To save the new State from bankruptcy, Necker proposed, and Mirabeau
caused it to be voted by acclamation, that each citizen should sacrifice
a quarter of his income. The domains of the Church were placed at the
_disposition of the nation_, and the minister of finance was authorized
to sell them to the amount of four hundred millions of livres, the State
to take measures to provide suitably for the maintenance of religion and
the support of its ministers, and the care of the poor. The crown-lands
and the property of the _émigrés_, which were confiscated July 26, 1792,
were also declared national property, _biens nationaux_, and these biens
were said to be the _dot_ of the new constitution. The collection of the
revenue was simplified and made less vexatious, each citizen to
contribute his just proportion.
The supreme moment of the Revolution was, perhaps, the Fête of the
Fédération, celebrated on the first anniversary of the fall of the
Bastille, on the Champ-de-Mars, by the Parisians and the delegates sent
by the army and the departments. The citizens, fearing that the great
amphitheatre destined for this celebration would not be prepared in
time, armed themselves with spades and picks, and thronged to the
location to aid the workmen in this patriotic labor. The king presided;
the queen, seated in a gallery of the École Militaire, took the dauphin
in her arms and presented him to the people at the moment when his
father was taking the oath to employ all the power delegated to him by
the constitutional law of the State to maintain the constitution decreed
by the Assemblée and accepted by him. The _Te Deum_ was chanted before
the immense "altar of the country" erected in the midst of the
Champ-de-Mars, and the sun, suddenly breaking through the rain-clouds,
illuminated the scene as if the heavens approved. In the evening, and
for three days following, the populace danced on the Place de la
Bastille.
[Illustration: SOLDIERS OF THE DIRECTOIRE. From a drawing by J. Le
Blant.]
It was in this year, 1790, that the municipalité or commune of Paris was
organized by the law of the 7th of May, which decreed that it should be
administered by a _maire_, or mayor, sixteen _administrateurs_,
thirty-two members of the council, ninety-six notables, a procureur of
the commune, and two substitutes. The city was divided into forty-eight
_sections_, which were to be as nearly equal as possible, relative to
the number of citizens. The ninety-six notables, the maire, and the
forty-eight members of the corps municipal constituted the _conseil
général_ of the commune. The municipality had a treasurer, a _secrétaire
greffier_ with two assistants, a keeper of the archives, and a
librarian.
A very important part in the administration of the State, which became
more and more an irregular administration in which the powers of the
authorized government were tempered or set aside by popular clamor and
bloodshed, was taken by the various clubs. That which was composed of
the moderates, who wished to maintain the Constitution of 1791, having
for leaders Lafayette and Bailly, took its name from the convent of the
Feuillants in which it was lodged, and had separated from the formidable
club of the Jacobins. The building of the latter was destroyed by the
mob on the 28th of March, 1791, but the sittings were not finally
suspended until November 11, 1794. The Feuillants ceased to exist after
the 10th of August, 1792. The Jacobins, also named from the convent in
which it held its sittings, had been the club Breton, and had left
Versailles at the same period as the government. At first under the
influence of moderate men, it gradually came under the sway of
Robespierre. Danton presided over that of the Cordeliers, established in
the ancient refectory and school of the former convent of that order;
there was another turbulent association known as the _Amis de la Vérité_
[friends of the truth]; a ladies' club which published a journal; and
even two royalists' clubs, one closed by the police in May, 1790, and
the other by a decree of the municipalité in January, 1791.
The Constituante Assemblée held its last sitting on the 30th of
September, 1791, having finished its labors on the constitution, and
seen it accepted by the king,--apparently restored to a position of
security after the unsuccessful attempt of the royal family to escape on
the night of the 20th of June. The maire of the city, Bailly, addressed
his resignation to the officers of the municipality, and Lafayette
resigned the command of the Parisian national guard, "the Revolution
being terminated, and the reign of law established," according to a
decree of the municipalité of the 1st of October. The Assemblée
Legislative, which was to carry on this peaceable government, and to
which no members of the Constituante were eligible, held its first
sitting on this date. But the new constitution satisfied no one,
republicans or monarchists, and the former were divided into numerous
factions with very different views,--the Girondins, so named from the
eloquent members from the Gironde, who directed the new Assemblée, and
who wished to overthrow the royal authority without going to extremes;
the extreme republicans, called Montagnards because they occupied the
high seats on the left in the Assemblée, and the Feuillants, or
constitutional royalists, who sat on the right.
