Part 42

One of the first steps taken by Napoleon on his attainment of the supreme executive power was to make peace with the Church. Under the anti-religious legislation of the Revolution, in which most of the clergy and bishops had been declared outlaws, the social order had added to its other ills religious chaos. After the battle of Marengo in 1800, Napoleon, in an address to the clergy of Milan, laid down the following principles for his church policy: “No society can exist without morality, and there can be no good morality without religion. Religion alone gives the state a firm and stable support. A society without religion is like a vessel without a compass; France, taught by her misfortunes, has finally opened her eyes; she has recognized that the Catholic religion is, as it were, an anchor, that alone can keep her steady, in her time of stress.”

He had no purpose, however, to allow the Church to secure for itself an organization, that might appeal to the people, apart from or contrary to the government. His ideal was an ecclesiastical machine which could be controlled exactly as if it were a government department. Under such assumptions a concordat was arranged with the Papacy, whose power Napoleon respected. He ordered his agent at Rome, who conducted the negotiations, to treat the Pope as if he had 200,000 men. For some time the discussion dragged, because Pius VII refused to accept certain reforms which seemed to threaten the independence of the hierarchy. Finally, the terms were arranged under which the First Consul gained his two chief points: the introduction of an entirely new episcopate with a reduction of dioceses and the recognition of the alienation of church property during the Revolution.

Among the most important features of this instrument was the declaration that the Catholic religion should be freely exercised in France, but that it was to conform itself to such police regulations as the government should judge necessary for public tranquillity. The new bishops were to be presented by the state and instituted by the Pope. Parish priests were to be appointed by the bishops, but the appointment could be vetoed by the state, and the payment of the bishops and priests was undertaken by the government. A number of the former constitutional bishops, who had been in schism with Rome, were appointed in the new hierarchy which now numbered sixty members. The introduction of the clause mentioned above relating to the police powers of the state was used as a ground for a whole series of “organic articles” by which the French Church was bound hand and foot to the Napoleonic system; they were but a revival of the Gallican principles adopted by Louis XIV to help him to become the supreme administrator of the Church in France. Rome naturally protested, for these articles interfered with the autocratic system of the Curia. Acts of the Holy See and decrees of councils were not legalized in France unless they were verified by the government. Bishops could not consult together without a license from the government, or retire from their dioceses temporarily, without a permit. In many other details episcopal jurisdiction and church autonomy were interfered with. But all protests were in vain, and Pius VII conformed reluctantly to the will of the master of Western Europe, hoping that the slow-going diplomacy of his Secretary of State, Consalvi, would secure future concessions.

The first friction between the Emperor and the Pope occurred over the introduction of religious orders. None were authorized except certain orders for women, engaged in charitable or relief work. On December 2, 1804, after much hesitation, the Pope agreed to come to Paris to participate in the imperial coronation. He was treated with respect, but during the ceremony, when he was about to place the crown on Napoleon’s head, the Emperor with a show of displeasure took it out of his hands and crowned himself. On one ground or another Pius was kept in France for several months, as Napoleon was glad to have the head of the Church placed in a subordinate position before the world as a kind of Grand Almoner to the Emperor of the French.

New difficulties arose over the Pope’s refusal to annul the marriage of Jerome Bonaparte with Miss Patterson, an American, who had been married to Napoleon’s youngest brother in Baltimore in 1803 by the Roman Catholic bishop of that city. There were fresh grounds of alienation when, in 1806, Napoleon wrote to the Pope, who wished to be neutral, to close his ports to English vessels and to expel from his court English, Russians, and Swedes. “You are,” he said, “the sovereign of Rome, but I am the Emperor; my enemies should be yours.” As the Pope still proclaimed his neutrality, Napoleon seized the Papal States, and finally occupied Rome in February, 1808. For fourteen months the Pope was kept a virtual prisoner in the Quirinal under a guard of honor; he was not allowed to communicate with the cardinals, twenty-four of whom had been, by Napoleon’s orders, deported. Finally, in May, 1809, a decree was issued by which the States of the Church were annexed to the French Empire. Rome was proclaimed a free imperial city, the Pope being allowed to keep only his palace and his estates with an income of 2,000,000 francs.

