“We have done with the romance of the Revolution:  we must now commence its history.  We must have eyes only for what is real and practicable in the application of principles, and not for the speculative and hypothetical.”  Such were the memorable words of Bonaparte to his Council of State at one of its early meetings.  They strike the keynote of the era of the Consulate.  It was a period of intensely practical activity that absorbed all the energies of France and caused the earlier events of the Revolution to fade away into a seemingly remote past.  The failures of the civilian rulers and the military triumphs of Bonaparte had exerted a curious influence on the French character, which was in a mood of expectant receptivity.  In 1800 everything was in the transitional state that favours the efforts of a master builder; and one was now at hand whose constructive ability in civil affairs equalled his transcendent genius for war.

I propose here briefly to review the most important works of reconstruction which render the Consulate and the early part of the Empire for ever famous.  So vast and complex were Bonaparte’s efforts in this field that they will be described, not chronologically, but subject by subject.  The reader will, however, remember that for the most part they went on side by side, even amidst the distractions caused by war, diplomacy, colonial enterprises, and the myriad details of a vast administration.  What here appears as a series of canals was in reality a mighty river of enterprise rolling in undivided volume and fed by the superhuman vitality of the First Consul.  It was his inexhaustible curiosity which compelled functionaries to reveal the secrets of their office:  it was his intelligence that seized on the salient points of every problem and saw the solution:  it was his ardour and mental tenacity which kept his Ministers and committees hard at work, and by toil of sometimes twenty hours a day supervised the results:  it was, in fine, his passion for thoroughness, his ambition for France, that nerved every official with something of his own contempt of difficulties, until, as one of them said, “the gigantic entered into our very habits of thought."

The first question of political reconstruction which urgently claimed attention was that of local government.  On the very day when it was certain that the nation had accepted the new constitution, the First Consul presented to the Legislature a draft of a law for regulating the affairs of the Departments.  It must be admitted that local self-government, as instituted by the men of 1789 in their Departmental System, had proved a failure.  In that time of buoyant hope, when every difficulty and abuse seemed about to be charmed away by the magic of universal suffrage, local self-government of a most advanced type had been intrusted to an inexperienced populace.  There were elections for the commune or parish, elections for the canton, elections for the district, elections for the Department, and elections for the National Assembly, until the rustic brain, after reeling with excitement, speedily fell back into muddled apathy and left affairs generally to the wire-pullers of the nearest Jacobin club.  A time of great confusion ensued.  Law went according to local opinion, and the national taxes were often left unpaid.  In the Reign of Terror this lax system was replaced by the despotism of the secret committees, and the way was thus paved for a return to organized central control, such as was exercised by the Directory.

The First Consul, as successor to the Directory, therefore found matters ready to his hand for a drastic measure of centralization, and it is curious to notice that the men of 1789 had unwittingly cleared the ground for him.  To make way for the “supremacy of the general will,” they abolished the Parlements, which had maintained the old laws, customs, and privileges of their several provinces, and had frequently interfered in purely political matters.  The abolition of these and other privileged corporations in 1789 unified France and left not a single barrier to withstand either the flood of democracy or the backwash of reaction.  Everything therefore favoured the action of the First Consul in drawing all local powers under his own control.  France was for the moment weary of elective bodies, that did little except waste the nation’s taxes; and though there was some opposition to the new proposal, it passed on February 16th, 1800 (28 Pluviose, an, viii).

It substituted local government by the central power for local self-government.  The local divisions remained the same, except that the “districts,” abolished by the Convention, were now reconstituted on a somewhat larger scale, and were termed arrondissements, while the smaller communes, which had been merged in the cantons since 1795, were also revived.  It is noteworthy that, of all the areas mapped out by the Constituent Assembly in 1789-90, only the Department and canton have had a continuous existencea fact which seems to show the peril of tampering with well-established boundaries, and of carving out a large number of artificial districts, which speedily become the corpus vile of other experimenters.  Indeed, so little was there of effective self-government that France seems to have sighed with relief when order was imposed by Bonaparte in the person of a Prefect.  This important official, a miniature First Consul, was to administer the affairs of the Department, while sub-prefects were similarly placed over the new arrondissements, and mayors over the communes.  The mayors were appointed by the First Consul in communes of more than 5,000 souls:  by the prefects in the smaller communes:  all were alike responsible to the central power.

