Blessings of Peace
(1801-1803)
It now became eminently desirable that Napoleon should pay some
attention to the domestic affairs of France and of the countries
dominated by her. He determined to infuse a little of his own
inexhaustible energy into the departments of State, and to restore
public confidence generally. That some kind of mutual understanding
should be arrived at with the Powers who were not under his thumb was
a prime necessity. Affairs on the Continent were by no means without
possibilities of danger to the Republic. Russia and Great Britain had
become allies, the hitherto neutral scales of Prussia might at any
moment lean towards the latter, and Austria had not become reconciled
to the loss of her territories.
When England set on foot proposals for a cessation of hostilities which
had continued since 1793, Napoleon was busily preparing a flotilla
for the invasion of that island, to which project he had devoted
considerable thought. Although he did not betray his eagerness, he
certainly felt that there could be no greater or more profitable
blessing than a period of peace, which would enable him to carry
out various reforms and also to consolidate his own interests. The
negotiations finally took definite shape in the short-lived Treaty
of Amiens. The British Government under the leadership of Addington
lacked the genius and foresight of Pitt, consequently the balance of
profit from the Treaty was on the side of France. The Egyptian question
was to be settled by that country being restored to the Sultan; Malta
was to be handed back to the Knights of St John, its former possessors;
Great Britain was to retain Ceylon and Trinidad alone of her colonial
conquests during the war. These were the principal items of the Treaty,
the preliminaries of which were signed in London on the 1st October
1801. France was at peace with all the world.
Napoleon, whose term of office as First Consul had been extended
for ten years (at a later period he was made Consul for life), now
directed the whole of his powers on the internal government of France.
Neither afraid of God nor man personally, he early discerned that
religion had a deep political significance. France had tried to blot
out Christianity, but as a result of her efforts the old forms of
worship had merely given place to vague speculations and makeshifts.
The Christian faith was re-established by the Concordat, a “treaty of
peace with the Roman Catholic Church,” as an eminent modern scholar
terms it, the First Consul setting a good example by attending Mass at
Notre Dame. This was followed by the inauguration of the Civil Code, a
readjustment of laws involving the most arduous research on the part of
those learned in the intricacies of jurisprudence.
Commerce received a fresh impetus, public works were undertaken, and
social life revived. So great was the confidence of Englishmen that
they again began to make the “grand tour” of the Continent, then deemed
a necessary part of the education of members of the upper classes.
The Diary of Robert Sym, clerk to his Majesty’s Signet, affords us an
interesting glimpse of Napoleon at this time. He writes in his quaint
way as follows:--
“On the ‘Quinze Thermidor’ (Tuesday, August 3rd, 1802) we saw Bonaparte
review in the ‘Cour des Tuileries’ what was certainly the flower of his
army, for they were very different men from those we had seen on the
road and at Calais. We never saw a finer body of men than these, nor
finer horses and accoutrements, and all clothed and equipped in the
most complete manner. The corps of Chasseurs and of the Gens d’Armerie,
in particular, were very fine men. The corps of Guides, too, seemed to
be all picked. These latter were commanded by young Beauharnais, the
son of the wife of Bonaparte....
“About twelve o’clock Bonaparte came down the great stair of the
Tuileries and one of our party, who happened to be right opposite the
porch, told us that he mounted his horse from wooden steps. He then
rode forward, accompanied by about fifteen or twenty generals and a
Mameluke from Egypt. All his suite were dressed and powdered in the
most showy manner, but Bonaparte himself wore a plain green coat with
a narrow white cloth edging at the seams, such as servants in this
country sometimes wear, and a cocked hat without any lace. His hair
is very black and is cropped very close to his head and neck, so that
his ears are all bare. It falls down over his brow. His complexion is
swarthy, his face long, a fine nose, his eyes are very dark and his
eyebrows fall, or are drawn down, much over his eyes. His cheek bones
are high, and his cheeks sink between the bones of the face and those
of the chin, which gives him a wasted, consumptive look. His upper
lip projects in the middle of his mouth, considerably over the under
one, and his chin is sharp and prominent. He does not seem to be above
five feet six, and is very thin. He is thirty-three years of age.
To me he appeared to have the look of anxiety, or rather of terror.
He was mounted on a beautiful Arabian grey horse, one of the most
perfect animals I ever saw. His saddle, or rather housing, on which
he sat, was purple velvet, richly embroidered with gold and a great
many nets and trappings.... Bonaparte was nearly an hour and a half
on horseback on this occasion. During all that period he never once
opened his lips, nor did he turn his head to the right or to the left.
He looked straight over his horse’s ears. No person spoke to him, nor
was he cheered or huzzaed, either when he came into the Cour or when he
departed.”
The conquests of the Republic in Italy, Holland, Belgium, the left bank
of the Rhine, and Switzerland imposed considerable responsibility upon
the French, and it was necessary to reorganise the several governments.
