Private Memoirs of Napoleon,
volume 2, chapters 20-26._
_Duchess D' Abrantes,
Memoirs of Napoleon,
volume 1, chapter 80._
_Count M. Dumas,
Memoirs,
chapter 9 (volume 2)._
_H. A. Taine,
The Modern Regime,
volume 1, book 3, chapter 3._
FRANCE: A. D. 1801-1804.
The Civil Code and the Concordat.
"Four years of peace separated the Treaty of Luneville from
the next outbreak of war between France and any Continental
Power. They were years of the extension of French influence in
every neighbouring State; in France itself, years of the
consolidation of Bonaparte's power, and of the decline of
everything that checked his personal rule. ... Among the
institutions which date from this period, two, equally
associated with the name of Napoleon, have taken a prominent
place in history, the Civil Code and the Concordat. Since the
middle of the 18th century the codification of law had been
pursued with more or less success by almost every Government
in the western continent. The Constituent Assembly of 1789 had
ordered the statutes by which it superseded the variety of
local customs in France to be thus cast into a systematic
form. ... Bonaparte instinctively threw himself into a task so
congenial to his own systematizing spirit, and stimulated the
efforts of the best jurists in France by his own personal
interest and pride in the work of legislation. A Commission of
lawyers, appointed by the First Consul, presented the
successive chapters of a Civil Code to the Council of State.
In the discussions in the Council of State Bonaparte himself
took an active, though not always a beneficial, part. ... In
March, 1804, France received the Code which, with few
alterations, has formed from that time to the present the
basis of its civil rights. ... It is probable that a majority
of the inhabitants of Western Europe believe that Napoleon
actually invented the laws which bear his name. As a matter of
fact, the substance of these laws was fixed by the successive
Assemblies of the Revolution; and, in the final revision which
produced the Civil Code, Napoleon appears to have originated
neither more nor less than several of the members of his
Council whose names have long been forgotten.
{1338}
He is unquestionably entitled to the honour of a great
legislator, not, however, as one who, like Solon or like
Mahomet, himself created a new body of law. ... Four other
Codes, appearing at intervals from the year 1804 to the year
1810, embodied, in a corresponding form, the Law of Commerce,
the Criminal Law, and the Rules of Civil and of Criminal
Process. ... Far more distinctively the work of Napoleon
himself was the reconciliation with the Church of Rome
effected by the Concordat [July, 1801]. It was a restoration
of religion similar to that restoration of political order
which made the public service the engine of a single will. The
bishops and priests, whose appointment the Concordat
transferred from their congregations to the Government, were
as much instruments of the First Consul as his prefects and
his gensdarmes. ... An alliance with the Pope offered to
Bonaparte the means of supplanting the popular organisation of
the Constitutional Church by an imposing hierarchy, rigid in
its orthodoxy and unquestioning in its devotion to himself. In
return for the consecration of his own rule, Bonaparte did not
shrink from inviting the Pope to an exercise of authority such
as the Holy See had never even claimed in France. The whole of
the existing French Bishops, both the exiled non-jurors and
those of the Constitutional Church, were summoned to resign
their sees into the hands of the Pope; against all who refused
to do so sentence of deposition was pronounced by the Pontiff.
... The sees were reorganised, and filled up by nominees of the
First Consul. The position of the great body of the clergy was
substantially altered in its relation to the Bishops.
Episcopal power was made despotic, like all other powers in
France. ... In the greater cycle of religious change, the
Concordat of Bonaparte appears in another light. ... It
converted the Catholicism of France from a faith already far
more independent than that of Fénélon and Bossuet into the
Catholicism which in our day has outstripped the bigotry of
Spain and Austria in welcoming the dogma of Papal
infallibility."
_C. A. Fyffe,
History of Modern Europe,
volume 1, chapter 5._
"It is ... easy, from the official reports which have been
preserved, to see what part the First Consul took in the
framing of the Civil Code. While we recognise that his
intervention was advantageous on some minor points, ... we
must say that his views on the subjects of legislation in
which this intervention was most conspicuous, were most often
inspired by suggestions of personal interest, or by political
considerations which ought to have no weight with the
legislator. ... Bonaparte came by degrees to consider himself
the principal creator of a collective work to which he
contributed little more than his name, and which probably
would have been much better if the suggestions of a man of
action and executive authority had not been blended with the
views, necessarily more disinterested, larger and more humane,
of the eminent jurisconsults whose glory he tried to usurp."
