Part 37

Upon this Bonaparte wrote to the Senate that he preferred to appeal to the people to know if he should impose upon himself the sacrifice of prolonging his magistracy. Using the more pliable Council of State, Cambacérès extracted from them an edict for a plébiscite to be submitted to the people, who were asked whether the First Consul should be named for life and whether he should be allowed to designate his successor. After these illegal preliminaries, for there was no formal authority for the plébiscite from the representative bodies, the single question of the consulate for life was voted upon on August 2, 1802, with the result that there were 3,568,885 affirmative votes and 8374 negative. The increase in affirmative votes of 500,000 over the plébiscite of two years before, shows how many royalists had rallied to the consular system, in response to the favor shown them by the amnesty lately given to émigrés and to manifest their appreciation of the Concordat by which the First Consul had made his peace with the Church.

It is significant that on the registers almost none of the names of members of the Constituent Assembly or of the Convention appear. The men of 1789 had accepted the Consulate two years before, but they now abstained from voting. Of the negative votes most came from the army. At Ajaccio, Bonaparte’s native city, out of 300 men of the garrison there were 66 noes. Among others, Lafayette voted against the project, stating in a letter to Bonaparte that the 19th Brumaire had saved France, that the dictatorship had healed its ills, but that he did not wish to accept, as the final result of the revolution, an “arbitrary government.”

The next step was to secure the right of appointing a successor. Bonaparte had shown at first an apparent reluctance to accept the suggestion, when it was made as a proposition to be submitted to the people. Now, when it was made a part of a measure entitled “Organic changes in the Constitution of the year VIII” (i.e., 1800), it was passed without any real debate by the Council of State and accepted by the Senate without discussion. At the same time it was arranged that nominations to the Senate were to be made from a list prepared by the First Consul; this practically meant, as the Senate’s membership was still far short of its full quota, that the right assigned to it of accepting or rejecting the successor of the First Consul was only nominal. This situation of dependence made the Senate a useful body to Bonaparte; accordingly its constitutional powers were increased, it being given among other new prerogatives the right of dissolving the Tribunate and the Legislative Body. The Senate’s omnipotence simply concealed the figure of the First Consul, who set his puppets there in motion.

So reconstructed, the whole machine worked marvelously. The Council of State, after showing signs of independence, was made a purely decorative body, its real power being handed over to a private council named by the First Consul. The Tribunate was to be reduced to fifty members after a short interval. All relics of direct popular election disappeared, and to the functions of the First Consul were added the rights of ratifying treaties and remitting judicial sentences.

As a sop to public opinion, the number of electors, who chose the lists of candidates from which were selected the officials in the local and central government, was increased, largely by doing away with the property qualification, a curious feature of the early more radical republican constitutions. There were, it is true, elections, electors, and elected candidates, but all were under the direct or indirect control of the arch manipulator, the First Consul, who crowned the whole system.

From this period begins the departure from the external signs of republican simplicity. The First Consul was no longer Citizen Bonaparte, but Napoleon Bonaparte; the anniversary of his birth was celebrated by a ministerial decree. Like a sovereign the new ruler had his civil list, and in his residence, the Tuileries, he began to display the ostentatious character of court life. Military dress was abandoned, and it began to be the fashion again to wear one’s hair in a cue and to use powder, although the First Consul still appeared with his own hair dressed in the revolutionary manner. Josephine took much interest in reorganizing her household after the model of the old régime; in the exercise of her taste she was allowed to go far, but it was remarked that women had no political influence in the new court.

Judged by contemporary opinion, one of the plainest steps taken by Bonaparte towards a monarchy was the inauguration of the Legion of Honor, having at its head the First Consul, assisted by a great council, subordinate to which there were 1500 posts, each with 27 officers of various degrees, and 350 legionaries. This institution, which was endowed by national funds, was composed of members distinguished by their services to the Republic either as soldiers or as civilians. They pledged themselves among other things to oppose any enterprise tending to re-establish the feudal system, or proposing to reproduce the titles and the characteristics by which feudalism was marked, and to do everything in their power to maintain liberty and equality.

