Worlds Best Histories France Vol 7 by M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt

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[Illustration: JOSEPHINE]

World's Best Histories: FRANCE

BY
M. GUIZOT AND MADAME GUIZOT DE WITT

IN EIGHT VOLUMES
VOLUME SEVEN

HISTORY OF FRANCE

VOLUME SEVEN

TABLE OF CONTENTS--VOL. VII.

CHAPTER VII. The Consulate (1799-1804)

CHAPTER VIII. Glory and Success (1804-1805)

CHAPTER IX. Glory and Conquest (1805-1808)

CHAPTER X. The Home Government (1804-1808)

CHAPTER XI. Glory and Illusions. Spain and Austria

CHAPTER XII. The Divorce (1809-1810)

CHAPTER XIII. Glory and Madness. The Russian Campaign (1811-1812)

THE HISTORY OF FRANCE

CHAPTER VII.

THE CONSULATE (1799-1804).

For more than ten years, amid unheard of shocks and sufferings, France had
been seeking for a free and regular government, that might assure to her
the new rights which had only been gained through tribulation. She had
overthrown the Monarchy and attempted a Republic; she had accepted and
rejected three constitutions, all the while struggling single-handed with
Europe, leagued against her. She had undergone the violence of the Reign
of Terror, the contradictory passions of the Assemblies, and the
incoherent feebleness of the Directory. For the first time since the death
of King Louis XIV., her history finds once more a centre, and henceforth
revolves round a single man. For fifteen years, victorious or vanquished,
at the summit of glory, or in the depths of abasement, France and Europe,
overmastered by an indomitable will and unbridled passion for power, were
compelled to squander their blood and their treasure upon that page of
universal history which General Bonaparte claims for his own, and which he
has succeeded in covering with glory and crime.

On the day following the 18th Brumaire, in the uncertainty of parties, in
face of a constitution audaciously violated, and a government mainly
provisional, the nation was more excited than apprehensive or disquieted.
It had caught a glimpse of that natural power and that free ascendancy of
genius to which men willingly abandon themselves, with a confidence which
the most bitter deceptions have never been able to extinguish. Ardent and
sincere republicans, less and less numerous, felt themselves conquered
beforehand, by a sure instinct that was not misled by the protest of their
adversaries. They bent before a new power, to which their old hatreds did
not attach, which they believed to be in some sort created by their own
hands, and of which they had not yet measured the audacity. The mass of
the population, the true France, hailed with joy the hope of order and of
a regular and strong administration. They were not prejudiced in favor of
the philosophic constitution so long propounded by Sieyes. In the eyes of
the nation, the government was already concentrated in the hands of
General Bonaparte; it was in him that all were trusting, for repose at
home and glory and peace abroad.

In fact, he was governing already, disregarding the prolonged discussions
of the two legislative commissions, and the profound developments of the
projects of Sieyes, expounded by M. Boulay. Before the Constitution of the
year VIII, received the sanction of his dominant will, he had repealed the
Law of Hostages, recalled the proscribed priests from the Isle of Oleron,
and from Sinnamari most of those transported on 18th Fructidor. He had
reformed the ministry, and distributed according to his pleasure the chief
commands in the army. As Moreau had been of service to Bonaparte in his
_coup d'etat_, he was placed at the head of the army of the Rhine joined
to the army of Helvetia, taken from Massena on the morrow of his most
brilliant victories. Distrust and ill-will struggled with his admiration
of Bonaparte in the mind of the conqueror of Zurich; he was sent to the
army of Italy, always devoted to Bonaparte. Berthier remained at Paris in
the capacity of minister of war. Fouche was placed at the police, and
Talleyrand undertook foreign affairs. By a bent of theoretical fancy,
which was not borne out by experience in government, the illustrious
mathematician Laplace was called to the ministry of the interior. Gaudin
became minister of finances; he replaced immediately the forced loans with
an increase of direct taxes, and introduced into the collection of the
public revenues some important improvements, which paved the way for our
great financial organization.

At the same time, without provocation and without necessity, as if simply
in compliance with the mournful traditions of past violence, a list of
proscriptions, published on the 23rd Brumaire, exiled to Guiana or the Ile
de Re nine persons--a mixture of honest republicans opposed to the new
state of things, and of wretches still charged with the crimes of the
Reign of Terror. Only the name of General Jourdan excited universal
reprobation, and it was immediately struck out. The measure itself was
soon mitigated, and the decree was never executed.

