet used them. He gave employment
to royalists, Jacobins, Girondins, Deists, Christians, and infidels.
“Can he do the work, and will he do it honestly?” these were the
supreme tests. No enmity would deprive him of the service of the honest
and capable. No friendship would tolerate the continuance in office of
the dishonest or incompetent. Resolute in this policy of taking men as
he found them, of making the most of the materials at hand, he gave
high employment to many a man whom he personally disliked. He gave
to Talleyrand the ministry of foreign affairs, to Fouché that of the
police, to Carnot that of war. To Moreau he gave the largest of French
armies; Augereau, Bernadotte, Jourdan, he continued to employ. “I
cannot create men; I must use those I find.” Again he said, “The 18th
of Brumaire is a wall of brass, separating the past from the present.”
If they were capable, if they were honest, it did not matter to
Napoleon whether they had voted to kill the King or to save him; he put
them to work for France. Once in office, they must work. No sinecures,
no salaries paid as hush money, or indirect bribe, or pension for past
service, or screen for the privileged; without exception all must
earn their wages. “Come, gentlemen!” Napoleon would say cheerfully
to counsellors of State who had already been hammering away for ten
or twelve hours, “Come, gentlemen, it is only two o’clock! Let us
get on to something else; we must earn the money the State pays us.”
He himself labored from twelve to eighteen hours each day, and his
activity ran the whole gamut of public work,--from the inspection of
the soldier’s outfit, the planning of roads, bridges, quays, monuments,
churches, public buildings, the selection of a sub-prefect, the choice
of a statue for the palace, the review of a regiment, the dictation of
a despatch, or the details of a tax-digest, to the grand outlines of
organic law, national policy, and the movements of all the armies of
the Republic.
Under the Directory, the military administration had broken down so
completely that the war office had lost touch with the army. Soldiers
were not fed, clothed, or paid by the State. They could subsist only by
plundering friends and foes alike. Frightful ravages were committed by
civil and military agents of the French Republic in Italy, Switzerland,
and along the German frontier. When Napoleon applied to the late
minister of war, Dubois de Crancé, for information about the army, he
could get none. Special couriers had to be sent to the various commands
to obtain the most necessary reports. Under such mismanagement,
desertions had become frequent in the army, and recruiting had
almost ceased. The old patriotic enthusiasm had disappeared; the
“Marseillaise” performed at the theatres, by order of the Directory,
was received with hoots. To breathe new life into Frenchmen, to inspire
them again with confidence, hope, enthusiasm, was the great task of the
new government. The Jacobin was to be made to tolerate the royalist,
the Girondin, the Feuillant, and the priest. Each of these in turn
must be made to tolerate each other and the Jacobin. The noble must
consent to live quietly within the Republic which had confiscated his
property, and by the side of the man who now owned it. The republican
must dwell in harmony with the emigrant aristocracy which had once
trodden him to the earth, and which had leagued all Europe against
France in the efforts to restore old abuses. In the equality created
by law, the democrat must grow accustomed to the sight of nobles and
churchmen in office; and the man of the highest birth must be content
to work with a colleague whose birth was of the lowest. Ever since the
Revolution began, there had been alternate massacres of Catholics by
revolutionists, and of revolutionists by Catholics. It is impossible
to say which shed the greatest amount of blood--the Red Terror of the
Jacobins, or the White Terror of the Catholics. Fanaticism in the
one case as in the other had shown a ferocity of the most relentless
description. The cruel strife was now to be put down, and the men who
had been cutting each other’s throats were to be made to keep the peace.
Napoleon, in less than a year, had completely triumphed over the
difficulties of his position. The machinery of state was working with
resistless vigor throughout the realm. The taxes were paid, the laws
enforced, order reëstablished, brigandage put down, La Vendée pacified,
civil strife ended. The credit of the government was restored, public
funds rose, confidence returned. Men of all parties, of all creeds,
found themselves working zealously to win the favor of him who worked
harder than any mortal known to history.
Meanwhile Sieyès and the two commissions had been at work on the new
constitution. Dreading absolute monarchy on the one hand, and unbridled
democracy on the other, Sieyès had devised a plan of government which,
as he believed, combined the best features of both systems. There was
to be universal suffrage. Every tax-paying adult Frenchman who cared
enough about the franchise to go and register should have a vote.
But these voters did not choose office-holders. They simply elected
those from whom the office-holders should be chosen. The great mass
of the people were to elect one-tenth of their number, who would be
the notables of the commune. These would, in turn, elect one-tenth of
their number, who would be the notables of the department. These again
would elect one-tenth, who would be the national notables. From these
notables would be chosen the office-holders,--national, departmental,
and communal. This selection was made, not by the people, but by the
executive. There was to be a council of state working immediately with
the executive by whom its members were appointed. This council acting
with the executive would propose laws to the tribunate, an assembly
which could debate these prepared measures and which could send three
of its members to the legislative council to favor or oppose the law.