_P. Lanfrey,
History of Napoleon,
volume 2, chapter 5._
ALSO IN:
_A. Thiers,
History of the Consulate and the Empire,
volume 1, books 12-14._
_W. H. Jervis,
History of the Church of France,
volume 2, chapter 11._
_J. E. Darras,
General History of the Catholic Church,
volume 4, pages 547-554._
_The Code Napoleon, translated by Richards._
FRANCE: A. D. 1802.
Fourcroy's education law.
See EDUCATION, MODERN: EUROPEAN COUNTRIES,
FRANCE: A. D. 1565-1802.
FRANCE: A. D. 1802 (August-September).
Annexation of Piedmont, Parma, and the Isle of Elba.
A "flagrant act of the First Consul's at this time was the
seizure and annexation of Piedmont. Although that country was
reconquered by the Austro-Russian army in 1799, the-King of
Sardinia had not been restored when, by the battle of Marengo,
it came again into the possession of the French. Bonaparte
then united part of it to the Cisalpine Republic, and promised
to erect the rest into a separate State; but he afterwards
changed his mind; and by a decree of April 20th 1801, ordered
that Piedmont should form a military division of France. ...
Charles Emanuel, disgusted with the injustice and insults to
which he was exposed, having abdicated his throne in favour of
his brother Victor Emanuel, Duke of Aosta, June 4th 1802,
Bonaparte ... caused that part of Piedmont which had not been
united to the Italian Republic to be annexed to France, as the
27th Military Department, by a formal Senatus-Consulte of
September 11th 1802. A little after, October 11th, on the
death of Ferdinand de Bourbon, Duke of Parma, father of the
King of Etruria, that duchy was also seized by the rapacious
French Republic. The isle of Elba had also been united to
France by a Senatus-Consulte of August 26th."
_T. H. Dyer,
History of Modern Europe,
book 7, chapter 11 (volume 4)._
ALSO IN:
_A. Gallenga,
History of Piedmont,
volume 3, chapter 5._
FRANCE: A. D. 1802-1803.
Complaints against the English press.
The Peltier trial.
The First Consul's rage.
War declared by Great Britain.
Detention of all the English in France, Italy, Switzerland and
the Netherlands.
Occupation of Hanover.
"Mr. Addington was wont to say in after years that the ink was
scarcely dry, after the signature of the treaty of Amiens,
when discontents arose which perilled the new peace. On the
24th of May [1802], M. Otto told Lord Glenbervie that if the
English press were not controlled from censuring Napoleon,
there must be a war to the death: and in the course of the
summer, six requisitions were formally made to the British
government, the purport of which was that the press must be
controlled; the royal emigrants sent to Warsaw; the island of
Jersey cleared of persons disaffected to the French
government; and all Frenchmen dismissed from Great Britain who
wore the decorations of the old monarchy. The reply was, that
the press was free in England; and that if any of the
emigrants broke the laws, they should be punished; but that
otherwise they could not be molested. The government, however,
used its influence in remonstrance with the editors of
newspapers which were abusive of the French. Cobbet was
pointed out by name by Napoleon, as a libeller who must be
punished; and Peltier, a royalist emigrant, who had published
some incentives to the assassination of the French ruler, or
prophecies which might at such a crisis be fairly regarded as
incentives. M. Peltier's object was to use his knowledge of
the tools of Napoleon, and his great political and literary
experience, in laying bare the character and policy of
Napoleon; and he began, in the summer of 1802, a journal, the
first number of which occasioned the demand for his
punishment.
{1339}
He was prosecuted by the Attorney-General, and defended by Sir
James Mackintosh, in a speech which was translated into nearly
all the languages of Europe, and universally considered one of
the most prodigious efforts of oratory ever listened to in any
age. The Attorney-General, Mr. Percival, declared in Court,
that he could hardly hope for an impartial decision from a
jury whose faculties had been so roused, dazzled and charmed.
