CHAPTER III. AMBITION AND SELF-ESTEEM.

I. Rights and benefits.

The assignment of right.--Those out of favor and the

preferred under former governments.--Under the Ancient

Regime.--During the Revolution.--French conception of

Equality and Rights.--Its ingredients and its excesses.--The

satisfaction it obtains under the new regime.--Abolition of

legal incapacity and equality in the possession of rights.

--Confiscation of collective action and equality in the

deprivation of rights.--Careers in the modern State.--Equal

right of all to offices and to promotion.--Napoleon's

distribution of employments.--His staff of officials

recruited from all classes and parties.

Now that the State has just made a new allotment of the burdens and

duties which it imposes it must make a new assignment of the rights

and benefits it confers. Distributive justice, on both sides, and long

before 1789, was defective, and, under the monarchy, exclusions had

become as obnoxious as exemptions; all the more because, through a

double iniquity, the ancient Régime in each group distinguished two

other groups, one to which it granted every exemption, and the other

which it made subject to every exclusion. The reason is that, from the

first, the king, in the formation and government of the kingdom, in

order to secure the services, money, collaboration or connivance which

he needed, was obliged to negotiate always with corporations, orders,

provinces, seignories, the clergy, churches, monasteries, universities,

parliaments, professional bodies or industrial guilds and families, that

is to say with constituted powers, more or less difficult to bring under

subjection and which, to be kept in subjection, stipulated conditions.

Hence, in France, so many different conditions: each distinct body had

yielded through one or several distinct capitulations and possessed its

own separate statute. Hence, again, such diversely unequal conditions:

the bodies, the best able to protect themselves, had, of course,

defended themselves the best. Their statutes, written or unwritten,

guaranteed to them precious privileges which the other bodies, much

weaker, could neither acquire nor preserve. These were not merely

immunities but likewise prerogatives, not alone alleviations of taxation

and militia dispensations, but likewise political and administrative

liberties, remnants of their primitive sovereignty, with many other

positive advantages. The very least being precedence, preferences,

social priority, with an incontestable right to rank, honors, offices,

and favors. Such, notably, were the regions-states possessing their

own government (pays d'états), compared with those which elected the

magistrates who apportioned taxation (pays d'élection),[3301] the

two highest orders, the clergy and the nobles, compared with the

third-estate, and the bourgeoisie, and the town corporations compared

with the rest of the inhabitants. On the other hand, opposed to these

historical favorites were the historical disinherited, the latter

much more numerous and counting by millions--the taxable commons, all

subjects without rank or quality, in short, the ordinary run of men,

especially the common herd of the towns and particularly of the country,

all the more ground down on account of their lower status, along with

the Jews lower yet, a sort of foreign class scarcely tolerated, with

the Calvinists, not only deprived of the humblest rights but, again,

persecuted by the State for the past one hundred years.

All these people, who have been transported far outside of civic

relationships by historic right, are brought back, in 1789, by

philosophic right. After the declarations of the Constituent Assembly,

there are no longer in France either Bretons, Provençals, Burgundians

or Alsatians, Catholics, Protestants or Israelites, nobles or plebeians,

bourgeois or rurals, but simply Frenchmen,

* all with the one title of citizens,

* all endowed with the same civil, religious and political rights,

* all equal before the State,

* all introduced by law into every career, collectively, on an equal

footing and without fear or favor from anybody;

* all free to follow this out to the end without distinction of rank,

birth, faith or fortune;

* all, if they are good runners, to receive the highest prizes at the

end of the race, any office or rank, especially the leading honors and

positions which, thus far reserved to a class or coterie, had not been

allowed previously to the great multitude.

Henceforth, all Frenchmen, in theory, enjoy rights in common;

unfortunately, this is only the theory. In reality, in all state

relationships (dans la cité), the new-comers appropriate to themselves

the offices, the pretensions, and more than the privileges of their

predecessors; the latter, consisting of large and small land-owners,

gentlemen, parliamentarians, officials, ecclesiastics, notables of

every kind and degree, are immediately deprived of the rights of man.

Surrendered to rural jacqueries and to town mobs, they undergo, first,

the neglect and, next, the hostility of the State: the public gendarme

has ceased to protect them and refuses his services; afterwards, on

becoming a Jacobin, he declares himself their enemy, treats them

as enemies, plunders them, imprisons them, murders them, expels or

transports them, inflicts on them civil death, and shoots them if they

dare return; he deprives their friends or kindred who remain in France

of their civil rights; he deprives the nobles or the ennobled of their

quality as Frenchmen, and compels them to naturalize themselves afresh

according to prescribed formalities; he renews against the Catholics the

interdictions, persecutions and brutalities which the old government

had practiced against the Calvinist minority.--Thus, in 1799 as in 1789,

there are two classes of Frenchmen, two different varieties of men,

the first one superior, installed in the civic fold, and the second,

inferior and excluded from it; only, in 1799, the greatest inequality

consigned the inferior and excluded class to a still lower, more remote,

and much worse condition.

The principle (of equalite), nevertheless, subsists. Since 1789 it is

inscribed at the top of every constitution; it is still proclaimed in

the new constitution. It has remained popular, although perverted and

disfigured by the Jacobins; their false and gross interpretation of

it could not bring it into discredit; athwart the hideous grotesque

caricature, all minds and sentiments ever recur to the ideal form of

the cité to the veritable social contract, to the impartial, active, and

permanent reign of distributive justice. Their entire education, all the

literature, philosophy and culture of the eighteenth century, leads

them onward to this conception of society and of rights; more profoundly

still, they are predisposed to it by the inner structure of their

intelligence, by the original cast of their sensibility7 by the

hereditary defects and qualities of their nature and of their race.-The

Frenchman easily and quickly grasps some general trait of objects and

persons, some characteristic in common; here, this characteristic is the

inherent quality of man which he dexterously makes prominent, clearly

isolates, and then, stepping along briskly and confidently, rushes

ahead on the high-road to consequences.[3302] He has forgotten that his

summary notion merely corresponds to an extract, and a very brief one,

of man in his completeness; his decisive, precipitate process hinders

him from seeing the largest portion of the real individual; he has

overlooked numerous traits, the most important and most efficacious,

those which geography, history, habit, condition, manual labor, or a

liberal education, stamp on intellect, soul and body and which, through

their differences, constitute different local or social groups. Not only

does he overlook all these characteristics, but he sets them aside; they

are too numerous and too complex; they would interfere with and disturb

his thoughts; however fitted for clear and comprehensive logic he is so

much the less fitted for complex and comprehensive ideas; consequently,

he avoids them and, through an innate operation of which he is

unconscious, he involuntarily condenses, simplifies and curtails

henceforth, his idea, partial and superficial as it is, seems to him

adequate and complete; in his eyes the abstract quality of man takes

precedence of and absorbs all others; not only has this a value, but the

sole value. One man, therefore, is as good as another and the law should

treat all alike.--Here, amour-propre (self-esteem, pride or arrogance),

so keen in France, and so readily excited, comes in to interpret and

apply the formula:[3303]

"Since all men equal each other, I am as good as any man; if the law

confers a right on people of this or that condition, fortune or birth,

it must confer the same right on me. Every door that is open to them

must be open to me; every door that is closed to me must be closed to

them. Otherwise, I am treated as an inferior and wounded in my deepest

feelings. When the legislator places a ballot in their hands he is bound

to place another just like it in my hands, even if they know how to use

it and I do not, even if a limited suffrage is of use to the community

and universal suffrage is not. So much the worse if I am sovereign only

in name, and through the imagination; I consent to my sovereignty being

illusory, but with the understanding that the sovereignty of others is

regarded likewise; so I prefer servitude and privation for all, rather

than liberties and advantages for a few, and, provided the same level is

passed over all heads, I submit to the yoke for all heads, including my

own."

Such is the internal composition of the instinct of' equality, and such

is the natural instinct of Frenchmen. It is beneficial or mischievous

according as one or the other of its ingredients predominates, at one

time the noble sentiment of equity and at another time the low envy of

foolish vanity;[3304] healthy or unhealthy, however, its power in France

is enormous, and the new Régime gratifies it in every possible way, good

or bad. No more legal disqualifications! On the one hand, the republican

laws of proscription or of exception were all repealed: we have seen an

amnesty and the return of the émigrés, the Concordat, the restoration

of Catholic worship, the compulsory reconciliation of the

constitutionalists with the orthodox; the First Consul admits no

difference between them; his new clergy are recruited from both groups

and, in this respect, he forces the Pope to yield.[3305] He gives twelve

of the sixty episcopal thrones to former schismatics; he wants them to

take their places boldly; he relieves them from ecclesiastical penitence

and from any humiliating recantation; he takes care that, in the other

forty-eight dioceses, the priests who formerly took the civic oath shall

be employed and well treated by their superiors who, at the same epoch,

refused to take the civic oath. On the other hand, all the exclusions,

inequalities and distinctions of the monarchy remain abolished. Not only

are the Calvinist and even Israelite cults legally authorized, the same

as the Catholic cult, but, again, the Protestant consistories and Jewish

synagogues[3306] are constituted and organized on the same footing as

the Catholic churches. Pastors and rabbis likewise become functionaries

under the same title as bishops and cure's; all are recognized or

sanctioned by the government and all equally benefit by its patronage:

it is an unique thing in Europe to find the small churches of the

minority obtaining the same measure of indifference and good will from

the State as the great church of the majority, and, henceforth, in fact

as in law, the ministers of the three cults, formerly ignored, tolerated

or proscribed, enjoy their rank, titles and honors in the social as well

as in the legal hierarchy, equally with the ministers of that cult which

was once the only one dominant or allowed

Similarly, in the civilian status, no inferiority or discredit must

legally attach to any condition whatever, either to plebeian, villager,

peasant or poor man as such, as formerly under the monarchy; nor to

noble, bourgeois, citizen, notable or rich man, as recently under the

Republic. Each of these two classes is relieved of its degradation; no

class is burdened by taxation or by the conscription beyond its due; all

persons and all property find in the government, in the administration,

in the tribunals, in the gendarme, the same reliable protection.--So

much for equity and the true spirit of equality.--Let us now turn

around and consider envy and the bad spirit of equality. The plebiscite,

undoubtedly, as well as the election of deputies to the Corps Legislatif

are simply comedies; but, in these comedies, one rôle is as good as

another and the duke of the old or new pattern, a mere figurant

among hundreds and thousands of others, votes only once like the

corner-grocer. Undoubtedly, the private individual of the commune

or department, in institutions of charity, worship or education, is

deprived of any independence, of any initiation, of any control, as the

State has confiscated for itself all collective action; but the classes

deprived of this are especially the upper classes, alone sufficiently

enlightened and wealthy to take the lead, form projects and provide for

expenditure: in this usurpation, the State has encroached upon and eaten

deeper into the large body of superior existences scattered about than

into the limited circle where humbler lives clamber and crawl along;

nearly the entire loss, all perceptible privation, is for the

large landed proprietor and not for his hired hands, for the large

manufacturer or city merchant and not for their workmen or clerks,[3307]

while the clerk, the workman, the journeyman, the handicraftsman, who

grumble at being the groundlings, find themselves less badly off since

their masters or patrons, fallen from a higher point, are where they are

and they can elbow them.

