The End of Apprenticeship.
The English Conquest of Corsica -- Effects in Italy -- The
Buonapartes at Toulon -- Napoleon Thwarted Again --
Departure for Paris -- His Character Determined -- His
Capacities -- Reaction From the "Terror" -- Resolutions of
the Convention -- Parties in France -- Their Lack of
Experience -- A New Constitution -- Different Views of Its
Value.
[Sidenote: 1795.]
The turmoils of civil war in France had now left Corsica to her own
pursuits for many months. Her internal affairs had gone from bad to
worse, and Paoli, unable to control his fierce and wilful people, had
found himself helpless. Compelled to seek the support of some strong
foreign power, he had instinctively turned to England, and the English
fleet, driven from Toulon, was finally free to help him. On February
seventeenth, 1794, it entered the fine harbor of St. Florent, and
captured the town without an effort. Establishing a depot which thus
separated the two remaining centers of French influence, Calvi and
Bastia, the English admiral next laid siege to the latter. The place
made a gallant defense, holding out for over three months, until on
May twenty-second Captain Horatio Nelson, who had virtually controlled
operations for eighty-eight days continuously,--nearly the entire
time,--directed the guns of the _Agamemnon_ with such destructive
force against the little city that when the land forces from St.
Florent appeared it was weakened beyond the power of resistance and
surrendered.[44] The terms made by its captors were the easiest known
to modern warfare, the conquered being granted all the honors of war.
As a direct and immediate result, the Corsican estates met, and
declared the island a constitutional monarchy under the protection of
England. Sir Gilbert Elliot was appointed viceroy, and Paoli was
recalled by George III to England. On August tenth fell Calvi, the
last French stronghold in the country, hitherto considered impregnable
by the Corsicans.
[Footnote 44: For a full account of these important
operations see Mahan: Life of Nelson, I, 123 _et seq._]
The presence of England so close to Italian shores immediately
produced throughout Lombardy and Tuscany a reaction of feeling in
favor of the French Revolution and its advanced ideas. The Committee
of Safety meant to take advantage of this sentiment and reduce the
Italian powers to the observance of strict neutrality at least, if
nothing more. They hoped to make a demonstration at Leghorn and punish
Rome for an insult to the republic still unavenged--the death of the
French minister, in 1793, at the hands of a mob; perhaps they might
also drive the British from Corsica. This explained the arrival of the
commissioners at Nice with the order to cease operations against
Sardinia and Austria, for the purpose of striking at English influence
in Italy, and possibly in Corsica.
Everything but one was soon in readiness. To meet the English fleet,
the shipwrights at Toulon must prepare a powerful squadron. They did
not complete their gigantic task until February nineteenth, 1795. We
can imagine the intense activity of any man of great power, determined
to reconquer a lost position: what Buonaparte's fire and zeal must
have been we can scarcely conceive; even his fiercest detractors bear
witness to the activity of those months. When the order to embark was
given, his organization and material were both as nearly perfect as
possible. His mother had brought the younger children to a charming
house near by, where she entertained the influential women of the
neighborhood; and thither her busy son often withdrew for the
pleasures of a society which he was now beginning thoroughly to enjoy.
Thanks to the social diplomacy of this most ingenious family,
everything went well for a time, even with Lucien; and Louis, now
sixteen, was made a lieutenant of artillery. At the last moment came
what seemed the climax of Napoleon's good fortune, the assurance that
the destination of the fleet would be Corsica. Peace was made with
Tuscany. Rome could not be reached without a decisive engagement with
the English; therefore the first object of the expedition would be to
engage the British squadron which was cruising about Corsica. Victory
would of course mean entrance into Corsican harbors.
On March eleventh the new fleet set sail. In its very first encounter
with the English on March thirteenth the fleet successfully
manoeuvered and just saved a fine eighty-gun ship, the _Ça Ira_, from
capture by Nelson. Next day there was a partial fleet action which
ended in a disaster, and two fine ships were captured, the _Ça Ira_
and the _Censeur_; the others fled to Hyères, where the troops were
disembarked from their transports, and sent back to their posts.[45]
Naval operations were not resumed for three months. Once more
Buonaparte was the victim of uncontrollable circumstance. Destitute of
employment, stripped even of the little credit gained in the last
half-year,[46] he stood for the seventh time on the threshold of the
world, a suppliant at the door. In some respects he was worse equipped
for success than at the beginning, for he now had a record to
expunge. To an outsider the spring of 1795 must have appeared the most
critical period of his life.[47] He himself knew better; in fact, this
ill-fated expedition was probably soon forgotten altogether. In his
St. Helena reminiscences, at least, he never recalled it: at that time
he was not fond of mentioning his failures, little or great, being
chiefly concerned to hand himself down to history as a man of lofty
purposes and unsullied motives. Besides, he was never in the slightest
degree responsible for the terrible waste of millions in this
ill-starred maritime enterprise; all his own plans had been for the
conduct of the war by land.