... M. Peltier was found guilty; but the Attorney-General did
not call for judgment on the instant. War was then--at the
close of February [1808]--imminent; and the matter was
dropped. M: Peltier was regarded as a martyr, and, as far as
public opinion went, was rather rewarded than punished in
England. He was wont to say that he was tried in England and
punished in France. His property was confiscated by the
consular agents; and his only near relations, his aged father
and his sister, died at Nantes, through terror at his trial.
By this time the merchants of Great Britain were thoroughly
disgusted with France. Not only had Napoleon prevented all
commercial intercourse between the nations throughout the
year, but he had begun to, confiscate English merchant
vessels, driven by stress of weather into his ports. By this
time, too, the Minister's mind was made up as to the
impossibility of avoiding war. ... Napoleon had published
[January 30, 1803] a Report of an official agent of his,
Sebastiani, who had explored the Levant, striving as he went
to rouse the Mediterranean States to a desertion of England
and an alliance with France. He, reported of the British force
at Alexandria, and of the means of attack and defence there;
and his employer put forth this statement in the 'Moniteur,'
his own paper, while complaining of the insults of the English
press towards himself. Our ambassador at Paris, Lord
Whitworth, desired an explanation: and the reception of his
demand by the First Consul ... was characteristic. ... He sent
for Lord Whitworth to wait on him at nine in the morning of
the 18th; made him sit down; and then poured out his wrath 'in
the style of an Italian bully,' as the record has it: and the
term is not too strong; for he would not allow Lord Whitworth
to speak. The first impression was, that it was his design to
terrify England: but Talleyrand's anxiety to smooth matters
afterwards, and to explain away what his master had said,
shows that the ebullition was one of mere temper. And this was
presently confirmed by his behaviour to Lord Whitworth at a
levee, when the saloon was crowded with foreign ambassadors
and their suites, as well as with French courtiers. The whole
scene was set forth in the newspapers of every country.
Napoleon walked about, transported with passion: asked Lord
Whitworth if he did not know that a terrible storm had arisen
between the two governments; declared that England was a
violator of treaties; took to witness the foreigners present
that if England did not immediately surrender Malta, war was
declared; and condescended to appeal to them whether the right
was not on his side; and, when Lord Whitworth would have
replied, silenced him by a gesture, and observed that, Lady
Whitworth being out of health, her native air would be of
service to her; and she should, have it, sooner than she
expected.--After this, there could be little hope of peace in
the most sanguine mind. ... Lord Whitworth left Paris on the
12th of May; and at Dover met General Andreossi, on his way to
Paris. On the 16th, it became publicly known that war was
declared: and on the same day Admiral Cornwallis received
telegraphic orders which caused him to appear before Brest on
the 18th. On the 17th, an Order in Council, directing
reprisals, was issued; and with it the proclamation of an
embargo being laid on all French and Dutch ships in British
ports. ... On the next day, May 18th, 1803, the Declaration of
War was laid before parliament, and the feverish state, called
peace, which had lasted for one year and sixteen days, passed
into one of open hostility. The reason why the vessels of the
Dutch were to be seized with those of the French was that
Napoleon had filled Holland with French troops, and was
virtually master of the country. ... In July, the militia
force amounted to 173,000 men; and the deficiency was in
officers to command them. The minister proposed, in addition
to all the forces actually in existence, the formation of an
army of reserve, amounting to 50,000 men: and this was
presently agreed to. There was little that the parliament and
people of England would not have agreed to at this moment,
under the provocation of Napoleon's treatment of the English
in France. His first act was to order the detention, as
prisoners of war, of all the English then in the country,
between the ages of 18 and 60. The exasperation caused by this
cruel measure was all that he could have expected or desired.