On the 21st of September, 1791, the Assemblée had decreed that every
criminal condemned to death should be beheaded, and to facilitate the
execution of this law a Doctor Louis drew up a _mémoire_ which he
presented to this body on the 20th of the following March, in which he
described an instrument of his own construction, and which, after
preliminary trials on animals and dead bodies, was finally adopted. Its
name was derived from a Doctor Guillotin who, on the 1st of September,
1789, demanded that the sufferings of those condemned to death should be
abridged by their execution with a species of machine that had been
formerly in use. "With my machine," he said, "I will strike off your
head in a twinkling, and without your suffering the slightest pain."
This phrase, which provoked the Assemblée to much laughter, was repeated
throughout Paris, and when a German mechanic, Schmidt, had constructed
on the plans of Doctor Louis an apparatus, it was immediately called
the _machine à Guillotin_, and presently, the guillotine. It was
inaugurated on the 25th of April, 1792, in the Place de Grève, upon the
person of a highway robber named Jacques Pelletier. "The novelty of the
execution increased greatly the number of those whom a barbarous pity
brought to view these sorrowful spectacles. This machine was preferred
with reason to the other methods of execution; it did not soil the hand
of a man with the blood of his fellow-creature."
The new instrument was put to such frequent use in the numerous
political executions that it soon acquired a great notoriety, the
prisoners jested concerning it, it was called the national razor, the
mill of silence, and there were some persons who wore in their ears
small representations of it. "In several of the hôtels of Paris, those
aristocrats who could not succeed in emigrating killed time with a
little guillotine in mahogany which was brought on the table after
dessert; there were passed under its axe, successively, little figures
or dolls whose heads, made to resemble those of our best magistrates,
allowed to escape, as they fell, a reddish liquor resembling blood, from
the body, which was a flask. All the guests, especially the ladies,
hastened to dip their handkerchiefs in this blood, which proved to be a
very agreeable essence of ambergris."
The site of the present Place de la Concorde, in which the guillotine
was afterward set up, was embellished with a bronze equestrian statue of
Louis XV, by Bouchardon, sculptor in ordinary to his Majesty,
inaugurated on the 17th of April, 1763, and, Bouchardon having died, the
design was completed by Pigalle, who placed on the marble pedestal four
bronze figures typifying Strength, Prudence, Justice, and Love of
Country,--supposed to represent the typical qualities of the monarch.
Consequently, the Parisians soon had the pleasure of reading on the
pedestal the following unofficial couplet:
"_Oh! la belle statue! oh! le beau piédestal!
Les vertus sont à pied, le vice est à cheval._"
[Oh! the fine statue! Oh! the beautiful pedestal! The Virtues go afoot,
and Vice rides on horseback.] This statue was overthrown on the 11th of
August, 1792, and the Place Louis XV became the Place de la Revolution,
a stone and plaster figure of Liberty seated, colored to imitate bronze,
being set up on the pedestal. On the 26th of October, 1795, it was
rebaptized Place de la Concorde; the Restoration restored its name of
Louis XV, and the Revolution of 1830, its present name.
[Illustration: THE DRUMS OF THE REPUBLIC. From a drawing by Adrien
Karbowsky.]
A very great majority of the bishops having refused to take the oath to
the new _constitution civile du clergé_, decreed by the Constituante
Assemblée, which placed them under the control of the civil authorities,
and being strengthened in this refusal by the authority of the Pope, the
new Assemblée, by the law of May 24, 1792, directed that as a measure of
public security all these priests _non assermentés_ should be banished.
The king refused to sanction this measure, and dismissed his Girondist
ministers; he sent a secret agent to the foreign coalition menacing the
frontiers: in the Assemblée, which allowed its sittings to be constantly
interrupted and overawed by irruptions of so-called delegations of the
citizens, of the sections, of the national guards, the suspicion and the
open denunciation of the court constantly increased. The agitation and
violence in the clubs, in the streets, in the journals, augmented from
day to day; on the 20th of June an enormous mass of the populace
overflowed the Assemblée chamber, broke into the Tuileries, shook their
fists in the queen's face, and compelled the king to assume the red cap.
