THE DAWN OF THE EMPIRE
For some time the question of a Napoleonic dynasty had been freely
discussed; and the First Consul himself had latterly confessed his
intentions to Joseph in words that reveal his super-human confidence
and his caution: "I always intended to end the Revolution by the
establishment of heredity: but I thought that such a step could not be
taken before the lapse of five or six years." Events, however, bore
him along on a favouring tide. Hatred of England, fear of Jacobin
excesses, indignation at the royalist schemes against his life, and
finally even the execution of Enghien, helped on the establishment of
the Empire. Though moderate men of all parties condemned the murder,
the remnants of the Jacobin party hailed it with joy. Up to this time
they had a lingering fear that the First Consul was about to play the
part of Monk. The pomp of the Tuileries and the hated Concordat seemed
to their crooked minds but the prelude to a recall of the Bourbons,
whereupon priestcraft, tithes, and feudalism would be the order of the
day. Now at last the tragedy of Vincennes threw a lurid light into the
recesses of Napoleon's ambition; and they exclaimed, "He is one of
us." It must thenceforth be war to the knife between the Bourbons and
Bonaparte; and his rule would therefore be the best guarantee for the
perpetual ownership of the lands confiscated during the
Revolution.[305]
To a materialized society that great event had come to be little more
than a big land investment syndicate, of which Bonaparte was now to be
the sole and perpetual director. This is the inner meaning of the
references to the Social Contract which figure so oddly among the
petitions for hereditary rule. The Jacobins, except a few conscientious
stalwarts, were especially alert in the feat of making extremes meet.
Fouché, who now wriggled back into favour and office, appealed to the
Senate, only seven days after the execution, to establish hereditary
power as the only means of ending the plots against Napoleon's life;
for, as the opportunist Jacobins argued, if the hereditary system were
adopted, conspiracies to murder would be meaningless, when, even if they
struck down one man, they must fail to shatter the system that
guaranteed the Revolution.
The cue having been thus dextrously given, appeals and petitions for
hereditary rule began to pour in from all parts of France. The grand
work of the reorganization of France certainly furnished a solid claim
on the nation's gratitude. The recent promulgation of the Civil Code
and the revival of material prosperity redounded to Napoleon's glory;
and with equal truth and wit he could claim the diadem as a fit reward
_for having revived many interests while none had been displaced._
Such a remark and such an exploit proclaim the born ruler of men. But
the Senate overstepped all bounds of decency when it thus addressed
him: "You are founding a new era: but you ought to make it last for
ever: splendour is nothing without duration." The Greeks who fawned on
Persian satraps did not more unman themselves than these pensioned
sycophants, who had lived through the days of 1789 but knew them not.
This fulsome adulation would be unworthy of notice did it not convey
the most signal proof of the danger which republics incur when men
lose sight of the higher aims of life and wallow among its sordid
interests.[306]
After the severe drilling of the last four years, the Chambers voted
nearly unanimously in favour of a Napoleonic dynasty. The Corps
Législatif was not in session, and it was not convoked. The Senate,
after hearing Fouché's unmistakable hints, named a commission of its
members to report on hereditary rule, and then waited on events. These
were decided mainly in private meetings of the Council of State, where
the proposal met with some opposition from Cambacérès, Merlin, and
Thibaudeau. But of what avail are private remonstrances when in open
session opponents are dumb and supporters vie in adulation? In the
Tribunate, on April 23rd, an obscure member named Curée proposed the
adoption of the hereditary principle. One man alone dared openly to
combat the proposal, the great Carnot; and the opposition of Curée to
Carnot might have recalled to the minds of those abject champions of
popular liberty the verse that glitters amidst the literary rubbish of
the Roman Empire:
"Victrix causa deis placuit, sed victa Catoni."
