Part 36

As soon as this was done, there was a great display of military activity. The city was placed in a state of siege, and care was taken that the minority of the Directors should be kept as virtual prisoners in the Luxembourg. The opponents of the change in the Five Hundred had time enough to prepare for resistance, and they did not propose to annul the existing constitution on the basis of a rumor. Napoleon appeared first before the Ancients, where he made an incoherent speech, and showed himself unable to name the conspirators he charged with disloyalty against the country. When he was ushered into the Hall where the Five Hundred were in session, the whole body had just sworn allegiance to the Directorial Constitution. Walking between four grenadiers, his diminutive figure added no gravity to the scene; he was pale, disturbed, and undecided. The members refused to listen to him, and cried “outlaw” or “down with the traitor.” It is alleged that in the tumult daggers were drawn, and that Napoleon was in personal danger, as his adversaries closed round him. But all that happened, according to the most reliable witnesses, was that Napoleon and his escort were jostled and finally ejected from the hall. One grenadier, it is known, had the sleeve of his coat torn. Lucien, who rose to defend his brother, was hissed, and finally gave up his place as presiding officer. Another conspirator, when he refused to pass a motion depriving Napoleon of his command, was replaced by Lucien Bonaparte, who, on his part, collapsed from the nervous strain when he was bidden to put the motion declaring Napoleon an outlaw. He was allowed to go out and find his brother, so that the whole matter might be peaceably settled without extreme measures being taken.

In the meantime the leading conspirator, Napoleon, was suffering from a nervous crisis. When he was outside the hall, he appeared to observers as if he were walking in his sleep; upon trying to address his troops from horseback, he fell to the ground. Lucien just then came on the scene and conveyed him to a room in the palace, where Siéyès said to him: “They wish to put you outside the law; we’ll put them outside the hall.” The story of the display of daggers was now concocted, and Napoleon’s troops were told of the danger their commander had been in. Lucien directed the soldiers to go into the hall and clear out the legislature. This order was executed by two companies of armed grenadiers, who, despite the protests of the deputies, pushed them good-humoredly out of the building, taking some of the members who resisted, in their arms.

The Ancients set forward their part of the revolution by voting the suppression of the Directory, by appointing an executive commission of three members, and by demanding the adjournment of the whole legislative body. But to give the transaction a specious form of legality, Lucien called some of the members of the Five Hundred together, and they, under his direction, proceeded to behave as if they were a majority. An executive consular commission was appointed, composed of Siéyès, Ducas, and Bonaparte, to be called the Consuls of the French Republic. During the adjournment of the legislature, the powers of that body were to be exercised by a commission composed of twenty-five members of each branch. These two commissions were to decide on the measures initiated by the Consuls in matters of administration and finance and also on the changes in the constitution required to free it from its imperfections. This proposal was accepted by the Ancients, and the three Consuls swore to be faithful to the republic, one and undivided, to liberty, to equality, and to the representative system.

The news of the suppression of the Directorial régime caused suspense, but little excitement. People were puzzled rather than alarmed; there had been so many transformations since 1789 that one more seemed hardly irregular. Besides, the Directory had often violated their own constitution; hence the illegality in their suppression was regarded as nothing strange. The Paris workmen stayed quietly in their quarters; there was no Jacobin Club to champion the cause of the radicals or to act as a center of protest. Financial circles were reassured, when government securities rose; there was a difference of seven francs between the quotations on the 17th Brumaire and 24th of the same month.

The royalists were happy, for they were naïve enough to believe that Napoleon would play the rôle of General Monk in a Bourbon restoration. On the whole, at Paris and in the country, the masses of the people were apathetic; some clubs here and there protested and called upon the citizens to arm themselves in defense of the dead government, while some departmental officials were dismissed, because they questioned the legality of the changes at Paris. But nowhere was there anything like an uprising in behalf of the Directory, which too forcibly recalled the terrible years of revolutionary experience.

IV THE FIRST CONSUL

The provisional consuls remained in control from November 11 to December 24, 1799. Napoleon presided at the first meeting because his name began with “B,” it having been arranged that the consular power should be exercised in alphabetical order. The Consuls seemed to have no more authority than the Directors they had superseded. Governmental policy was still anonymous. Napoleon never appeared in public life except with his two colleagues, and his influence was exerted altogether in military affairs, in which he exercised the functions that Carnot had held under the Committee of Public Safety. He dressed as a civilian, not as a general. Moreover, the Consuls showed themselves most conciliatory; they published no magniloquent program and behaved as if the lawlessness which had ushered in their rule was something foreign to their own desires. No one talked of a military dictatorship; there was, indeed, a studied moderation in the new government. It is true a few Jacobins were placed under police supervision, but some of the members of the revolutionary convention were used as agents to reassure the good republicans throughout the country. Among the deputies who had been expelled on the famous 19th Brumaire, several made their peace with the government, while the irreconcilables carefully avoided any overt acts in opposing it. The republican tradition was maintained by manifestoes against superstition and the émigrés. An era of good feeling was now ushered in most auspiciously.

