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

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Napoleon judged thus; he did not avail himself of the articles immediately
denied in the note drawn up by his negotiators, and painfully accepted by
the Pope. In fact, the undertaking at Savona had failed; it began again at
Paris, where the Council at length assembled on June 17th. The emperor had
beforehand sought to intimidate a few of the priests called to take part
in it. During his recent journey in Normandy he had Bois Chollet, the
Bishop of Seez, called before him, accused of rigor towards the priests
who had lately accepted the constitution. "You wish for civil war; you
have already engaged in it," cried Napoleon, "you have embrued your hands
in French blood. I have pardoned you, and you will not pardon others,
miserable wretch; you are a bad subject, give me your resignation
immediately." One of the canons of Seez, the Abbe Le Gallois, learned and
virtuous, and who was looked upon as exercising a great influence over his
bishop, was conducted to Paris, and put in prison in La Force. "The canon
is too clever," said the emperor, "let him be brought to Vincennes." Le
Gallois was to pass nine months there, and only the fall of the Empire was
to put an end to his detention.

"Your conscience is a fool!" said Napoleon to De Broglie, Bishop of Ghent,
whom he had made a chevalier of the legion of honor, when the latter
protested against a clause in the oath. He had said as much to other
prelates whom he had just convoked to the Council. It is a serious case
for absolute power when it enters into a struggle with the most noble
sentiments of human nature. The Emperor Napoleon had come to that point
when he regarded as his enemies freedom of thought and freedom of
conscience amongst his subjects still suspected of independence,
_litterateurs_ or bishops.

Ninety-five prelates assembled, on the 17th of June, in the morning, in
the church of Notre Dame. They were joined by nine bishops appointed by
Napoleon, although they had not yet received canonical institution. At the
second seance, when the affairs of the Council began to be seriously
considered, the Ministers of Religion of France and Italy took their
places in the assembly. In opening, on the 16th, the session of the Corps
Legislatif, the emperor had haughtily proclaimed his supremacy. "The
affairs of religion," he said, "have been too often mixed up with, and
sacrificed to, the interests of a state of the third order. I have put an
end to this scandal forever. I have united Rome to the Empire. I have
accorded palaces to the popes at Rome and in Paris. If they have at heart
the interests of religion, they will often desire to sojourn at the centre
of the affairs of Christendom. It was thus that St. Peter preferred Rome
to a sojourn in the Holy Land."

On taking his seat at the Council, Bigot de Preameneu, then Minister of
Religion, pronounced in his turn a discourse which history ought to assign
to its true origin. The emperor enumerated, by the mouth of his minister,
his numerous grievances with regard to the court of Rome, dioceses without
bishops, the prelates deprived of canonical institution. "By this means
the Pope has tried to create troubles in the Church and in the state. The
sinister projects of the Pope have been rendered null by the firmness of
the chapters in maintaining their rights, and by the good feeling of the
people, accustomed to respect only the legitimate authorities. His Majesty
declares that he will never suffer in France as in Germany, that the court
of Rome should exercise on vacancies in the sees any influence by vicars
apostolic, because the Christian religion being necessary to the faithful,
and to the state, its existence would be compromised in countries where
vicars, whom the government might not recognize should be charged with the
direction of the faithful. His Majesty wishes to protect the religion of
his fathers; he wishes to preserve it; and yet it would be no longer the
same religion if it ceased to have bishops, and if one claimed to
concentrate in himself the power of all. His Majesty expects, as emperor
and king, as protector of the Church, as the father of his people, that
the bishops should be instituted according to the forms anterior to the
Concordat, and without a see ever remaining vacant over three months, a
time more than sufficient for its being filled up."

The declaration fell like a thunderbolt in the midst of the Council. With
the exception of a very small number of prelates acquainted with the
negotiations of Savona, or in the confidence of the emperor, the mass of
the bishops, come from a distance, ignorant or deceived, thought to find
peace accomplished, or on the way of being accomplished, in the Church
between the civil power and the holy see. On the previous evening all had
applauded the words of Boulogne, Bishop of Troyes, then the most
celebrated amongst the religious orators, when he cried, "Whatever
vicissitudes the see of Peter may experience, whatever may be the state
and condition of his august successor, we shall always be linked to him by
the bonds of respect and filial reverence. This see may be removed, it can
never be destroyed. They may deprive it of its splendor, they can never
deprive it of its force. Wheresoever the see may be, there all others will
meet. Wheresoever this see may be transported, all Catholics will follow
it, because wheresoever it may be settled there will be the stem of the
succession, the centre of government, and the sacred depository of the
apostolic traditions." When the prelates were successively called upon to
give their consent to the opening of the Council, Mgr. d'Aviau, Archbishop
of Bordeaux, replied, "Yes, I wish it; excepting, nevertheless, the
obedience due to the sovereign pontiff, an obedience to which I pledge
myself on oath." All the members of the Council, its president, Cardinal
Fesch, at the head of it, took the oath of allegiance to the Catholic
Church, apostolic and Roman, and at the same time a "faithful obedience to
the Roman pontiff, successor of St. Peter, the prince of the apostles, and
successor of Jesus Christ."