Through the revolutionary storms and the murderous epochs which had
successively seen all the great actors in the political struggles
disappear from the scene, the Abbe Sieyes emerged as a veteran associated
with the first free impulses of the nation. In 1789, his pamphlet, "What
is the Third Estate?" had arrested the attention of all serious minds. He
had several times, and in decisive circumstances, played an important part
in the Constituent Assembly. Since his vote of the 20th January, and until
the 9th Thermidor, he remained in voluntary obscurity; mingling since then
in all great theoretical discussions, he had exercised a preponderating
influence in recent events. From revolution to revolution, popular or
military, he came out in the part of legislator, his spirit escaping from
the influence of pure democracy. He had formerly proposed the banishment
_en masse_ of all the nobility, and he still nursed in the depths of his
soul a horror for all traditional superiority. He had said, "Whoever is
not of my species is not my fellow-creature; the nobles are not of my
species; they are wolves, and I fire upon them." He had, however, been
brought, by his reflections and the course of events, to construct
eccentric theories, of a factitious aristocracy, the wielders of power to
the exclusion of the nation, recruited from a limited circle--a disfigured
survival of the Italian republics of the middle ages, without the free and
salutary action of representative government.

"Confidence ought to proceed from below, and power to act from above,"
declared the appointed legislator of the 18th Brumaire. He himself
compared his political system to a pyramid, resting on the entire mass of
the nation, terminating at the top in a single man, whom he called the
Great Elector. He had not the courage to pronounce the word king.

Five millions of electors, constituted into primary assemblies, were to
prepare a _municipal_ list of 500,000 elected who in their turn were
entrusted with the formation of a _departmental_ list of 50,000 names. To
these twice sifted delegates was confided the care of electing 5000 as a
_national_ list, alone capable of becoming the agents of executive power
in the whole of France. The municipal and departmental administrations
were to be chosen by authority from their respective lists. The
_Conservative Senate_, composed of eighty members, self-elective, had the
right of appointing the members of the Corps Legislatif, the Tribuneship,
and the Court of Cassation. It was besides destined to the honor of
choosing the Great Elector. The senators, richly endowed, might exercise
no other function. The Corps Legislatif was dumb, and limited to voting
the laws prepared by the Council of State, and discussed by the Tribunate.
The Great Elector, without actively interfering in the government,
furnished with a civil list of six millions, and magnificently housed by
the state, appointed the two councils of peace and war, upon whom depended
the ministers and all the administrative _personnel_ of prefects and sub-
prefects entrusted with the government of the departments. In case the
magistrate, so highly placed in his sumptuous indolence, should seem to
menace the safety of the State, the Senate was authorized to _absorb_ him
by admitting him into its ranks. The same action might be exercised with
respect to any of the civil or military functionaries.

So many complicated wheels calculated to hinder rather than to sustain
each other, so much pomp in words and so little efficacy in action, could
never suit the intentions or the character of General Bonaparte. He
claimed at once the position of Great Elector, which Sieyes had perhaps
secretly thought to reserve for himself.

"What!" said he, "would you want to make me a pig in a dunghill?" Then
demolishing the edifice laboriously constructed by the legislator, "Your
Great Elector is a slothful king," said he to Sieyes; "the time for that
sort of thing is past. What! appoint people to act, and not act himself!
It won't do. If I were this Great Elector I should certainly do everything
which you would desire me not to do. I should say to the two consuls of
peace and war: 'If you don't choose such and such a man, or take such and
such a measure, I shall send you about your business.' And I would compel
them to proceed according to my will. And these two consuls? How do you
think they could agree? Unity of action is indispensable in government. Do
you think that serious men would be able to lend themselves to such
shams?"