Now that men are born on the ground, all on the same level, and are

confined within universal and uniform limits, social life no longer

appears to them other than a competition, a rivalry instituted and

proclaimed by the State, and of which it is the umpire; for, through

its interference, all are comprised within its enclosure and shut up

and kept there; no other field is open to run on; on the contrary, every

career within these bounds, indicated and staked out beforehand, offers

an opportunity for all runners: the government has laid out and

leveled the ground, established compartments, divided off and prepared

rectilinear lists which converge to the goal; there, it presides, the

unique arbiter of the race, exposing to all competitors the innumerable

prizes which it proposes for them.--These prizes consist of offices, the

various employments of the State, political, military, ecclesiastical,

judiciary, administrative and university, all the honors and dignities

which it dispenses, all the grades of its hierarchy from the lowest

to the highest, from that of corporal, college-regent, alderman,

office--supernumerary, assistant priest up to that of senator, marshal

of France, grand master of the university, cardinal, and minister of

State. It confers on its possessor, according to the greater or lesser

importance of the place, a greater or lesser portion of the advantages

which all men crave and seek for money, power, patronage, influence,

consideration, importance and social pre-eminence; thus, according to

the rank one attains in the hierarchy, one is something, or of some

account; outside of the hierarchy, one is nothing.

Consequently, the faculty for getting in and advancing one's self

in these lists is the most precious of all: in the new Régime it is

guaranteed by the law as a common right and is open to all Frenchmen. As

no other outlet for them is allowed by the State it owes them this

one; since it invites them and reduces everybody to competing under its

direction it is bound to be an impartial arbiter; since the quality of

citizen, in itself and through it alone, confers the right to make one's

way, all citizens indifferently must enjoy the right of succeeding in

any employment, the very highest, and without any distinction as

to birth, fortune, cult or party. There must be no more preliminary

exclusions; no more gratuitous preferences, undeserved favors,

anticipated promotions; no more special favors.--Such is the rule of

the modern State: constituted as it is, that is to say, monopolizer and

omnipresent, it cannot violate this rule for any length of time with

impunity. In France, at least, the good and bad spirits of equality

agree in exacting adherence to it: on this point, the French are

unanimous; no article of their social code is more cherished by them;

this one flatters their amour-propre and tickles their imagination; it

exalts hope, nourishes illusion, intensifies the energy and enjoyment

of life.--Thus far, the principle has remained inert, powerless, held in

suspension in the air, in the great void of speculative declarations and

of constitutional promises. Napoleon brings it down to the ground and

renders it practical; that which the assemblies had decreed in vain for

ten years he brings about for the first time and in his own interest. To

exclude a class or category of men from offices and promotion would be

equivalent to depriving one's self gratuitously of all the talents it

contains, and, moreover, to incurring, besides the inevitable rancor

of these frustrated talents, the sullen and lasting discontent of the

entire class or category. The First Consul would do himself a wrong were

he to curb his right to choose: he needs every available capacity, and

he takes them where he finds them, to the right, to the left, above or

below, in order to keep his regiments full and enroll in his service

every legitimate ambition and every justifiable pretension.

Under the monarchy, an obscure birth debarred even the best endowed men

from the principal offices. Under the Consulate and the Empire the two

leading personages of the State are Lebrun, Maupeou's old secretary,

a productive translator,[3308] a lawyer, formerly councilor in a

provincial court of justice, then third-consul, then Duc de Plaisance

and arch-chancellor of the Empire and Cambacérès, second-consul, then

Duc de Parme and arch-chancellor of the Empire, both of them being

princes. Similarly, the marshals are new men and soldiers of fortune,

a few of them born in the class of inferior nobles or in the ordinary

bourgeois class, mostly among the people or even amongst the populace,

and, in its lowest ranks, Masséna, the son of a wine-dealer, once a

cabin-boy and then common soldier and non-commissioned officer for

fourteen years; Ney, son of a cooper, Lefebvre, son of a miller, Murat,

son of a tavern-keeper, Lannes, son of an hostler, and Augereau, son

of a mason and a female dealer in fruit and vegetables.--Under the

Republic, noble birth consigned, or confined, the ablest and best

qualified men for their posts to a voluntary obscurity, only too glad

when their names did not condemn them to exile, imprisonment or to the

guillotine. Under the Empire, M. de Talleyrand is prince of Benevento,

minister of foreign affairs and vice-grand-elector with a salary of five

hundred thousand francs. We see personages of old nobility figuring in

the first ranks: among the clergy M. de Roquelaure, M. de Boisgelin,

M. de Broglie, M. Ferdinand de Rohan; in the magistracy, M. Séguier, M.

Pasquier, M. Molé; on the domestic and decorative staff of the

palace, Comte de Ségur, grand-master of ceremonies, Comte de

Montesquiou-Fézensac, grand-chamberlain, also as chamberlains, Comtes

d'Aubusson de la Feuillade, de Brigode, de Croy, de Coutades,

de Louvois, de Brancas, de Gontaut, de Grammont, de Beauvau, de

Lur-Saluces, d'Haussonville, de Noailles, de Chabot, de Turenne,[3309]

and other bearers of historic names.--During the Revolution, at each new

parliamentarian, popular or military coup d'état the notabilities of

the vanquished party were always excluded from office and generally

outlawed. After the coup d'état of Brumaire, not only are the vanquished

of the old parties all brought back under the protection of the law,

but, again, their notables are promoted to the highest offices. Among

the monarchists of the Constituent Assembly Mabuet is made councilor of

State, and Maury archbishop of Paris; forty-seven other ecclesiastics

who, like himself, refused to take the oath to the civil constitution

of the clergy, are appointed, like him, to episcopal thrones. Among

the Feuillants of the Legislative Assembly, Vaublanc is made prefect,

Beugnot a councilor of State and minister of the finances in the

grand-duchy of Berg, Matthieu Dumas a brigadier-general and director of

reviews, Narbonne becomes the aid-de-camp and the intimate interlocutor

of Napoleon, and then ambassador to Vienna; if Lafayette had been

willing, not to ask for but to accept the post, he would have been made

a marshal of France.--Among the few Girondists or Federalists who did

not perish after the 2nd June, Riouffe is prefect and baron, Lanjuinais

is senator and count; among others proscribed, or half proscribed, the

new Régime restores to and places at the head of affairs the superior

and special employees whom the Reign of Terror had driven away, or

singled out for slaughter, particularly the heads of the financial and

diplomatic services who, denounced by Robespierre on the 8th Thermidor,

or arrested on the morning of the 9th already felt their necks under the

blade of the guillotine; Reinhart and Otto are ambassadors, Mollien is

count and treasury minister, Miot becomes councilor of state, Comte de

Melito minister of finances at Naples, while Gaudin is made minister of

finances in France and Duc de Gaëte. Among the transported or fugitives

of Fructidor, Barthélemy becomes senator, Barbé-Marbois director of the

Treasury and first president of the Cour des Comptes; Siméon, councilor

of State and then minister of justice in Westphalia; Portalis is made

minister of worship, and Fontanes grand-master of the University. The

First Consul passes the sponge over all political antecedents: not

only does he summon to his side the moderates and half-moderates of the

Constituent and Legislative Assemblies, of the Convention and of the

Directory, but again he seeks recruits among pure royalists and pure

Jacobins, among the men the most devoted to the ancient Régime and

amongst those most compromised by the Revolution, at both extremities

of the most extreme opinions. We have just seen, on the one side, what

hereditary favorites of a venerable royalty, what born supporters of the

deposed dynasty, are elevated by him to the first of his magisterial,

clerical and court dignities. On the other hand, apart from Chasset,

Roederer and Grégoire, apart from Fourcroy, Bérlier and Réal, apart from

Treilhard and Boulay de La Meurthe, he employs others branded or noted

for terrible acts, Barère himself, at least for a certain period, and in

the sole office he was fitted for, that of a denunciator, gazetteer and

stimulator of public opinion; everybody has a place according to his

faculties, and each has rank according to his usefulness and merit.

Barère, consequently, becomes a paid spy and pamphleteer; Drouet,

the postmaster, who arrested the royal family at Varennes, becomes

sub-prefect at Sainte-Menehould; Jean-Bon Saint-André, one of the

Committee of Public Safety, is made prefect at Mayence; Merlin de Douai,

reporter of the law against suspects, is prosecuting attorney in the

court of cassation; Fouché, whose name tells all, becomes minister of

state and Duke of Otranto; nearly all of the survivors of the Convention

are made judges of première instance or of appeal, revenue-collectors,

deputies, prefects, foreign consuls, police commissioners, inspectors of

reviews, head-clerks in the post-offices, custom-houses and tax-offices,

while, in 1808, among these functionaries, one hundred and thirty were

regicides.[3310]

II. Ambitions during the Ancient Regime.

The need of success.--Initiation and conditions of promotion

under the old monarchy.--Effect on minds.--Ambitions are

limited.--The external outlets open to them.

To make one's way, get ahead, and succeed in the world is now the

dominant thought in the minds of men. Before 1789, this thought had

not acquired sovereign control in their minds; it found that there were

rival ideas to contend with, and it had only half-developed itself; its

roots had not sunk down deep enough to monopolize the activity of the

imagination, to absorb the will and possess the mind entirely; and the

reason is that it lacked both air and victuals. Promotion, under the old

monarchy, was slow, and in the first place, because the monarchy was old

and because in every order which is not new each new generation finds

that every office is filled, and next, because, in this old order

founded on tradition and heredity, future vacancies were supplied long

beforehand. The great social staircase led to several stories; each man

could ascend every step of his own flight, but he could not mount above

it; the landing reached, he found closed doors and nearly insurmountable

barriers. The story above was reserved to its own inhabitants; they

occupied it now and were still to occupy it in time to come; the

inevitable successors of the titular possessor were seen around him

on each step, his equals, peers and neighbors, one or the other often

designated by name as his legal heir, the purchaser of his survivorship.