The Tribunate named a commission to report; it was favourable to the
Bonapartes. The Senate voted in the same sense, three Senators alone,
among them Grégoire, Bishop of Blois, voting against it. Sieyès and
Lanjuinais were absent; but the well-salaried lord of the manor of
Crosne must have read with amused contempt the resolution of this
body, which he had designed to be the _guardian of the republican
constitution_:
"The French have conquered liberty: they wish to preserve their
conquest: they wish for repose after victory. They will owe this
glorious repose to the hereditary rule of a single man, who, raised
above all, is to defend public liberty, maintain equality, and
lower his fasces before the sovereignty of the people that
proclaims him."
In this way did France reduce to practice the dogma of Rousseau with
regard to the occasional and temporary need of a dictator.[307]
When the commonalty are so obsequious, any title can be taken by the
one necessary man. Napoleon at first affected to doubt whether the
title of Stadtholder would not be more seemly than that of Emperor;
and in one of the many conferences held on this topic, Miot de Melito
advocated the retention of the term Consul for its grand republican
simplicity. But it was soon seen that the term Emperor was the only
one which satisfied Napoleon's ambition and French love of splendour.
Accordingly a _senatus consultum_ of May 18th, 1804, formally decreed
to him the title of Emperor of the French. As for his former
colleagues, Cambacérès and Lebrun, they were stultified with the
titles of Arch-chancellor and Arch-treasurer of the Empire: his
brother Joseph received the title of Grand Elector, borrowed from the
Holy Roman Empire, and oddly applied to an hereditary empire where the
chief _had_ been appointed: Louis was dubbed Constable: two other
grand dignities, those of Arch-chancellor of State and High Admiral,
were not as yet filled, but were reserved for Napoleon's relatives by
marriage, Eugène Beauharnais and Murat. These six grand dignitaries of
the new Empire were to be irresponsible and irremovable, and, along
with the Emperor, they formed the Grand Council of the Empire.
On lesser individuals the rays of the imperial diadem cast a fainter
glow. Napoleon's uncle, Cardinal Fesch, became Grand Almoner;
Berthier, Grand Master of the Hounds; Talleyrand, Grand Chamberlain;
Duroc, Grand Marshal of the Palace; and Caulaincourt, Master of the
Horse, the acceptance of which title seemed to the world to convict
him of full complicity in the schemes for the murder of the Duc
d'Enghien. For the rest, the Emperor's mother was to be styled _Madame
Mère_; his sisters became Imperial Highnesses, with their several
establishments of ladies-in-waiting; and Paris fluttered with excitement
at each successive step upwards of expectant nobles, regicides,
generals, and stockjobbers towards the central galaxy of the Corsican
family, which, ten years before, had subsisted on the alms of the
Republic one and indivisible.
It remained to gain over the army. The means used were profuse, in
proportion as the task was arduous. The following generals were
distinguished as Marshals of the Empire (May 19th): Berthier, Murat,
Masséna, Augereau, Lannes, Jourdan, Ney, Soult, Brune, Davoust,
Bessières, Moncey, Mortier, and Bernadotte; two marshal's bâtons were
held in reserve as a reward for future service, and four aged
generals, Lefebvre, Serrurier, Pérignon, and Kellerman (the hero of
Valmy), received the title of honorary marshals. In one of his
conversations with Roederer, the Emperor frankly avowed his reasons
for showering these honours on his military chiefs; it was in order to
assure the imperial dignity to himself; for how could they object to
this, when they themselves received honours so lofty?[308] The
confession affords a curious instance of Napoleon's unbounded trust
in the most elementary, not to say the meanest, motives of human
conduct. Suitable rewards were bestowed on officers of the second
rank. But it was at once remarked that determined and outspoken
republicans like Suchet, Gouvion St. Cyr, and Macdonald, whose talents
and exploits far outstripped those of many of the marshals, were
excluded from their ranks. St. Cyr was at Taranto, and Macdonald,
after an enforced diplomatic mission to Copenhagen, was received on
his recall with much coolness.[309] Other generals who had given
umbrage at the Tuileries were more effectively broken in by a term of
diplomatic banishment. Lannes at Lisbon and Brune at Constantinople
learnt a little diplomacy and some complaisance to the head of the
State, and were taken back to Napoleon's favour. Bernadotte, though ever
suspected of Jacobinism and feared for the forceful ambition that sprang
from the blending of Gascon and Moorish blood in his veins, was now also
treated with the consideration due to one who had married Joseph
Bonaparte's sister-in-law: he received at Napoleon's hands the house in
Paris which had formerly belonged to Moreau: the exile's estate of
Grosbois, near Paris, went to reward the ever faithful Berthier.