A thin, pale young artillery officer, standing on the terrace by the
river, watched this mob with indignation. "The wretches!" he exclaimed,
"they ought to shoot down the first five hundred; the rest would take to
their heels quickly enough." His name was Napoleon Bonaparte; he had
been born in Corsica, in 1769, the year after that island had become
French.
Not daring to do otherwise, the king was compelled to recall the
Girondins to power, and to declare war against the German emperor on the
20th of April; the first actions of this war were unfavorable; the Duke
of Brunswick, the commander of the Prussian army, issued a proclamation
on the 20th of July declaring that he was coming, in the name of the
allied monarchs, to restore the authority of Louis XVI, and the
infuriated Parisian mob replied by the attack on the Tuileries on the
10th of August. The king, with all his family, escaped to the Assemblée
at seven o'clock in the morning; the Swiss guards, badly led and short
of munitions, were massacred after a gallant and ineffective defence.
The atrocious Marat was hailed as the victor of this evil day; the
Assemblée, under the inspiration of Robespierre, began to incline toward
more extreme measures. The populace demanded of it that the king should
be dethroned and a national Convention convened, it granted the second
but not the first; the king was removed from the Assemblée to the prison
of the Temple, and the Commune, headed by Danton, minister of justice,
and composed of those leaders who had been elected to the principal
municipal offices, became the real power in the capital. Through its
instigation most of those confined in the various prisons of Paris were
massacred in the first week in September. The helpless Assemblée held
its last sitting on the 21st of this month, and the president,
remitting its authority to the new Convention Nationale, announced in
phrases which the future was to make but sinister mockery: "The aim of
all your efforts shall be to give the French people liberty, laws, and
peace."
The first step of the new legislators was to declare that "royalty was
abolished in France," and to proclaim the Republic. The struggles to
maintain the direction of affairs between the Girondins and the
Montagnards increased in vehemence until the latter succeeded in
acquiring the ascendency at the end of May, 1793. "Educated in the ideas
of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, they dreamed of the rude virtues of the best
period of Rome and of Sparta for the France of the eighteenth century,
and, even though society should perish in the experiment, they were
determined to apply their theories." The question of bringing the king,
or "Capet," as he was now termed, to trial was debated in the Convention
as early as the 7th of November, 1792; on the 2d of December, the
Conseil Général of the Commune of Paris sent a petition to the
Convention inviting that body to expedite this affair, and asking that
the debate should be on these two questions: "1. Is Louis worthy of
death? 2. Would it be advantageous for the Republic that he should
perish on the scaffold?" By the terms of the constitution, the person of
the king was sacred, and the extreme penalty provided for him was
deposition, but the spirit of the "Terror" was already in the air; the
situation on the frontiers was extremely critical; it was with some
vague idea of defying or of awing the coalition that Danton had
exclaimed in the Assemblée: "Let us throw them, in defiance, the head of
a king!" The execution of the monarch, on the morning of the 21st of
January, 1793, had, on the contrary, the effect of uniting against
France all the sovereigns of Europe.
Around this execution have clustered the usual growth of legends and
invention that supplement the great, trenchant facts of history with an
embroidery to which history does not always condescend. The fine words
which the king's confessor, the Abbé Edgeworth, are supposed to have
addressed to him on the scaffold: "Son of Saint-Louis, ascend to
heaven!" were invented on the day of the execution by a journalist named
Charles His. The picturesque story of a secret midnight mass, celebrated
every year on the anniversary of the execution, at the instigation and
at the expense of the executioner Sanson, is equally devoid of
foundation. It first appeared in the preface of a work published in
1830, under the title of _Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de la
Revolution française_, by SANSON, _exécuteur des arrêts criminels_. The
preface was written by Balzac, the work itself by a certain Lhéritier,
and Balzac reproduced the story with appropriate embellishments in his
_Une Messe en 1793_, and later in the _Episode sous la Terreur_. One of
the nuns who, in the first account, appeared as Mlle. de Charost here
becomes the Mlle. de Langeais who figures so picturesquely and
improbably in several of his romances. In the _Biographie universelle_,
Michaud relates that Sanson, in his will, left directions to have a
commemorative mass celebrated every year on the 21st of January; that he
was so affected by the execution of the king that he fell ill
immediately afterward, and died within six months, and that the
provisions of the will were faithfully executed by his son and successor
until his own death, in 1840. It appears, however, that the elder Sanson
continued "to function" all through the Terror, did not die till 1806,
and that any attempt to carry out the pretended provisions of his will
would have been very dangerous to his son, and to any notary who might
have drawn it up. Through the Terror, and even under the Directory,
there are numerous records of sentences of deportation against priests
who had celebrated requiem masses for the repose of the soul of Louis
XVI. The famous _Messe de Sanson_ appears to have been invented out of
the whole cloth by Balzac.
