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

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Already the Spanish princes were on the way to their retreats. Compiegne
and Navarre not being ready for their reception, the old king was to
inhabit Fontainebleau provisionally. The emperor ordered Talleyrand to
receive the Infantas at Valencay, thus confiding to his vice-grand-elector
the honorable functions of a jailer. "I desire," he wrote to him on the
9th of May, "that the princes may be received with no external ceremony,
but with respect and care, and that you do everything possible to amuse
them. Be on Monday evening at Valencay. If you have a theatre there, and
could get a few comedians to come, it would not be a bad idea; you might
bring Madame de Talleyrand there, with four or five ladies. I have the
greatest interest in the Prince of Asturias being prevented from taking
any false steps. I desire, then, that he may be amused and occupied. Harsh
policy would lead one to put him in the Bicetre, or in some strong castle;
but as he has thrown himself into my arms, and has promised me to do
nothing without my orders, and as all goes on in Spain as I desire, I have
decided to send him into a country place, surrounding him at the same time
with pleasures and keeping him under strict surveillance. Let this last
during the month of May and part of June; the affairs of Spain will have
taken a turn, and I shall then see what part I shall take.

"As to you, your mission is honorable enough; to receive at your house
these three illustrious personages, in order to amuse them, is altogether
worthy of the nation and of your rank."

The captivity of the Spanish princes was to be much longer and less
cheerful than the Emperor Napoleon was depicting it beforehand. He had
already provided for the government of Spain. Sorrowfully and with great
difficulty, Murat had prevailed upon the Grand Council of Castile and the
Indies to indicate a preference for the King of Naples. The Junta had
absolutely refused to take part in any manifestations of this nature. On
the 10th of May, Napoleon wrote to King Joseph, "King Charles, by the
treaty I have made with him, cedes to me all the rights of the crown of
Spain. The nation, through the medium of the Supreme Council of Castile,
asks from me a king. It is for you that I destine this crown. Spain is not
like the kingdom of Naples: it has 11,000,000 of inhabitants, more than a
hundred and fifty millions of revenue, without counting the immense
revenues and possessions of all the Americas. It is, besides, a crown
which places you at Madrid, within three days of France, which entirely
covers one of its frontiers. At Madrid you are in France; Naples is at the
end of the world. I desire, then, that immediately you have received this
letter you should confide the regency to whoever you will, and the command
of the troops to Marshal Jourdan, and that you should set out for Bayonne
by way of Turin, Mont Cenis, and Lyons. You will receive this letter on
the 19th, you will set out on the 20th, and you will be here on the 1st of
June. Withal, keep the matter secret; people will perhaps suspect
something, but you can say that you have to go to Upper Italy in order to
confer with me on important affairs."

Napoleon had said, the moment when he concluded the treaty which deprived
the house of Bourbon of its last throne, "What I am doing is not well in a
certain point of view, I know. But policy demands that I should not leave
in my rear, so near Paris, a dynasty inimical to my own."

Justice and right possess lights of which the cleverest framers of human
politics are at times ignorant. The Emperor Napoleon descended several
steps towards his fall when he abused his power as regards Pope Pius VII.,
and used odious means to dethrone the feeble and ignorant princes who were
ruling over Spain. Very slippery are the roads of universal power; in the
steps of its master, France was rushing to disaster.

CHAPTER X.

THE HOME GOVERNMENT (1804-1808).

For more than twenty years the history of France was the history of
Europe; for more than fifteen years the history of Napoleon was the
history of France, but a history cruelly bloody and agitated, often
adorned with so much glory and splendor, that the country might, and in
fact did, indulge itself in long and fatal illusions which drew down
bitter sufferings. All this life of our country, however, was not
dissipated afar off in the train of its victorious armies, or its arrogant
ambassadors; if old France was sometimes astonished to find herself so
much increased that she ran the risk of becoming one of the provinces of
the Empire, she always remained the centre, and her haughty master did not
forget her. Carried beyond her territory by the wild instinct of ambition,
he did not renounce the home government of his first and most famous
conquest. Seconded by several capable and modest men to whom he
transmitted peremptory orders, often modified by them in the execution,
Napoleon founded again the French administration, formerly powerful in the
hands of the great minister of Louis XIV., but destroyed and overthrown by
the shocks of the Revolution. He established institutions, he raised
monuments which have remained while all the dazzling trophies of his arms
have disappeared, while all his conquests have been torn from us, after
worn out France, bruised and bleeding, found herself smaller than at the
end of the evil days of the French Revolution.