Such was not the end which the emperor had proposed to himself in
convoking the Council, and his wrath towards Cardinal Fesch was violent,
as well as towards Boulogne. "I have ever in my heart the oath taken to
the Pope, which seemed to me very ill-timed," wrote he to Bigot de
Preameneu; "make researches to discover what is meant by this oath, and
how the parliaments regarded it. Let the sittings of the Council be
secret, and let it not have, either in session or in committee, any motion
of order. The report that you make to the Council ought not to be
printed." The commissions were to be appointed by ballot; the first
elected was charged with drawing up the address to the emperor. The task
was confided to the Bishop of Nantes, Mgr. Duvoisin, clever and wise, well
advanced in the good graces of Napoleon, and who had been one of the
delegates to Savona. To the first objections that his colleagues presented
to him, the prelate responded that his draft of the address had received
the approval of the emperor.

It was much to presume on the docility of an assembly, incomplete in
truth, for a very small part of the Italian and German bishops had been
convoked, independent, however, by character and station. Whilst Mgr.
Duvoisin submitted his draft with regret to a revision which allowed
nothing to remain of the complaisance but lately evinced for the imperial
policy, an obscure prelate demanded that the entire Council should entreat
from the emperor the liberty of the Pope. "It is our right; it is also our
duty," cried Dessolles, Bishop of Chambery; "we owe it not only to
ourselves, but we owe it also to the faithful of our dioceses--what do I
say, to ail the Catholics of Europe, and of the whole world? Let us not
hesitate; let us go, we must, let us go to throw ourselves in a body at
the feet of the emperor, in order to obtain this indispensable
deliverance." And as timid objections began to manifest themselves in the
assembly, "What, messieurs?" resumed the bishop, "the Chapter of Paris has
been able to ask for mercy to M. d'Astros, one of its members, and we will
not have the courage to ask for the freedom of the Pope. And why should
the emperor be provoked at it? Messeigneurs, the Divinity himself consents
to be solicited, persecuted, importuned with our prayers; sovereigns are
the image of God upon earth; by what right ought they to complain if we
act towards them as towards the Master of Heaven?"

Emotion overcame all the members of the Council; the moderates and the
waverers were drawn along by the ardor of the prelates personally attached
to the Pope, or nobly resolved upon sustaining their convictions even to
the end. The old Archbishop of Bordeaux, the Bishops of Ghent and of
Troyes, claimed at once the liberty of the pontiff, and his canonical
right to use the ecclesiastical thunderbolts. "Judge the Pope, if you
dare, and condemn the Church if you can," cried Mgr. d'Aviau. The prelates
pledged to the imperial power wished to adjourn the discussion; when they
came to the vote on the draft of the address, now without color or life,
Cardinal Maury proposed that it should only be signed by the president and
the secretaries. This overture suited all the timid characters; the
address was voted by sitting and standing. The emperor did not show
himself satisfied. "The bishops are much, mistaken if they think to have
the last word with me," said he. The Bishop of Chambery alone found favor
in his eyes. "One is never to be blamed for asking for the freedom of his
chief," said Napoleon. He had an order sent to the Council to answer his
message on the subject of canonical institution within eight days, without
losing time in useless discussions. A few of the more moderate bishops
happened to be going out of the Tuileries from the imperial mass; the
emperor approached them. "I have desired to act by you as princes of the
Church," said he; "It is for you to say if you will henceforth be only
beadles, The Pope refuses to execute the Concordat; ah, well! I no longer
wish for the Concordat." "Sire," said Osmond, "your Majesty will not tear
with your own hands the finest page in your history." "The bishops have
acted like cowards!" cried Napoleon, with violence. "No, sire," again
replied the prelate, who had so lately accepted the Archbishopric of
Florence without waiting for canonical institution, "they are not cowards,
for they have taken the side of the most feeble." The emperor turned his
back on him.