In those days, not only was the individual himself considered, his

merits and his services, but likewise his family and ancestry, his state

and condition, the society he entered into, the "salon" he maintained,

his fortune and his followers; these antecedents and surroundings

composed the quality of the personage; without this requisite quality,

he could not go beyond the landing-place. Strictly speaking, a personage

born on the upper steps of one story might sometimes succeed in mounting

the lowest steps of the next story, but there he stopped. In short, it

was always considered by those on the lower story that the upper story

was inaccessible and, moreover, uninhabitable.

Accordingly, most of the public offices, in the finances, in the

administration, in the judiciary, in the parliaments, in the army,

at court, were private property as is now the case with the places of

advocates, notaries and brokers; they had to be bought to enable one to

follow these pursuits, and were very dear; one had to possess a large

capital and be content beforehand to derive only a mediocre revenue from

it, 10, 5 and sometimes 3 % on the purchase-money.[3311] The place once

acquired, especially if an important one, involved official parade,

receptions, an open table, a large annual outlay;[3312] it often ran

the purchaser in debt; he knew that his acquisition would bring him more

consideration than crowns. On the other hand, to obtain possession of

it, he had to secure the good-will of the body of which he became a

member, or of the patron who bestowed the office. That is to say, he

must be regarded by his future colleagues as acceptable, or by the

patron as a guest, invited, and feasible friend, in other words, provide

sponsors for himself, furnish guarantees, prove that he was well-off and

well-educated, that his ways and manners qualified him for the post,

and that, in the society he was about to enter, he would not turn out

unsuitable. To maintain one's self in office at court one was obliged to

possess the tone of Versailles, quite different from that of Paris and

the provinces.[3313] To maintain one's self in a high parliamentary

position, one was expected to possess local alliances, moral authority,

the traditions and deportment handed down from father to son in the old

magistrate families, and which a mere advocate, an ordinary pleader,

could not arrive at.[3314] In short, on this staircase, each distinct

story imposed on its inmates a sort of distinct costume, more or less

costly, embroidered and gilded, I mean a sum of outward and inward

habits and connections, all obligatory and indispensable, comprising

title, particle and name: the announcement of any bourgeois name by a

lackey in the ante-chamber would be considered a discord; consequently,

one had one's self ennobled in the current coin, or assumed a noble

name gratis. Caron, son of a watchmaker, became Beaumarchais; Nicolas, a

foundling, called himself M. de Champfort; Danton, in public documents,

signed himself d'Anton; in the same way, a man without a dress-coat

hires or borrows one, no matter how, on going out to dine; all this

was tolerated and accepted as a sign of good behavior and of final

conformity with custom, as in testimony of respect for the usages of

good society.

Through this visible separation of stories, people had acquired the

habit of remaining in the condition in which they were placed; they were

not irritated by being obliged to stay in it; the soldier who enlisted

did not aspire to become an officer; the young officer of the lower

noblesse and of small means did not aspire to the post of colonel or

lieutenant-general; a limited perspective kept hopes and the imagination

from fruitlessly launching forth into a boundless future: ambition,

humbled to the ground at the start, walked instead of flying; it

recognized at the outset that the summits were beyond its reach; to be

able to mount upward one or two steps was enough.--In general, a man

obtained promotion on the spot, in his town, corporation or parliament.

The assistant-counselor who pleaded his first case in the court of

Grenoble or of Rennes calculated that, in twenty years, he would become

first judge at Grenoble or at Rennes, rest twenty years or more in

office, and he aimed at nothing better. Alongside of the counselor of

a (court) presidency, or of an "election" magistrate, of a clerk in the

salt-tax bureau, or in the frontier custom-house, or in the bureau of

"rivers and forests," alongside of a clerk in the treasury or ministry

of foreign affairs, or of a lawyer or prosecuting attorney, there was

always some son, son-in-law or nephew, fitted by domestic training, by

a technical apprenticeship, by moral adaptation, not only to perform

the duties of the office, but to be contented in it, pretend to nothing

beyond it, not to look above himself with regret or envy, satisfied with

the society around him, and feel, moreover, that elsewhere he would be

out of his element and uncomfortable.

Life, thus restricted and circumscribed, was more cheerful then than at

the present day; souls, less disturbed and less strained, less exhausted

and less burdened with cares, were healthier. The Frenchman, exempt from

modern preoccupations, followed amiable and social instincts, inclined

to take things easily, and of a playful disposition owing to his natural

talent for amusing himself by amusing others, in mutual enjoyment

of each other's company and without calculation, through easy and

considerate intercourse, smiling or laughing, in short, in a constant

flow of inspiration, good-humor and gayety.[3315] It is probable that,

if the Revolution had not intervened, the great parvenus of the time

and of the Empire would, like their forerunners, have submitted to

prevailing necessities and readily accommodated themselves to the

discipline of the established Régime. Cambacérès, who had succeeded to

his father as counselor at the bar of Montpellier, would have become

president (of the tribunal) in his turn; meanwhile, he would have

composed able jurisprudential treatises and invented some new pâté de

becfigues; Lebrun, former collaborator with Maupeou, might have become

counselor in the court of excise at Paris, or chief-clerk in the

Treasury department; he would have kept up a philosophical salon, with

fashionable ladies and polished men of letters to praise his elegant

and faulty translations. Amongst the future marshals, some of them,

pure plebeians, Masséna, Augereau, Lannes, Ney, Lefebvre, might have

succeeded through brilliant actions and have become "officers of

fortune," while others, taking in hand specially difficult services,

like commandant Fischer who undertook the destruction of Mandrin's band,

and again, like the hero Chevert, and the veteran Lückner, might have

become lieutenant-generals. Rough as these men were, they would have

found, even in the lower ranks, if not full employment for their

superior faculties, at least sufficient food for their strong and coarse

appetites; they would have uttered just the same oaths, at just as

extravagant suppers, with mistresses of just the same caliber.[3316]

Had their temperament, character and genius been indomitable, had they

reared and pranced to escape bridle and harness and been driven like

ordinary men, they need not have broken out of the traces for all that;

there were plenty of openings and issues for them on either side of

the highway on which others were trotting along. Many families often

contained, among numerous children, some hot-headed, imaginative youth,

some independent nature rebellious in advance, in short, a refractory

spirit, unwilling or incapable of being disciplined; a regular life,

mediocrity, even the certainty of getting ahead, were distasteful to

him; he would abandon the hereditary homestead or purchased office to

the docile elder brother, son-in-law or nephew, by which the domain or

the post remained in the family; as for himself, tempted by illimitable

prospects, he would leave France and go abroad; Voltaire says[3317] that

"Frenchmen were found everywhere," in Canada, in Louisiana, as surgeons,

fencing-masters, riding-masters, officers, engineers, adventurers

especially, and even filibusters, trappers and backwoodsmen, the

supplest, most sympathetic and boldest of colonizers and civilizers,

alone capable of bringing the natives under assimilation by assimilating

with them, by adopting their customs and by marrying their women,

mixing bloods, and forming new and intermediary races, like Dumas de La

Pailleterie, whose descendants have furnished original and superior men

for the past three generations, and like the Canada half-breeds by which

the aboriginal race succeeds in transforming itself and in surviving.

They were the first explorers of the great lakes, the first to trace the

Mississippi to its mouth, and found colonial empires with Champlain

and Lasalle in North America and with Dupleix and La Bourdonnais in

Hindustan. Such was the outlet for daring, uncontrollable spirits,

restive temperaments under constraint and subject to the routine of an

old civilization, souls astray and unclassed from their birth, in which

the primitive instincts of the nomad and barbarian sprouted afresh, in

which insubordination was innate, and in which energy and capacity to

take the initiative remained intact.--Mirabeau, having compromised his

family by scandals, was on the point of being dispatched by his father

to the Dutch Indies, where deaths were common; it might happen that he

would be hanged or become governor of some large district in Java or

Sumatra, the venerated and adored sovereign of five hundred thousand

Malays, both ends being within the compass of his merits. Had Danton

been well advised, instead of borrowing the money with which to buy an

advocate's place in the Council at about seventy thousand livres, which

brought him only three cases in four years and obliged him to hang on to

the skirts of his father-in-law, he would have gone to Pondicherry or

to the palace of some indigenous rajah or king as agent, councilor

or companion of his pleasures; he might have become prime-minister to

Tippoo Sahib, or other potentate, lived in a palace, kept a harem and

had lacs of rupees; undoubtedly, he would have filled his prisons and

occasionally emptied them by a massacre, as at Paris in September, but

it would have been according to local custom, and operating only on

the lives of Sheikhs and Mahrattas. Bonaparte, after the fall of his

protectors, the two Robespierres, finding his career arrested, wanted

to enter the Sultan's service; accompanied by Junot, Muiron, Marmont

and other comrades, he could have carried to Constantinople rarer

commodities, much better compensated in the Orient than in the Occident,

namely military honor and administrative talent; he would have dealt

in these two products, as he did in Egypt, at the right time and in the

right place, at the highest price, without our conscientious scruples

and without our European refinements of probity and humanity. No

imagination can picture what he would have become there: certainly some

pasha, like Djezzar in Syria, or a khedive like Mahomet-Ali, afterwards

at Cairo; he already saw himself in the light of a conqueror, like

Ghengis-Khan,[3318] a founder like Alexander or Baber, a prophet like

Mahomet; as he himself declares, "one could work only on a grand scale

in the Orient," and there he would have worked on a grand scale; Europe,

perhaps, would have gained by it, and especially France.

III. Ambition and Selection.

The Revolution provides an internal outlet and an unlimited

career.--Effect of this.--Exigencies and pretensions of the

modern man.--Theoretical rule of selection among rivals.

--Popular suffrage raised to be lord and judge.--Consequence

of its verdict.--Unworthiness of its choice.

