On the 9th of November, 1799, Citizen Bonaparte, the successful
commander-in-chief of the armies of the Directorate of France, decided
that his employers had done enough talking and that the time had come to
send them about their business. The Jacobin rabble in the street
protested. Citizen Bonaparte put up two cannon. The rabble jeered at his
toy guns. Citizen Bonaparte fired. The rabble fled whence it came. The
next day the legislative body was summarily dismissed. The French
Revolution was over.
Biologically speaking, Citizen Bonaparte was the second son of Madame
Laetitia Bonaparte, née Ramolino, the wife of a Corsican lawyer of some
small local importance. His spiritual mother, however, sat on the Place
de la Concorde, knitted worsted stockings, and counted the heads which
the guillotine chopped off. When his day of glory came, Bonaparte did
not forget his faithful mother, and surrounded her with his signs of
love and affection. But the foster-mother who had helped him directly to
his glory, without whom he never might have been anything but the
husband of the attractive Madame Josephine, he neglected, and when she
seemed to stand between him and his success he dispatched her into the
desert of oblivion, a region which during revolutionary times is never
very far distant from the scene of momentary action.
What Napoleon Bonaparte knew about Holland cannot have been very much.
Geography, in a general sense, was not his strong point. Like everybody
else in Paris, he must have known something about the Batavian Republic,
and, like everybody else, he must have received vague notions of the
dilatory methods, the insignificant acts, and the clumsiness of the
different Batavian missions which sporadically appeared in Paris.
Ginstokers who prepared parliamentary revolutions as delegates from
private political clubs, generals who left their posts and went trotting
to Paris to arrange another upheaval in the assembly of their native
country, were not the type of men in whom the future emperor delighted.
Of any sentiment or liking for the Dutch trait and character we find no
vestige in Napoleon. There were one or two Dutch generals who won his
favour, and one admiral even gained his friendship. He appreciated Dutch
engineers because they could build good fortifications and excellent
pontoon bridges. In general, however, the slow and deliberate Hollander
greatly annoyed the man of impulsive deeds, and the tenacity with which
these futile people defended their petty little rights and prerogatives,
when actual and immense honours were in store for all men with devotion
and energy, filled Napoleon with an irritation and a contempt which he
never tried to conceal.
The French Dictator felt but one interest in the Dutch Republic--a
material one. In the first place, he wanted the Dutch gold to use for
his expeditions against all his near and distant neighbours. In the
second place, he contemplated using the strategic position of the
republic in his great war upon the British Kingdom. And as soon as he
had been elected First Consul he approached the republic with demands
for loans and voluntary donations, which were both flatly refused. The
Amsterdam bankers were not willing to consider any French loan just
then, and the Dutch assembly declared that it could not produce the
50,000,000 guilders which the Consul wanted. It was simply impossible.
The Consul retaliated by a very strict enforcement of the terms of the
French treaty by which the republic was bound to equip and maintain
25,000 French soldiers. This, in turn, so greatly increased the expenses
of the republic that many citizens paid more than half of their income
in taxes. It was indeed a very unfortunate moment for such an
experiment. The second constitution was by no means a success. Of the
many promised reorganizations of the internal government not a single
one had as yet been instituted. The reform of the financial system
existed on paper but had not yet come nearer to realization than had the
proposed reorganization of the militia. The new system of legal
procedure was still untried, and the new national courts had not yet
been established. The codification of civil and penal law had not yet
been begun. Public instruction was under a minister of its own, but it
remained as primitive as ever before. The reform of the municipal
government had not yet been attempted. The central government of the
different departments had been put into somewhat better shape than
before, but everything about it was still in the first stages of
development. The constitution which had promised to be all things to all
men was nothing to any one. The system of government which it provided
was too complicated. It looked as if there must be a third change in the
management of the Batavian Republic. General Bonaparte was asked for his
opinion. General Bonaparte at that moment was going through one of the
sporadic changes in his nature. He began to have his hair cut and pay
attention to the state of his linen. He commenced to understand that a
revolution might be all very well, but that a firm and stable government
had enormous advantages. And if the rich people in Holland wished to
drop some of their former revolutionary notions and make their
government more conservative, they certainly were welcome to the change.
This time there was not even a _coup d'état_. The legislative
assembly--the combined meeting of both houses--convened solemnly, like a
house of bishops, and proposed a revision of the constitution.
On the 16th of March, 1801, a committee was appointed to draw up a more
practical constitution, one more in accord with the historical
development of the people. The committee went to work with eagerness,
and with the French ambassador as their constant adviser. General
Bonaparte was kept informed of all the proceedings, and everything went
along as nicely as could be desired. But when the work was done the
legislative assembly, after a very complicated discussion, suddenly
rejected the new constitution five to one.
What the assembly could not do, the Dutch directors could do. Yes, but
the difficulty was that two of the five directors seemed to be against
revision. "Three directors are better than five," came back from Paris.
The two opposing directors were informed that their opinion would no
longer be asked for, and the three others hired a second-class newspaper
man who had seen better days and ordered him to draw up a new
constitution. Our distinguished colleague, who used to make a living
writing political speeches for the members of the different assemblies,
set to work to earn his extra pennies, and in less than the time which
had been allowed him, his constitution, neatly copied, was in the hands
of the three directors. They sent it to Paris. Napoleon changed a few
minor articles, but approved of the document as a whole. Now, according
to the rules of the old constitution, the document should have been sent
to the members of the assembly for their approval. The directors,
however, did not bother about such small details, and had the
constitution printed and sent directly to the voters. The two discarded
directors and the assembly protested. But this time there was not even a
chance for defiance or for a heroic stand in parliament. The doors of
the assembly were locked and were kept locked. The assemblymen could
protest in the street, but for all practical purposes they had ceased to
exist.
On the 1st of October, 1801, the vote of the people was taken. It
appeared that there were five times as many nays as yeas. Therefore the
nays had it?
Not while Consul Bonaparte resides in the Tuilleries.
How many voters were there in the republic? 416,419.
How many had voted in all? 68,990.
Well, count all those who did not vote among the yeas and see how the
sum will come out then? A very ingenious method. The count was made, and
then the yeas had it.