Many were the young men thus doomed to lose, in wearing
expectation or despair, twelve of the best years of their
lives, cut off from family, profession, marriage,
citizenship--everything that young men most value. Many were
the parents separated for twelve long years from the young
creatures at home, whom they had left for a mere pleasure
trip: and many were the grey-haired fathers and mothers at
home who went down to the grave during those twelve years
without another sight of the son or daughter who was pining in
some small provincial town in France, without natural
occupation, and well nigh without hope. In June, the English
in Rouen were removed to the neighbourhood of Amiens; those in
Calais to, Lisle; those at Brussels to Valenciennes. Before
the month was out, all the English in Italy and Switzerland,
in addition to those in Holland, were made prisoners. How many
the whole amounted to does not appear to have been
ascertained: but it was believed at the time that there were
11,000 in France, and 1,800 in Holland. The first pretence was
that these travellers were detained as hostages for the prizes
which Napoleon accused us of taking before the regular
declaration of war; but when proposals were made for an
exchange, he sent a savage answer that he would keep his
prisoners till the end of the war. It is difficult to conceive
how there could be two opinions about the nature of the man
after this act. The naval captures of which Napoleon
complained, as made prior to a declaration of war, were of two
merchant Ships taken by English frigates: and we find notices
of such being brought into port on the 25th of May. Whether
they were captured before the 18th, there is no record that we
can find. ... On the sea, our successes seemed a matter of
course; but meantime a blow was struck at Great Britain, and
especially at her sovereign, which proved that the national
exasperation against France was even yet capable of increase.
{1340}
On the breaking out of the war; George III. issued a
proclamation, as Elector of Hanover, declaring to Germany that
the Germanic states had nothing to fear in regard to the new
hostilities, as he was entering into war as King of Great
Britain, and not as Elector of Hanover. Whatever military
preparations were going forward in Hanover were merely of a
defensive character. Napoleon, however, set such defence at
defiance. On the 13th of June, news arrived of the total
surrender of Hanover to the French. ... Government resolved to
declare the Elbe and the Weser, and all the ports of Western
Germany, in a state of blockade; as the French had now command
over all the intermediate rivers. It was calculated that this
would annoy and injure Napoleon effectually, as it would cause
the ruin of foreign merchants trading from the whole series of
ports. English merchants would suffer deeply; but it was
calculated that English capital and stock would hold out
longer than those of foreign merchants. Thus was the sickening
process of private ruin, as a check to public aggression,
entered upon, before war had been declared a month."
_H. Martineau,
History of England, 1800-1815,
book l, chapter 4._
ALSO IN:
_M. de Bourrienne,
Private Memoirs of Napoleon,
volume 2, chapters 28-30._
_Sir J. Mackintosh,
Speech in Defense of Jean Peltier
(Miscellaneous Works)._
_J. Ashton,
English Caricature and Satire on Napoleon I.,
volume 1, chapters 24-87._
FRANCE: A. D. 1803 (April-May).
Sale or Louisiana to the United States of America.
See LOUISIANA: A. D. 1798-1808;
and UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1803.
FRANCE: A. D. 1803.
Loss of San Domingo, or Hayti.
See HAYTI: A. D. 1682-1803.
FRANCE: A. D. 1804-1805.
Royalist plots and Bonaparte's use or them.
The abduction and execution or the Duc d'Enghien.
The First Consul becomes Emperor.
His coronation by the Pope.
His acceptance of the crown or Italy.
Annexation of Genoa to France.
The rupture with England furnished Bonaparte "with the
occasion of throwing off the last disguise and openly
restoring monarchy. It was a step which required all his
audacity and cunning. He had crushed Jacobinism, but two great
parties remained. There was first the more moderate
republicanism, which might be called Girondism, and was widely
spread among all classes and particularly in the army.