Sieyes was not fond of discussion, for which indeed he was not suited;
with the prudent sagacity which always characterized his conduct, he
recognized the inferiority of his will and his influence in comparison
with General Bonaparte. Three consuls were substituted for the Great
Elector and his two chosen subordinates equal in appearance, but already
classed according to the origin of their power. As first consul, Bonaparte
was not to be subjected to any election; he held himself as appointed by
the people. "What colleagues will they give me?" said he bluntly to
Roederer and Talleyrand who served him constantly as his agents of
communication. "Whom do you wish?" He named Cambaceres, then minister of
justice, clever and clear-sighted, of an independent spirit joined to a
docile character; and Lebrun, the former secretary of the Chancellor
Maupeou, minister for foreign affairs under the Convention, and respected
by moderate republicans. Some had spoken of M. Daunou, honestly courageous
in the worst days of the Revolution; the clever author of the Constitution
of the year III., and whom Bonaparte had taken a malicious pleasure in
entrusting with the drawing up of the new Constitution. A certain number
of voices in the two legislative commissions had supported his name. The
resolution of M. Daunou was known; Bonaparte did not complete the counting
of the votes. "We shall do better," said he, "to keep to those whom M.
Sieyes has named." Cambaceres and Lebrun were appointed consuls. Sieyes
received from the nation a rich grant and the estate of Crosne. In concert
with Roger-Ducos and the new consuls, he formed the list of the Senate,
who immediately completed its numbers, as well as the lists of the 300
members of the Corps Legislatif, and the 100 members of the Tribunate.
Moderation presided over the composition of the lists; Bonaparte attached
no importance to them, and took no part in their preparation. He had
formed with care the Council of State, many capable men finding a place in
it. It was the instrument which the First Consul destined for the
execution of his ideas. Once only, on the 19th Brumaire, he came for a
moment into contact with the assemblies. Henceforth he left them in the
shade; all power rested in his hands. Under the name of Republic, the
accent of an absolute master resounded already in the proclamation
everywhere circulated on the day following the formation of the new
government:--

"Frenchmen,

"To render the Republic dear to citizens, respected by foreigners,
formidable to our enemies, are the obligations which we have contracted in
accepting the chief magistracy.

"It will be dear to citizens if the laws and the acts of authority bear
the impress of the spirit of order, justice and moderation.

"The Republic will be imposing to foreigners if it knows how to respect in
their independence the title of its own independence, if its engagements,
prepared with wisdom and entered upon with sincerity, are faithfully kept.

"Lastly, it will be formidable to its enemies, if the army and navy are
made strong, and if each of its defenders finds a home in the regiment to
which he belongs, and in that home a heritage of virtue and glory; if the
officer, trained by long study, obtains by regular promotion the
recompense due to his talents and work.

"Upon these principles depend the stability of government, the success of
commerce and agriculture, the greatness and prosperity of nations.

"We have pointed out the rule, Frenchmen, by which we ought to be judged,
we have stated our duties. It will be for you to tell us whether we have
fulfilled them."

"What would you have?" said the First Consul to La Fayette. "Sieyes has
put nothing but shadows everywhere; the shadow of legislative power, the
shadow of judicial power, the shadow of government; some part of the
substance was necessary. Faith! I have put it there." The very preamble of
the Constitution affirmed the radical change brought about in the
direction of affairs. "The powers instituted to-day will be strong and
lasting, such as they ought to be in order to guarantee the rights of
citizens and the interests of the State. Citizens, the Revolution is fixed
upon the same principles which began it. It is finished!"

It was not the apotheosis, but the end of the Revolution that the authors
of the Constitution of the year VIII. arrogantly announced. In the first
impulse of a great spirit brought face to face with a difficult task,
Bonaparte conceived the thought of terminating the war like the
Revolution, and of re-establishing, at least for some time, the peace he
needed in order to govern France. Disdainful of the ordinary forms of
diplomacy, he wrote directly to George III., as he had formerly written to
the Archduke Charles (18th December, 1799).

"Called by the will of the French nation to be first magistrate, I deem it
expedient on entering upon my charge to communicate directly with your
Majesty.

"Must the war which for eight years has ravaged the four quarters of the
globe, be eternal? Is there no other means of arriving at a mutual
understanding?

"How can the most enlightened nations of Europe, powerful and strong
beyond what their security and independence require, sacrifice the
interest of commerce, the prosperity of their people, and the happiness of
families, to ideas of vainglory?

"These sentiments cannot be foreign to the heart of your Majesty, who
governs a free nation with the sole aim of rendering it happy.