But the Revolution arrived and the ambitions which, under the ancient

Régime, found a field abroad or cooled down at home, arose on the natal

soil and suddenly expanded beyond all calculation. After 1789, France

resembles a hive in a state of excitement; in a few hours, in the brief

interval of an August morning, each insect puts forth two huge wings,

soars aloft and "all whirl together pell-mell;" many fall to the ground

half cut to pieces and begin to crawl upward as before; others, with

more strength or with better luck, ascend and glitter on the highways

of the atmosphere.--Every great highway and every other road is open to

everybody through the decrees of the Constituent-Assembly, not only for

the future, but even immediately. The sudden dismissal of the entire

ruling staff, executive, or consultative, political, administrative,

provincial, municipal, ecclesiastical, educational, military, judicial

and financial, summon to take office all who covet it and who have a

good opinion of themselves. All previously existing conditions, birth,

fortune, education, old family and all apprenticeships, customs and ways

which retard and limit advancement, are abolished: There are no

longer any guarantees or sponsors; all Frenchmen are eligible to all

employments; all grades of the legal and social hierarchy are conferred

by a more or less direct election, a suffrage becoming more and more

popular, by a mere numerical majority. Consequently, in all branches of

the government under central or local authority and patronage, there is

the installation of a new staff of officials. The transposition

which everywhere substitutes the old inferior to the old superior, is

universal,[3319] "lawyers for judges, bourgeois for statesmen, former

plebeians for former nobles, soldiers for officers, officers for

generals, curés for bishops, vicars for curés, monks for vicars,

stock-jobbers for financiers, self-taught persons for administrators,

journalists for publicists, rhetoricians for legislators, and the poor

for the rich." A sudden jump from the bottom to the top of the social

ladder by a few, from the lowest to the highest rung, from the rank of

sergeant to that of major-general, from the condition of a pettifogger

or starving newspaper-hack to the possession of supreme authority, even

to the effective exercise of omnipotence and dictatorship--such is the

capital, positive, striking work of the Revolution.

At the same time, and as an after-effect, a revolution is going on in

minds and the moral effect of the show is greater and more lasting than

the events themselves. The minds have been stirred to their very depths;

stagnant passions and slumbering pretensions are aroused. The multitude

of offices presented and expected vacancies "has excited the thirst

for power, stimulated self-esteem, and fired the hopes of men the most

inept. An fierce, gross presumption has freed the ignorant and the

foolish of any feeling of modesty or incompetence; they have deemed

themselves capable of everything because the law awards public office

simply to the able. Everybody had a perspective glimpse of gratified

ambition; the soldier dreamt only of displacing the officer, the officer

of becoming general, the clerk of supplanting the head administrator,

the lawyer of yesterday of the supreme court, the curé of becoming

bishop, the most frivolous littérateur of seating himself on the

legislative bench. Places and positions, vacant due to the promotion

of so many parvenus, provided in their turn a vast career to the lower

classes. Seeing a public functionary issue out of nothingness, where

is the shoeblack whose soul would not stir with ambition?"--This new

sentiment must be taken into account: for, whether reasonable or not, it

is going to last, maintain its energy, stimulate men with extraordinary

force[3320] and become one of the great incentives of will and action.

Henceforth, government and administration are to become difficult

matters; the forms and plans of the old social architecture are no

longer applicable; like construction is not possible with materials of a

different kind, whether with stable or unstable materials, with men

who do not dream of quitting their condition or with men who think of

nothing but that.

In effect, whatever vacancy may occur, each aspirant thinks himself fit

for it, and only one of the aspirants can obtain it. Accordingly some

rule of preference must be adopted outside of the opinion that each

candidate entertains of himself. Accordingly, at a very early date, one

was established, and there could be no better one, namely, that, among

the competitors for the place, the most competent to fill it should be

chosen. Unfortunately, the judge, ordinary, extraordinary and supreme,

instituted to decide in this case, was the plurality of male, adult

Frenchmen, counted by heads, that is to say a collective being in which

the small intelligent, élite body is drowned in the great rude mass;

of all juries, the most incompetent, the easiest duped and misled,

the least able to comprehend the questions laid before it and the

consequences of its answer; the worst informed, the most inattentive,

the most blinded by preconceived sympathies or antipathies, the most

willingly absent, a mere flock of enlisted sheep always robbed or

cheated out of their vote, and whose verdict, forced or simulated,

depended on politicians beforehand, above and below, through the

clubs as well as through the revolutionary government, the latter,

consequently, maneuvering in such a way as to impose itself along with

their favorites on the choice of the French people. Between 1792 and

1799, the republican official staff just described is thus obtained.--It

is only in the army where the daily and keen sense of a common physical

and mortal danger ends in dictating the choice of the best, and raises

tried merit to the highest rank; and yet it must be noted that Jacobin

infatuation bore down as rigorously on the army as elsewhere and on

two occasions: at the outset through the election of a superior

officer conferred on subordinates, which handed rank over to the noisy

disputants and intemperate intriguers of the mess-room; and again

during the Reign of Terror, and even later,[3321] in the persecution

or dismissal of so many patriotic and deserving officers, which led

Gouvion-Saint-Cyr and his comrades, through disgust, to avoid or decline

accepting high rank, in the scandalous promotion of club brawlers and

docile nullities, in the military dictatorship of the civil proconsuls,

in the supremacy conferred on Léchelle and Rossignol, in the

subordination forced on Kléber and Marceau, in the absurd plans of a

demagogue with huge epaulettes like Cartaux,[3322] in the grotesque

orders of the day issued by a swaggering inebriate like Henriot,[3323]

in the disgrace of Bonaparte, and in the detention of Hoche.--In the

civil order of things, it was worse. Not only was the rule of regulating

promotion by merit not recognized but it was applied in an inverse

sense. In the central government as in the local government, and from

top to bottom of the hierarchy, from the post of minister of foreign

affairs down to that of president of a petty revolutionary committee,

all offices were for the unworthy. Their unfitness kept on increasing

inasmuch as incessant weeding out worked against them, the functionary,

degraded by his work, growing worse along with his function.--Thus

the constitutional rights of merit and capacity ended in the practical

privilege of incapacity and demerit. And in the allotment of grades and

social advantages, distributive justice had given way to distributive

injustice, while practice, contrary to theory, instituted permanently,

on the one hand, the exclusion or retirement of competent, instructed,

expert, well-bred, honorable and respected men and, on the other hand,

brought forward illiterate, inept and rude novices, coarse and vulgar

brutes, common blackguards, men used up or of tarnished reputations,

rogues ready for anything, fugitives from justice, in short the

adventurers and outcasts of every kind and degree.[3324] The latter,

owing their success to perversion or lack of conscientiousness,

derived their principal title from their vigorous fists and a fixed

determination to hold on to their places as they had obtained them,

that is to say by main force and by the murder or exile of their

rivals.--Evidently, the staff of officials which the Declaration of

Human Rights had promised was not the staff on duty ten years later

there was a lack of experience.[3325] In 1789, careers were open to

every ambition; down to 1799, the rivalry of ambitions had simply

produced a wild uproar and a brutal conquest. The great modern

difficulty remained: how to discipline the competition and to find an

impartial judge, an undisputed arbitrator of the competition.

IV. Napoleon, Judge-Arbitrator-Ruler.

Napoleon as judge of competition.--Security of his seat.

--Independence of his decisions.--Suppression of former

influences and end of monarchical or democratic intrigues.

--Other influences against which he is on guard.--His favorite

rule.--Estimate of candidates according to the kind and

amount of their useful labor.--His own competency.--His

perspicacity.--His vigilance.--Zeal and labor of his

functionaries.--Result of competition thus viewed and of

functions thus exercised.--Talents utilized and jealousies

disarmed.

Behold him, at last, this judge-arbitrator. On the 8th November, 1799,

he appears and takes his seat, and that very evening he goes to

work, makes his selections among the competitors and gives them their

commissions. He is a military chieftain and has installed himself;

consequently he is not dependent on a parliamentary majority, and any

insurrection or gathering of a mob is at once rendered abortive by his

troops before it is born. Street sovereignty is at an end; Parisians are

long to remember the 13th of Vendémaire and the way General Bonaparte

shot them down on the steps of Saint-Roch. All his precautions against

them are taken the first day and against all agitators whatever, against

all opponents disposed to dispute his jurisdiction. His arm-chair as

first Consul and afterwards his throne as Emperor are firmly fixed;

nobody but himself can undermine them; he is seated definitively and

will stay there. Profound silence reigns in the public crowd around

him; some among them dare whisper, but his police has its eye on them.

Instead of conforming to opinion he rules it, masters it and, if need

be, he manufactures it. Alone by himself from his seat on high,

in perfect independence and security, he announces the verdicts of

distributive justice. Nevertheless he is on his guard against the

temptations and influences which have warped the decisions of his

predecessors; in his tribunal, the schemes and intrigues which formerly

obtained credit with the people, or with the king, are no longer in

vogue; from now on, the profession of courtier or of demagogue is a

poor one.--On the one hand, there is no success, as formerly under the

monarchy, through the attentions of the ante-chamber, through elegant

manners, delicate flattery, fashionable drawing-rooms, or valets and

women on an intimate footing; mistresses here enjoy no credit and there

are neither favorites nor the favored; a valet is regarded as a useful

implement; great personages are not considered as extra-ornamental and

human furniture for the palace. Not one among them dare ask for a place

for a protégé which he is incapable of filling, an advancement which

would derange the lists of promotions, a pass over the heads of others;

if they obtain any favors, these are insignificant or political; the

master grants them as an after-thought, to rally somebody, or a party,

to his side; they personally, their ornamental culture, their high-bred

tone, their wit, their conversational powers, their smiles and bows--all

this is lost on him, or charged to account. He has no liking for their

insinuating and discreet ways;[3326] he regards them as merely good

domestics for parade; all he esteems in them is their ceremonial

significance, that innate suppleness which permits them to be at once

servile and dignified, the hereditary tact which teaches them how to

present a letter, not from hand to hand, but on the rim of a hat, or

on a silver plate, and these faculties he estimates at their true

worth.--On the other hand, nobody succeeds, as lately under the

Republic, through tribunal or club verbosity, through appeals to

principles, through eloquent or declamatory tirades; "glittering

generalities," hollow abstractions and phrases made to produce an

impression have no effect; and what is better, political ideology, with

a solicitor or pleader, is a bad note. The positive, practical mind

of the judge has taken in at a glance and penetrated to the bottom

of arguments, means and valid pretensions; he submits impatiently to

metaphysics and pettifoggery, to the argumentative force and mendacity

of words.--This goes so far that he distrusts oratorical or literary

talent; in any event when he entrusts active positions or a part in

public business then he takes no note of it. According to him, "the men

who write well and are eloquent have no solidity of judgment; they are

illogical and very poor in discussion,"[3327] they are mere artists

like others, so many word-musicians, a kind of special, narrow-minded

instrument, some of them good solo players, like Fontanes, and who the

head of a State can use, but only in official music for grand cantatas

and the decoration of his reign. Wit in itself, not alone the wit which

gives birth to brilliant expressions and which was considered a prime

accomplishment under the old regime, but general intelligence, has for

him only a semi-value.[3328] "I am more brilliant[3329], you may say?