The rebound from the former electoral system, which placed all local authority ultimately in the hands of the voters, was emphasized by Article 75 of the constitution, which virtually raised officials beyond reach of prosecution.  It ran thus:  “The agents of the Government, other than the Ministers, cannot be prosecuted for facts relating to their duties except by a decision of the Council of State:  in that case the prosecution takes place before the ordinary tribunals.”  Now, as this decision rested with a body composed almost entirely of the higher officials, it will be seen that the chance of a public prosecution of an official became extremely small.  France was therefore in the first months of 1800 handed over to a hierarchy of officials closely bound together by interest and esprit de corps; and local administration, after ten years of democratic experiments, practically reverted to what it had been under the old monarchy.  In fact, the powers of the Prefects were, on the whole, much greater than those of the royal Intendants:  for while the latter were hampered by the provincial Parlements, the nominees of the First Consul had to deal with councils that retained scarce the shadow of power.  The real authority in local matters rested with the Prefects.  The old elective bodies survived, it is true, but their functions were now mainly advisory; and, lest their advice should be too copious, the sessions of the first two bodies were limited to a fortnight a year.  Except for a share in the assessment of taxation, their existence was merely a screen to hide the reality of the new central despotism. Beneficent it may have been; and the choice of Prefects was certainly a proof of Bonaparte’s discernment of real merit among men of all shades of opinion; but for all that, it was a despotism, and one that has inextricably entwined itself with the whole life of France.

It seems strange that this law should not have aroused fierce opposition; for it practically gagged democracy in its most appropriate and successful sphere of action, local self-government, and made popular election a mere shadow, except in the single act of the choice of the local juges de paix.  This was foreseen by the Liberals in the Tribunate:  but their power was small since the regulations passed in January:  and though Daunou, as “reporter,” sharply criticised this measure, yet he lamely concluded with the advice that it would be dangerous to reject it.  The Tribunes therefore passed the proposal by 71 votes to 25:  and the Corps Legislatif by 217 to 68.

The results of this new local government have often been considered so favourable as to prove that the genius of the French people requires central control rather than self-government.  But it should be noted that the conditions of France from 1790 to 1800 were altogether hostile to the development of free institutions.  The fierce feuds at home, the greed and the class jealousies awakened by confiscation, the blasts of war and the blight of bankruptcy, would have severely tested the firmest of local institutions; they were certain to wither so delicate an organism as an absolute democracy, which requires peace, prosperity, and infinite patience for its development.  Because France then came to despair of her local self-government, it did not follow that she would fail after Bonaparte’s return had restored her prestige and prosperity.  But the national elan forbade any postponement or compromise; and France forthwith accepted the rule of an able official hierarchy as a welcome alternative to the haphazard acts of local busybodies.  By many able men the change has been hailed as a proof of Bonaparte’s marvellous discernment of the national character, which, as they aver, longs for brilliance, order, and strong government, rather than for the steep and thorny paths of liberty.  Certainly there is much in the modern history of France which supports this opinion.  Yet perhaps these characteristics are due very largely to the master craftsman, who fashioned France anew when in a state of receptivity, and thus was able to subject democracy to that force which alone has been able to tame itthe mighty force of militarism.

The return to a monarchical policy was nowhere more evident than in the very important negotiations which regulated the relations of Church and State and produced the Concordat or treaty of peace with the Roman Catholic Church.  But we must first look back at the events which had reduced the Roman Catholic Church in France to its pitiable condition.