"Scarcely invested with a sovereignty, new both to France and to himself,"
said Count Mollien in his memoirs, "Napoleon imposed upon himself the task
of ascertaining all the revenues and expenses of the state. He had
acquired patience for the details from the fact that, in his campaigns, he
depended entirely upon himself for the care of securing food, clothing and
pay of his armies." On the eve of Austerlitz, after immense efforts made
by the government as well as the public, to re-establish order and
activity in a country so long agitated and weakened by incessant shocks,
the measure of new enterprises had been exceeded; embarrassments extended
from public to private fortunes, all the symptoms of a serious and
impending crisis were already shown. Napoleon did not hide this from
himself, but he saw and sought for no other remedy than victory. Passing
before Mollien, when going to theatre, he said to him, "The finances are
in a bad way, the Bank is embarrassed. I cannot put these matters right."
For a long time the fortune as well as the repose of France was to depend
upon the ever doubtful chances of victory; long she submitted to it with a
constancy without example. The day came when victory was not sufficient
for our country, she had not strength enough to support the price of her
glory. The Emperor Napoleon was deceived in seeking the sources of public
prosperity in conquest; the blood which flows in the veins of a nation is
not restored as soon as another nation, humiliated and vanquished, shall
in its turn give up drop by drop its blood, its children, and its
treasures. Society is exhausted unless war contributions and exactions
definitively fill the coffers of the victor. The long hostilities of
Europe, and our alternate successes and reverses, have sufficiently taught
us this hard lesson. Victor or vanquished, France has never completely
crushed her enemies, she has never been crushed by them. All have
suffered, all still suffer from this outrage on the welfare of society,
which is called a war of conquest. In the beginning of his supreme power,
Napoleon thought to find in victory an inexhaustible source of riches. "It
was the ideas of the ancients which Napoleon applied to the right of
conquest," said Mollien.

He learnt even on the morrow of the battle of Austerlitz that victory is
not sufficient for the repose and prosperity of a state; the expenses
necessitated by the preparations for war, the enormous sums which the
treasury had had to pay, the general crisis in the commercial world had
induced the minister of the treasury, Barbe Marbois, to have recourse to
hazardous enterprises entrusted to unsafe hands. "You are a very honest
man," the emperor wrote [Footnote: The "Negociants reunis."] to his
minister, "but I cannot help believing that you are surrounded by rogues."
Six weeks after the battle of Austerlitz, on the 26th January, 1806,
Napoleon arrived at Paris in the night and summoned a council of finance
for the following morning. The emperor scarcely permitted a few words to
be addressed to him on a campaign so promptly and gloriously terminated.
"We have," he said, "questions to deal with which are more serious; it
appears that the greatest dangers of the state are not in Austria; listen
to the report of the minister of the treasury."

"Barbe Marbois commenced the report with the calm of a conscience which
has nothing to reproach itself," adds M. Mollien. He soon showed how the
receipts, constantly inferior to the indispensable expenses, had obliged
the treasury to borrow, first from the receivers-general, then from a new
company of speculators at the head of whom was M. Ouvrard, a man of
ability, but of doubtful reputation; the brokers as they were called, had
in their turn engaged the state in perilous affairs with Spain, and the
commissions upon the receivers-general, which had been conceded to them,
enormously surpassed their advances. "The State is the sole creditor of
the company," Marbois said at last. The emperor got in a passion. His
prompt and penetrating mind, always ready to distrust, discovered by
instinct, and without penetrating into details, the fraud to which his
minister was blind. He called before him the brokers, the principal clerks
at the treasury, and confounding them all by the bursts of his anger, he
forgot at the same time the respect he owed to the age and character of
Marbois, who was suddenly dismissed, and immediately replaced by Mollien.

"I had no need to listen to the entire report to guess that the brokers
had converted to their own use more than sixty millions," said Napoleon to
his new minister; "the money must be recovered."

The debts of the brokers to the public treasury were still more
considerable: Mollien had to find the proof and ward off in a great
measure the dangers resulting to the treasury from this fatal association
with a company of speculators.