Napoleon spoke of himself as revoking the Donation of Constantine; his intention was to make of Paris the religious head of the world with himself the director of its religion as well as of its secular affairs. Pius VII’s reply was a bull of excommunication against the Emperor, who, however, was not mentioned by name in the document. It only spoke in general terms of those who were guilty of deeds of violence in the States of the Church. Napoleon affected to pay little attention to the Papal protest, but he acted promptly, first by appealing to the old principle of the Gallican Church, that denied the right of the Pope to excommunicate a sovereign of a state. Then he had the person of the Pope seized by the commander of the Roman gendarmerie. No resistance was offered, and Pius was conducted as a prisoner, in a closed carriage with drawn shades, to Savona on the western Riviera near Genoa. Here he was kept carefully guarded, but he refused all terms of settlement that insisted on his surrender of the temporal power. No one was allowed to see him except in the presence of his guards. When Napoleon desired canonical institution for some newly appointed bishops, the Pope refused, on the ground that he was deprived of the advice of his cardinals. The situation was embarrassing, for there were, in August, 1809, twenty-seven vacant sees in France. Efforts were made to find a solution by calling a council at Paris; but the ecclesiastics, on assembling there, declared that the Pope’s consent was necessary. Napoleon then ordered the bishops to take charge of their dioceses without institution from the Pope. But a brief came from Savona to Cardinal Maury, the archbishop designate of Paris, enjoining him from administering his diocese without the Pope’s consent. The Emperor now treated the prisoner of Savona with even more rigor, put in prison the clergy whom he suspected of bringing the Papal brief, and deprived Pius of all means of corresponding with the outside world.

At this time the divorce of Napoleon from Josephine took place. The difficulties of the civil law were got over easily, although the Emperor had to violate the provisions of his own code, and the ecclesiastical committee of the diocese of Paris showed itself equally obliging, by recognizing the two imperial claims, that there had been an absence of consent to his religious marriage of 1804, and that there were defects of form in the ceremony itself. When the marriage with the Austrian archduchess was celebrated on April 2, 1810, thirteen of the twenty-six cardinals present in Paris refused to be present at the religious ceremony. This behavior excited Napoleon to an act of personal revenge, by which the recalcitrant princes of the Church were deprived of the insignia of their office, were placed under police supervision, and had to forego their allowance.

In 1811, a council was held in Paris to decide on the question as to the rights of the Pope in the matter of institution. Some of the bishops showed independence, urging the Emperor to restore Pius to liberty. There was a general agreement that Papal consent was necessary. In the meantime the Pope had been cajoled or bullied into accepting a clause, to be added to the Concordat, that canonical institution should be given within a fixed period, and if it were not given, it might be granted by the metropolitan or oldest bishop of the province. Just before the invasion of Russia the aged Pope was brought incognito from Savona to Fontainebleau. During the trip, though he was seriously ill, no consideration was shown him, and for many months after his arrival he was confined to his bed. Only cardinals and prelates who were partisans of Napoleon were allowed to see him. The defeat in Russia brought about a radical change; Napoleon now saw the advantage of arranging some terms of peace, because the harsh treatment of the venerable head of the greatest Christian communion was being used against his persecutor, both at home and abroad. Negotiations were resumed, and under personal pressure from Napoleon, Pius, on condition that the domains of the Holy See were restored to him, made large concessions. He gave Napoleon the right to fill all the bishoprics of France and Italy, except those in the vicinity of Rome, and he allowed metropolitan institution. Afterwards, on consulting with his advisers, the Pope published a retraction of his consent, by which the provisions he had made were annulled. No attention was paid by the Emperor to this change of attitude except that he ordered the imprisonment of the Cardinal de Pietro, who he thought had persuaded Pius to change his mind.

In 1814, before the last campaign on French territory, Napoleon gave the Pope permission to leave Fontainebleau, and shortly before the final defeat he restored the Papal States. There were no further relations between the two, the restored Pope and dethroned Emperor, except that Pius VII, after the Hundred Days and Waterloo, magnanimously offered the Bonaparte family an asylum in Rome, and later on made representations to the English government with a view to reduce the severity of Napoleon’s captivity at St. Helena.

