PARIS, August, 1805.
MY LORD:--No act of Bonaparte’s government has occasioned so many, so
opposite, and so violent debates, among the remnants of revolutionary
factions comprising his Senate and Council of State, as the introduction
and execution of the religious concordat signed with the Pope. Joseph
was here again the ostensible negotiator, though he, on this as well as
on former occasions, concluded nothing that had not been prepared and
digested by Talleyrand.
Bonaparte does not in general pay much attention to the opinions of
others when they do not agree with his own views and interests, or
coincide with his plans of reform or innovation; but having in his public
career professed himself by turns an atheist and an infidel, the
worshipper of Christ and of Mahomet, he could not decently silence those
who, after deserting or denying the God of their forefathers and of their
youth, continued constant and firm in their apostasy. Of those who
deliberated concerning the restoration or exclusion of Christianity, and
the acceptance or rejection of the concordat, Fouche, Francois de Nantz,
Roederer, and Sieges were for the religion of Nature; Volney, Real,
Chaptal, Bourrienne, and Lucien Bonaparte for atheism; and Portalis,
Gregoire, Cambaceres, Lebrun, Talleyrand, Joseph and Napoleon Bonaparte
for Christianity. Besides the sentiments of these confidential
counsellors, upwards of two hundred memoirs, for or against the Christian
religion, were presented to the First Consul by uninvited and volunteer
counsellors,--all differing as much from one another as the members of
his own Privy Council.
Many persons do Madame Bonaparte, the mother, the honour of supposing
that to her assiduous representations is principally owing the recall of
the priests, and the restoration of the altars of Christ. She certainly
is the most devout, or rather the most superstitious of her family, and
of her name; but had not Talleyrand and Portalis previously convinced
Napoleon of the policy of reestablishing a religion which, for fourteen
centuries, had preserved the throne of the Bourbons from the machinations
of republicans and other conspirators against monarchy, it is very
probable that her representations would have been as ineffective as her
piety or her prayers. So long ago as 1796 she implored the mercy of
Napoleon for the Roman Catholics in Italy; and entreated him to spare the
Pope and the papal territory, at the very time that his soldiers were
laying waste and ravaging the legacy of Bologna and of Ravenna, both
incorporated with his new-formed Cisalpine Republic; where one of his
first acts of sovereignty, in the name of the then sovereign people, was
the confiscation of Church lands and the sale of the estates of the
clergy.
Of the prelates who with Joseph Bonaparte signed the concordat, the
Cardinal Gonsalvi and the Bishop Bernier have, by their labours and
intrigues, not a little contributed to the present Church establishment,
in this country; and to them Napoleon is much indebted for the intrusion
of the Bonaparte, dynasty, among the houses of sovereign Princes. The
former, intended from his youth for the Church, sees neither honour in
this world, nor hopes for any blessing in the next, but exclusively from
its bosom and its doctrine. With capacity to figure as a country curate,
he occupies the post of the chief Secretary of State to the Pope; and
though nearly of the same age, but of a much weaker constitution than his
Sovereign, he was ambitious enough to demand Bonaparte’s promise of
succeeding to the Papal See, and weak and wicked enough to wish and
expect to survive a benefactor of a calmer mind and better health than
himself. It was he who encouraged Bonaparte to require the presence of
Pius VII. in France, and who persuaded this weak pontiff to undertake a
journey that has caused so much scandal among the truly faithful; and
which, should ever Austria regain its former supremacy in Italy, will
send the present Pope to end his days in a convent, and make the
successors of St. Peter what this Apostle was himself, a Bishop of Rome,
and nothing more.
Bernier was a curate in La Vendee before the Revolution, and one of those
priests who lighted the torch of civil war in that unfortunate country,
under pretence of defending the throne of his King and the altars of his
God. He not only possessed great popularity among the lower classes, but
acquired so far the confidence of the Vendean chiefs that he was
appointed one of the supreme and directing Council of the Royalists and
Chouans. Even so late as the summer of 1799 he continued not only
unsuspected, but trusted by the insurgents in the Western departments. In
the winter, however, of the same year he had been gained over by
Bonaparte’s emissaries, and was seen at his levies in the Tuileries. It
is stated that General Brune made him renounce his former principles,
desert his former companions, and betray to the then First Consul of the
French Republic the secrets of the friends of lawful monarchy, of the
faithful subjects of Louis XVIII. His perfidy has been rewarded with one
hundred and fifty thousand livres in ready money, with the see of
Orleans, and with a promise of a cardinal’s hat. He has also, with the
Cardinals Gonsalvi, Caprara, Fesch, Cambaceres, and Mauri, Bonaparte’s
promise, and, of course, the expectation of the Roman tiara. He was one
of the prelates who officiated at the late coronation, and is now
confided in as a person who has too far committed himself with his
legitimate Prince, and whose past treachery, therefore, answers for his
future fidelity.