The conduct of the revolutionists towards the Church of France was actuated partly by the urgent needs of the national exchequer, partly by hatred and fear of so powerful a religious corporation.  Idealists of the new school of thought, and practical men who dreaded bankruptcy, accordingly joined in the assault on its property and privileges:  its tithes were confiscated, the religious houses and their property were likewise absorbed, and its lands were declared to be the lands of the nation.  A budget of public worship was, it is true, designed to support the bishops and priests; but this solemn obligation was soon renounced by the fiercer revolutionists.  Yet robbery was not their worst offence.  In July, 1790, they passed a law called the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which aimed at subjecting the Church to the State.  It compelled bishops and priests to seek election by the adult males of their several Departments and parishes, and forced them to take a stringent oath of obedience to the new order of things.  All the bishops but four refused to take an oath which set at naught the authority of the Pope:  more than 50,000 priests likewise refused, and were ejected from their livings:  the recusants were termed orthodox or non-juring priests, and by the law of August, 1792, they were exiled from France, while their more pliable or time-serving brethren who accepted the new decree were known as constitutionals.  About 12,000 of the constitutionals married, while some of them applauded the extreme Jacobinical measures of the Terror.  One of them shocked the faithful by celebrating the mysteries, having a bonnet rouge on his head, holding a pike in his hand, while his wife was installed near the altar. Outrages like these were rare:  but they served to discredit the constitutional Church and to throw up in sharper relief the courage with which the orthodox clergy met exile and death for conscience’ sake.  Moreover, the time-serving of the constitutionals was to avail them little:  during the Terror their stipends were unpaid, and the churches were for the most part closed.  After a partial respite in 1795-6, the coup d’etat of Fructidor (1797) again ushered in two years of petty persécutions; but in the early summer of 1799 constitutionals were once more allowed to observe the Christian Sunday, and at the time of Bonaparte’s return from Egypt their services were more frequented than those of the Theophilanthropists on the décadis.  It was evident, then, that the anti-religious furor had burnt itself out, and that France was turning back to her old faith.  Indeed, outside Paris and a few other large towns, public opinion mocked at the new cults, and in the country districts the peasantry clung with deep affection to their old orthodox priests, often following them into the forests to receive their services and forsaking those of their supplanters.

Such, then, was the religious state of France in 1799:  her clergy were rent by a formidable schism; the orthodox priests clung where possible to their parishioners, or lived in destitution abroad; the constitutional priests, though still frowned on by the Directory, were gaining ground at the expense of the Theophilanthropists, whose expiring efforts excited ridicule.  In fine, a nation weary of religious experiments and groping about for some firm anchorage in the midst of the turbid ebb-tide and its numerous backwaters.

Despite the absence of any deep religious belief, Bonaparte felt the need of religion as the bulwark of morality and the cement of society.  During his youth he had experienced the strength of Romanism in Corsica, and during his campaigns in Italy he saw with admiration the zeal of the French orthodox priests who had accepted exile and poverty for conscience’ sake.  To these outcasts he extended more protection than was deemed compatible with correct republicanism; and he received their grateful thanks.  After Brumaire he suppressed the oath previously exacted from the clergy, and replaced it by a promise of fidelity to the constitution.  Many reasons have been assigned for this conduct, but doubtless his imagination was touched by the sight of the majestic hierarchy of Rome, whose spiritual powers still prevailed, even amidst the ruin of its temporal authority, and were slowly but surely winning back the ground lost in the Revolution.  An influence so impalpable yet irresistible, that inherited from the Rome of the Caesars the gift of organization and the power of maintaining discipline, in which the Revolution was so signally lacking, might well be the ally of the man who now dominated the Latin peoples.  The pupil of Cæsar could certainly not neglect the aid of the spiritual hierarchy, which was all that remained of the old Roman grandeur.

Added to this was his keen instinct for reality, which led him to scorn such whipped-up creeds as Robespierre’s Supreme Being and that amazing hybrid, Theophilanthropy, offspring of the Goddess of Reason and La Reveilliere-Lepeaux.  Having watched their manufacture, rise and fall, he felt the more regard for the faith of his youth, which satisfied one of the most imperious needs of his nature, a craving for certainty.  Witness this crushing retort to M. Mathieu:  “What is your Theophilanthropy?  Oh, don’t talk to me of a religion which only takes me for this life, without telling me whence I come or whither I go.”  Of course, this does not prove the reality of Napoleon’s religion; but it shows that he was not devoid of the religious instinct.

The victory of Marengo enabled Bonaparte to proceed with his plans for an accommodation with the Vatican; and he informed one of the Lombard bishops that he desired to open friendly relations with Pope Pius VII., who was then about to make his entry into Rome.  There he received the protection of the First Consul, and soon recovered his sovereignty over his States, excepting the Legations.