"Your Majesty will see in these overtures only my sincere desire to
contribute effectively, for the second time, to a general pacification by
a prompt procedure, full of confidence and divested of those forms which,
necessary perhaps, in order to disguise the dependence of feeble States,
only reveal between strong States a mutual desire to deceive each other.

"France and England, by the abuse of their power, may for a long time yet
retard its termination; but I dare to say that every civilized nation is
interested in the close of a war which embraces the whole world."

At the same time, and in nearly the same terms, Bonaparte wrote to the
Emperor Francis. He had treated formerly with this sovereign, and would
not perhaps have found him inflexible; but Pitt did not believe the
Revolution finished, and had no confidence in a man who had just seized
with a victorious hand the direction of the destinies of France. A
frigidly polite letter, addressed by Lord Granville to Talleyrand, the
minister of foreign affairs, repelled the advances of the First Consul.
The English then prepared a new armament intended to second the attempts
which the royalists were at that time renewing in the west. In enumerating
the causes of European mistrust with regard to France, Lord Granville
added, "The best guarantee, the most natural guarantee, for the reality
and the permanence of the pacific intentions of the French government,
would be the restoration of that royal dynasty which has maintained for so
many ages the internal prosperity of France, and which has made it
regarded with respect and consideration abroad. Such an event would clear
away all the obstacles which hinder negotiations for peace, it would
ensure to France the tranquil possession of her ancient territory, and it
would give to all the nations of Europe that security which they are
compelled to seek at present by other means."

During the violent debate raised in Parliament by the pacific propositions
of the First Consul, Pitt based all his arguments upon the instability and
insecurity of a treaty of peace with the French Revolution, whatever might
be the name of its chief rulers. "When was it discovered that the dangers
of Jacobinism cease to exist?" he cried. "When was it discovered that the
Jacobinism of Robespierre, of Barere, of the five directors, of the
triumvirate, has all of a sudden disappeared because it is concentrated in
a single man, raised and nurtured in its bosom, covered with glory under
its auspices, and who has been at once the offspring and the champion of
all its atrocities?... It is because I love peace sincerely that I cannot
content myself with a vain word; it is because I love peace sincerely that
I cannot sacrifice it by seizing the shadow when the reality is not within
my reach. _Cur igitur pacem nolo? Quia infida est, quia periculosa, quia
esse non potest!_"

More moderate in form, Austria had in reality replied like England. War
was inevitable, and in the internal disorder in which the Directory had
left affairs, in the financial embarrassment and in the deplorable state
of the armies, the First Consul felt the weight of a government that had
been so long disorganized and weak, pressing heavily on his shoulders. His
first care was to achieve the pacification of the west, always agitated by
royalist passions. For a moment the chiefs of the party thought it
possible to engage General Bonaparte in the service of the monarchical
restoration: they were speedily undeceived. But the First Consul knew how
to make use in Vendee of the influence of the former cure of St. Laud, the
Abbe Bernier; he made an appeal to the priests, who returned from all
parts to their provinces, "The ministers of a God of Peace," said the
proclamation of the 28th December, 1799, "will be the first promoters of
reconciliation and concord; let them speak to all hearts the language
which they learn in the temple of their Master! Let them enter temples
which will be reopened to them, and offer for their fellow-citizens the
sacrifice which shall expiate the crime of war and the blood which has
been made to flow!" Always in intimate unison with the religious sentiment
of the populace who fought under their orders, the Vendean chiefs
responded to this appeal, laying down their arms. In Brittany and in
Normandy, Georges Cadoudal and Frotte continued hostilities; severe
instructions were sent, first to General Hedouville, and then to General
Brune. "The Consuls think that the generals ought to shoot on the spot the
principal rebels taken with arms in hand. However cunning the Chouans may
be, they are not so much so as Arabs of the desert. The First Consul
believes that a salutary example would be given by burning two or three
large communes, chosen from among those who have behaved themselves most
badly." Six weeks later the insurrection was everywhere subdued; Frotte,
and his young aide-de-camp Toustain, had been shot; Bourmont had accepted
the offers of the First Consul, and enrolled himself in his service;
Georges Cadoudal resisted all the advances of him whom he was soon to
pursue with his hatred even to attempting a crime. "What a mistake I have
made in not stifling him in my arms!" repeated the hardy chief of the
Chouans on quitting General Bonaparte. He retired into England. The civil
war was terminated; the troops which had occupied the provinces of the
west could now rejoin the armies which were preparing on the frontiers.
Carnot, who had just re-entered France, replaced at the ministry of war
General Berthier, called upon active service. It was the grand association
connected with his name, rather than the hope of an active and effective
co-operation, which decided the First Consul to entrust this post to
Carnot; possibly he wished to remove it from the little group of obstinate
liberals justly disquieted at the dangers with which they saw freedom
menaced. Already the journals had been suppressed, with the exception of
thirteen; the laws were voted without dispute; and, "in a veritable
whirlwind of urgency," the government claimed to regulate the duration of
the discussions of the Tribunate. Benjamin Constant, still young, and
known for a short time previously as a publicist, raised his voice
eloquently against the wrong done to freedom of discussion. "Without
doubt," said he "harmony is desirable amongst the authorities of the
Republic; but the independence of the Tribunate is no less necessary to
that harmony than the constitutional authority of the government; without
the independence of the Tribunate, there will be no longer either harmony
or constitution, there will be no longer anything but servitude and
silence, a silence that all Europe will understand."