But these republican sentiments did not protect the measure from criticism. It was opposed both in the Council of State and in the Tribunate, where there was only a majority of sixteen in its favor when it was finally passed. Even the Legislative Body made difficulties, as is seen in their recorded vote of 170 for and 110 against. But it was not only from such shadows of representative government as were still permitted to linger on, that opposition came to Bonaparte’s personal rule. Moreau, the hero of the Hohenlinden campaign, was known to have sturdy republican sentiments. Moreover, there was Bernadotte, the commander of the eastern army, who was openly discontented and was supposed by many to have instigated a plot against the First Consul at Rennes. There were, indeed, a series of military plots at this time, but the knowledge of their existence was suppressed by the government, whose object it was to impress on public opinion at home and abroad the popularity of the consular system.

The Legislative Body and the Tribunate busied themselves with subordinate affairs such as laws governing the practice of medicine and the organization of a notary public system. In the Senate the hand of the First Consul was seen in the liberal financial provisions for certain senators, who were allowed a suitable house and 25,000 francs annual income. Of course the selection of the beneficiaries of these favors was left to the First Consul. There was no reluctance in voting money and troops for the defense of the state, for by this time Bonaparte’s personal policy and the national interests were closely identified.

This feeling of loyalty was all the more intensified when, after war broke out again with England, the British government took a hand in encouraging the schemes of various royalist groups. Among these were some irreconcilable survivors of the Vendéan insurrection, led by Cadoudal, who planned to remove Bonaparte by assassination, after which it was assumed that a Bourbon restoration would follow as a matter of course. Pichegru, an old revolutionary general, was an accomplice, and the conspirators made an effort to secure the coöperation of Moreau, but failed. Learning through his spies of this invitation, and glad of a plea to rid himself of a rival, Bonaparte had Moreau arrested, though he knew his innocence, and instigated a bitter press campaign against him. Police agents encouraged the plot, hoping that some of the Bourbon princes, certain of its success, might cross from England to France, in expectation of Bonaparte’s death.

In this atmosphere of plots, Bonaparte seems to have lost his head, and to have descended to the weapons of revenge handed down among the clansmen of his native island when they settled their domestic feuds. One member of the Bourbon house was from this point of view as good as any other, when it was a question of proving the capacity of the government to deal with its monarchical enemies. The nearest victim was selected for a stroke worthy of Cæsar Borgia--the Duke d’Enghien, a distant relative of the direct heirs of the old monarchy, who had been living quietly for two years at Ettenheim in Baden. A detachment of dragoons was sent across the frontier, into the territory of a small state, at peace with France, and arrested the young prince, March 15, 1804. The papers that were found showed clearly that the Duke was not involved in the plot in any way, but in spite of this evidence of non-culpability, he was tried by a commission made up of colonels of the regiments of the Paris garrison.

The prisoner was shot six days after his arrest, the sentence being executed at the château of Vincennes. Though freed from any complicity in the Pichegru plot, the Duke d’Enghien had tried to enter the service of England against France; he had also fought against the French Republic as an émigré, so whatever may be said in criticism of the abject subservience of the officers who acted as judges in the court-martial, it must be remembered that the law of the revolutionary period, by which the death penalty was inflicted upon any Frenchman engaged in open warfare against his country, had never been abrogated. Probably it was to this justification of his act that Napoleon referred when he refused to listen to Josephine’s entreaties in behalf of the Bourbon prince. “I am,” he said, “a man of the State. I am the French Revolution, and I shall uphold it.” These words were spoken in a moment of typical exaltation. After many years had passed he commented in the following way on his action: “The deserved death of the Duc d’Enghien hurt Napoleon in public opinion, and was of no use to him politically.” There soon followed a report of Pichegru’s suicide in his prison, a way of accounting for his death which, after the execution of the Bourbon Duke, it was hard to accept as satisfactory. Many believed that he was assassinated at Bonaparte’s command because the publicity of an open trial was dreaded.

V THE INAUGURATION OF THE EMPIRE

From the excitement caused by these conspiracies came the movement which led to the inauguration of the empire. Petitions were drawn up asking that the consulate should be made hereditary in the Bonaparte family; there was considerable reluctance in using explicitly the word “empire,” and there was much wavering and intrigue before a member of the Tribunate, Curie, offered a resolution on the 23rd of April, 1804, according to the terms of which Napoleon Bonaparte, the then First Consul, should be declared Emperor of the French, and the imperial dignity should remain hereditary in his family. Carnot was the only member who argued against the change, but his plea in behalf of a régime of liberty found no supporters, though he pointed out in frank language that the movement in favor of hereditary monarchy was fictitious, because freedom of the press no longer existed. The Senate acted quickly on the motion from the one popular body that now was in session, for the Legislative Body was adjourned. A decree establishing the imperial constitution was passed on May 18, 1804. The measure was to be submitted to popular approval, but from the date of its passage Bonaparte received the title of Emperor of the French, and the empire actually came into existence. The international situation played a considerable part in forcing the abandonment of the few remaining vestiges of a republican system. Bonaparte had no desire to maintain for any length of time the pose of an apostle of peace, which for the sake of popularity he had assumed, while the negotiations at Amiens were in progress. England, too, had no wish to fulfil the engagements of that treaty, by which her power would be diminished. She was interested in keeping both Malta and Alexandria, and her promise of non-intervention on the Continent was very liberally interpreted by her government.