"The only and exclusive object of the council of 1811," the Abbe de Pradt
has said in his "Histoire des quatre Concordats," "was to regulate the
order of Canonical Institution, and to provide that it should not
henceforth be hindered by any other cause than the objections urged
against the appointments by the Pope. In this lay the whole dispute
between the holy see and the princes. It was not only his own affairs that
Napoleon was attending to in this settlement, it was also those of other
sovereigns, whom he spared by his example the embarrassments which awaited
them." The Council felt the extreme importance of the question. After a
lively discussion, and in spite of the persistency of the prelates
favorable to the court, the commission appointed for this purpose would
not pronounce upon the message of his Majesty before sending a deputation
to the holy Father, who might set forth to him the deplorable state of the
churches in the empire of France and in the kingdom of Italy, and who
might confer with him on the means of remedying these evils. "The emperor
requires a decree of the Council before consenting to the sending of the
deputation," repeated Cardinal Fesch and his friends. "That would be a
sure method to make everything fail," cried the Bishop of Tournay, "for it
would be exactly like saying to the Pope: Your purse or your life; give us
the bulls and we shall be satisfied with you." Cardinal Fesch was
constrained to carry to Napoleon the vote of the commission.

The emperor did not think highly either of the skill or the character of
his uncle, and was not particular how he treated him. "He will not reject
you," said the cardinal to a lady with a petition, "I have been turned out
of doors, yes I, twice in a single day." He essayed vainly to explain to
Napoleon the canonical reasons which had determined the commission.

"Still more theology," replied the emperor; "hold your tongue; you are an
ignoramus. In six months I should get to know more than you. Ah! the
commission votes thus! I shall not get the worst of it. I shall dissolve
the Council and all will be finished. It is of small consequence what the
Council wishes or doesn't wish, I shall declare myself competent,
following the advice of the philosophers and lawyers. The prefects will
appoint the cures, the chapters, and the bishops. If the metropolitan does
not choose to institute them, I will shut up the seminaries, and religion
will have no more ministers." The violence of the insult and the grandeur
of the situation elevated the soul of Cardinal Fesch. "If you wish to make
martyrs, commence in your own family, sire," said he. "I am ready to give
my life to seal my faith. Be perfectly assured that unless the Pope shall
have approved this measure, I, the metropolitan, will never institute any
of my suffragans. I go even further: if one of them should bethink
himself, in my default, of instituting a bishop in my province, I would
excommunicate him immediately."

It was then that Napoleon recognized the advantages of the abortive
attempt at Savona. "You are all noodles," said he to his ecclesiastical
counsellors, "you do not understand your position. It will then be for me
to extricate you from the affair; I am about to arrange everything." He
dictated upon the spot the draft of a decree based upon the concessions at
first accepted by the Pope. "The deputation of bishops to the holy Father
has removed all difficulties," said he; "the Pope has condescended to
enter into the difficulties of the Church; the sole difference is to be
found in the length of the delay; the emperor wished for three months, the
Pope asked for six. This difference not being of a nature to break up the
arrangement already concluded, it became henceforth the duty of the
Council to enact it. The deputation to the holy Father should convey to
him the thanks of the prelates and the faithful."

At first the commission of the Council almost entirely fell into the trap.
Could it be doubted that the authorization given by the Pope appeared to
cut the question whilst reserving the rights of the holy see. The
Archbishop of Bordeaux alone protested in the first place; he soon rallied
to his side Broglie, Boulogne, and the Bishop of Tournay. In spite of the
most ardent efforts of the bishops favorable to the court the majority of
the commission ended by rejecting the decree. "You will answer for all the
future evils of the Church," said the Archbishop of Tours to the Bishop of
Ghent, "and I cite you before the tribunal of God." "I await you there
yourself," replied Broglie.

The emperor appeared to acquiesce without anger in the decision of the
commission. "What is it in the decree that most displeases the bishops?"
he asked of Cardinal Fesch. "It is the demand for it to be converted into
a law of the state," replied the Archbishop of Lyons. "If that hinders
them, they have only to take it out," replied Napoleon; "I can just as
well make it a law of the state when I please." Cardinal Fesch gave a
report of his mission; he promptly broke up the sitting (July 10th). On
the following morning the Council was dissolved. In the night the bishop
of Ghent, Troyes, and Tournay were arrested in their beds, taken to
Vincennes, and kept in secrecy. The Duc de Rovigo was opposed to the
arrest of the Archbishop of Bordeaux. "We must not touch M. d'Aviau," said
he; "he is a saint, and we shall have everybody against us."