The past violence of the assemblies, and their frequent inconsistencies,
had wearied feeble minds, and blinded short-sighted spirits. The speech of
Benjamin Constant secured for his friend Madame de Stael a forced
retirement from Paris. The law was voted by a large majority, and the
adulations of flatterers were heaped up around the feet of the First
Consul. He himself took a wiser view of his position, which he still
considered precarious. On taking up his residence at the Tuileries, in
great state, on February 19, 1800, he said to his secretary, "Well,
Bourienne, we have reached the Tuileries; the thing is now to stop here."

Already, and by the sole effort of a sovereign will, which appeared to
improve by exercise, the power formerly distributed among obscure hands
was concentrated at Paris, under the direction of a central administration
suddenly organized; exactions borne with difficulty resulted in abundant
resources from the conquered or annexed countries, at Genoa, in Holland,
at Hamburg. The young King of Prussia, sensible and prudent, had refused
to transform his neutrality into alliance; but he had used his influence
over the smaller states of the empire, to induce them to maintain the same
attitude. The Emperor Paul I., tossed to and fro by the impetuous
movements of his ardent and unhealthy spirit, was piqued by the defeats of
Suwarrow, and offended by the insufficiency of the help of Austria; he was
discontented with the English government, and ill-humoredly kept himself
apart from the coalition. The resumption of hostilities was imminent, and
the grand projects of the First Consul began to unroll themselves. Active
preparations had been till then confined to the army of the Rhine under
Moreau. The army of Liguria, placed under the command of Massena, with
Genoa as a centre of operations, had received neither reinforcements nor
munitions; its duty was to protect the passage of the Appenines against
Melas, whilst Moreau attacked upon the Rhine the army of Suabia, commanded
by Marshal Kray. The occupation of Switzerland by the French army impeded
the movements of the allies, by compelling them to withdraw their two
armies from each other; the First Consul meditated a movement which should
give him all the advantages of this separation. Moreau in Germany, Massena
in Italy, were ordered at any cost to keep the enemy in check. Bonaparte
silently formed a third army, the corps of which he cleverly dispersed,
distracting the attention of Europe by the camp of the army of reserve at
Dijon. Already he was preparing the grand campaign which should raise his
glory to its pinnacle, and establish his power upon victory. In his idea
everything was to be sacrificed to the personal glory of his successes. He
conceived a project of attack by crossing the Rhine. Moreau, modest and
disinterested, accepted the general plan of the war, and subordinated his
operations to those of the First Consul; in his military capacity
independent and resolute, he persisted in passing the Rhine at his
pleasure. Bonaparte was enraged. "Moreau would not seek to understand me,"
cried he. He yielded, however, to the observations of General Dessoles,
and always clever in subjugating those of whom he had need, he wrote to
Moreau to restore him liberty of action. "Dessoles will tell you that no
one is more interested than myself in your personal glory and your good
fortune. The English embark in force; what do they want? I am to-day a
sort of manikin, who has lost his liberty and his good fortune. Greatness
is fine but in prospective and in imagination. I envy you your luck; you
go with the heroes to do fine deeds. I would willingly barter my consular
purple against one of your brigadier's epaulettes" (16th March, 1800).