Napoleon seemed to be content with the rôle of a Washington, but the moment he saw there was no fear of resistance he took steps to secure the adoption of a constitution fitted to make him the master of France. The machinery for this purpose was near at hand in the two legislative commissions mentioned above. Siéyès was working hard on a model constitution which was to be a marvelous harmony of various democratic principles. According to this scheme the people were to draw up a list of candidates, while an elector chose from the list those who should carry on the administration. The government was placed in the hands of a Council of State, there were additional bodies to act as representatives or as checks to keep the proper balance and to repress personal ambition and demagoguery. There was, besides this, a scheme to revive the Directory with the names of its constituent parts changed.

Bonaparte, who saw no chance for personal rule in either of these proposals, organized a small sub-committee to which he presented a scheme of his own, that never really went before either of the committees in a regular session, but was signed individually by the members under pressure from him. It was carefully planned, but the project that had such an irregular origin was nothing more than a sham constitution. It contained no declaration of rights and had no reference to liberty of the press. But the most shrewdly planned scheme for centralizing the power in the hands of one man was revealed in the so-called electoral provisions, by which the citizens of each district prepared, by voting for one-tenth of their number, a communal list from which all officials were to be selected. This system was carried through several gradations, until a national list was reached, from which all the higher popular representatives were to be chosen. The right of nomination from these various lists was conferred, in vague and ambiguous language, upon the First Consul. After the lists were once drawn up no further change could be made in these provisions.

Bonaparte transferred to himself the right of appointing all the local officials, the members of municipal and departmental councils, and so by a stroke of his pen deprived France of all trace of local government. His plan brought into existence an intensified centralization such as the country had not known, even under the ancient monarchy. All laws had to be proposed by the executive government; among the various representative bodies, the Senate, Council of State, Tribunate, and Legislative bodies, power was so divided that no single one had an effective initiative.

All the real power was placed by the constitution under the control of the First Consul. According to Article 41, the First Consul promulgated the laws; he nominated and recalled at will the members of the Council of State, ministers, ambassadors and chief foreign agents, the officers of the army and navy, the members of the local administration, and the legal solicitors of the government. He named all the civil and communal judges of the Court of Appeal. As to the second and third Consuls, they had only a consultative share in the executive power; to the Senate was given the function of selecting the three Consuls, but the constitution itself designated those who were to be invested with the authority for the first period of ten years. They were Bonaparte, Cambacérès, and Le Brun.

The constitution was presented to the people for a “plébiscite;” that is each citizen was to inscribe opposite his name on a register “yes” or “no.” But this was not done everywhere on the same day; in fact, it lasted several weeks, and so there was time to put pressure on different localities, and also an arrangement was made by which the new government was installed before the plébiscite was completed. Most Frenchmen wanted peace at home and abroad, and as the government was adopting a general policy of reconciliation, they were glad to give it their support, all the more because they had no real constitutional traditions and were sick of emotionalism and rhetoric. The result of the voting was 3,011,007 ayes and only 1562 noes. Among those on the affirmative side were a number of sturdy Jacobins.

In his administration, Bonaparte relied chiefly on the Council of State; he was in close relations with them, because all laws had to be drawn up in this body. He often presided at their meetings and in his remarks to them explained his ideas and his program. He did not hesitate to treat their projects as actual laws, although the constitution provided for a submission to other representative bodies.

One of the first acts of the new régime was the passing of severe press laws. Thirteen papers were allowed in Paris, but they were threatened with suppression if they published articles contrary to the respect due to the social compact, the sovereignty of the people, and the glory of the armies; or if they published attacks on the government or on nations friendly or allied with the Republic, even if the articles in question were taken from the foreign press. This enactment of 27 Nivose, year VIII, may be justly said to have inaugurated the Napoleonic despotism.

Another law presented and accepted was a measure which destroyed all communal and local rights, and turned over the whole administration in town and country to prefects and sub-prefects, appointed by, and responsible to, the central government. Mayors, acting mayors, and town and county councilmen were all appointed by either the First Consul or his appointees, the prefects.