The Marshal Gouvion St. Cyr had but recently given a peremptory reason
against select companies. "There are not many brave men in the world,"
said he; "when you collect them all in the same corps, there is not enough
leaven elsewhere to make the dough rise." Deprived of the most resolute of
its members, the Council found itself in the hands of Napoleon like dough,
soft and unresisting. The grand reasons, the elevated and powerful
arguments which the captive prelates had made so important, lost all
influence over the mass of their colleagues. "One is afraid of Vincennes
and one has no desire to loose one's revenues," replied Cardinal Fesch to
the entreaties of the persons who solicited the fathers of the Council to
use their efforts in favor of the prisoners. By fear or persuasion the
bishops, when personally urged and worked upon, bent one after another
under the imperial will. The news from Savona were that the Pope's health
was improved and that he was inclined to go back to the original
concessions. The Council, dissolved on the 11th of July, quietly assembled
again on the 5th August. The signature of about eighty bishops was
considered certain. The public discussion was not renewed; the Archbishop
of Bordeaux alone protested against sanctioning all the imperial claims by
a decree, thirteen or fourteen prelates joining their mute protest to
Aviau's declaration; and the votes were decided by sitting and rising.
Subject to a power which they durst not discuss, the Fathers of the
Council disliked to proclaim openly their personal subservience. The
decree drawn up by the Emperor Napoleon came back to his hands confirmed
by the approbation of the Council "Our wine was not considered good in the
wood," said Cardinal Maury cynically, "you will find it better in
bottles." A deputation of bishops set out for Savona.

A few months afterwards, under the pressure of the same arbitrary and
sovereign will, Pius VII., now alone at Fontainebleau as he had been in
his prison at Savona, had in his turn to yield in a certain measure to
Napoleon's demands. As it had recently been at Savona, he was destined to
see his concessions deformed and exaggerated in order to serve as a basis
for a convention which he never ratified. On the day after the Council he
showed no displeasure to the bishops who had come as delegates, but
promised the investiture of the twenty-seven prelates who were nominated,
and even gave to the deliberations of the Council a sort of sanction in a
brief which he reserved to himself the right of drawing up. The form of it
did not please the emperor, who sent it back to the Council of State for
examination. The bishops who still remained in Paris waiting for the
decisions of the holy Father were sent to their dioceses. "I don't wish to
have a meeting of saints always here," said the emperor to Rovigo. In
summoning the Council he had made the blunder of reckoning upon the easy
docility of an assembly. "To ask men questions is to acknowledge their
right to be deceived," said the Parisians on the day after the refractory
bishops were arrested; "why does he summon a Council to imprison
afterwards those who are not of his opinion?" The triumph obtained by
Napoleon over the terrified prelates did not add to his glory, though it
assisted in lessening for the moment his ecclesiastical difficulties. All
the dioceses were now provided with bishops, and order was restored to the
chapters. That was all the emperor then wished, his outrages upon the
independence of consciences and on personal liberty weighing nothing in
his balance. He was accustomed to set little value on rights which
prevented the accomplishment of his designs. He had brought the bishops to
submission, imposed upon the captive Pope a partial acceptance of his
will, loftily vindicated the heritage of Charlemagne, and proclaimed his
moral and religious supremacy: and now, leaving Pius VII. still at Savona
and the refractory prelates at Vincennes, there was nothing more to keep
him in Paris. The Russian campaign was already preparing.

CHAPTER XIII.

GLORY AND MADNESS--THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN (1811-1812).

It is painful to love one's country and see it advancing to defeat; it is
sad to see a great mind, whose good sense recently equalled his power,
dragged to ruin by his own faults and dragging after him a wearied nation.
In 1812, France began to judge the Emperor Napoleon: and long previously
Europe had denounced him as an insatiable conqueror who laid her waste
incessantly. She was about to learn once more that neither distance, nor
the rigors of climate, nor threatening armies, afforded sufficient
protection against the emperor's schemes. Whilst his armies were
struggling hard in Spain and Portugal against the insurgent population
assisted by England, and whilst still holding in Germany the pledges of
his conquests, Napoleon made preparations to attack the Emperor Alexander,
who was still officially honored with the name of "ally," and to whom he
thus wrote on the 6th April, 1811, when his armaments were already
everywhere being prepared: "Has your Majesty ever had reason to repent of
the confidence which you have shown me?"