This legislature could hear the champions of the tribunate, and also
the delegates from the council of state; and after the speeches of
these advocates, pro and con, the legislature, as a constitutional jury
which heard debate without itself debating, could vote on the proposed
law. Besides, there was to be a Senate, named by the executive,
holding office for life. This Senate was to choose the members of the
legislative council and of the tribunate, as well as the judges of the
high court of appeals. In the Senate was lodged the power of deciding
whether laws were constitutional.
According to the Sieyès plan, there were to have been two consuls, of
war and of peace respectively; and these consuls were to have named
ministers to carry on the government through their appointees. Above
the two consuls was to be placed a grand elector, who should be lodged
in a palace, maintained in great state, magnificently salaried, but who
should have no power beyond the choice of the consuls. If the Senate
should be of the opinion, at any time, that the grand elector was not
conducting himself properly, it could absorb him into its own body, and
choose another.
Sieyès had been one of the charter members of the revolutionary party,
had helped to rock the cradle when the infant was newly born, had
lived through all the changes of its growth, manhood, madness, and
decline. Much of the permanent good work of the Revolution was his.
He now wished to frame for the French such a fundamental law as would
guard their future against the defects of their national character,
while it preserved to them what was best in the great principles of the
Revolution.
Once a churchman himself, he knew the Church and dreaded it. He feared
that the priests, working through superstitious fears upon the minds of
ignorant masses, would finally educate them into hostility to the new
order--train them to believe that the Old Régime had been the best, and
should be restored. To get rid of this danger (the peril of royalists
and priests from above acting upon the ignorant masses below), the
far-sighted statesman, dealing with France as it was, did not favor
popular sovereignty. Only by indirection were the masses to be allowed
to choose their rulers. The people could choose the local notables from
whom the local officers must be taken; and these local notables could
vote for departmental notables from whom departmental officers should
be chosen; and those departmental notables would select from their own
numbers the national notables from whom holders for national positions
must be taken.
These electoral bodies grew smaller as they went upward. The 5,000,000
voters of the nation first elected 500,000 local notables; these chose
from themselves 50,000 departmental electors; and these in turn took
by vote 5000 of their own number to constitute the electoral class for
national appointments. The executive filled all offices from these
various groups. From below, the masses furnished the material to be
used in governing; from above, the executive made its own selection
from that material.
This was far from being representative government; but it was far from
being mere despotism, military or otherwise. It was considered as free
a system as France was then prepared for; and he is indeed a wise man
who knows that she would have done better under a constitution which
granted unlimited popular control. The French had not been educated or
trained in republican government, and the efforts which had been made
to uphold a republic in the absence of such education and experience
had resulted in the dictatorship of the Great Committee and of the
Directory.
Napoleon and Sieyès were agreed on the subject of popular suffrage;
they were far apart on the question of the executive. By nature
“imperious, obstinate, masterful,” the great Corsican had no idea of
becoming a fatuous, functionless elector. “What man of talent and honor
would consent to such a rôle,--to feed and fatten like a pig in a stye
on so many millions a year?” Before this scornful opposition the grand
elector vanished. In his place was put a First Consul, in whom were
vested all executive powers. Two associate consuls were given him, but
their functions in no way trenched upon his.
The constitution, rapidly completed, was submitted to the people by the
middle of December, 1799. It was adopted by three million votes--the
negative vote being insignificant.
“This constitution is founded on the true principles of representative
government, on the sacred rights of property, equality, and liberty.”
“The Revolution is ended.” So ran the proclamation published by the
provisional government.
It was a foregone conclusion that Napoleon would be named First Consul
in the new government which the people had ratified. It is no less
true that he dictated the choice of his two colleagues,--Cambacérès
and Lebrun. These were men whose ability was not of the alarming kind,
and who could be relied upon to count the stars whenever Napoleon, at
midday, should declare that it was night. Sieyès was soothed with the
gift of the fine estate of Crosne, and the presidency of the Senate.
Roger-Ducos also sank peacefully into the bosom of that august,
well-paid Assembly.
It was on Christmas Eve of 1799 that the government of the three
permanent consuls began; by the law of its creation it was to live for
ten years.
This consular government was a magnificent machine, capable of
accomplishing wonders when controlled by an able ruler. The gist of
it was concentration and uniformity. All the strength of the nation
was placed at the disposal of its chief. He could plan and execute,
legislate and enforce legislation, declare war and marshal armies,
and make peace. He was master at home and abroad. In him was centred
France. He laid down her laws, fixed her taxes, dictated her system of
schools, superintended her roads and bridges, policed her towns and
cities, licensed her books, named the number of her armies; pensioned
the old, the weak, and the deserving; censored her press, controlled
rewards and punishments,--his finger ever on the pulse-beat of the
nation, his will its master, his ideals its inspiration.