Two years later the emperor placed Barbe Marbois at the head of the Court
of Accounts which he had just founded. He did not admit the want of repose
or a wish for retirement. For a moment Mollien had hesitated to accept the
post imposed upon him by his master. He was director of the _caisse
d'amortissement_ (bank for redemption of rents), and was satisfied with
his place. "You cannot refuse a ministry," said the emperor, suddenly,
"this evening you will take the oath." Count Mollien introduced important
improvements into the management of the finances. The foundation of the
bank of service, in current account with the receivers-general, book-
keeping by double entry, formerly brought into France by Law, but which
had not been established at the treasury, the publication of annual
balance sheets, such were the improvements accomplished at that time by
the minister of the treasury.

The public works had not been neglected in this whirlwind of affairs which
circled round Napoleon. He had ordered vast contracts in road and canal-
making; in the intervals of leisure which he devoted to France and the
home government, he conceived the idea of monuments destined to
immortalize his glory and to fix in the spirit of the people the
remembrance of the past, on which the new master of France, set much
value. He repaired the basilica of St. Denis, built sepulchral chapels,
and instituted a chapter composed of former bishops. He finished the
Pantheon, restored to public worship under the old name of Sainte-
Genevieve, ordered the construction of the arcs de triomphe (triumphal
arches) of the Carrousel and l'Etoile, and the erection of the column in
the Place Vendome. He also decreed two new bridges over the Seine, those
of Austerlitz and Jena. The termination of the Louvre, the construction of
the Bourse, the erection of a temple consecrated to the memory of the
exploits of the great army and which became the church of the Madeleine,
were also decreed. In the great range of his thoughts, which constantly
advanced before his epoch and the resources at his disposal, Napoleon
prepared an enormous task for the governments succeeding him. All have
laboriously contributed to the completion of the works which he had
conceived.

At the same time that he constructed monuments and reorganized the public
administration, Napoleon desired to found new social conditions. He had
created kings and princes; he had raised around him his family and the
companions of his glory, to unheard-of fortune; he wished to consolidate
this aristocracy, which owed all its splendor to him, by extending it. He
had magnificently endowed the great functionaries of the Empire; he wished
to re-establish below and around them a hierarchy of subalterns, honored
by public offices and henceforth, for this reason, to have themselves and
families distinguished by hereditary titles. In the speech from the
throne, by which he opened the session of the legislative body in 1807,
Napoleon showed his intentions on this subject. "The nation," said he,
"has experienced the most happy results from the establishment of the
Legion of Honor. I have created several imperial titles, to give new
splendor to my principal subjects, to honor striking services by striking
recompenses, and also to prevent the return of any feudal titles
incompatible with our Constitution."

Thus it was that, by a child of the Revolution, still possessed by most of
its doctrines, a nobility was to be created in France. The country was not
deceived. The emperor could make dukes, marquises, counts, barons; he
could not constitute an aristocracy, that slow product of ages in the
history of nations. The new nobles remained functionaries when they were
not soldiers, illustrious by themselves as well as by the incomparable
lustre of the glory of their chief.

The emperor gained battles, concluded treaties, raised or overthrew
thrones; he founded a new nobility, and decreed the erection of
magnificent monuments by the simple effort of his all-powerful will; he
imagined that his imperial action had no limit, and thought himself able
to command the master-pieces of genius as well as the movements of his
armies. He was not, and had never been, indifferent to the great beauties
of intellect, and his taste was shocked when he was extolled at the opera
in bad verses.