In the Convention, divided into factions, and rent by mutual suspicion
and terror, efficient measures were, nevertheless, taken against the
allied enemies on the frontier, and those in the bosom of the nation; a
committee of general security was formed to look after the latter, with
a revolutionary tribunal to judge them, and a committee of public
safety, "a species of dictatorship with nine heads," took energetic
measures for the national defence. To the cry of "_Citoyens la Patrie
est en danger!_" the volunteers flocked to the enrolling offices in such
numbers that it was thought necessary to issue a decree commanding the
bakers and the postal employés to remain to exercise their functions.
Everything was lacking in the way of equipment for the armies, the
officers were suspected, and two or three of the generals went over to
the enemy; but the nation, inspired with a double fury, against the
foreign enemy and against its own citizens, put one million two hundred
thousand men in the field, and the fourteen armies of the Republic,
organized by the minister of war, Carnot, inaugurated that tremendous
series of victories which carried the French name to its apotheosis of
military splendor.
[Illustration: RETURN OF A REGIMENT OF GRENADIERS FROM THE CAMPAIGN IN
ITALY. From the painting by J. Le Blant.]
The excesses of the Reign of Terror are explained by the historians as
the result of the universal fright and suspicion. "Under the reign of
Hébert and Danton," said Saint-Just, "every one was wild and fierce with
fear." A young girl, Charlotte Corday, came up to Paris from Caen and
assassinated Marat, on the 13th of July, in the hopes of allaying the
universal madness by the death of the principal wild beast; the queen
was beheaded on the 16th of October; the king's sister, Madame
Elisabeth, Bailly, the former maire of the city, Mme. Dubarry, the
former mistress of Louis XV, and the Girondins, on the last day of
October; the Hébertists on the 24th of March, 1794; and Danton, Camille
Desmoulins, and other leaders of the so-called moderate party on the 5th
of April. There remained only Robespierre, and a contemporary engraving,
from the collection of M. Félix Perin, of Paris, reproduced on page 59,
represents this dictator, "after having guillotined all the French," as
executing with his own hand the executioner. He stands with his feet on
the constitution of 1791; each guillotine represents a group of his
victims. "_A_ is the headsman; _B_, the Committee of Public Safety; _C_,
the Committee of General Security; _D_, the revolutionary tribunal; _E_,
the Jacobins; _F_, the Cordeliers; _G_, the Brissotins; _H_, the
Girondins; _I_, the Philipotins (for Philippeautins, the followers of
Philippeaux); _K_, the Chabotins; _L_, the Hébertists; _M_, nobles and
priests; _N_, men of genius; _O_, old people, women, and children; _P_,
soldiers and generals; _Q_, the constitutional authorities; _R_, the
Convention Nationale; _S_, popular societies." The ingenious draftsman
might have added still another, one for himself, for we are not
surprised to learn that he paid with his head for this work of art.