It is customary to ascribe to Napoleon creative originality as a lawgiver. This is a part of the Napoleonic legend that has been upset by the industrious investigations of the partisans of the French Revolution, working under a famous professor at the Sorbonne. In many ways these scholars have rescued from obscurity the positive achievements of the Revolutionary statesmen, and it is now certain that the various codes of Napoleon carry out the principles of procedure and justice foreshadowed in the preliminary work done by the Constituent Assembly and the Convention. Napoleon’s own temperament is seen in the influence he brought to bear upon his lawyers to provide for rapidity in procedure and in execution of judgment, and in the increase of tribunals in which business men played an important rôle.

In education the Emperor’s influence was not so beneficial. He had little sympathy with any type of training that was not practical, and he had no sympathy at all with professorial free speech. Indeed, he expected the teaching profession to take its model from the Grand Army. There was to be little chance for personal development, each man marched in an appropriate rank under orders from a superior. The result of the iron-clad educational régime is acknowledged to have been most unsatisfactory, and it has been one of the most brilliant and most arduous achievements of the Third Republic to abolish the Napoleonic ideals of university teaching, and to substitute for them a system which encourages local and personal freedom. The change has already justified itself, for France is now close to Germany as the home of erudition in many fields of research in which Germany for years justly claimed an uncontested primacy.

The supreme position of Napoleon as a military commander has often led his admirers to affirm that he was infallible in his strategy. He encouraged this tendency at St. Helena, for, when he was composing his Memoirs, he invariably shifted the responsibility for errors in his battles to the shoulders of his lieutenants. He was an expert in manipulating figures, and he had such a good memory that he could always compose a most plausible lie. For years people supposed that the Russian expedition failed because of the extreme cold, and that the defeat at Waterloo might have been turned into a victory if the Emperor’s orders had been strictly carried out by Grouchy and if Ney had advanced more rapidly, as he was bidden to do by his commander-in-chief. These are misrepresentations--are the efforts of a man who wished to manipulate history for his own benefit. When, however, he was not dictating as an exile, Napoleon often enough expressed the truth about himself spontaneously. He allowed, for example, that he had been repeatedly defeated, and on more than one occasion he conceded to his marshals the possession of military talent superior to his own. One year after the Russian disaster he owned that the invasion had been ruined by blunders of his own. He was just as sweeping, too, in condemning various critical phases of his policy. He condemned the attack upon Spain not only as a wholesale blunder, but as a series of blunders in detail, and he characterized the invasion of Russia, while the Spanish War was unfinished, as a hopeless undertaking. Once, speaking to Talleyrand, he said, “I have made so many mistakes in my life that I am not ashamed of them.” It was a characteristic trait of his outlook on his own career that he imagined himself carried on as the instrument of deeds and acts which he could not justify. “I am not,” he once exclaimed, “a man, but a thing.”

Napoleon’s lack of appreciation of moral standards both in public and in private life is notorious, but he was no hypocrite. The one pleasing side of his character was his devotion to his family. Here the clear light of his intellect could not reach. It is true he made grotesque mistakes in putting his brothers into positions for which they were manifestly unfitted, but this sign of weakness shows that, after all, Napoleon was not entirely selfish. He seems to have had little actual patriotism. He was not a Frenchman either by descent or by sympathy, and what he accomplished was done at the expense of the French people. He understood some of their characteristics, but his own point of view was so practical that there were whole fields of achievement signalized in the records of French genius that he never appreciated. On lower planes of action, however, his driving power was immense, and the very terror he created by the success of his concentrated individualism prepared the way for that progressive acknowledgment of public justice and social righteousness which characterized the civilization of the nineteenth century. In spite of all his limitations, it seems impossible to point to a more marvelous career in the annals of humanity.