Augereau, half cured of his Jacobinism by the disfavour of the
Directory, was now drilling a small French force and Irish volunteers at
Brest. But the Grand Army, which comprised the pick of the French
forces, was intrusted to the command of men on whom Napoleon could
absolutely rely, Davoust, Soult, and Ney; and, in that splendid force,
hatred of England and pride in Napoleon's prowess now overwhelmed all
political considerations.
These arrangements attest the marvellous foresight and care which
Napoleon brought to bear on all affairs: even if the discontented
generals and troops had protested against the adoption of the Empire
and the prosecution of Moreau, they must have been easily overpowered.
In some places, as at Metz, the troops and populace fretted against
the Empire and its pretentious pomp; but the action of the commanders
soon restored order. And thus it came to pass that even the soldiery
that still cherished the Republic raised not a musket while the Empire
was founded, and Moreau was accused of high treason.
The record of the French revolutionary generals is in the main a
gloomy one. If in 1795 it had been prophesied that all those generals
who bore the tricolour to victory would vanish or bow their heads
before a Corsican, the prophet would speedily have closed his
croakings for ever. Yet the reality was even worse. Marceau and Hoche
died in the Rhineland: Kléber and Desaix fell on the same day, by
assassination and in battle: Richepanse, Leclerc, and many other brave
officers rotted away in San Domingo: Pichegru died a violent death in
prison: Carnot was retiring into voluntary exile: Masséna and
Macdonald were vegetating in inglorious ease: others were fast
descending to the rank of flunkeys; and Moreau was on his trial for
high treason.
Even the populace, dazzled with glitter and drunk with sensations,
suffered some qualms at seeing the victor of Hohenlinden placed in the
dock; and the grief of the scanty survivors of the Army of the Rhine
portended trouble if the forms of justice were too much strained.
Trial by jury had been recently dispensed with in cases that concerned
the life of Napoleon. Consequently the prisoner, along with Georges
and his confederates, could be safely arraigned before judges in open
court; and in that respect the trial contrasted with the midnight
court-martial of Vincennes. Yet in no State trial have judges been
subjected to more official pressure for the purpose of assuring a
conviction.[310] The cross examination of numerous witnesses proved
that Moreau had persistently refused his help to the plot; and the
utmost that could be urged against him was that he desired Napoleon's
overthrow, had three interviews with Pichegru, and did not reveal the
plot to the authorities. That is to say, he was guilty of passively
conniving at the success of a plot which a "good citizen" ought to
have denounced.
For these reasons the judges sentenced him to two years'
imprisonment. This judgment excessively annoyed Napoleon, who desired
to use his imperial prerogative of pardon on Moreau's life, not on a
mere term of imprisonment; and with a show of clemency that veiled a
hidden irritation, he now released him provided that he retired to the
United States.[311] To that land of free men the victor of Hohenlinden
retired with a dignity which almost threw a veil over his past
incapacity and folly; and, for the present at least, men could say that
the end of his political career was nobler than Pompey's, while
Napoleon's conduct towards his rival lacked the clemency which graced
the triumph of Cæsar.