Several reasons urged Napoleon to begin hostilities against the Emperor
Alexander--reasons which, though bad and insufficient, weighed in his
eyes, and, under the influence of his personal passions, with a decisive
weight in the balance. He wished to pursue, everywhere and by every means,
his struggle against England and her influence in Europe. Alexander had
refused to increase the rigors of the continental blockade. To this
infraction of the spirit of the treaties uniting the emperors, Alexander
had added, during the Austrian war, an attitude of indifference and
reserve which inspired confidence in the Emperor Francis and his advisers.
He had shown no eagerness for the family alliance which Napoleon twice
offered, while, at the same time, the latter was not deceived as to the
annoyance caused at St. Petersburg by the negotiations for the hand of the
grand-duchess being suddenly broken off. In short, Napoleon was convinced
that the Emperor Alexander was preparing for war, eager to recover his
liberty, and be freed from the conditions of the treaty of Tilsit. He, at
the same time, believed that the renewal of hostilities would be
signalized by important advantages for whichever of the two belligerents
could first enter on the campaign. His main efforts, therefore, in 1811,
were to hasten his warlike preparations, while using diplomatic artifices
to make his adversary sleep, and, at the same time, proving to Europe that
the rupture of the treaties was on the part of Alexander, and that the
Russians were the first to arm. On sending him Count Lauriston, who was
appointed to replace Caulaincourt, Napoleon wrote the Czar: "The man I
send you has no consummate skill in business, but he is true and upright,
as are the sentiments I bear towards you. Nevertheless I daily receive
from Russia news which are not pacific. Yesterday I learned from Stockholm
that the Russian divisions in Finland had left to go towards the frontiers
of the Grand Duchy. A few days ago I had instructions from Bucharest that
five divisions had left the Moldavian and Wallachian provinces for Poland,
and that only four divisions of your Majesty's troops remain on the
Danube. What is now taking place is a new proof that repetition is a
powerful figure of rhetoric. Your Majesty has so often been told that I
have a grudge against you, that your confidence has been shaken. The
Russians quit a frontier where they are necessary, to go to a point where
your Majesty has only friends. Nevertheless I had to think also of my
affairs, and consider my own position. The recoil of my preparations will
lead your Majesty to increase yours; and what you do, re-echoing here,
will make me raise new levies, and all that for mere phantoms! It is a
repetition of what I did in 1807 in Prussia, and in 1809 in Austria. As
for me, I shall remain your Majesty's friend even when that fatality which
rules Europe will one day compel our two nations to take sword in hand. I
shall regulate my conduct by your Majesty's; I shall never make the
attack: my troops will advance only when your Majesty has torn up the
treaty of Tilsit. I shall be the first to disarm, and restore everything
to the condition in which things were a year ago, if your Majesty will go
back to the same confidence."

The emperor spoke the truth, and his treatment of Russia was nothing new.
It had long been a clumsy artifice of his insatiable greed for war and
conquest to charge his enemies with taking the sword in hand on account of
their fears or expectations, the fear and expectations being usually
caused by his attitude and the projects with which he was credited.
Military reasons assisted at this time in encouraging him to dissimulate
and talk of peace. He had conceived the idea of occupying successively the
vast territories by which he was separated from Russia, and gaining first
the Oder and then the Vistula before the Russians were in motion to cross
the Niemen. The first links of this combination were already begun to be
forged; crowds of runaway conscripts were everywhere being dragged from
the woods and rocks where they hid themselves; and, by sending columns of
militia to scour the provinces, garrison the villages, and freely pillage
the houses of the young deserters, there were 50,000 or 60,000 men thus
compelled to give themselves up, whose hiding-places had not been
discovered. The emperor sent them in troops to the islands of Elba,
Corsica, Re, Belle-Isle, and Walcheren, appointing the sea to keep his
deserters. Scarcely had they acquired the most rudimentary notions of
military discipline, when they were despatched in a body to Marshal
Davout, who was still stationed on the Elbe, with instructions to drill
and form them. They often arrived still clad in their peasant's dress,
their bodies ill, and their minds revolting against the existence thus
forced upon them far from their home and country. About one sixth of these
wretches escaped during the march, braving all the dangers and suffering
of flight across an unknown country rather than be soldiers. Recruits from
all the conquered nations filled up the gaps in the regiments of the ever-
increasing army. War supplies as well as soldiers were also constantly
accumulating in Germany. Napoleon resolved to collect at Dantzig the
resources necessary to support an army of 400,000 men for a year. The
marvellous fertility of his mind was entirely occupied in facilitating and
rendering certain the movements of that enormous mass of men and horses
during a long campaign and across vast spaces. The transport arrangements
were in charge of skilled lieutenants, who had been with him in all his
battles; and General Eble was at the head of the engineer division for
bridge-construction. "With the means at our disposal, we shall eat up all
obstacles," said Napoleon, confidently.