In the light of Bonaparte’s own policy a strict interpretation of engagements would have been indeed a counsel of perfection, for his plans for the expansion of France were not modeled on the traditions of the eighteenth-century system of balance of power. He had schemes for controlling the Mississippi valley, and he also elaborated a revival of French colonial policy in which the possession of San Domingo was the chief factor. When the revolted slaves of that island made it impossible for the French troops to keep French administration intact, Bonaparte gave up the enterprise, and sold Louisiana to the United States for 80,000,000 francs. French agents and officers were sent to the east of the Mediterranean and to India, with instructions obviously intended to work for the downfall of British power and influence. Only a month after the treaty of Amiens was signed, General Decaen, notorious for his Anglophobia, was despatched to India, with secret instructions to get into touch with the Indian princes who were hostile to England’s rule, with the object of forming an alliance among them. Moreover, the official government paper, the _Moniteur_, took no pains to disguise the intention of the First Consul to organize, on the first opportunity, a second expedition for the conquest of Egypt.

On the continent of Europe, too, French aggression proceeded without any disguise. Holland had virtually become a French dependency; and it was now endowed with a consular régime. In Italy, Victor Emmanuel, the King of Sardinia, was deposed, and his territories were annexed to France. Not contented with being president of the Cisalpine Republic, Bonaparte treated the rest of the peninsula as a subject territory and sent garrisons to the south to important points in the Kingdom of Naples. Just as plain was his attitude towards Switzerland, where he made use of the internal dissensions in the cantons to increase French influence. He told the Swiss delegates, when he had selected himself to act as mediator in their disputes, that Europe recognized Italy, Holland, and Switzerland as being under French control. “I will never tolerate,” he added, “any other influence in Switzerland but mine, if it is to cost me 100,000 men.”

As to Germany, the rôle of protector and disposer of the smaller German states was ostentatiously assumed. Russia, which had been given by the treaty of Lunéville conjoint power with France in the rearrangement of the petty German principalities, was treated with small consideration. The work was done by Bonaparte, and its drastic character can be measured by the statistics of the changes carried out under French direction. In the eighteenth century there were from eighteen to nineteen hundred autonomous sovereignties in Germany; only thirty-nine survived in Bonaparte’s “New Model,” among them being six free cities and one ecclesiastical domain. By these changes Prussia profited considerably, but even more so Bavaria, because of its well-known friendship for France.

Under the cover of the Peace of Amiens, Bonaparte had become dictator of a large part of Europe. Accordingly, when Lord Whitworth, the English ambassador, protested in the name of the existing treaties, Bonaparte replied, “I suppose you refer to Piedmont and Switzerland; they are trifles; this could have been foreseen during the negotiations.” The German publicist, Gentz, summarized the situation, without exaggerating it. “France,” he said, “has no longer any frontiers, since all that surrounds it is in fact, if not yet in name, its property and domain, or will become so at the first opportunity.”

On its side, England was far from scrupulous in observing the terms of the Amiens convention, and showed notorious unfriendliness to France in encouraging the various royalist plots against Bonaparte’s life. Besides, the terms of the treaty were not carried out as regards the evacuation of Malta or as to the conditions made for restoring to the French certain towns in India. What was especially irritating to the British government and people was Bonaparte’s plan to develop French industry by adopting a protective system. He not only refused to sign any treaty of commerce with England, but took active measures to close the ports of France and of the states dependent on her to the products of English industry. A violent press campaign was inaugurated in London against the policy of the Consulate, couched in unsparing language against Bonaparte’s character and ambitions. He, on his side, took up a truculent attitude, saying in so many words that England’s effort to secure new allies would force him to conquer Europe and to revive the Empire of the West.