INDEX

A

Addington, 400

Ajaccio, 402

Alcuin, 181-183

Alexander of Russia, forms alliance with Napoleon, 417; covets Finland and Sweden, 421; sympathizes with French defeat in Spain, 422; confers with Napoleon at Erfurt, 422; takes aggressive attitude toward the French, 429

Alexander the Great, his descent, 7; succeeds to the throne of Macedon, 5; educated under Aristotle, 5; his precociousness, 5; master of Macedon, 7; checks uprisings, 8, 9; declared guardian of the temple, 9; renews Hellenic league, 9; begins his reign with crime, 9-10; leaves Amphipolis, 11; offers thanks to Dionysus, 11; marches up the Danube, 11; his rumored assassination, 13; razes Thebes, 14-15; his placability toward Athens, 16-17; plans to dethrone Persia’s king, 18; crosses the Hellespont, 18; defeats Persians, 20; marches against Halicarnassus, 21; concludes peace with the Persians, 25; is voted a crown, 25; his reply to Darius, 25-26; calls himself “Great King of Asia,” 26; lays siege to Tyre, 27-28; founds Alexandria, 28; invades Syria and Egypt, 28-29; again defeats Persians, 31; proceeds to Babylon, 31; razes Persepolis, 32; takes Drangiana, 35; executes Philotas and Parmenio, 36; captures Bessus, 36; founds new Alexandria, 36; routs the Scythians, 37; executes Bessus, 37; spears Clitus, 38; massacres Sogdianians, 38-39; marries Roxane, 39; hangs Hermolaus, 40; motives for conquest of India, 40-41; begins Indian campaign, 42; fords the Hydaspes, 42; defeats Indian army, 46; forced to cease Eastern conquests, 46; takes up organization of his empire, 49; endeavors to amalgamate Greeks and Persians, 49-53; looks after economic development, 52; tries to legitimatize his rule in the East, 54-56; his death, 57; nature of his achievements, 58-59, 64; his temperament, 38; his lack of statesmanship, 40; as an explorer, 46; as a general, 11, 59-63

Alexander’s Conquest of Greece, 4-17

Alexander’s Conquest of Persia, 17-34

Alexander’s Empire, 48-64

Alexander’s Invasion of India, 34-48

Alexandria, 28, 36, 52

Almagro, 366, 367

Alvarado, 336, 337, 340, 362, 365

Amiens, 402, 409

Ancients, The, 390, 391, 392

Andronicus, 232

Antonius, Marcus, 125

Ariovistus, prepares to resist Cæsar, 89-90; suffers defeat, 90

Aristotle, Alexander’s tutor, 5

Assembly, The Constituent, 402

Atahuallpa, 359-362, 364

Athens, opposed to Macedonian rule, 7; aroused over Thebans’ defeat, 16; double-faced toward Alexander, 16; sends embassy to Darius, 22

Attalus, 9, 10

Austerlitz, Napoleon’s victory at, 412

Austrians, 380 _et seq._

Aztecs, 317-322, 338, 343, 344, 345, 346, 347

B

Babylon surrenders to Alexander, 31

Bagration, 431

Bajesid, son of Murad, murders his brother, 235; his first military exploit, 235; his repressive measures, 236-238; prepares to complete siege of Constantinople, 238; proceeds against Hungarians and Roumanians, 239; massacres Christians, 242; fails before Constantinople, 243; defeated by Mongolo, 244; his death, 244

Bajesid, son of Bajesid, proclaimed Sultan, 272; defeats Djem, 272; wars on Hungary, Morea, and Venice, 273; abdicates the throne, 273

Balboa, 310, 357

Barras, 377, 378, 388

Belgæ, The, rise against Romans, 91; retreat from Cæsar, 92

Bernadotte, 405, 429, 436

Bertoldo, 262

Bessus, as successor to Darius, 35; his stand against the Greeks, 36; his execution by Alexander, 37

Bibulus, 80

Blücher, 444, 445

Bolivia, 369

Bonaparte, Carlo, 371; Joseph, arranges armistice at Paris, 439; Lucien, 390, 391, 392, 414; Napoleon (see Napoleon)