As for the actual conspirators, twenty of them were sentenced to death
on June 10th, among them being the elder of the two Polignacs, the
Marquis de Rivière, and Georges Cadoudal. Urgent efforts were made on
behalf of the nobles by Josephine and "Madame Mère"; and Napoleon
grudgingly commuted their sentence to imprisonment. But the plebeian,
Georges Cadoudal, suffered death for the cause that had enlisted all
the fierce energies of his youth and manhood. With him perished the
bravest of Bretons and the last man of action of the royalists.
Thenceforth Napoleon was not troubled by Bourbon plotters; and
doubtless the skill with which his agents had nursed this silly plot
and sought to entangle all waverers did far more than the strokes of
the guillotine to procure his future immunity. Men trembled before a
union of immeasurable power with unfathomable craft such as recalled
the days of the Emperor Tiberius.
Indeed, Napoleon might now almost say that his chief foes were the
members of his own household. The question of hereditary succession
had already reawakened and intensified all the fierce passions of the
Emperor's relatives. Josephine saw in it the fatal eclipse of a
divorce sweeping towards the dazzling field of her new life, and
Napoleon is known to have thrice almost decided on this step. She no
longer had any hopes of bearing a child; and she is reported by the
compiler of the Fouché "Memoirs" to have clutched at that absurd
device, a supposititious child, which Fouché had taken care to
ridicule in advance. Whatever be the truth of this rumour, she
certainly used all her powers over Napoleon and over her daughter
Hortense, the spouse of Louis Bonaparte, to have their son
recognized as first in the line of direct succession. But this
proposal, which shelved both Joseph and Louis, was not only hotly
resented by the eldest brother, who claimed to be successor designate,
it also aroused the flames of jealousy in Louis himself. It was
notorious that he suspected Napoleon of an incestuous passion for
Hortense, of which his fondness for the little Charles Napoleon was
maliciously urged as proof; and the proposal, when made with trembling
eagerness by Josephine, was hurled back by Louis with brutal violence.
To the clamour of Louis and Joseph the Emperor and Josephine seemed
reluctantly to yield.
New arrangements were accordingly proposed. Lucien and Jerome having,
for the present at least, put themselves out of court by their
unsatisfactory marriages, Napoleon appeared to accept a reconciliation
with Joseph and Louis, and to place them in the order of succession,
as the Senate recommended. But he still reserved the right of adopting
the son of Louis and of thus favouring his chances of priority.
Indeed, it must be admitted that the Emperor at this difficult crisis
showed conjugal tact and affection, for which he has received scant
justice at the hands of Josephine's champions. "How could I divorce
this good wife," he said to Roederer, "because I am becoming great?"
But fate seemed to decree the divorce, which, despite the reasonings
of his brothers, he resolutely thrust aside; for the little boy on
whose life the Empress built so many fond hopes was to be cut off by
an early death in the year 1807.
Then there were frequent disputes between Napoleon and Joseph. Both of
them had the Corsican's instinct in favour of primogeniture; and
hitherto Napoleon had in many ways deferred to his elder brother. Now,
however, he showed clearly that he would brook not the slightest
interference in affairs of State. And truly, if we except Joseph's
diplomatic services, he showed no commanding gifts such as could raise
him aloft along with the bewildering rush of Napoleon's fortunes. The
one was an irrepressible genius, the other was a man of culture and
talent, whose chief bent was towards literature, amours, and the art
of _dolce far niente_, except when his pride was touched: then he was
capable of bursts of passion which seemed to impose even on his
masterful second brother. Lucien, Louis, and even the youthful Jerome,
had the same intractable pride which rose defiant even against
Napoleon. He was determined that his brothers should now take a
subordinate rank, while they regarded the dynasty as largely due to
their exertions at or after Brumaire, and claimed a proportionate
reward. Napoleon, however, saw that a dynasty could not thus be
founded. As he frankly said to Roederer, a dynasty could only take
firm root in France among heirs brought up in a palace: "I have never
looked on my brothers as the natural heirs to power: I only consider
them as men fit to ward off the evils of a minority."