[Footnote 45: Marmont: Mémoires, I, 77-78.]
[Footnote 46: Inspection report in Jung, II, 477. "Too
much ambition and intrigue for his advancement."]
[Footnote 47: He was far down the list, one hundred and
thirty-ninth in the line of promotion.]
The Corsican administration had always had in it at least one French
representative. Between the latest of these, Lacombe Saint-Michel, now
a member of the Committee of Safety, and the Salicetti party no love
was ever lost. It was a general feeling that the refugee Corsicans on
the Mediterranean shore were too near their home. They were always
charged with unscrupulous planning to fill their own pockets. Now,
somehow or other, inexplicably perhaps, but nevertheless certainly, a
costly expedition had been sent to Corsica under the impulse of these
very men, and it had failed. The unlucky adventurers had scarcely set
their feet on shore before Lacombe secured Buonaparte's appointment to
the Army of the West, where he would be far from old influences, with
orders to proceed immediately to his post. The papers reached
Marseilles, whither the Buonapartes had already betaken themselves,
during the month of April. On May second,[48] accompanied by Louis,
Junot, and Marmont, the broken general set out for Paris, where he
arrived with his companions eight days later, and rented shabby
lodgings in the Fossés-Montmartre, now Aboukir street. The style of
the house was Liberty Hotel.
[Footnote 48: Possibly the twelfth. See Jung, III, I.]
At this point Buonaparte's apprentice years may be said to have ended:
he was virtually the man he remained to the end. A Corsican by origin,
he retained the national sensibility and an enormous power of
endurance both physical and intellectual, together with the dogged
persistence found in the medieval Corsicans. He was devoted with
primitive virtue to his family and his people, but was willing to
sacrifice the latter, at least, to his ambition. His moral sense,
having never been developed by education, and, worse than that, having
been befogged by the extreme sensibility of Rousseau and by the chaos
of the times which that prophet had brought to pass, was practically
lacking. Neither the hostility of his father to religion, nor his own
experiences with the Jesuits, could, however, entirely eradicate a
superstition which passed in his mind for faith. Sometimes he was a
scoffer, as many with weak convictions are; but in general he
preserved a formal and outward respect for the Church. He was,
however, a stanch opponent of Roman centralization and papal
pretensions. His theoretical education had been narrow and one-sided;
but his reading and his authorship, in spite of their superficial and
desultory character, had given him certain large and fairly definite
conceptions of history and politics. But his practical education! What
a polishing and sharpening he had had against the revolving world
moving many times faster then than in most ages! He was an adept in
the art of civil war, for he had been not merely an interested
observer, but an active participant in it during five years in two
countries. Long the victim of wiles more secret than his own, he had
finally grown most wily in diplomacy; an ambitious politician, his
pulpy principles were republican in their character so far as they had
any tissue or firmness.
His acquisitions in the science of war were substantial and definite.
Neither a martinet himself nor in any way tolerant of routine,
ignorant in fact of many hateful details, among others of obedience,
he yet rose far above tradition or practice in his conception of
strategy. He was perceptibly superior to the world about him in almost
every aptitude, and particularly so in power of combination, in
originality, and in far-sightedness. He could neither write nor spell
correctly, but he was skilled in all practical applications of
mathematics: town and country, mountains and plains, seas and rivers,
were all quantities in his equations. Untrustworthy himself, he strove
to arouse trust, faith, and devotion in those about him; and
concealing successfully his own purpose, he read the hearts of others
like an open book. Of pure-minded affection for either men or women he
had so far shown only a little, and had experienced in return even
less; but he had studied the arts of gallantry, and understood the
leverage of social forces. To these capacities, some embryonic, some
perfectly formed, add the fact that he was now a cosmopolitan, and
there will be outline, relief, and color to his character. "I am in
that frame of mind," he said of himself about this time, "in which men
are when on the eve of battle, with a persistent conviction that since
death is imminent in the end, to be uneasy is folly. Everything makes
me brave death and destiny; and if this goes on, I shall in the end,
my friend, no longer turn when a carriage passes. My reason is
sometimes astonished at all this; but it is the effect produced on me
by the moral spectacle of this land [_ce pays-ci_, not _patrie_], and
by the habit of running risks." This is the power and the temper of a
man of whom an intimate and confidential friend predicted that he
would never stop short until he had mounted either the throne or the
scaffold.