Eh, what do I care for your intelligence? What I care for is the

essence of the matter. There is nobody so foolish that is not good for

something--there is no intelligence equal to everything." In fact,

on bestowing an office it is the function which delegates; the proper

execution of the function is the prime motive in determining his choice;

the candidate appointed is always the one who will best do the work

assigned him. No factitious, party popularity or unpopularity, no

superficial admiration or disparagement of a clique, of a salon, or of

a bureau, makes him swerve from his standard of preference.[3330]

He values men according to the quality and quantity of their work,

according to their net returns, and he estimates them directly,

personally, with superior perspicacity and universal competency. He

is special in all branches of civil or military activity, and even

in technical detail; his memory for facts, actions, antecedence and

circumstances, is prodigious; his discernment, his critical analysis,

his calculating insight into the resources and shortcomings of a mind

or of a soul, his faculty for gauging men, is extraordinary; through

constant verifications and rectifications his internal repertory, his

biographical and moral dictionary, is kept daily posted; his attention

never flags; he works eighteen hours a day; his personal intervention

and his hand are visible even in the appointment of subordinates. "Every

man called to take part in affairs was selected by him;"[3331] it is

through him that they retain their place; he controls their promotion

and by sponsors whom he knows. "A minister could not have dismissed a

functionary without consulting the emperor, while the ministers could

all change without bringing about two secondary changes throughout the

empire. A minister did not appoint even a second-class clerk without

presenting a list of several candidates to the emperor and, opposite to

it, the name of the person recommending him." All, even at a

distance, felt that the master's eyes were on them. "I worked," says

Beugnot,[3332] "from night to morning, with singular ardor; I astonished

the natives of the country who did not know that the emperor exercised

over his servitors, however far from him they might be, the miracle of

the real presence. I thought I saw him standing over me as I worked shut

up in my cabinet."--"Under him," writes Roederer, "there is no man of

any merit who, as a reward for long and difficult labor, does not feel

himself better compensated by a new task than by the most honorable

leisure." Never did positions less resemble sinecures. Never was

the happiness of successful candidates or the misery of unsuccessful

candidates better justified. Never the compliance, the difficulty,

the risks of a required task have been compensated more fairly by the

enjoyment of the allocated rewards nor moderated the bitterness of the

frustrated pretensions.[3333] Never were public functions assigned

or fulfilled in a way to better satisfy the legitimate craving for

advancement, the dominant desire of democracy and of the century, and in

a way to better disarm the bad passions of democracy and of the

century, consisting of an envious leveling, anti-social rancor and

the inconsolable regrets of the man who has failed. Never did human

competition encounter a similar judge, so constant, so expert and so

justified.--He is himself conscious of the unique part he plays. His

own ambition, the highest and most insatiate of all, enables him to

comprehend the ambition of others; to place everywhere the man who suits

the post in the post which suits the man--this is what he has done for

himself and what he does for others. He knows that in this lies his

power, his deep-seated popularity, his social utility.

"Nobody," says Napoleon,[3334] "is interested in overthrowing a

government in which all the deserving are employed."

Then, again, comes his significant exclamation at the end, his summary

of modern society, a solemn grandiose figure of speech found in the

legendary souvenirs of a glorious antiquity, a classic reminiscence of

the noble Olympian games,

"Henceforth, all careers are open to talent!"

IV. The Struggle for Office and Title.

Competition and prizes.--Multitude of offices.--How their

number is increased by the extension of central patronage

and of the French territory.--Situation of a Frenchman

abroad.--It gives him rank.--Rapidity of promotion.

--Constant elimination and multiplicity of vacancies in the

army.--Preliminary elimination in the civil service.

--Proscription of cultivated men and interruption of education

during the Revolution.--General or special instruction rare

in 1800.--Small number of competent candidates.--Easy

promotion due to the lack of competitors.--Importance and

attraction the prizes offered.--The Legion of Honor.--The

imperial nobility.--Dotations and majorities.--Emulation.

Let us now consider the career which he thus opens to them and the

prizes he offers. These prizes are in full view, ranged along each

racecourse, graduated according to distances and more and more striking

and magnificent. Every ambition is provided for, the highest as well

as the lowest, and these are countless; for they consist of offices of

every grade in the civil and military hierarchies of a great centralized

State whose intervention is universal, under a government which

systematically tolerates no authority or influence outside of itself

and which monopolizes every species of social importance for its own

functionaries.[3335]--All these prizes, even the smallest and most

insignificant, are awarded by it. In the first place, Napoleon has two

or three times as many offices to bestow, on the soil of old France

alone, as the former kings; for, even in the choice of their staff of

officials, the latter were not always free; in many places they did not

have, or no longer had the right of appointment. At one time, this right

be longed from time immemorial to provincial or municipal corporations,

laic or ecclesiastic, to a certain chapter, abbey or collegiate church,

to a bishop in his diocese, to the seignior in his seignory. At another

time the king, once possessing the right, had surrendered or alienated

it, in whole or in part through gratuitous favor and the concession of

a survivorship or for money and through the sale of an office; in brief,

his hands were tied fast by hereditary or acquired privileges There are

no privileges now to fetter the hands of the First Consul. The entire

civil organization dates from him. The whole body of officials is thus

of his own selection, and under him it is much more numerous than that

of the ancient Régime; for he has extended the attributions of the

State beyond all former bounds. Directly or indirectly, he appoints by

hundreds of thousands the mayors and councilors of municipalities and

the members of general councils, the entire staff of the administration,

of the finances, of the judicature, of the clergy, of the University,

of public works and of public charity. Besides all this, myriads of

ministerial and notarial officials lawyers, ushers, auctioneers, and

by way of surplus, or as a natural result, the members of every great

private association since no collective enterprise, from the Bank of

France and the press to stage lines and tontines, may be established

without his permission, nor exist without his tolerance. Not counting

the latter, and after deducting likewise the military or active duty

and the functionaries who draw pay, the prefect from the earliest

years report that, since 1789, the number of people "employed or under

government pay" has more than doubled: In Doubs, in the year IX, instead

of 916 there are 1820; in Meurthe in the year XIII, instead of 1828

there are 3091; in Ain, in 1806 instead of 955 there are 1771[3336].

As to the army, it has tripled, and according to the First Consul's own

calculations, instead of 9,000 or 10,000 officers as in 1789, there are

more than 20,000.--These figures go on increasing on the old territory

through the very development of the new organization, through the

enormous increase of the army, through the re-establishment of religious

worship, through the installation of droits réunis, through the

institution of the University, owing to the increasing number

of officials, curés and assistant-priests, of professors and

school-teachers, and of retired and pensioned invalids.[3337]

And these figures, which already swell of themselves, are to swell an

additional half through the extension of the ancient territory. Instead

of 86 departments with a population of 26 millions, France ends in

comprising 130 departments with 42 million inhabitants--Belgium and

Piedmont, then Hanover, Tuscany, Central Italy, Illyria, Holland and the

Hanseatic provinces, that is to say 44 departments and 16 millions of

annexed Frenchmen;[3338] affording another large outlet for little and

big ambitions.--Add still another, as a surplus and not less extensive

outlet, outside of France: for the subject princes and the vassal kings,

Eugène, Louis, Jerome, Murat, and Joseph, each with their governments,

import into their realms a more or less numerous body of French

officials, familiars, court dignitaries, generals, ministers,

administrators, even clerks and other indispensable subalterns, if for

no other purpose than to bring the natives within the military and

civil compartments of the new Régime and teach them on the spot the

conscription, the administration, the civil code, and systems of

accounts like those of Paris. Even in the independent or allied States,

in Prussia, in Poland, in the confederation of the Rhine, there are,

at intervals or permanently, Frenchmen in position and in authority to

command contingent forces, to garrison fortresses, to receive supplies

and secure the payment of war contributions. Even with the corporal and

custom-house inspector on duty on coast at Dantzig and at Reggio, the

sentiment of victorious priority equals the possession of rank; in their

eyes the natives of the country are semi-barbarians or semi-savages,

a backward or prejudiced lot, not even knowing how to speak their

language; they feel themselves superior, as formerly the señor soldado

of the sixteenth century, or the civis romanus. Never since the great

Spanish monarchy and the Old Roman empire has a conquering State and

propagator of a new régime afforded its subjects such gratifications of

self-esteem, nor opened so vast a career to their ambitions.

For, having once adopted their career, they know better than the

Spaniards under Charles V. or the Romans under Augustus, how far they

can go and how fast they can get ahead. No obstacle impedes them; nobody

feels himself confined his post; each considers the one he occupies

as provisional, each takes it only to await a better one, anticipating

another at a very early date; he dashes onward, springs aloft and

occupies in advance the superior post which he means to secure on

the first vacancy, and, under this Régime, the vacancies are

numerous.--These vacancies, in the military service and in the grade

of officers, may be estimated at nearly four thousand per annum;[3339]

after 1808 and 1809, but especially after the disaster of 1812 and 1813,

places are no longer lacking but subjects fill them; Napoleon is

obliged to accept youths for officers as beardless as his conscripts,

eighteen-year-old apprentices who, after a year or six months in the

military academy, might finish their apprenticeship on the battle-field,

pupils taken from the philosophy or rhetoric classes, willing children

(de bonne volonté): On the 13th of December 1808, he draws 50 from his

lycées, who don the gold-lace of under-officers at once; in 1809, he

calls out 250, to serve in the depot battalions; in 1810, he calls out

150 of the age of nineteen who "know the drill," and who are to be sent

on distant expeditions with the commission of second-lieutenant; in

1811, 400 for the school of noncommissioned officers at Fontainebleau,

20 for the Ile-de-Ré and 84 who are to be quartermasters; and, in 1812,

112 more and so on. Naturally, thanks to annually increasing gaps made

by cannon and bayonet, the survivors in this body of youth mount the

faster; in 1813 and 1814, there are colonels and lieutenant-colonels of

the age of twenty-five.