The negotiations between Paris and the Vatican were transacted chiefly by a very able priest, Bernier by name, who had gained the First Consul’s confidence during the pacification of Brittany, and now urged on the envoys of Rome the need of deferring to all that was reasonable in the French demands.  The negotiators for the Vatican were Cardinals Consalvi and Caprara, and Monseigneur Spinaable ecclesiastics, who were fitted to maintain clerical claims with that mixture of suppleness and firmness which had so often baffled the force and craft of mighty potentates.  The first difficulty arose on the question of the resignation of bishops of the Gallican Church:  Bonaparte demanded that, whether orthodox or constitutionals, they must resign their sees into the Pope’s hands; failing that, they must be deposed by the papal authority.  Sweeping as this proposal seemed, Bonaparte claimed that bishops of both sides must resign, in order that a satisfactory selection might be made.  Still more imperious was the need that the Church should renounce all claim to her confiscated domains.  All classes of the community, so urged Bonaparte, had made immense sacrifices during the Revolution; and now that peasants were settled on these once clerical lands, the foundations of society would be broken up by any attempt to dispossess them.

To both of these proposals the Court of Rome offered a tenacious resistance.  The idea of compelling long-persecuted bishops to resign their sees was no less distasteful than the latter proposal, which involved acquiescence in sacrilegious robbery.  At least, pleaded Mgr.  Spina, let tithes be re-established.  To this request the First Consul deigned no reply.  None, indeed, was possible except a curt refusal.  Few imposts had been so detested as the tithe; and its réimposition would have wounded the peasant class, on which the First Consul based his authority.  So long as he had their support he could treat with disdain the scoffs of the philosophers and even the opposition of his officers; but to have wavered on the subject of tithe and of the Church lands might have been fatal even to the victor of Marengo.

In fact, the difficulty of effecting any compromise was enormous.  In seeking to reconcile the France of Rousseau and Robespierre to the unchanging policy of the Vatican, the “heir to the Revolution” was essaying a harder task than any military enterprise.  To slay men has ever been easier than to mould their thoughts anew; and Bonaparte was now striving not only to remould French thought but also to fashion anew the ideas of the Eternal City.  He soon perceived that this latter enterprise was more difficult than the former.  The Pope and his councillors rejoiced at the signs of his repentance, but required to see the fruits thereof.  Instead of first-fruits they received unheard-of demandsthe surrender of the three Legations of Bologna, Ferrara, and Romagna, the renunciation of all tithes and Church lands in France, and the acceptance of a compromise with schismatics.  What wonder that the replies from Rome were couched in the non possumus terms which form the last refuge of the Vatican.  Finding that negotiations made no progress, Bonaparte intrusted Berthier and Murat to pay a visit to Rome and exercise a discreet but burdensome pressure in the form of requisitions for the French troops in the Papal States.

The ratification of peace with Austria gave greater weight to his representations at Rome, and he endeavoured to press on the signature of the Concordat, so as to startle the world by the simultaneous announcement of the pacification of the Continent and of the healing of the great religious schism in France.  But the clerical machinery worked too slowly to admit of this projected coup de theatre.  In Bonaparte’s proposals of February 25th, 1801, there were several demands already found to be inadmissible at the Vatican; and matters came to a deadlock until the Pope invested Spina with larger powers for negotiating at Paris.  Consalvi also proceeded to Paris, where he was received in state with other ambassadors at the Tuileries, the sight of a cardinal’s robe causing no little sensation.  The First Consul granted him a long interview, speaking at first somewhat seriously, but gradually becoming more affable and gracious.  Yet as his behaviour softened his demands stiffened; and at the close of the audience he pressed Consalvi to sign a somewhat unfavourable version of the compact within five days, otherwise the negotiations would be at an end and a national religion would be adoptedan enterprise for which the auguries promised complete success.  At a later interview he expressed the same resolution in homely phrase:  when Consalvi pressed him to take a firm stand against the “constitutional” intruders, he laughingly remarked that he could do no more until he knew how he stood with Rome; for “you know that when one cannot arrange matters with God, one comes to terms with the devil."