Another of these contemporary engravings, also reproduced for these
pages, from the collection of M. le Baron de Vinck d'Orp, of Brussels,
designed by Laffitte and engraved "under the supervision of Me
Poirier, avocat of Dunkerque," is dedicated to Joseph Le Bon, an
unfrocked Oratorian, who had caused to be put to death more than one
thousand five hundred persons; he had even established an orchestra at
the foot of the guillotine. The title of the engraving, _Formes
acerbes_, is taken from a phrase used by Barère in his defence of this
sanguinary ecclesiastic: "If Le Bon had employed certain _formes
acerbes_ [harsh methods]," he said, "he had at least given proof of his
devotion to the Republic." He is represented as standing upon a heap of
naked and headless corpses, between the two guillotines of Arras and of
Cambrai, drinking alternately from the two cups which he fills from the
red streams from the scaffolds. At his side, two Furies excite the
tigers to devour the bodies of his victims. But the invention of the
caricaturists was no longer competent to record the actual march of
events.
"An instrument of death better adapted to conciliate the requirements of
humanity and the demands of the law could not be imagined," says a Paris
journal of 1793. "The ceremonial of the execution might also be
perfected, and delivered of all that pertains to the ancient régime.
This cart in which the condemned is transported, and which was granted
to Capet; these hands tied behind the back, which obliges the condemned
to assume a constrained and servile position; this black gown in which
the confessor is still permitted to array himself notwithstanding the
decree which forbids the ecclesiastic costume, all this apparatus fails
to proclaim the manners and customs of a nation enlightened, humane, and
free."
Everything was reversed, reorganized and regulated by decree, from the
conduct of those persons suspected of treason against the Republic
because they ate only the crust of their bread, in the restaurants (18th
of February, 1794), to the recognition of the Supreme Being and of the
immortality of the soul (8th of May). A more practicable piece of
legislation was that which divided the commune of Paris into twelve
arrondissements or municipalités (21st of February, 1795), it having
been recognized that the city united under the power of one maire had
been too powerful a force for seditious purposes, and that, divided into
forty-eight sections, it had furnished too many centres of insurrection,
which, communicating secretly with each other, had been able to elude
the vigilance of the supreme authorities.
It was in this year 1795, "year III of the Republic," that was abolished
the democratic constitution of 1793, which had not yet been put into
execution, and established the Directory, of five members, one to be
retired every year and replaced by a new member, all to be named by the
legislative power and responsible to it. The latter was also divided,
the council of the Five Hundred (_Cinq-Cents_) being charged with the
duty of proposing the law, and that of the _Anciens_ with that of
examining it and executing it. By this division of power it was hoped to
avoid a dictatorship and to constitute a liberal republic. The two
legislative councils were composed two-thirds of members of the
Convention and one-third of newly-elected delegates; the new government
established itself in the palace of the Luxembourg. Carnot, the most
illustrious of the five Directors, gave the command of the army of Italy
to Napoleon Bonaparte.
On the 4th of September, 1797, the Directory, with the aid of Augereau
and some twelve thousand men, suppressed the majority of the two
_Conseils_, who had become royalists and anti-revolutionary, and sent a
large number of them into exile. To this _coup d'état_ of the 18th
Fructidor, year V, succeeded that of the 22d Floréal, year VI (May 11,
1798), which annulled the election of the deputies who were called
_patriotes_. General Bonaparte, with his army, was in Egypt; the
European powers judged the time propitious to form a new coalition
against such an unstable government and exhausted people. On the 30th
Prairial, year VII (18th of June, 1799), the Conseils combined against
the Directors and forced three of them to resign, but Bonaparte landed
at Fréjus, and to all these futile little revolutions succeeded the
vital one of the 18th Brumaire (9th of November, 1799), in which his
grenadiers turned the members of the Cinq-Cents out of their hall at the
point of the bayonet, and the Anciens, left alone in session, conferred
the executive power on three provisional Consuls, Bonaparte, Sieyès, and
Roger Ducos. Two commissions, of twenty-five members each, were
appointed to revise the constitution.
"It was the Revolution abdicating, transferring its power to military
authority, and about to enter with it on a new phase. And, moreover, it
was still one more _journée_, that is to say, violent measure. What
lessons given to the peoples by these perpetual insurrections, of the
Commune, of the Convention, of the Directory, of the Conseils, of the
royalists as of the republicans, and, finally, of the army! And how
could it be possible to form citizens respecting the law, careful to
modify it only with wisdom, instead of tearing it to pieces with rage,
when, for the last ten years, nothing had been accomplished without
sudden and violent measures?"