In the civil service, if fewer are killed everybody is almost equally

over tasked. Under this reign one is soon used up, physically and

morally, even in pacific employments, and this also supplies vacancies.

Besides, in default of deaths, wounds and violent elimination, there is

another elimination, not less efficacious, operating in this direction,

and for a long time, in favor of men of ability, preparing places for

them and accelerating their advancement. Napoleon accepts none but

competent candidates; now, in 1800, there is a dearth of acceptable

candidates for places in the civil service and not, as in 1789, or at

the present time, a superabundance and even too great a crowd.--In the

military service especially, capacity is innate; natural endowments,

courage, coolness, quick perception, physical activity, moral

ascendancy, topographical imagination form its principal elements; men

just able to read, write and cipher became, in three or four years,

during the Revolution, admirable officers and conquering generals.--It

is not the same in relation to civil capacity; this requires long and

continuous study. To become a priest, magistrate, engineer, professor,

prefect or school-teacher, one must have studied theology or law,

mathematics or Latin, administration or the finances. If not, the

functionary is not qualified to serve: he must, at the very least, know

how to spell, be able to write French, examine a law-case, draw up

a report, keep accounts, and if needs be, comprehend a plan, make an

estimate and read off a map. Men of this stamp are rare at the beginning

of the Consulate. As notables,[3340] the Revolution mowed them down

first. Among all their sons and so many well-bred youth who have become

soldiers through patriotism, or who have left their families to prevent

these from becoming suspect, one half repose on the battlefield or have

left the hospital only for the cemetery; "the muscadin[3341] died from

the first campaign." In any event, for them and their younger brothers,

for the children beginning to learn Latin and mathematics, for all who

hoped to pursue liberal professions, for the entire generation about to

receive either a superior, a common, or even a primary instruction, and

hence to furnish brains prepared for intellectual work, there was a lack

of this for ten years. Not only were the endowments which provided

for instruction confiscated but the educational staff, nearly all

ecclesiastic, was one of the most proscribed among those proscribed.

Whilst military requisition and the closing of the schools suppressed

the pupils, massacres, banishment, imprisonment, destitution and the

scaffold suppressed the teachers. Whilst the ruin of universities

and colleges did away with theoretical apprenticeship, the ruin of

manufactures and of trade abolished practical apprenticeship. Through

the long interruption of all studies, general instruction as well as

special competency became rare product in the market.--Hence it is that,

in 1800, and during the three or four following years, whoever brought

to market either one the other of these commodities was certain of a

quick sale;[3342] the new government needed them more than anybody. The

moment the seller made up his mind, he was bought, and, whatever he may

be, a former Jacobin or a former émigré; he is employed. If he brings

both commodities and is zealous, he is promptly promoted; if, on

trial, he is found of superior capacity, he will, like Mollien, Gaudin,

Tronchet, Pasquier and Molé, attain to the highest posts, for he finds

scarcely any competitors. These he would have had had things followed

their usual course; it is the Revolution which has cleared the ground

around him; without that the road would have been obstructed; competent

candidates would have swarmed. Reckon, if possible, how many men

of talent who were destroyed, royalists, monarchists, feuillants,

Girondists and even Jacobins. They were the élite of the noblesse, of

the clergy, of the bourgeoisie, of the youth and those of riper age.

Thus rid of their most formidable rivals the survivors pursue their way

at top speed; the guillotine has wrought for them in advance; it has

effected openings in their own ranks, made by bullets in every battle

in the ranks of the army, and, in the civil hierarchy as in the military

hierarchy, merit, if demonstrated by services, or not arrested by death,

reaches the highest summit in very few years.

The prizes offered on these summits are splendid; no attraction is

lacking. The great trainer who displays them has omitted none of

the seductions which excite and stimulate an ordinary mind. He has

associated with the positive values of power and wealth every

value incident to imagination and opinion; hence his institution of

decorations and the Legion of Honor.[3343]

"They call it a toy,"[3344] said he, "but men are led by toys...

Frenchmen are not changed by ten years of revolution.... See how the

people prostrate themselves before foreign decorations: they have been

surprised by them and accordingly do not fail to wear them.... The

French cherish but one sentiment, honor: that sentiment, then, requires

nourishing--they must have honors."

A very few are satisfied with their own achievements; ordinary men

are not even content with the approbation they perceive in the eyes of

others: it is too intermittent, too reserved, too mute; they need fame

that is brilliant and noisy; they want to hear the constant hum of

admiration and respect whenever they appear or whenever their name is

mentioned. Even this does not suffice; they are unwilling that their

merit should rest in men's minds in the vague state of undefined

greatness, but that it should be publicly estimated, have its current

value, enjoy undisputed and measured rank on the scale above all other

lesser merits.--The new institution affords complete satisfaction to

all these exigencies of human and French nature. On the 14th of July,

1804,[3345] the anniversary of the taking of the Bastille, Napoleon

administers the oath to the legionaries and, after a solemn mass,

distributes the insignia under the dome of the Invalides in the presence

of the empress and the court; and again one month later, August

16, 1804, on the anniversary of the Emperor's birth, in the camp at

Boulogne, facing the ocean and in full view of the flotilla assembled to

conquer England, before one hundred thousand spectators and the entire

army, to the roll of eighteen hundred drums. No ceremony, probably, was

ever more exciting. The eminent surgeon, Larrey, then decorated, a man

of austere virtue, spoke of it with emotion to the end of his life and

never alluded that unique day but with a trembling voice. On that

day, nearly all the men of superior and tried merit and talent in

France[3346] are proclaimed, each with the title proportionate his

degree of eminence--chevaliers, officers, commanders, grand-officers,

and, later on, grand-eagles; each on the same plane with his equals of a

different class, ecclesiastics alongside of laymen, civilians alongside

of soldiers; each honored by the company of his peers, Berthollet,

Laplace and Lagrange alongside of Kellermann, Jourdan and Lefebvre,

Otto and Tronchet alongside of Masséna, Augereau, Ney, Lannes, Soult and

Davout; four cardinals side by side with eighteen marshals, and likewise

even down to corporal, and to Egyptian veterans blinded by ophthalmia

on the banks of the Nile, comprising common soldiers who, through

some brilliant achievement, had won a sword or a gun of honor, as, for

instance, Coignet,[3347] who, dashing ahead with fixed bayonet, kills

five Austrian artillerymen and takes their cannon himself alone. Six

years before this he was a stable-boy on a farm and could neither read

nor write; he is now mentioned among the first of those promoted, a

colleague and almost a comrade of Monge, the inventor of descriptive

geometry, of de Fontanes, grand-master of the university, of marshals,

admirals, and the highest dignitaries, all sharing in common an

inestimable treasure, the legitimate heirs of twelve years' accumulated

glory by the sacrifice of so many heroic lives and all the more

glorified because so few,[3348] and because, in these days, a man did

not obtain the cross by twenty years of plodding in a bureau, on account

of routine punctuality, but by wonderful strokes of energy and audacity,

by wounds, by braving death a hundred times and looking it in the face

daily.

Henceforth, legally as well as in public opinion, they form the staff of

the new society, its declared, verified notables, enjoying precedences

and even privileges. On passing along the street the sentinel

presents arms; a company of twenty-five soldiers attends their

funeral procession; in the electoral colleges of the department or

arrondissement they are electors by right and without being balloted

for, simply by virtue of their rank. Their sons are entitled to

scholarships in La Fléche, at Saint-Cyr, and in the lycées, and their

daughters at Ecouen or Saint-Denis. With the exception of a title, as

formerly, they lack nothing for filling the place of the old nobility,

and Napoleon re-creates this title for their benefit. The title itself

of chevalier, count, duke or prince carries along with an idea of social

superiority; when announced in a drawing room, when it precedes the

first sentence of an address, those who are present do not remain

inattentive; an immemorial prejudice inclines them to award

consideration or even deference. The Revolution tried in vain to destroy

this power of words and of history; Napoleon does better: he confiscates

it; he arrogates to himself the monopoly of it, he steals the trade-mark

from the ancient Régime; he himself creates 48,000 chevaliers, 1000

barons, 388 counts, 31 dukes and 4 princes. Furthermore, he stamps with

his own mark the old nobles whom he introduces into his nobility: he

coins them anew and often with an inferior title; this or that duke

is lowered a notch and becomes simply a count: taken at par or at a

discount the feudal coin must, in order to pass, receive the imperial

stamp which gives it its recognized value in modern figures.

But, let the old-fashioned metal be what it may, whether gold, silver or

copper, even crude and plebeian, the new coin is of good alloy and very

handsome. Frequently, like the old currency, it displays coats of arms

in high relief, a heraldic crown and the name of a locality; it no

longer bears the name of territory, and it does not call to mind a

primitive sovereignty. On the contrary, it bears the name of a victory

or of a conquest and reminds one of recent exploits. Duc de

Montebello or a Prince de la Moskowa is equivalent in the imagination

contemporaries to a Duc de Montmorency or a Prince de Rohan; for, if the

prince or duke of the empire is without ancestors, he is or will be an

ancestor himself. To these prizes coveted by vanity Napoleon tacks on

every substantial and pecuniary advantage, in ready money or landed

property, not alone large salaries, adjunctive sénatoreries, occasional

munificent gifts,

* a million at one time to General Lasalle, but likewise vast revenues

from the extraordinary domain[3349],

* 32,463,817 francs a year divided amongst 4970 persons,

* pensions from 250 to 5000 francs for all legionaries,

* villas, large estates, private incomes, distinct and superb endowments

for those of the highest rank, a fortune of 100,000 livres income and

more to 34 of these,

* a fortune of 450,000 livres in the public funds to Cambacérès, of

683,000 livres in the public funds to Masséna, of 728,000 livres in the

public funds to Ney, of 910,000 livres in the public funds to Davout, of

1,354,000 livres in the public funds to Berthier,

* and besides all this, three "sovereign principalities," Neufchatel to

Berthier, Benevento to Talleyrand, and Ponte-Corvo to Bernadotte.--

This last attraction which, in these times of violent and premature

death, is of no little account. Napoleon opens out hereditary and

undefined prospects beyond the perspectives of life and of inferior

interests. Each of the titles conferred by him, that of prince, duke,

count, baron, and even that of chevalier, is transmissible in direct

descent, according to primogeniture from father to son, and sometimes

from uncle to nephew, under specified conditions which are very

acceptable, and of which the first is the institution of an inalienable

majority, inattackable, consisting of this or that income or real

property, of bank stock or state securities, from 3000 francs for common

chevaliers up to 200,000 francs for the dukes, that is to say, a certain

fortune in perpetuity due to the sovereign's liberality, or to the

prudence of the founder, and intended to support the dignity of the

title from male to male and from link to link throughout the future

chain of successive inheritors. Through this supreme reward, the subtle

tempter has a hold on the men who care not alone for themselves but for

their family: henceforth, the work as he does, eighteen hours a day,

stand fire, and say to themselves, while sinking at their desks or

facing cannon-ball that their pre-eminence survives them in their

posterity:

"In any event my son will succeed me and even become greater by my

death."