Borodino, 430

Brankovitch, 260, 261

Brutus, his opposition to Cæsarism, 121; his share in the conspiracy, 129

C

Cadiz, 426

Cæsar, Julius, youth and education, 67; political leanings, 68; first public office, 68; family connections, 69; contests Pompeius’ leadership, 69-70; his Agrarian Law, 70; as a free-thinker, 71; elected Pontifex Maximus, 72; supports Catiline, 72; opposes death penalty, 73-74; seeks alliance with Pompeius, 75-76; divorces his wife, 76; tries Clodius, 76; rules Spain, 77; returns to Rome, 78; forms alliance with Crassus and Pompeius, 78; elected magistrate, 79; arrests Cato, 79; submits his agrarian measures to the populace, 79; his anti-extortion law, 82; starts for Gaul, 85; defeats the Helvetii, 89; defeats Ariovistus, 90; crosses the Alps, 90; defeats the Belgæ, 94; returns to Rome to strengthen triumvirate, 95; defeats the Veneti, 96; “butchers” the Germans, 97; goes to Britain, 98-99; defeats Vercingetorix, 102; ends Gallic campaign, 102; breaks with Pompeius and the Senate, 102; outgenerals Pompeius in Spain, 107-108; returns to Italy, 111; serves as Dictator, 111; his second victory over Pompeius, 112-115; asserts Roman sovereignty over Egypt, 116; is made Dictator by Cæsarian Senate, 117; suppresses mutiny among troops, 117-118; defeats Scipio in Africa, 119; returns triumphantly to Rome, 119; beginning autocratic régime, 120; his problems and plans, 120-121; humbles the Senate, 121; reforms the Roman Calender, 122; his benevolent paternalism, 122; his relations with Cleopatra, 116, 122; defeats and executes Cnæus Pompeius, 123; turns to Spanish provinces, 124; is deified as founder of the Roman Empire, 124; plans Eastern campaign, 125; is offered a diadem, 125; his autocratic ambitions, 126; conspired against, 128; assassinated, 128-129; his sham republicanism, 131; his generalship, 86, 131-133; his manipulation of military figures, 93

Cæsar’s Alliance with Pompeius and Crassus, 75-84

Cæsar’s Beginnings, 65-75

Cæsar’s Break with Pompeius and the Senate, 102-119

Cæsar’s Conquest of Gaul, 84-102

Cæsar’s Supremacy, 119-133

Cambacérès, 400, 402

Capac, 352

Capiastro, 261

Carloman, 139

Carolingian Culture, Charles the Great as promoter of, 180; Alcuin’s share in, 181-183; its literary movement, 184-185; its other phases, 186-188

Catiline, plans social revolution, 72

Cato, obstructs parliamentary proceedings, 79; defeats Crassus’s plan, 81; commits suicide, 119

Charles IV, 420

Charles VIII, 272

Charles, Archduke, 424, 425

Charles the Great, acknowledged sole Frankish King, 139; offers peace to Desiderius, 142; besieges Pavia, 142; honored as Exarch of Ravenna, 143; as Patrician, 144, 159, 160; his policy with the Saxons, 145; his view of the Saxon gods, 146; attacks Saxon tribes, 146-147; occupies Eresburg, 147; his first general assembly, 147; strengthens ecclesiastical organization, 147-148; his retaliation at Verden, 148; his Saxon campaign, 149; his drastic measures of pacification, 150; his warlike expeditions, 151-158; his coronation as Emperor of Rome, 158-165; provides for his succession, 167-169; his death, 169-170; his dress and physical features, 171; his marriages and progeny, 171; his education and intellectual interests, 172; as king and emperor, 172-179; as promoter of Carolingian Culture, 180, 185; as general, 195-196; his relations with the Church, 198-212

Châtillon, congress of, 438

Chlodvig, 134

Church, The, under Charles the Great, 199-212

Cicero, on Cæsar’s education, 67; defeats Cæsar’s agrarian legislation, 70; frustrates social revolution, 72-73; makes overtures to Pompeius, 75; on Cæsar’s administration of Spain, 77; refuses to leave aristocratic party, 78; opposes Crassus’ legislative measures, 81

Clitus, 38

Clodius, 76

Cleopatra, 5, 116, 122

Coalitions, Anti-Napoleonic, 388-389, 390, 397-398, 410, 414, 423

Colonial System, The, 308-309

Columbus, sordid motives for his voyages, 295-296; results of his voyages, 297; starts American slave-trade, 298; deports Spanish criminals to the Indies, 308; dies in Spain, 298; his opinion of the Haytians, 306

Committee of Public Safety, The, 375-376

Constant, Benjamin, 444

Constantine, 253, 254, 255, 258

Consul, Napoleon as, 392; the provisional, 393-394; the First, 395, 397; of State, 394, 396, 401, 404

Cornwallis, Lord, 400

Corsica, its heroic struggle for independence, 371