Secondly, there was the old royalism, which after many years
of helpless weakness had revived since Brumaire. These two
parties, though hostile to each other, were forced into a sort
of alliance by the new attitude of Bonaparte, who was hurrying
France at once into a new revolution at home and into an abyss
of war abroad. England, too, after the rupture, favoured the
efforts of these parties. Royalism from England began to open
communications with moderate republicanism in France. Pichegru
acted for the former, and the great representative of the
latter was Moreau, who had helped to make Brumaire in the
tacit expectation probably of rising to the consulate in due
course when Bonaparte's term should have expired, and was
therefore hurt in his personal claims as well as in his
republican principles. Bonaparte watched the movement through
his ubiquitous police, and with characteristic strategy
determined not merely to defeat it but to make it his
stepping-stone to monarchy. He would ruin Moreau by fastening
on him the stigma of royalism; he would persuade France to
make him emperor in order to keep out the Bourbons. He
achieved this with the peculiar mastery which he always showed
in villainous intrigue. ... Pichegru [who had returned
secretly to France from England some time in January, 1804]
brought with him wilder partisans, such as Georges [Cadoudal]
the Chouan. No doubt Moreau would gladly have seen and gladly
have helped an insurrection against Bonaparte. ... But
Bonaparte succeeded in associating him with royalist schemes
and with schemes of assassination. Controlling the Senate, he
was able to suppress the jury; controlling every avenue of
publicity, he was able to suppress opinion; and the army,
Moreau's fortress, was won through its hatred of royalism. In
this way Bonaparte's last personal rival was removed. There
remained the royalists, and Bonaparte hoped to seize their
leader, the Comte d'Artois, who was expected, as the police
knew, soon to join Pichegru and Georges at Paris. What
Bonaparte would have done with him we may judge from the
course he took when the Comte did not come. On March 15, 1804,
the Duc d'Enghien, grandson of the Prince de Condé, residing
at Ettenheim in Baden, was seized at midnight by a party of
dragoons, brought to Paris, where he arrived on the 20th,
confined in the castle of Vincennes, brought before a military
commission at two o'clock the next morning, asked whether he had
not borne arms against the republic, which he acknowledged
himself to have done, conducted to a staircase above the moat,
and there shot and buried in the moat. ... That the Due
d'Enghien was innocent of the conspiracy, was nothing to the
purpose; the act was political, not judicial; accordingly he
was not even charged with complicity. That the execution would
strike horror into the cabinets, and perhaps bring about a new
Coalition, belonged to a class of considerations which at this
time Bonaparte systematically disregarded. This affair led
immediately to the thought of giving heredity to Bonaparte's
power. The thought seems to have commended itself irresistibly
even to strong republicans and to those who were most shocked
by the murder. To make Bonaparte's position more secure seemed
the only way of averting a new Reign of Terror or new
convulsions. He himself felt some embarrassment. Like
Cromwell, he was afraid of the republicanism of the army, and
heredity pure and simple brought him face to face with the
question of divorcing Josephine. To propitiate the army, he
chose from the titles suggested to him--consul, stadtholder,
&c.--that of emperor, undoubtedly the most accurate, and
having a sufficiently military sound. The other difficulty
after much furious dissension between the two families of
Bonaparte and Beauharnais, was evaded by giving Napoleon
himself (but none of his successors) a power of adoption, and
fixing the succession, in default of a direct heir, natural or
adoptive, first in Joseph and his descendants, then in Louis
and his descendants. Except abstaining from the regal title,
no attempt was made to conceal the abolition of republicanism.
... The change was made by the constituent power of the
Senate, and the Senatus-Consulte is dated May 18, 1804. The
title of Emperor had an ulterior meaning.
{1341}
Adopted at the moment when Napoleon began to feel himself
master both in Italy and Germany, it revived the memory of
Charles the Great. To himself it was the more satisfactory on
that account, and, strange to say, it gave satisfaction rather
than offence to the Head of the Holy Roman Empire, Francis II.
Since Joseph, the Habsburg Emperors had been tired of their
title, which, being elective, was precarious. They were
desirous of becoming hereditary emperors in Austria, and they
now took this title (though without as yet giving up the
other). Francis II. bartered his acknowledgement of Napoleon's
new title against Napoleon's acknowledgement of his own. It
required some impudence to condemn Moreau for royalism at the
very moment that his rival was re-establishing monarchy. Yet
his trial began on May 15th. The death of Pichegru, nominally
by suicide, on April 6th, had already furnished the rising
sultanism with its first dark mystery. Moreau was condemned to
two years' imprisonment, but was allowed to retire to the
United States."
_J. R. Seeley,
Short History of Napoleon I.,
chapter 8, section 4._
_C. C. Fauriel,
The Last Days of the Consulate._