The body known as the Tribunate, which discussed the laws and gave its opinion upon them, and the Legislative Chamber, which voted upon them without discussion, adopted this measure, the first with a strong minority against it, who voiced, by vigorous speeches, their protests against the suppression of all liberty. But the press was muzzled, and there was general satisfaction because of the admirable selection made by Napoleon for the subordinate officials. The new administration was simple and effective, and had not yet shown the possibilities of tyranny it contained.

As to the First Consul, though he took up his residence in the Tuileries, there was no consular court; republican etiquette was observed, and the title of citizen was still retained. When the news of Washington’s death reached Paris, mourning was ordered in the name of the principles of liberty and equality. But the new tendencies were shown in the favor extended by the First Consul to men of strong monarchical sympathies. Napoleon, however, was soon occupied with more momentous questions than the discovery of fresh means to paralyze republican institutions in France.

After the withdrawal of Russia from the anti-French coalition,--a step which was due to the victories of Masséna,--Austria, England, and some of the lesser states of Italy and Germany, kept up the conflict. Bonaparte had no desire to see the war terminated, but he so far bowed to public sentiment as to write letters to the King of England and to Francis II, the Emperor, suggesting a cessation of hostilities. England refused to make peace except on the condition that the Bourbons should be restored, and Austria declined to take any action without the consent of her ally. The publication of the correspondence appealed to French patriotism, and the answer of the nation was a vote of 200,000 conscripts to carry on the war.

For the purpose of invading France, Austria had two armies in the field, each of 120,000 men. The French forces under Moreau and Masséna were told off to keep the Austrians in check in Germany and along the Italian Riviera; Bonaparte himself planned with a third army to drive them out of Italy, in a second campaign which was to be the replica of his first in Italy. Both Moreau and Masséna showed great capacity in carrying out the strategical plans assigned to them. Bonaparte gathered together an army of 60,000 and suddenly crossed the St. Bernard pass by a march in which the French engineers showed remarkable skill in overcoming the natural difficulties of the way. The commander-in-chief made the passage on the back of a mule, as many tourists still do, led by a peasant-guide of the neighborhood. On the top, the soldiers were hospitably received at the famous monastery. The chief problem was to get the artillery over, and this was done by dismounting the guns and fastening them within hollowed-out trunks of trees. They were then dragged along the precipitous path by relays of 100 men.

While the Austrian general, Melas, was looking for the French along the Riviera road, Bonaparte was making his entrance into Milan, where the stupid excesses of recent Austrian rule had made the population forget the more intelligent or subtle tyranny of the French conqueror. Instead of rescuing Masséna, who was suffering the extremities of a siege at Genoa, he preferred to leave him to his fate and to risk deciding the campaign by a pitched battle with an enemy much stronger in numbers than himself. These hazards were plainly seen in the engagement that followed at Marengo on June 14, 1800. Three times the French were forced to withdraw, and Melas was sending off couriers to announce his victory, when Desaix, who had been sent, the day before, to Novi to prevent a turning movement on the part of the Austrians, heard the cannonading and came to the aid of his leader. A fresh charge was made, and the ground that had been lost was regained. The first to fall was Desaix, the man who had saved the day. The effect of the victory was instantaneous, for the day afterward, Melas signed an armistice, by which warfare was to be stopped for five months, in which time the Austrians were to evacuate the whole of Italy as far as the Mincio.

When the war was resumed later, French successes continued, until finally the whole of the Italian peninsula was brought once more under French control. After Marengo, the decisive battle of the campaign, which brought Austria to sue for peace, was Moreau’s victory at Hohenlinden, the 2d of December, 1800, on which occasion the Austrians lost in killed and wounded 20,000 men. The victory brought forth from Bonaparte the public acknowledgment, made before the legislative body, that Hohenlinden was one of the finest achievements in history, and he also wrote to Moreau saying that he, Bonaparte himself, had been outdone. He afterwards criticised Moreau, and ascribed his victory to mere chance, saying that his opponent, the archduke, had shown greater strategical ability than the commander of the French army.

As the result of these various operations, came the peace of Lunéville, February, 1801, which marked the complete humiliation of Austria. In its main lines it followed the stipulations of Campo Formio, but it added the demand that the Dutch and Swiss republics should be recognized as states under French protection. Moreover, the Pope was allowed to retain some of his territory, and the King of Naples also benefited by Napoleon’s moderation towards monarchical governments.