All the temptations which serve to overcome the natural lethargy of

human matter are simultaneously united and; with the exception of

personal conscience and the desire for personal independence, all other

internal springs are strained to the utmost. One unusual circumstance

gives to eager ambitions a further increase of energy, impulse and

enthusiasm.--All these successful or parvenu men are contemporaries:

all have started alike on the same line and from the same average or

low condition in life; each sees old comrades superior to himself on the

upper steps; he considers himself as good they are, suffers because he

is not on their level, and strives and takes risks so as to mount up to

them. But, however high he mounts, he still sees higher yet others who

were formerly his equals; consequently, no rank obtained by them seems

to him above his deserts, and no rank that he obtains suffices for his

pretensions.

"See that Masséna," exclaimed Napoleon,[3350] a few days before

the battle of Wagram; "he has honors and fame enough, but he is not

satisfied; he wants be a prince like Murat and Bernadotte: he will risk

getting shot to-morrow simply to be a prince."--

Above these princes who have only the rank, the title and the money,

come the grand-dukes and reigning viceroys like Murat, grand-duke of

Berg, and Eugene, viceroy of Italy. Above Eugene and Murat are the

vassal-kings, Louis, Joseph, Jerome, then Murat himself, who, among

these, is in a better place, and Bernadotte, the only sovereign that is

independent; all more or less envied by the marshals, all more or less

rivals of each other, the inferior aspiring to the superior throne,

Murat inconsolable at being sent to Naples and not to Spain, and at

having only five millions of subjects instead of thirteen millions.

From top to bottom of the hierarchy and even to the loftiest places,

comprising thrones, the steps rise regularly above each other in

continuous file, so that each leads to the following one, with nothing

to hinder the first-comer, provided he is lucky, has good legs and does

not fall on the way, from reaching the top of the staircase in twenty

or thirty years. "It was commonly reported in the army--he has been

promoted king of Naples, of Holland, of Spain, of Sweden, as formerly

was said of the same sort of man, who had been promoted sergeant in this

or that company."--Such is the total and final impression which lingers

on in all imaginations; it is in this sense that the people interpret

the new Régime, and Napoleon devotes himself to confirming the popular

interpretation. Accordingly, the first duchy he creates is for Marshal

Lefebvre

"purposely," as he says,[3351] because "this marshal had been a private

and everybody in Paris had known him as a sergeant in the French

guards."

--With such an example before them, and so many others like it, not less

striking, there is no ambition that does not become exalted, and often

to delirium.

"At this time," says Stendhal, who seized the master-idea of the reign,

"there was no apothecary's apprentice in his back shop, surrounded by

his drugs and bottles, filtering and pounding away in his mortar, who

did not say to himself that, if he chanced to make some great discovery,

he would be made a count with fifty thousand francs a year."

In those days there was no under-clerk who, in his labored penmanship,

inscribed names on a piece of parchment, that did not imagine his own

name appearing some day on a senatorial or ministerial diploma. At this

time the youthful corporal who dons his first stripes of gold braid

already fancies that he hears the beating of the drums, the blast of the

trumpet, and the salvos of artillery which proclaim him marshal of the

Empire.[3352]

V. Self-esteem and a good Reputation.

The inward spring from 1789 to 1815.--Its force.--Its

decline.--How it ends in breaking the machine down.

A new force, extraordinary, is just apparent in history, a spiritual

force analogous to that which formerly stimulated souls in Spain in the

sixteenth century, in European the time of the crusades, and in Arabia

in the time of Mahomet. It stimulates the faculties to excess, increases

energy tenfold, transports man beyond or above himself, creates

enthusiasts and heroes, blinding or rendering men crazy, and hence the

irresistible conquerors and rulers. It stamps its imprint and leaves

its memorials in ineffaceable characters on men and things from Cadiz

to Moscow. It overrides all natural barriers and transcends all

ordinary limits. "The French soldier," writes a Prussian officer after

Jena,[3353] "are small and puny. One of our Germans could whip any four

of them. But, under fire, they become supernatural beings. They are

swept along by an indescribable ardor of which there is not a trace

among our soldiers.... What can you do with peasants whom nobles lead

into battle, but whose danger they share without any interest in

their passions or recompenses!"--Coupled with the physical needs which

requires a certain amount of ease and of daily food, and which, if too

strenuously opposed, produces passing jacqueries, there is a still more

potent longing which, on suddenly encountering its object, seizes on

it, clings to it, gorges it, and produces revolutions that last: this

longing is the desire to contemplate one-self with satisfaction and

complacency, forming of one's self a pleasing, flattering image, and of

trying to impress and plant this image in the minds of others; in short,

the ambition for a great self-esteem and of becoming greatly esteemed by

others.[3354] This sentiment, according to the quality of the person and

according to circumstances, gives birth sometimes to the noblest virtues

and the most sublime devotion, and at other times to the worst misdeeds

and the most dangerous delirium: the man becomes transfigured, the

sleeping god or demon which both live within him is suddenly aroused.

After 1789, both appear and both together; from this date onward, says

an eye-witness,[3355] and, during one quarter of a century, "for most

Frenchmen and in whatever class," the object of life is displaced; each

has put it outside of himself; from now on, the essential thing for

everybody is "to have lived," or "to have died for something," for

an idea. A man becomes the slave of his idea, gives himself up to it;

consequently, he has experienced the intense satisfaction of considering

himself a noble being, of superior essence, foremost among the first,

and of seeing himself regarded in that light and proclaimed and

glorified as such.--This keen, profound and intense pleasure was first

enjoyed by the French on listening to the Declaration of the Rights

of Man; from then, and in good faith, they felt themselves citizens,

philosophers, the destroyers of prejudices and wrongs, zealots in behalf

of truth, liberty and equality, and then, when the war of 1792 came, the

defenders of the country, missionaries and propagators of every grand

principle.[3356]--Towards 1796, principles began to recede in the

background;[3357] in the ideal portrait which man makes of himself the

liberator and benefactor of mankind gradually gives way to the admirable

and admired hero capable of great achievements. This inner portrait of

himself suffices for his happiness for some years to come: vanity[3358]

properly so called and a calculating ambition are not the incentives

of action; if he obtains promotion it is without asking for it; his

aspiration is simply to display himself, to be lavish of himself and

live or die courageously and gaily[3359] along with his comrade; to be

considered, outside the service, the equal, friend and brother of his

subordinates and of his chiefs.[3360] Pillage, nevertheless, has begun;

for, a long continuance of war depraves the conqueror; brutality,

indifference to property and to life grows on him; if callous, or he

wishes to become so, he eats, drinks and enjoys the passing hour;

if provident and wary, he scrapes together what he can or levies

contributions and hoards money.--Under the Empire, and especially

towards 1808 and 1809, the ideal figure degenerates still more; from now

on, it is the successful or the coming officer, with his rank and its

accouterments, his gold-embroidered uniform and badges, exercising

authority over so many hundreds and thousands of men and enjoying a

certain notable sum of regular salaries, besides other gratifications

bestowed on him by the master, along with the profits he can make out of

the vanquished.[3361] All that he now cares for is rapid promotion, and

in any way, noble or ignoble, at first, of course, on the main road,

that is in straining himself and risking his life, but likewise on a

new road, in an affectation of zeal, in practicing and professing blind

obedience, in abandoning all political ideas, in devoting himself no

longer to France, but to the sovereign: sympathy for his comrades gives

way to harsh rivalry; soldierly friendships, under the anticipation

of advancement, die out. A vacancy due to death is for the benefit of

survivors and they know it. "At Talavera," says Stendhal, "two officers

stood together at their battery, while a ball comes and the captain

falls. 'Good,' says the lieutenant, 'now François is dead and I shall be

captain.' 'Not yet,' says François, who was only stunned and who gets

up on his feet. These two men were neither unfriendly nor inimical, only

the lieutenant wanted to rise a step higher in rank." And this shrewd

observer adds: "Such was the furious egoism then styled love of glory

and which, under this title, the Emperor had communicated to the

French."

On this slope the slide is rapid and abject. Each, at first, thinks

of himself; the individual makes of himself a center. The example,

moreover, comes from above. Is it for France or for himself that

Napoleon works?[3362] So many immense enterprises, the conquest of

Spain, the expedition into Russia, the installation of his brothers and

relations on new thrones, the constant partition and rearrangement of

Europe, all those incessant and more and more distant wars, is it for

the public good and common safety that he accumulates them? What does

he himself desire if not to push his fortunes still farther?--He is too

much ambitious (trop ambitionnaire), say his own soldiers;[3363] and yet

they follow him to the last. "We have always marched along with him,"

replied the old grenadiers,[3364] who had traversed Poland to penetrate

into Russia; "we couldn't abandon him this time and leave him alone by

himself."--But others who see him nearer by, those who stand first and

next to him, do as he does; and, however high these have mounted, they

want to mount still higher, or, otherwise, to keep their places, or,

at least, provide for themselves and hold on to something substantial.