Joseph deeply resented this conduct. He was a Prince of the Empire,
and a Grand Elector; but he speedily found out that this meant nothing
more than occasionally presiding at the Senate, and accordingly
indulged in little acts of opposition that enraged the autocrat. In
his desire to get his brother away from Paris, the Emperor had already
recommended him to take up the profession of arms; for he could not
include him in the succession, and place famous marshals under him if
he knew nothing of an army. Joseph perforce accepted the command of a
regiment, and at thirty-six years of age began to learn drill near
Boulogne.[312] This piece of burlesque was one day to prove infinitely
regrettable. After the disaster of Vittoria, Napoleon doubtless wished
that Joseph had for ever had free play in the tribune of the Senate
rather than have dabbled in military affairs. But in the spring and
summer of 1804 the Emperor noted his every word; so that, when he
ventured to suggest that Josephine should not be crowned at the coming
coronation, Napoleon's wrath blazed forth. Why should Joseph speak of
_his_ rights and _his_ interests? Who had won power? Who deserved to
enjoy power? Power was his (Napoleon's) mistress, and he dared Joseph
to touch her. The Senate or Council of State might oppose him for ten
years, without his becoming a tyrant: "To make me a tyrant one thing
alone is necessary--a movement of my family."[313]
The family, however, did not move. As happened with all the brothers
except Lucien, Joseph gave way at the critical moment. After
threatening at the Council of State to resign his Grand Electorate and
retire to Germany if his wife were compelled to bear Josephine's train
at the coronation, he was informed by the Emperor that either he must
conduct himself dutifully as the first subject of the realm, or retire
into private life, or oppose--and be crushed. The argument was
unanswerable, and Joseph yielded. To save his own and his wife's
feelings, the wording of the official programme was altered: she was
_to support Josephine's mantle_, not _to bear her train_.
In things great and small Napoleon carried his point. Although
Roederer pleaded long and earnestly that Joseph and Louis should come
next to the Emperor in the succession, and inserted a clause in the
report which he was intrusted to draw up, yet by some skilful artifice
this clause was withdrawn from the constitutional act on which the
nation was invited to express its opinion: and France assented to a
_plébiscite_ for the establishment of the Empire in Napoleon's family,
which passed over Joseph and Louis, as well as Lucien and Jerome, and
vested the succession in the natural or adopted son of Napoleon, and
in the heirs male of Joseph or Louis. Consequently these princes had
no place in the succession, except by virtue of the _senatus
consultant_ of May 18th, which gave them a legal right, it is true,
but without the added sanction of the popular vote. More than three
and a half million votes were cast for the new arrangement, a number
which exceeded those given for the Consulate and the Consulate for
Life. As usual, France accepted accomplished facts.
Matters legal and ceremonial were now approaching completion for the
coronation. Negotiations had been proceeding between the Tuileries and
the Vatican, Napoleon begging and indeed requiring the presence of the
Pope on that occasion. Pius VII. was troubled at the thought of
crowning the murderer of the Duc d'Enghien; but he was scarcely his
own master, and the dextrous hints of Napoleon that religion would
benefit if he were present at Notre Dame seem to have overcome his
first scruples, besides quickening the hope of recovering the north of
his States. He was to be disappointed in more ways than one. Religion
was to benefit only from the enhanced prestige given to her rites in
the coming ceremony, not in the practical way that the Pope desired.
And yet it was of the first importance for Napoleon to receive the
holy oil and the papal blessing, for only so could he hope to wean the
affections of royalists from their uncrowned and exiled king.
Doubtless this was one of the chief reasons for the restoration of
religion by the Concordat, as was shrewdly seen at the time by
Lafayette, who laughingly exclaimed: "Confess, general, that your
chief wish is for the little phial."[314] The sally drew from the
First Consul an obscene disclaimer worthy of a drunken ostler.
Nevertheless, the little phial was now on its way.