The overthrow of Robespierre was the result of an alliance between
what have been called the radicals and the conservatives in the
Convention. Both were Jacobins, for the Girondists had been
discredited, and put out of doors. It was not, however, the
Convention, but Paris, which took command of the resulting movement.
The social structure of France has been so strong, and the nation so
homogeneous, that political convulsions have had much less influence
there than elsewhere. But the "Terror" had struck at the heart of
nearly every family of consequence in the capital, and the people were
utterly weary of horrors. The wave of reaction began when the would-be
dictator fell. A wholesome longing for safety, with its attendant
pleasures, overpowered society, and light-heartedness returned.
Underneath this temper lay but partly concealed a grim determination
not to be thwarted, which awed the Convention. Slowly, yet surely, the
Jacobins lost their power. As once the whole land had been mastered by
the idea of "federation," and as a later patriotic impulse had given
as a watchword "the nation," so now another refrain was in every
mouth--"humanity." The very songs of previous stages, the "Ça ira" and
the "Carmagnole," were displaced by new and milder ones. With Paris in
this mood, it was clear that the proscribed might return, and the
Convention, for its intemperate severity, must abdicate.
This, of course, meant a new political experiment; but being, as they
were, sanguine admirers of Rousseau, the French felt no apprehension
at the prospect. The constitution of the third republic in France has
been considered a happy chance by many. Far from being perfectly
adapted to the needs of the nation, the fine qualities it possesses
are the outcome, not of chance, nor of theory, but of a century's
experience. It should be remembered that France in the eighteenth
century had had no experience whatever of constitutional government,
and the spirit of the age was all for theory in politics. Accordingly
the democratic monarchy of 1791 had failed because, its framework
having been built of empty visions, its constitution was entirely in
the air. The same fate had now overtaken the Girondist experiment of
1792 and the Jacobin usurpation of the following year, which was
ostensibly sanctioned by the popular adoption of a new constitution.
With perfect confidence in Rousseau's idea that government is based on
a social contract between individuals, the nation had sworn its
adhesion to two constitutions successively, and had ratified the act
each time by appropriate solemnities. Already the bubble of such a
conception had been punctured. Was it strange that the Convention
determined to repeat the same old experiment? Not at all. They knew
nothing better than the old idea, and never doubted that the fault
lay, not in the system, but in its details; they believed they could
improve on the work of their predecessors by the change and
modification of particulars. Aware, therefore, that their own day had
passed, they determined, before dissolving, to construct a new and
improved form of government. The work was confided to a committee of
eleven, most of whom were Girondists recalled for the purpose in order
to hoodwink the public. They now separated the executive and judiciary
from each other and from the legislature, divided the latter into two
branches, so as to cool the heat of popular sentiment before it was
expressed in statutes, and, avoiding the pitfall dug for itself by
the National Assembly, made members of the Convention eligible for
election under the new system.
If the monarchy could have been restored at the same time, these
features of the new charter would have reproduced in France some
elements of the British constitution, and its adoption would probably
have pacified the dynastic rulers of Europe. But the restoration of
monarchy in any form was as yet impossible. The Bourbons had utterly
discredited royalty, and the late glorious successes had been won
partly by the lavish use in the enemy's camp of money raised and
granted by radical democrats, partly by the prowess of enthusiastic
republicans. The compact, efficient organization of the national army
was the work of the Jacobins, and while the Mountain was discredited
in Paris, it was not so in the provinces; moreover, the army which was
on foot and in the field was in the main a Jacobin army. Royalty was
so hated by most Frenchmen that the sad plight of the child dauphin,
dying by inches in the Temple, awakened no compassion, and its next
lineal representative was that hated thing, a voluntary exile; the
nobility, who might have furnished the material for a French House of
Lords, were traitors to their country, actually bearing arms in the
levies of her foes. The national feeling was a passion; Louis XVI had
been popular enough until he had outraged it first by ordering the
Church to remain obedient to Rome, and then by appealing to foreign
powers for protection. The emigrant nobles had stumbled over one
another in their haste to manifest their contempt for nationality by
throwing themselves into the arms of their own class in foreign lands.