Masséna has accumulated forty millions and Talleyrand sixty;[3365] in

case of a political crash the money remains. Soult tried to have himself

elected king of Portugal,[3366] and Bernadotte finds means to have

himself elected king of Sweden. After Leipsic, Murat bargains with the

allies, and, to retain his Neapolitan kingdom, he agrees to furnish a

contingent against France; before the battle of Leipsic, Bernadotte is

with the allies and fights with them against France. In 1814, Bernadotte

and Joseph, each caring for himself, the former by intrigues and with

the intriguers of the interior, also by feeling his way with the foreign

sovereigns while the latter, in the absence of Napoleon, by "singular

efforts" and "assiduities" beforehand with Marie Louise thinks of taking

the place of the falling emperor.[3367] Prince Eugene alone, or almost

alone, among the great personalities of the reign, is really loyal, his

loyalty remaining always intact exempt from concealed motives and above

suspicion. Everywhere else, the coming crash or sinister rumors are

heard or anticipated; alarm descends from high places, spreads through

the army and echoes along the lines of the lowest ranks. In 1815, the

soldier has full confidence in himself and in Napoleon; "but he is

moody, distrustful of his other leaders.... Every march incomprehensible

to him makes him uneasy and he thinks himself betrayed."[3368] At

Waterloo, dragoons that pass him with their swords drawn and old

corporals shout to the Emperor that Soult and Vandamme, who are at this

moment about going into battle, are haranguing their troops against him

or deserting him; that General Dhénin, who has repulsed a charge of the

enemy and whose thigh is fractured by a cannon-ball, has just passed

over to the enemy. The mechanism which, for fifteen years, has worked so

well, breaks down of itself through its own action; its cog-wheels have

got out of gear; cracks show themselves in the metal which seemed

so sound; the divinations of popular instinct verify this; the

exaggerations of the popular imagination expand it and suddenly the

whole machine rattles down to the ground.

All this is due to Napoleon having introduced into it the craving for

success as central motor, as the universal main-spring, unscrupulous

ambition, in short, a crude egoism, and in the first place his own

egoism, [3369] and this incentive, strained to excess,[3370] puts the

machine out of order and then ruins it. After him, under his successors,

the same machinery is to work in the same manner, and break down in the

same way, at the expiration of a more or less extensive period. Thus

far, the longest of these periods has lasted less than twenty years.

*****

[Footnote 3301: "Most of the French provinces down to the time of

Richelieu still possessed a special representative body which consented

to and levied the taxes; most of these bodies were supported by the

all-powerful minister and replaced by intendants who, from that time on,

administered, or rather exhausted, the country, divided into thirty-two

generalities. A few provinces, however, Brittany, Burgundy, Languedoc,

a part of Provence, Flanders, Artois, and some small districts in the

Pyrenees kept their old representative body and were called pays d'état,

whilst other provinces were designated, by a strange abuse of language,

under the name of pays d'élection." (Translated from" Madame de Staël et

son Temps," vol. I., p. 38.) TR.]

[Footnote 3302: Cf. on the antiquity of this sort of mind, evident

from the beginning of society and of French literature, my "History of

English Literature," vol. I., and "La Fontaine et ses fables," pp.10 to

13.]

[Footnote 3303: In relation to this sentiment, read La Fontaine's fable

of "The Rat and the Elephant." La Fontaine fully comprehended its social

and psychological bearing. "To believe one's self an important personage

is very common in France.... A childish vanity is peculiar to us.

The Spaniards are vain, but in another way. It is specially a French

weakness."]

[Footnote 3304: Beugnot, "Mémoires," I., 317. "This equality which is

now our dominant passion is not the noble kindly sentiment that affords

delight by honoring one's self in honoring one's fellow, and in feeling

at ease in all social relationships; no, it is an aversion to every

kind of superiority, a fear lest a prominent position may be lost; this

equality tends in no way to raise up what is kept down, but to prevent

any elevation whatever."]

[Footnote 3305: D'Haussonville, "l'Église romaine et le Premier Empire,"

I., chs X. and XI.]

[Footnote 3306: Decree of March 17, 1808, on the organization of the

Israelite cult. The members of the Israelite consistories and the rabbis

must be accepted by the government the same as the ministers of the

other cults; but their salary, which is fixed, must be provided by the

Israelites of the conscription; the State does not pay this, the same

as with curés or pastors. This is not done until under the monarchy of

July, when the assimilation of the Israelite with the other Christian

cults is effected.]

[Footnote 3307: "Travels in France during the years 1814 and 1815

"(Edinburgh, 1806) I., 176. "The nobility, the great landed proprietors,

the yeomanry, the lesser farmers, all of the intermediate ranks who

might oppose a check to the power of a tyrannical prince, are nearly

annihilated."--Ibid., 236. "Scarcely an intermediate rank was to be

found in the nation between the sovereign and the peasant."--Ibid., II.

239. "The better class of the inhabitants of the cities, whether traders

and manufacturers or the bourgeoisie of France, are those who were the

most decided enemies of Bonaparte."]

[Footnote 3308: Napoleon, desirous of forming an opinion of him, said

to Roederer, "Send me his books." "But," said Roederer, "he is only a

translator." "No matter," replied Napoleon, "I will read his prefaces,"]

[Footnote 3309: Cf. the "Dictionnaire biographique," published at

Leipsic, 1806-1808 (by Eymory) 4 vols., and the "Almanach impérial" for

1807 to 1812; many other historic names are found there, and among

these the ladies of the palace. In 1810, Comte de la Rochefoucauld

is ambassador to Holland and Comte de Mercy-Argenteau ambassador to

Bavaria.]

[Footnote 3310: "The Revolution," II., 323. (Ed. Laffont I. 773, note 1)]

[Footnote 3311: "The Revolution," vol. III., PP. 318~322. (Ed. Laff. II.

pp. 237-240.)]

[Footnote 3312: "The Ancient Régime," pp. 116-119, 128. (Ed. Laff. I.

pp. 90-92, 100-101.)]

[Footnote 3313: De Tilly, "Mémoires," I., 153. "The difference between

the tone and language of the court and that of the city was about as

great as that between Paris and the provinces."]

[Footnote 3314: Hence the lack of success of the Maupeou parliament.]

[Footnote 3315: See the collections of songs previous to the Revolution,

especially military songs such as "Malgré la bataille,"--"Dans les

gardes françaises," etc.--At the time of the Restoration, the pastoral

or gallant songs of Florian, Bouffiers and Berquin were still sung in

bourgeois families, each person, young or old, man or woman, singing one

at the dessert. This undercurrent of gayety, geniality and amiability

lasted throughout the Revolution and the Empire. ("Travels through the

South of France, 1807 and 1808," p.132, by Lieutenant-Colonel Pinkney,

of the United States.) "I must once for all say that the Memoirs of

Marmontel are founded in nature." He cites a great many facts in proof

of this, and testifies in all classes to a prompt and social nature, a

natural benevolence or habitual civility which leads them instinctively,

and not unfrequently impertinently, into acts of kindness and

consideration."--The same impression is produced on comparing the

engravings, fashion-plates, light subjects and caricatures of this

period with those of the present epoch. The malicious sentiment begins

only with Béranger; and yet his early pieces ("Le Roi d'Yvetot," "le

Sénateur") display the light air, accent and happy, instead of venomous,

malice of the old song. Nobody now sings in the lower bourgeoisie or in

gatherings of clerks or students, while, along with the song, we

have seen the other traits which impressed foreigners disappear, the

gallantry, the jesting humor, the determination to regard life as so

many hours (une serie de quarts d'heures, each of which may be separated

from the others, be ample in themselves and agreeable to him who talks

and to him or her who listens.]

[Footnote 3316: Read the novels of Pigault-Lebrun: books of the epoch

the best adapted to the men of the epoch, to the military parvenus,

swift, frank, lusty and narrow-minded.]

[Footnote 3317: Candide (Récit de la Vieille).]

[Footnote 3318: "Souvenirs", by PASQUIER (Etienne-Dennis, duc),

chancelier de France, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893. "I am sure that his

imagination was more taken with Ghengis-Khan than with Caesar."]

[Footnote 3319: "The Revolution," II., 12, 22. (Laff. I. pp. 574, 582.)

(Articles by Mailet-Dupan, "Mercure de France," Dec. 30, 1791, and

April 7, 1792.)--Napoleon, "Mémorial" (Sept. 3, 1816), thinks so too and

states the essential characteristic of the Revolution. This consisted

in "telling everybody who held office, every one who had a place or a

fortune: 'Get out.'"]

[Footnote 3320: Roederer, III., 534 (January 1809, on Normandy),

"Children in every situation think of becoming soldiers to get the cross

(legion of honor), and the cross secures the chevalier. The desire

of distinction, of passing ahead of some one else, is a national

sentiment."]

[Footnote 3321: "The Revolution," II., 248. (Laff. I. p. 747.)]

[Footnote 3322: Napoleon, "Mémoires "(edited by M. de Montholon, III.,

11-19), on the extraordinary ignorance of Cartaux.--Ibid., 23, on

Doppet's incapacity, the successor of Cartaux.]

[Footnote 3323: "The Revolution," III., 310. (Laff. II. pp. 178-179.)]

[Footnote 3324: They called themselves exclusives under the

Directory.--Cf. "The Revolution, II.", 23, 187, 196, 245, 297-303,

340-351, 354; book III., ch, 2 and 3, and book IV. (Ed. Laff. I.

pp. 582, 701, pp. 709-710, 745, 782-787, 821-823 and in Vol. II. pp.

131-167, pp. 167-215 and pp 311-357.)]

[Footnote 3325: The declaration of Human Rights in 1789 stated that:

"art. 1st, § 5. Tous les citoyens sont egalement admissible aux emplois

publics. Les peuples ne connaissent d'autres motifs de préference, dans

élections, que les vertus et les talents." Virtue in French is virtue in

English while talent in French must be translated as being both talent

and skill. (SR.)]

[Footnote 3326: Madame de Rémusat, passim.--Roederer, III., 538 (January

1809). (Words of Napoleon) "I took a few of the old court into my

household. They remained two years without speaking to me and six

months without seeing me... I don't like them--they are no good for

anything--their conversation is disagreeable to me."]

[Footnote 3327: Napoléon, "Mémoires."]

[Footnote 3328: Roederer, "Mémoires."]

[Footnote 3329: Taine uses the French expression "esprit" which might

both mean spirit, wit, mind or sense.]

[Footnote 3330: Roederer, "Mémoires, "III., 281. "Men, under his

government, who had hitherto been considered incapable are made useful;

men hitherto considered distinguished found themselves mixed in with

the crowd; men hitherto regarded as the pillars of the State found

themselves useless ... An ass or a knave need never be ambitious to

approach Bonaparte, they will make nothing out of him."]

[Footnote 3331: Fiévée, "Correspondance," III., 33.--Roederer, III.,

381.]

[Footnote 3332: Beugnot, "Mémoires," II., 372.]