In order to divest the meeting of Pope and Emperor of any awkward
ceremony, Napoleon arranged that it should take place on the road
between Fontainebleau and Nemours, as a chance incident in the middle
of a day's hunting. The benevolent old pontiff was reclining in his
carriage, weary with the long journey through the cold of an early
winter, when he was startled to see the retinue of his host. The
contrast in every way was striking. The figure of the Emperor had now
attained the fullness which betokens abounding health and strength: his
face was slightly flushed with the hunt and the consciousness that he
was master of the situation, and his form on horseback gained a dignity
from which the shortness of his legs somewhat detracted when on foot. As
he rode up attired in full hunting costume, he might have seemed the
embodiment of triumphant strength. The Pope, on the other hand, clad in
white garments and with white silk shoes, gave an impression of peaceful
benevolence, had not his intellectual features borne signs of the
protracted anxieties of his pontificate. The Emperor threw himself from
his horse and advanced to meet his guest, who on his side alighted,
rather unwillingly, in the mud to give and receive the embrace of
welcome. Meanwhile Napoleon's carriage had been driven up: footmen were
holding open both doors, and an officer of the Court politely handed
Pius VII. to the left door, while the Emperor, entering by the right,
took the seat of honour, and thus settled once for all the vexed
question of social precedence.[315]
During the Pope's sojourn at Fontainebleau, Josephine breathed to him
her anxiety as to her marriage; it having been only a civil contract,
she feared its dissolution, and saw in the Pope's intervention a
chance of a firmer union with her consort. The pontiff comforted her
and required from Napoleon the due solemnization of his marriage; it
was therefore secretly performed by Napoleon's uncle, Cardinal Fesch,
two days before the coronation.[316]
It was not enough, however, that the successor of St. Peter should
grace the coronation with his presence: the Emperor sought to touch
the imagination of men by figuring as the successor of Charlemagne. We
here approach one of the most interesting experiments of the modern
world, which, if successful, would profoundly have altered the face of
Europe and the character of its States. Even in its failure it attests
Napoleon's vivid imagination and boundless mental resources. He
aspired to be more than Emperor of the French: he wished to make his
Empire a cosmopolitan realm, whose confines might rival those of the
Holy Roman Empire of one thousand years before, and embrace scores of
peoples in a grand, well-ordered European polity.
Already his dominions included a million of Germans in the Rhineland,
Italians of Piedmont, Genoa, and Nice, besides Savoyards, Genevese,
and Belgians. How potent would be his influence on the weltering chaos
of German and Italian States, if these much-divided peoples learnt to
look on him as the successor to the glories of Charlemagne! And this
honour he was now to claim. However delusive was the parallel between
the old semi-tribal polity and modern States where the peoples were
awakening to a sense of their nationality, Napoleon was now in a
position to clear the way for his great experiment. He had two charms
wherewith to work, material prosperity and his gift of touching the
popular imagination. The former of these was already silently working
in his favour: the latter was first essayed at the coronation.
Already, after a sojourn at Boulogne, he had visited Aix-la-Chapelle,
the city where Charlemagne's relics are entombed, and where Victor
Hugo in some of his sublimest verse has pictured Charles V. kneeling
in prayer to catch the spirit of the mediæval hero. Thither went
Napoleon, but in no suppliant mood; for when Josephine was offered the
arm-bones of the great dead, she also proudly replied that she would
not deprive the city of that precious relic, especially as she had the
support of an arm as great as that of Charlemagne.[317] The insignia
and the sword of that monarch were now brought to Paris, and shed on
the ceremony of coronation that historic gleam which was needed to
redeem it from tawdry commonplace.