No initiative remained with the people. Political liberty was a
reminiscence. The town bridge could not be rebuilt or the lights of
the village changed without authority granted from the Consul or his
agents. “Confidence coming from below; power descending from above,”
was the principle of the new Sieyès system. Under just such a scheme
it was possible that it might happen that the power of the ruler would
continue to come down long after the confidence of the subject had
ceased to go up.
The Revolution had gone to the extreme limits of popular sovereignty
by giving to every citizen the ballot, to every community the right
of local self-government; and to the masses the privilege of electing
judicial and military as well as political officers. France was
said to be cut up into forty thousand little republics. The central
authority was almost null; the local power almost absolute. It was
this federative system carried to excess (as under the Articles of
the Confederation in our own country) which had made necessary the
despotism of the Great Committee. The consular constitution was the
reverse of this. Local government became null, the central authority
almost absolute. Prefects and sub-prefects, appointed by the executive,
directed local affairs, nominally assisted by local boards, which met
once a year. Even the mayors held their offices from the central power.
From the lowest round of the official ladder to the highest, was a
steady climb of one rung above the other. The First Consul was chief,
restrained by the constitution; below him, moving at his touch, came
all the other officers of state.
Under Napoleon the burden of supporting the State rested on the
shoulders of the strong. Land, wealth, paid the direct taxes; the
customs duties were levied mainly upon luxuries, not upon the
necessaries of life. Prior to the Revolution the taxes of the
unprivileged had amounted to more than three-fourths of the net produce
of land and labor. Under the Napoleonic system the taxes amounted to
less than one-fourth of the net income.
Before the Revolution the poor man lost fifty-nine days out of every
year in service to the State by way of tax. Three-fifths of the French
were in this condition. After the Revolution the artisan, mechanic,
and day laborer lost from nine to sixteen days per year. Before the
Revolution Champfort could say, “In France seven millions of men beg
and twelve millions are unable to give anything.” To the same purport
is the testimony of Voltaire that one-third of the French people had
nothing.
Under Napoleon an American traveller, Colonel Pinkney could write,
“There are no tithes, no church taxes, no taxation of the poor. All the
taxes together do not go beyond one-sixth of a man’s rent-roll.”
Before the Revolution the peasant proprietor and small farmer, out
of 100 francs net income, paid 14 francs to the seigneur, 14 to the
Church, and 53 to the State. After Napoleon’s rise to power, the same
farmer out of the same amount of income paid nothing to the seigneur,
nothing to the Church, very little to the State, and only 21 francs to
the commune and department. Under the Bourbons such a farmer kept for
his own use less than 20 francs out of 100; under Napoleon he kept 79.
Under the Bourbons the citizen was compelled to buy from the government
seven pounds of salt every year at the price of thirteen sous per
pound, for himself and each member of his family. Under Napoleon he
bought no more than he needed, and the price was two sous per pound.
Under the Bourbons the constant dread of the peasant, for centuries,
had been Famine--national, universal, horribly destructive Famine. With
Napoleon’s rise to power, the spectre passed away; and, excepting local
and accidental dearths in 1812 and 1817, France heard of Famine no more.
Napoleon believed that each generation should pay its own way. He had
no grudge against posterity, and did not wish to live at its expense.
Hence he “floated” no loans, issued no bonds, and piled up no national
debt.
The best of the Bourbon line, Henry IV., lives in kindly remembrance
because he wished the time to come when the French peasant might, once
a week, have a fowl for the pot. Compare this with what Lafayette
writes (in 1800): “You know how many beggars there were, people dying
of hunger in our country. We see no more of them. The peasants are
richer, the land better tilled, and the women better clad.”
Morris Birkbeck, an English traveller, writes, “Everybody assures
me that the riches and comfort of the farmers have been doubled in
twenty-five years.
“From Dieppe to this place, Montpellier, we have not seen among the
laboring people one such famished, worn-out, wretched object as may
be met in every parish in England, I had almost said on almost every
farm.... A really rich country, and yet there are few rich individuals.”
As one reads paragraphs like these, the words of John Ruskin come to
mind, “Though England is deafened with spinning-wheels, her people have
no clothes; though she is black with digging coal, her people have no
fuel, and they die of cold; and though she has sold her soul for gain,
they die of hunger!”
* * * * *
How the government which was overthrown by Napoleon could have gone on
much longer even Mr. Lanfrey does not explain. It had neither money nor
credit; the very cash box of the opera had been seized to obtain funds
to forward couriers to the armies. It had neither honesty nor capacity.
Talleyrand, treating with the American envoys, declined to do business
till his hands had been crossed, according to custom; brigands robbed
mail coaches in the vicinity of Paris; the public roads and canals were
almost impassable; rebellion defied the government in La Vendée. The
Directory did not even have the simple virtue of patriotism; Barras was
sold to the Bourbons, and held in his possession letters-patent issued
to him by the Count of Provence, appointing him royal commissioner
to proclaim and reëstablish the monarchy. “Had I known of the
letters-patent on the 18th of Brumaire,” exclaimed Napoleon afterward,
“I would have pinned them upon his breast and had him shot.”