The new constitution, of the year VIII, was promulgated on the 15th of
December, 1799. The consuls were three in number, elected for ten years,
and eligible for re-election, but to the first was given all the power,
his two colleagues being merely advisers. These three consuls were
Bonaparte, Cambacérès, and Lebrun. The laws were to be prepared under
the direction of the consuls by a _Conseil d'État_, named by them and
revocable by them; these laws were to be discussed by the _Tribunat_,
composed of one hundred members, but voted or rejected only by the three
hundred members of the _Corps législatif_. Between these two powers,
executive and legislative, was placed a _Sénat conservateur_, consisting
of eighty members named for life, who were to watch over the maintenance
of the constitution and select from the national lists, selected by a
process of successive elimination from the whole body of electors, the
members of the Tribunat and the Corps législatif.
[Illustration: THE ARMY UNDER THE FIRST CONSUL: RETURN OF A REGIMENT
FROM MARENGO. From a water-color by F. Bac.]
The whole administration of the State was reorganized and given that
character of "centralization," apparently rendered necessary by the
danger from abroad by which it was threatened, which is still
maintained, notwithstanding the many evils to which it has given rise
and the extent to which the public liberty is impaired. Under the able
hand of the First Consul, the new government was quick to inspire such
confidence that the Parisian bankers lent it readily the first funds of
which it had need. The laws against the recalcitrant clergy were greatly
modified, the churches opened, the list of the émigrés was declared
closed, and the former nobles admitted to their rights as citizens, but
not to the enjoyment of their property which had been confiscated for
the benefit of the _biens nationaux_. The Parlement of Paris having been
suppressed, a new judiciary organization was established in the capital,
the _tribunal de première_ instance and the _cour d'appel_ were created;
the _cour de cassation_ and the _cour d'assise_, the justices of the
peace, were all reorganized. The army, strongly revolutionary in
tendency, was so willing to be relieved of the incompetence of the
Directory, and was so promptly provided with equipments, munitions, and
confidence in the new order of things, that it willingly accepted the
change in the State.
Marengo and Hohenlinden brought about the Peace of Lunéville, February,
1801, with the Continental powers; the fear of the camp of Boulogne
from which the First Consul proposed to descend upon England (if we may
believe the French historians), that of Amiens, March, 1802, with that
power. The wars of the Revolution were finished, it was thought, even by
Bonaparte himself. Then commenced that extraordinary display of the
genius of reorganization, unhampered by any undue scrupulousness, which
made his legislation almost as admirable as his military talent; the
nation willingly resigned itself into his powerful and most skilful
hands, and the machinations of the royalists against his life, the
conspiracies and the infernal machine of 1800, only paved the way to the
Consulate for life, 2d of August, 1802. The Empire followed on the 18th
of May, two years later.
The name of the Republic, however, was retained long after its substance
had departed. The title of Emperor appears as early as 1790, in a
proposition made by M. de Villette on the 17th of June, before the club
of 1789, that the king should be saluted by that title on the day of the
fête of the Federation. "Let us efface," he exclaimed, "the names of
king, of kingdom, and of subject, which will never combine with the word
'liberty,'" _Empire_ signified, under the monarchy as under the
Republic, rather the extent of the territory of France than a form of
government. The first article of the sénatus-consulte organique of the
28th Floréal, year XII, which modified the Consular constitution, read:
"The government of the Republic is confided to an emperor who shall take
the title of _Empereur des Français_." And the Emperor's oath was: "I
swear to maintain the integrity of the territory of the Republic." The
word _République_ did not disappear entirely from the official language
for four years. The figure of the Republic ceased to appear on the seal
of State in 1805, and the inscription RÉP. FRA. from the official stamp
on the news journals on the 1st of January, 1806. It was on this date
also that the Gregorian calendar replaced that of the Republic. The
decree of the 28th of May, 1807, is the last act of the Imperial
government in which appears the phrase _par les constitutions de la
République_, but it was only from the 1st of January, 1809, that the
coinage was stamped _Empire Français_, instead of _République
Française_. It would seem that in 1808, Napoleon, little as he liked the
Republic, was the only one who remembered its official existence.