All that money and art could do to invest the affair with pomp and
circumstance had already been done. The advice of the new Master of
the Ceremonies, M. de Ségur, and the hints of the other nobles who had
rallied to the new Empire, had been carefully collated by the untiring
brain that now watched over France. The sum of 1,123,000 francs had
been expended on the coronation robes of Emperor and Empress, and far
more on crowns and tiaras. The result was seen in costumes of
matchless splendour; the Emperor wore a French coat of red velvet
embroidered in gold, a short cloak adorned with bees and the collar of
the Legion of Honour in diamonds; and at the archbishop's palace he
assumed the long purple robe of velvet profusely ornamented with
ermine, while his brow was encircled by a wreath of laurel, meed of
mighty conquerors. In the pommel of his sword flashed the famous Pitt
diamond, which, after swelling the family fortune of the British
statesman, fell to the Regent of France, and now graced the coronation
of her Dictator. The Empress, radiant with joy at her now indissoluble
union, bore her splendours with an easy grace that charmed all
beholders and gave her an almost girlish air. She wore a robe of white
satin, trimmed with silver and gold and besprinkled with golden bees:
her waist and shoulders glittered with diamonds, while on her brows
rested a diadem of the finest diamonds and pearls valued at more than
a million francs.[318] The curious might remember that for a necklace
of less than twice that value the fair fame of Marie Antoinette had
been clouded over and the House of Bourbon shaken to its base.
The stately procession began with an odd incident: Napoleon and
Josephine, misled apparently by the all-pervading splendour of the new
state carriage, seated themselves on the wrong side, that is, in the
seats destined for Joseph and Louis: the mistake was at once made good,
with some merriment; but the superstitious saw in it an omen of
evil.[319] And now, amidst much enthusiasm and far greater curiosity,
the procession wound along through the Rue Nicaise and the Rue St.
Honoré--streets where Bonaparte had won his spurs on the day of
Vendémiaire--over the Pont-Neuf, and so to the venerable cathedral,
where the Pope, chilled by long waiting, was ready to grace the
ceremony. First he anointed Emperor and Empress with the holy oil; then,
at the suitable place in the Mass he blessed their crowns, rings, and
mantles, uttering the traditional prayers for the possession of the
virtues and powers which each might seem to typify. But when he was
about to crown the Emperor, he was gently waved aside, and Napoleon with
his own hands crowned himself. A thrill ran through the august assembly,
either of pity for the feelings of the aged pontiff or of admiration at
the "noble and legitimate pride" of the great captain who claimed as
wholly his own the crown which his own right arm had won. Then the
_cortège_ slowly returned to the middle of the nave, where a lofty
throne had been reared.
Another omen now startled those who laid store by trifles. It was
noticed that the sovereigns in ascending the steps nearly fell
backwards under the weight of their robes and trains, though in the
case of Josephine the anxious moment may have been due to the
carelessness, whether accidental or studied, of her "mantle-bearers."
But to those who looked beneath the surface of things was not this an
all-absorbing portent, that all this religious pomp should be removed
by scarcely eleven years from the time when this same nave echoed to
the shouts and gleamed with the torches of the worshippers of the
newly enthroned Goddess of Reason?
Revolutionary feelings were not wholly dead, but they now vented
themselves merely in gibes. On the night before the coronation the walls
of Paris were adorned with posters announcing: _The last Representation
of the French Revolution--for the Benefit of a poor Corsican Family._
And after the event there were inquiries why the new throne had no
_glands d'or;_ the answer suggested because it was _sanglant_.[320]
Beyond these quips and jests the Jacobins and royalists did not go. When
the phrase _your subjects_ was publicly assigned to the Corps Législatif
by its courtier-like president, Fontanes, there was a flutter of wrath
among those who had hoped that the new Empire was to be republican. But
it quickly passed away; and no Frenchman, except perhaps Carnot, made so
manly a protest as the man of genius at Vienna, who had composed the
"Sinfonia Eroïca," and with grand republican simplicity inscribed it,
"Beethoven à Bonaparte." When the master heard that his former hero had
taken the imperial crown, he tore off the dedication with a volley of
curses on the renegade and tyrant; and in later years he dedicated the
immortal work to the _memory_ of a great man.
* * * * *