In his opinion, mind had its place in the social state, and should be
everywhere regulated as a class of that institute which he had
reconstituted and completed. He had already laid the foundations of a
great university corporation, which he was soon to establish, and which
has since, in spite of some defects, rendered such important services to
the national education and instruction. In the session of 1806, a project
of law, drawn up by M. Fourcroy, Director of Public Instruction, had made
the fundamental principles known. By the side of the clerical body, to
whom Napoleon would not confide the public education, he had imagined the
idea of a lay corporation, which should not be subject to permanent vows,
while at the same time imbued with that _esprit de corps_ which he had
come to look on as one of the great moral forces of society. Under the
name of the Imperial University, a new body of teachers was to be
entrusted with the public education throughout the empire; the members of
this body of teachers were to undertake civil, special, and temporary
obligations. The professional education of the men destined to this
career, their examinations, their incorporation in the university, the
government of this body, confided to a superior council, composed of men
illustrious by their talents; all this vast and fertile scheme, due in a
great measure to the aid of Fontanes, was afterwards to be developed in
the midst of the storms which already commenced to gather around France.
Napoleon had long conceived the project, but deferred the details to
another time, waiting until he had created the nursery which should
furnish France with learned men, whose duty was to educate the rising
generation. The all-powerful conqueror, in the midst of his Polish
campaign, and in his winter-quarters of Finkestein, prepared a minute on
the establishment of Ecouen, which had been recently founded for the
education of poor girls belonging to members of the Legion of Honor. I
wish to quote this document, which, though blunt and insolent, shows much
good sense, in order to show how this infinitely active and powerful mind
pursued at once different enterprises and thoughts, stamping on all his
works the seal of his character and his personal will.

"This establishment must be handsome in all that relates to building, and
simple in all that relates to education. Beware of following the example
of the old establishment of St. Cyr, where they spent considerable sums
and brought up the young ladies badly. The employment and distribution of
time are objects which principally demand your attention. What shall be
taught to the young ladies who are to be educated at Ecouen? We must begin
by religion in all its strictness. Do not admit on this point any
modification. Religion is an important matter in a public institution for
young ladies. It is, whatever may be said to the contrary, the surest
guarantee for mothers and for husbands. Let us bring up believers, and not
reasoners. The weakness of woman's brain, the uncertainty of their ideas,
their destiny in society, the necessity of constant and perpetual
resignation, and a sort of indulgent and easy charity; all this cannot be
obtained, except by religion, by a religion charitable and mild. I
attached but small importance to the religious institutions of the
military school of Fontainebleau, and I have ordained only what is
absolutely necessary for the lyceums. It is quite the reverse for the
institution of Ecouen. Nearly all the science taught there ought to be
that of the Gospel. I desire that there may proceed from it not very
charming women, but virtuous women; that their accomplishments may be
those of manners and heart, not of wit and amusement.

"There must, therefore, be at Ecouen a director, an intelligent man, of
middle age and good morals. The pupils must each day say regular prayers,
hear mass, and receive lessons on the catechism. This part of their
education must be most carefully attended to.

"The pupils must then also be taught arithmetic, writing, and the
principles of their mother tongue, so that they know orthography. They
must be taught a little geography and history, but be careful not to teach
them Latin or any foreign tongue. To the eldest may be taught a little
botany, or a slight course of physics or natural history, and even that
may have a bad effect. They must be limited in physics to what is
necessary to prevent gross ignorance or stupid superstition, and must keep
to facts, without reasonings which tend directly or indirectly to first
causes.

"It will afterwards be considered if it would be useful to give to those
who attain to a certain class a sum for their clothing. They might by that
get accustomed to economy, to calculate the value of things, and to keep
their own accounts. But, in general, they must all be occupied during
three fourths of the day in manual work; they ought to know how to make
stockings, chemises, embroidery--in fact, all kinds of women's work. These
young girls ought to be considered as if they belonged to families who
have in the provinces from fifteen to eighteen thousand francs a year, and
be treated accordingly. You will therefore understand that hand-work in
the household should not be indifferent to them.

"I do not know if it is possible to teach them some little of medicine and
pharmacy, at least of that kind of medicine which is within the reach of a
nurse. It would be well also if they knew a little part of the kitchen
occupied by medicinal herbs. I wish that a young girl, quitting Ecouen to
take her place at the head of a small household, should know how to cut
out her dresses, mend her husband's clothes, make her baby-linen, and
procure little comforts for her family by the means usually employed in a
provincial household; nurse her husband and children when ill, and know on
these points, because it has been early inculcated on her, all that nurses
have learnt by habit. All this is so simple and trivial as scarcely to
require reflection. As to dress, it ought to be uniform and of common
material, but well made. I think that on that head the present female
costume leaves nothing to be desired. The arms, however, must of course be
covered, and other modifications adopted which modesty and the conditions
of health require.

"As to the food, it cannot be too simple; soup, boiled beef, and a little
_entree_; there is no need for more.