Among the most efficient of the minor measures taken to replace the old
order of things by the new was the creation of a new honorary order, to
supersede those of the ancient régime,--the cross of Saint-Louis, for
military services; the cordon of Saint-Michel (cordon noir), for civil
services; and the order of the Saint-Esprit (cordon bleu), which
included only a hundred chevaliers, of the most ancient nobility. A law
of May 19, 1802, created a _Légion d'honneur_, to be composed of a grand
administrative council and of fifteen cohorts, each consisting of seven
great officers, twenty commandants, thirty officers, and three hundred
and fifty legionaries. By the eighth article of this law, every
individual admitted into this Legion was to swear on his honor to devote
himself to the service of the Republic, to the preservation of its
territory in all its integrity, to the defence of its government, of its
laws, of all property which it had bestowed, to combat, with the aid of
all the means which justice, reason, and the laws authorized, every
enterprise tending to re-establish the feudal régime, to revive the
titles and qualities which had been its attributes,--in short, to aid
with all his power in the maintenance of liberty and equality. By the
denial of any hereditary privileges it was thought thus to create an
order which would not offend the new spirit of equality while offering
a suitable reward to the soldier, the diplomat, the scientist, the
professional or the commercial man who had rendered notable service to
his country.
"The Empire succeeding the Republic," says M. Steenackers in his
_Histoire des ordres de chevalerie_, "brought about certain changes in
the Legion of Honor. In the first place, the form of the oath had to be
modified, and was refused by certain men, such as the admiral Truguet
and the poet Lemercier. The first distribution made by the Emperor, on
the 14th of July, 1804, in the church of the Invalides, to the principal
personages of the Empire, was again made the occasion of a manifestation
of opposition by Augereau, although a grand officer of the order, and of
about sixty military officers who remained in the court, not wishing to
enter the chapel. In this distribution, the old invalided soldiers came
first, then the members of the Institute, and finally the military
legionaries. The youth of Paris also made its small protestation, some
days after this distribution. It was the season for carnations,--the
young men put these flowers in their buttonholes and thus were enabled
to receive, at a distance, military honors from functionaries a trifle
near-sighted. Napoleon, informed of the jests which ensued, and of the
discontent of the soldiers, ordered the minister of the police to take
the most severe measures with regard to these insolents. Fouché replied:
'Certainly these young people deserve to be chastised, but I will wait
for the autumn, which is coming.' This clever reply disarmed the master,
and presently the protesting carnations were seen no more, but the
sarcasms and the pretended witticisms were not so easily checked. Thus,
in the spring of 1803, General Moreau, giving a dinner, summoned his
cook and said to him, in the presence of his guests, 'Michel, I am
pleased with your dinner; you have truly distinguished yourself with
it, I wish to give you a stewpan of honor....' Lafayette refused the
decoration, characterizing it as ridiculous. Ducis and Delille would not
accept it."
[Illustration: REVIEW IN THE PLACE DU CARROUSEL. FIRST EMPIRE. From a
drawing by L. Marold.]
The grand officers received a pension of five thousand francs; the
commandants, two thousand; the officers, one thousand; the legionaries,
two hundred and fifty. The poor daughters, or the orphans, of members of
the Legion are educated by the State; but it is not considered "good
form" to accept this honorable charity. A decree of the 30th of January,
1805, instituted a fifth degree in the order, superior to all the
others, which was designated as the grand decoration or the grand
eagle,--the number of these was limited to sixty. Later, the cross was
surmounted by an imperial crown. The decoration, at the period of its
founding, was in the shape of a star with five double rays, attached to
one of the buttonholes of the coat by a red moiré ribbon. This ribbon
had at first an edging of white, but this edging was soon suppressed. In
the centre of the star was placed the head of the Emperor, crowned with
a wreath of oak and laurel.
At the present moment, this decoration, which has been retained by all
the succeeding governments of France, is passing through one of its
periodical, but never very important, periods of partial disesteem. The
somewhat inconsistent conduct of the administration of the Legion of
Honor with regard to those of its members whom it has disciplined and
those whom it has retained unquestioned on its lists, among those active
in the Dreyfus-Zola-Picquart-Esterhazy affair, has led to considerable
comment and disaffection,--even to resignation of the generally
much-coveted red ribbon by certain peculiarly indignant members of the
order.