Moreover, another work of the Revolution could not be undone. The
lands of both the emigrants and the Church had either been seized and
divided among the adherents of the new order, or else appropriated to
state uses. Restitution was out of the question, for the power of the
new owners was sufficient to destroy any one who should propose to
take away their possessions. This is a fact particularly to be
emphasized, because, making all allowances, the subsequent history of
France has been determined by the alliance of a landed peasantry with
the petty burghers of the cities and towns. What both have always
desired is a strong hand in government which assures their property
rights. Whenever any of the successive forms and methods has failed
its fate was doomed. In this temper of the masses, in the flight of
the ruling class, in the distemper of the radical democracy, a
constitutional monarchy was unthinkable. A presidential government on
the model of that devised and used by the United States was equally
impossible, because the French appear already to have had a
premonition or an instinct that a ripe experience of liberty was
essential to the working of such an institution. The student of the
revolutionary times will become aware how powerful the feeling already
was among the French that a single strong executive, elected by the
masses, would speedily turn into a tyrant. They have now a nominal
president; but his election is indirect, his office is representative,
not political, and his duties are like an impersonal, colorless
reflection of those performed by the English crown. The
constitution-makers simply could not fall back on an experience of
successful free government which did not exist. Absolute monarchy had
made gradual change impossible, for oppression dies only in
convulsions. Experience was in front, not behind, and must be gained
through suffering.
It was therefore a grim necessity which led the Thermidorians of the
Convention to try another political nostrum. What should it be? There
had always been a profound sense in France of her historic continuity
with Rome. Her system of jurisprudence, her speech, her church, her
very land, were Roman. Recalling this, the constitution-framers also
recollected that these had been the gifts of imperial and Christian
Rome. It was a curious but characteristic whim which consequently
suggested to the enemies of ecclesiasticism the revival of Roman forms
dating from the heathen commonwealth. This it was which led them to
commit the administration of government in both external and internal
relations to a divided executive. There, however, the resemblance to
Rome ended, for instead of two consuls there were to be five
directors. These were to sit as a committee, to appoint their own
ministerial agents, together with all officers and officials of the
army, and to fill the few positions in the administrative departments
which were not elective, except those in the treasury, which was a
separate, independent administration. All executive powers except
those of the treasury were likewise to be in their hands. They were to
have no veto, and their treaties of peace must be ratified by the
legislature; but they could declare war without consulting any one.
The judiciary was to be elected directly by the people, and the judges
were to hold office for about a year. The legislature was to be
separated into a senate with two hundred and fifty members, called the
Council of Ancients, which had the veto power, and an assembly called
the Council of Juniors, or, more popularly, from its number, the Five
Hundred, which had the initiative in legislation. The members of the
former must be at least forty years old and married; every aspirant
for a seat in the latter must be twenty-five and of good character.
Both these bodies were alike to be elected by universal suffrage
working indirectly through secondary electors, and limited by
educational and property qualifications. There were many wholesome
checks and balances. This constitution is known as that of I
Vendémiaire, An IV, or September twenty-second, 1795. It became
operative on October twenty-sixth.
The scheme was formed, as was intended, under Girondist influence, and
was acceptable to the nation as a whole. In spite of many defects, it
might after a little experience have been amended so as to work, if
the people had been united and hearty in its support. But they were
not. The Thermidorians, who were still Jacobins at heart, ordered that
at least two-thirds of the men elected to sit in the new houses should
have been members of the Convention, on the plea that they alone had
sufficient experience of affairs to carry on the public business, at
least for the present. Perhaps this was intended as some offset to the
enforced closing of the Jacobin Club on November twelfth, 1794, due to
menaces by the higher classes of Parisian society, known to history as
"the gilded youth." On the other hand, the royalists saw in the new
constitution an instrument ready to their hand, should public opinion,
in its search for means to restore quiet and order, be carried still
further away from the Revolution than the movement of Thermidor had
swept it. Their conduct justified the measures of the Jacobins.