England, now left alone as the sole enemy of France, had been enabled, by her control of the sea, to make a clean sweep of the French colonies. She acquired Malta, and forced the French to abandon Egypt. But English supremacy at sea was resented on the Continent, a league of neutrals was formed, and the Russian government showed distinct signs of drawing towards France, after the refusal of England to restore Malta to its ancient owners, the Knights of St. John. Portugal was detached from England, and Spain was brought into such friendly relations that she ceded to France the territory of Louisiana, which had been in her possession since 1763.

England’s isolation was unpopular at home because the enormous accumulation of war debts was dreaded, and the threats of Napoleon to invade the country were taken seriously, after he had established an armed camp at Boulogne. William Pitt, the soul of resistance to France, had left the government on account of differences over the Irish question. His successor, Addington, was not averse to coming to an agreement. After the signing of certain preliminaries in London the terms of peace, as the result of a five months’ discussion between Lord Cornwallis and Joseph Bonaparte at Amiens, took the form of a treaty named from that place on March 25, 1802, between France, Spain, and the Dutch republic on one side, and England on the other. Most of the colonial conquests made by England were restored to their owners. Egypt was returned to Turkey, and England agreed to return Malta to the Knights of St. John and at the same time undertook not to interfere in the internal affairs of Holland, Germany, Switzerland, and the Italian republics.

Bonaparte became the hero of peace as he had been already of war. His popularity, due to his splendid achievements on the battlefield, was now enhanced by the victories of French diplomacy. His rule was firmly established; a new era of harmony and happiness seemed to be opening up under his auspices. His unconstitutional methods of government were forgotten in the brilliancy of his successes. But there were many things that showed his anti-republican animus, and his mania for autocratic rule. Before he set out for the Austrian campaign three Paris papers were suppressed, and censorship for the theaters was reintroduced. His taking command of the army was a step not contemplated by the constitution of which he was the author. While he was absent, it is true that the executive power was placed in the hands of Cambacérès, who proved so efficient that Bonaparte hurried back to Paris, immediately after Marengo, in order to resume the reins of government.

The members of the Tribunate showed their feelings by eulogizing the heroism of Desaix and relegating the First Consul to a second place. But Bonaparte’s return from Italy called forth a great wave of enthusiasm throughout the masses of the nation, that showed him he could go far in repressing the opposition of the republican party, which was strongly intrenched in the Tribunate. On December 24, 1800, the life of the chief executive had been endangered by a plot, and while Bonaparte was driving to the opera there was an explosion by which four people were killed and sixty wounded near his carriage.

Though it was clear that the authors of the outrage were royalist sympathizers, Bonaparte insisted that the Jacobins were its instigators, and took this opportunity of diminishing the ranks of the opposition by an edict of the Council of State, executed without the sanction of the Tribunate and Legislative Body, that deported 130 republicans to distant colonial possessions. Towards other less known opponents harsh measures were used, some of them being executed on charges of conspiracy, trumped up by the police. Even the wives and widows of former revolutionary leaders were imprisoned without trial, and fifty-two citizens notorious for their democratic sentiments were forbidden to reside in Paris or its neighborhood.

In certain parts of the country royalist brigands were at work, wreaking vengeance on individuals who had taken an active part in the revolution or pillaging the houses of those who had bought confiscated property. Taking advantage of the demand for increased security against such outrages, Bonaparte created special tribunals, in which the judges were partly army officers, authorized to deal with all crimes of a nature calculated to disturb the government. With such elastic provisions, it was easy to turn the machinery of these courts against obnoxious republicans. There was no appeal against the decision made by this body except on the ground of jurisdiction. In this way a sort of revolutionary tribunal was erected, which Bonaparte could use for the purpose of wreaking his own personal vengeance.

Opposition in the so-called representative bodies was crippled by various clever devices. For example, after the return from Italy, when the period had come for the retirement by lot of a fixed number of representatives in the Tribunate and the Legislative Body, the Senate, which was loyal because filled by nomination of the second and third Consuls, intervened and designated those of the representative chambers who should continue to hold office. In this way 320 men, who had made themselves obnoxious by their criticism or by their opposition, were got rid of. Yet even after this purification all independence was not destroyed. It was necessary to employ devious methods to secure for Bonaparte, after the peace of Amiens, his appointment as Consul for life. When the matter was proposed by Cambacérès, so often used as the First Consul’s agent rather than as his colleague, the Tribunate intimated that the recompenses for the First Consul’s services should be purely honorary. Even the Senate contented itself with re-electing Bonaparte for another term as First Consul in advance of the expiration of his first term of office.