In the year 1807, that of the peace of Tilsit, the Empire attained its
highest point. After the Concordat, which aimed to establish peace and
toleration in religious matters and the Legion of Honor, a system of
national recompense for distinguished services, came the founding of the
Université, and the publishing of the civil Code. "On his return from
Marengo, the First Consul had empowered Tronchet, Portalis, Bigot de
Préameneu, and Maleville to draw up a plan for a civil Code, for which
the preceding Assemblées had prepared the materials. This great work was
accomplished in four months. Bonaparte ordered that it should be sent to
all the judicial courts, and a number of valuable observations were thus
obtained. The section of legislation of the Conseil d'État examined
them, then drew up the sketches of the laws, which were communicated to
the Tribunat, and returned to the Conseil amended, clarified, but
destined to be still more so. Then, in fact, commenced, under the
presidency of the First Consul, those admirable discussions in which he
took such a glorious part. He animated every one with his ardor; he
astonished these old jurisconsults by the profundity of his views, above
all by that exquisite good sense which, in the constructing of a good
law, is worth more than all the science of the lawyers. In this manner
was elaborated that chart of the family and of property which the Corps
législatif adopted in its session of 1804, and which received, three
years later, the name which it merited, of _Code Napoléon_."
Among the many testimonials by contemporaries to the prodigious
faculties, the authority which seemed to disengage itself from the
person of Napoleon, in this work of legislation in which lay his truest
glory, one of the latest is to be found in the _Mémoires_ of the Comte
Mollien, who, after the 18th Brumaire, was called to the direction of
the _Caisse d' Amortissement_, or bureau of liquidation, just
established, and in 1806, to the post of Minister of the Treasury. "I
felt myself," he says, "if not convinced, at least vanquished, brought
to the ground, by this puissance of genius, this vigor of judgment, this
sentiment of his own infallibility, which seemed to leave to other men
only that of their inferiority. If he saw himself contradicted, his
polemics armed themselves with arguments the most pressing, as likewise,
in some cases, with a censure the most bitter, almost always with a
torrent of objections which it was impossible to foresee, still more
impossible to combat, because you would have as vainly endeavored to
seize the thread of the argument as to break it."
After Wagram, Napoleon himself perceived the waning of his star, and it
was with a view of reassuring public opinion, as well as of providing
for the future, that he divorced Josephine and married the Austrian
archduchess, Marie-Louise. A year afterward, on the 20th of March, 1811,
the policy of this marriage seemed to justify itself, and the Empire to
have acquired a new security, by the birth of a son. A contemporary
writer, M. de Saint-Amand, gives a lively picture of the emotions with
which the Parisians awaited the news of this auspicious event. "All the
inhabitants of the city knew that the reports of twenty-one cannon only
would announce the birth of a daughter, but that if a son were born,
there would be fired a hundred and one. The explosions of the artillery
commenced. From the moment the first report was heard, the multitude
kept perfectly silent. This silence was interrupted only by voices
counting the sounds of the cannon,--one, two, three, four, and so on.
"The suspense of the waiting was solemn. When the twentieth report was
heard, the emotion was indescribable; at the twenty-first, all the
breasts were breathless; at the twenty-second, there was an outburst of
joy which rose almost to delirium. Cries of delight, hats in the air,
applaudings; it was an ovation, a victory over Destiny, which it seemed
was to be henceforth the servant of Napoleon."
Nevertheless, three years later, the Allies were in Paris, and the
Senate, convoked and directed by Talleyrand,--to whom the Chancellor
Pasquier, qualified by Taine as "the best informed and the most
judicious witness for the first half of this century," denies every
quality of "the heart or the soul," the superiority of talent with which
he is generally credited, and even the sole virtue usually left him by
his detractors, that of having skilfully and worthily represented France
at the Congress of Vienna,--named a provisional government, on the 1st
of April, 1811. On the 3d, it pronounced the end of Napoleon's power; on
the 6th, it adopted a new constitution and called to the throne a
brother of Louis XVI, who became Louis XVIII.
[Illustration: THE FLOWERS. CEILING DECORATION FOR THE GRANDE SALLE DES
FÊTES IN THE NEW HOTEL DE VILLE.