In the spring of 1803, the final rupture came with a message from George III that the security of England was menaced by France. The outbreak of hostilities was marked by the seizure on England’s side, without any declaration of war, of 1200 French and Dutch merchant ships. Bonaparte replied to this act of piracy by another in kind, though a more original violation of international justice; he arrested all the subjects of England who were to be found on French territory, and prohibited the purchase of any article of British manufacture. The next step was to prepare for an invasion of England from the Channel ports and for the military occupation of Hanover, an appanage of the British crown. On the Continent, Pitt formed an alliance against the aggressions of France, known as the Third Coalition. Austria, Prussia, Sweden, and Naples prepared to act together, the chief military contingents being supplied by Austria with three armies amounting in all to 130,000 men, and by Russia, which promised four armies.

As England controlled the sea power, Bonaparte’s preparations to invade it were futile, though 2343 transports were collected, and for many months an army of 120,000 were kept in training for the passage over the Channel. But there was no adequate protecting fleet, and the French officers showed no ability in using the vessels under their command. The entrance to the Channel was guarded by English ships; all the French ports were blockaded, and Villeneuve, the French admiral, in an engagement off Trafalgar, was decisively beaten by Nelson, with a loss of twenty men-of-war, out of a combined French and Spanish fleet of thirty-five. Villeneuve was made the scapegoat for the failure of the plan to invade England, but the scheme was a chimerical one from the start, viewed in the light of the experiences of French armies in San Domingo and in Egypt, where they were cut off from their base. Many critics are, therefore, willing to believe that Napoleon was not sorry to have been relieved by the loss of his fleet from undertaking a spectacular but most hazardous adventure.

Before the battle of Trafalgar, October 20, 1805, while Napoleon was at Boulogne, he dictated a plan evidently the result of long consideration, containing the most exact details for the march of his army to the Danube. In the meantime, the Austrians had invaded Bavaria, had taken possession of Ulm, and were awaiting the French in the defiles of the Black Forest. With wonderful speed, precision, and secrecy enveloping operations were carried out, by which Mack, the Austrian general, who supposed the French army was near Strassburg, when it had already cut his communications far to the east of his forces, was surrounded and forced to capitulate. In this short campaign of three weeks, 100,000 Austrians had been dispersed by remarkable strategical movements, extending over a stretch of country several hundred miles wide. Not an error had been committed, not a combination had failed. The soldiers truly said, “The Emperor has beaten the enemy by our legs.”

Now that the Austrians were destroyed as a military entity, the Russian armies in Austria remained to be attacked. By a series of forced marches Vienna was reached by the middle of November without any general engagement. The plan of the Austrian and Russian generals was to cut off Napoleon, when he advanced farther into the heart of the empire, in much the same way as he had treated Mack. They had the advantage in numbers, for the French army now was only 68,000, while the allies had 90,000. The co-operation of Prussia was expected by the allies, if the Russians could win a victory, and with this additional strength it was hoped that the whole French army would ultimately be forced to capitulate.

But Napoleon moved from Vienna with great rapidity and brought on a decisive engagement at Austerlitz. Everything was done to increase the confidence of the allies. They knew that the French were reduced, by the detaching of thousands of men, needed to occupy Vienna and to keep in check various divisions of the Austrian forces. In some skirmishes the Austro-Russians were allowed to win small advantages, to put them off their guard, and to induce them to offer battle on unfavorable terms. Their two wings were adroitly separated from the center by the French troops giving way at an opportune moment. Napoleon took advantage of this weakness of the enemy’s center, while his commanders were preventing the detached portion of the enemy’s forces from returning to the main body, to drive the Russians, opposite him, on the frozen surfaces of various ponds in the battlefield. He then used his artillery to break the surface of the ice and so drowned several thousand of the enemy.

This brilliant engagement, fought on December 2, 1805, cost the allies 15,000 men in killed and wounded, 20,000 prisoners, 45 standards, and 140 cannon. Napoleon, delighted that the allies had walked into the trap prepared for them, commended in the order of the day following the battle, the conduct of his men. “I am contented with you,” he said. “You have, on the great day of Austerlitz, justified what I expected from your valor. When I lead you back to France, my people will see you again with joy. It will only be necessary for you to say ‘I was at the battle of Austerlitz’ for the reply to be made, ‘There is a brave man.’” The Emperor might well be satisfied, for the renewal of warfare had not been popular in France, where the defeat at Trafalgar had caused depression and anxiety. Now all was forgotten in the glorious victory which again placed the Austrian Empire at the mercy of the conqueror.