They were encumbered by tradition, with which Napoleon had little or
no sympathy. As regards the independence which the inhabitants had
every reason to expect by the terms of the Peace of Lunéville, the
First Consul was rich in promise and poor in performance. Moderation
was a quality distinctly lacking in Napoleonic statesmanship. The
very thought of a national spirit was a nightmare to the man who was
now bent on building a vast Empire of the West. Northern Italy was
completely dominated by him; Piedmont, for long the football of Austria
and France, was incorporated with the Republic, Parma and Placentia
were occupied. The Cisalpine Republic speedily became the Italian
Republic, a high-sounding name calculated to please, with Napoleon as
President and a French army of occupation. Within certain limits the
First Consul’s jurisdiction was beneficial, even though he ruled on
despotic principles.
To Holland, now the Batavian Republic, he granted a constitution, but
many of his measures were too arbitrary for the stolid Dutch; there
was no end to their grievances, both fancied and real. Probably the
provinces on the left bank of the Rhine, which were incorporated with
France, gained more lasting advantages if only because they were less
meddled with. Affairs on the opposite side of the river attracted more
attention; in Germany there was something worth playing for. With the
Czar’s consent, Napoleon set about rearranging the various German
States. This he did to his present satisfaction, Francis II. of the
unwieldy Holy Roman Empire, of which these territories formed a part,
meekly acquiescing, as befits a monarch who has no alternative but to
grin and bear unpreventable misfortunes. Over two hundred independent
States formerly belonging to bishops, abbots, and petty sovereigns were
eventually annexed to their larger neighbours, the idea being to gain
the good-will and friendship of the more important rulers.
Switzerland, a neutral State according to the Treaty of Lunéville
but not held to be so by the First Consul, was more difficult of
settlement. After several systems of government had been tried and
failed, Napoleon himself drew up the Constitution of Malmaison. This he
forced the country to accept in May, 1801, but it was amended in the
following year. On the withdrawal of the French army of occupation,
civil war broke out among the patriotic Swiss, Ney speedily quelling
it, however, with a formidable body of troops. The Helvetian Republic
was too important from a military point of view to be allowed to snap
the fetters which linked it to France.
European affairs, it might be thought, would have been sufficiently
exhausting to preclude colonial projects. But, to use an apparent
paradox, Napoleon never had more time to spare than when he was most
busy. He derived his recreation from change of work, shutting up one
drawer in his mind to open another, to use his own simile. Of leisure
and ease he had little; a visit to the theatre, a hunt occasionally, an
hour’s chat with Josephine and the ladies of the Consular Court, during
which he would tell them the most creepy ghost stories, and a game of
cards at which he cheated, sufficed him for pastime. He took exercise
while working, restlessly pacing the study while he dictated a torrent
of words on civil, military, and naval matters, or walking in the
garden discussing affairs with a Minister of State.
At this period Napoleon’s intellect and powers of exhaustive
concentration were at their best, and it is characteristic of his
marvellous energy that he could find time to devote to the possessions
of the Republic overseas. He resolved upon an attempt to recover San
Domingo, in the West Indies, then ruled by the famous negro President
Toussaint L’Ouverture, the subject of one of Wordsworth’s greatest
sonnets: “Toussaint, thou most unhappy man of men.” France had
practically lost her supremacy of this important West India island
owing to a revolt of the negroes, and there seemed a likelihood of
Toussaint declaring its independence.
The First Consul sent off 21,000 troops under General Leclerc, who had
married Pauline, the prettiest of the Bonaparte sisters, and the blacks
were eventually routed. Some months later, when the yellow fever had
laid low many of the French soldiers and England and the Republic were
again at war, the cause of the negroes was taken up by the British,
with the result that the independence of San Domingo was definitely
established. Only one-fifth of the expeditionary army returned to
France.
In a diary kept by Rear-Admiral Sir George Cockburn’s secretary during
Napoleon’s voyage in the _Northumberland_ to St Helena, a conversation
is recorded in which the ex-Emperor referred particularly to the West
Indies. He said that “had he continued at the head of the French
Government, he never would have attempted the re-occupation of St
Domingo; that the most he would have established with regard to that
island would have been to keep frigates and sloops stationed around
it to force the blacks to receive everything they wanted from, and to
export all their produce exclusively to, France; for, he added, he
considered the independence of the blacks there to be more likely to
prove detrimental to England than to France. This latter remark is a
reiteration of his feelings with respect to England, as in all the
calculations he makes, the proportion of evil which may accrue to our
nation seems to bear in his mind the first consideration.”
In the early days of 1803 the First Consul’s attention was distracted
by events nearer home, and he had no alternative but to abandon his
dreams of a Colonial Empire. If, as he afterwards stated, “the Saint
Domingo business” was “the greatest error in all my government I ever
committed,” he had been able to obtain Louisiana from Spain in exchange
for an extension of territory in Italy, and also to secure Guiana.