This religious concordat of the 10th September, 1801, as well as all
other constitutional codes emating from revolutionary authorities,
proscribes even in protecting. The professors and protectors of the
religion of universal peace, benevolence, and forgiveness banish in this
concordat from France forever the Cardinals Rohan and Montmorency, and
the Bishop of Arras, whose dutiful attachment to their unfortunate Prince
would, in better times and in a more just and generous nation, have been
recompensed with distinctions, and honoured even by magnanimous foes.
When Madame Napoleon was informed by her husband of the necessity of
choosing her almoner and chaplain, and of attending regularly the Mass,
she first fell a-laughing, taking it merely for a joke; the serious and
severe looks, and the harsh and threatening expressions of the First
Consul soon, however, convinced her how much she was mistaken. To evince
her repentance, she on the very next day attended her mother-in-law to
church, who was highly edified by the sudden and religious turn of her
daughter, and did not fail to ascribe to the efficacious interference of
one of her favourite saints this conversion of a profane sinner. But
Napoleon was not the dupe of this church-going mummery of his wife, whom
he ordered his spies to watch; these were unfortunate enough to discover
that she went to the Mass more to fill her appointments with her lovers
than to pray to her Saviour; and that even by the side of her mother she
read billets-doux and love-letters when that pious lady supposed that she
read her prayers, because her eyes were fixed upon her breviary. Without
relating to any one this discovery of his Josephine’s frailties,
Napoleon, after a violent connubial fracas and reprimand, and after a
solitary confinement of her for six days, gave immediate orders to have
the chapels of the Tuileries and of St. Cloud repaired; and until these
were ready, Cardinal Cambaceres and Bernier, by turns, said the Mass, in
her private apartments; where none but selected favourites or favoured
courtiers were admitted. Madame Napoleon now never neglects the Mass,
but if not accompanied by her husband is escorted by a guard of honour,
among whom she knows that he has several agents watching her motions and
her very looks.
In the month of June, 1803; I dined with Viscomte de Segur, and Joseph
and Lucien Bonaparte were among the guests. The latter jocosely remarked
with what facility the French Christians had suffered themselves to be
hunted in and out of their temples, according to the fanaticism or policy
of their rulers; which he adduced as a proof of the great progress of
philosophy and toleration in France. A young officer of the party,
Jacquemont, a relation of the former husband of the present Madame
Lucien, observed that he thought it rather an evidence of the
indifference of the French people to all religion; the consequence of the
great havoc the tenets of infidelity and of atheism had made among the
flocks of the faithful. This was again denied by Bonaparte’s
aide-de-camp, Savary, who observed that, had this been the case, the
First Consul (who certainly was as well acquainted with the religious
spirit of Frenchmen as anybody else) would not have taken the trouble to
conclude a religious concordat, nor have been at the expense of providing
for the clergy. To this assertion Joseph nodded an assent.
When the dinner was over, De Segur took me to a window, expressing his
uneasiness at what he called the imprudence of Jacquemont, who, he
apprehended, from Joseph’s silence and manner, would not escape
punishment for having indirectly blamed both the restorer of religion and
his plenipotentiary. These apprehensions were justified. On the next
day Jacquemont received orders to join the colonial depot at Havre; but
refusing to obey, by giving in his resignation as a captain, he was
arrested, shut up in the Temple, and afterwards transported to Cayenne or
Madagascar. His relatives and friends are still ignorant whether he is
dead or alive, and what is or has been his place of exile. To a petition
presented by Jacquemont’s sister, Madame de Veaux, Joseph answered that
“he never interfered with the acts of the haute police of his brother
Napoleon’s Government, being well convinced both of its justice and
moderation.”