"I do not dare, as at Fontainebleau, order the pupils to do their own
cooking; I should have too many people against me; but they may be allowed
to prepare their dessert, and what is given to them either for lunch or
for holidays. I will dispense with their cooking, but not with their
making their own bread. The advantage of all this is, that they will be
exercised in all they may be called on to do, and find the natural
employment of their time in practical and useful things.

"If I am told that the establishment will not be very fashionable, I reply
that this is what I desire, because it is my opinion that of all
educations the best is that of mothers; because my intention is
principally to assist those young girls who have lost their mothers, and
whose relations are poor. To sum up all, if the members of the Legion of
Honor who are rich disdain to put their daughters at Ecouen, if those who
are poor desire that they shall be received, and if these young persona;
returning to their provinces, enjoy there the reputation of good women, I
shall have completely attained my end, and I am certain that the
establishment will acquire a high and genuine reputation.

"In this matter we must go to the verge of ridicule. I do not bring up
either dressmakers, or waiting-women, or housekeepers, but women for
modest and poor households. The mother, in a poor household, is the
housekeeper of the family."

The spirit of the age and the fascinations of luxury in an agitated epoch
were too strong for the determined and reasoned will of the legislator.
The houses of the Legion of Honor were not destined to become the best
schools for the mothers of families "in modest and poor households."
Napoleon had well judged the superior influence of daily example when he
said, "My opinion is, that the best education is that of mothers." The
wisest and most far-seeing rules know not how to replace it. Religion
cannot be taught by order, like sewing or cooking. The great lesson of
daily virtue and devotion will ever remain the lot of mothers.

The delicate question of female education carried the mark of the Emperor
Napoleon's genius for organization. He had also sought to reduce to rules
the encouragement that power owed to genius. Since the year 1805, he had
instituted prizes every ten years, intended to recompense the authors of
the best works on the physical sciences, mathematics, history, the author
of the best theatrical piece, the best opera, the best poem, the best
painters and sculptors; "so that," according to the preamble of the
decree, "France may not only preserve the superiority she has acquired in
science, literature, and the arts, but that the age which commences may
surpass those which have preceded it."

It would be an arrogant pretension for the nineteenth century to assert
its superiority over its illustrious predecessors, the sixteenth,
seventeenth, and eighteenth century, in all that concerns literature or
art. However, we have had the good fortune and the honor to be witnesses
of a wonderful display of creative genius in France in all branches of
literature and art; we have seen orators, poets, artists who could take
rank with the most illustrious chiefs of the ancient schools; all this
splendor, all this national and peaceful glory, has only taken root in
regular liberty and constitutional order. The troubles of the French
Revolution, the violent and continual emotions of the war, above all the
rule of an arbitrary will, which opened or shut at pleasure both lips and
printing-presses, had not been propitious to the expansion of human
thought under the reign of the Emperor Napoleon. Those who possessed a
spark of the admirable gift of genius, preserved at the same time in their
hearts that passion for liberty which necessarily ranked them among the
enemies or suspected persons. At the height of his supreme power, Napoleon
could never suffer independence either of thought or speech. He long
persecuted Benjamin Constant after he had taken his place among the
members of the Tribunate; and he manifested a persecuting aversion towards
Madame de Stael, which betrayed that littleness of character often lying
hid under a greatness of mind and views. When I turn over the table of
contents of that immense correspondence of Napoleon which reveals the
entire man in spite of the prudence of the editors, I find continually the
name of Madame de Stael, joined to rigorous measures of spiteful epithets.
"I write to the Minister of Police to finish with that mad Madame de
Stael," he wrote on the 20th April, 1807, to the Count Regnault St. Jean
d'Angely, who had apologized for his correspondence with the illustrious
outlaw. "She is not to be suffered to leave Geneva, unless she wishes to
go to a foreign country to write libels. Every day I obtain new proofs
that no one can be worse than that women, enemy of the government and of
France, without which she cannot live;" and several days previously he
wrote to Fouche, "When I occupy myself with Madame de Stael, it is because
I have the facts before me. That woman is a true bird of bad omen; she
believes the tempest already arrived, and delights in intrigues and
follies. Let her go to her Lake Leman. Have not the Genevans done us harm
enough?"