This dalliance with the “constitutionals” might have been more than an astute ruse, and Consalvi knew it.  In framing a national Church the First Consul would have appealed not only to the old Gallican feeling, still strong among the clerics and laity, but also to the potent force of French nationality.  The experiment might have been managed so as to offend none but the strictest Catholics, who were less to be feared than the free-thinkers.  Consalvi was not far wrong when, writing of the official world at Paris, he said that only Bonaparte really desired a Concordat.

The First Consul’s motives in seeking the alliance of Rome have, very naturally, been subjected to searching criticism; and in forcing the Concordat on France, and also on Rome, he was certainly undertaking the most difficult negotiation of his life. But his preference for the Roman connection was an act of far-reaching statecraft.  He saw that a national Church, unrecognized by Rome, was a mere half-way house between Romanism and Protestantism; and he disliked the latter creed because of its tendency to beget sects and to impair the validity of the general will.  He still retained enough of Rousseau’s doctrine to desire that the general will should be uniform, provided that it could be controlled by his own will.  Such uniformity in the sphere of religion was impossible unless he had the support of the Papacy.  Only by a bargain with Rome could he gain the support of a solid ecclesiastical phalanx.  Finally, by erecting a French national Church, he would not only have perpetuated schism at home, but would have disqualified himself for acting the part of Charlemagne over central and southern Europe.  To re-fashion Europe in a cosmopolitan mould he needed a clerical police that was more than merely French.  To achieve those grander designs the successor of Cæsar would need the aid of the successor of Peter; and this aid would be granted only to the restorer of Roman Catholicism in France, never to the perpetuator of schism.

These would seem to be the chief reasons why he braved public opinion in Paris and clung to the Roman connection, bringing forward his plan of a Gallican Church only as a threatening move against the clerical flank.  When the Vatican was obdurate he coquetted with the “constitutional” bishops, allowing them every facility for free speech in a council which they held at Paris at the close of June, 1801.  He summoned to the Tuileries their president, the famous Gregoire, and showed him signal marks of esteem.  “Put not your trust in princes” must soon have been the thought of Gregoire and his colleagues:  for a fortnight later Bonaparte carried through his treaty with Rome and shelved alike the congress and the church of the “constitutionals.”

It would be tedious to detail all the steps in this complex negotiation, but the final proceedings call for some notice.  When the treaty was assuming its final form, Talleyrand, the polite scoffer, the bitter foe of all clerical claims, found it desirable to take the baths at a distant place, and left the threads of the negotiation in the hands of two men who were equally determined to prevent its signature, Maret, Secretary of State, and Hauterive, who afterwards become the official archivist of France.  These men determined to submit to Consalvi a draft of the treaty differing widely from that which had been agreed upon; and that, too, when the official announcement had been made that the treaty was to be signed immediately.  In the last hours the cardinal found himself confronted with unexpected conditions, many of which he had successfully repelled.  Though staggered by this trickery, which compelled him to sign a surrender or to accept an open rupture, Consalvi fought the question over again in a conference that lasted twenty-four hours; he even appeared at the State dinner given on July 14th by the First Consul, who informed him before the other guests that it was a question of “my draft of the treaty or none at all.”  Nothing baffled the patience and tenacity of the Cardinal; and finally, by the good offices of Joseph Bonaparte, the objectionable demands thrust forward at the eleventh hour were removed or altered.

The question has been discussed whether the First Consul was a party to this device.  Theiner asserts that he knew nothing of it:  that it was an official intrigue got up at the last moment by the anti-clericals so as to precipitate a rupture.  In support of this view, he cites letters of Maret and Hauterive as inculpating these men and tending to free Bonaparte from suspicion of complicity.  But the letters cannot be said to dissipate all suspicion.  The First Consul had made this negotiation peculiarly his own:  no officials assuredly would have dared secretly to foist their own version of an important treaty; or, if they did, this act would have been the last of their career.  But Bonaparte did not disgrace them; on the contrary, he continued to honour them with his confidence.  Moreover, the First Consul flew into a passion with his brother Joseph when he reported that Consalvi could not sign the document now offered to him, and tore in pieces the articles finally arranged with the Cardinal.  On the return of his usually calm intelligence, he at last allowed the concessions to stand, with the exception of two; but in a scrutiny of motives we must assign most importance, not to second and more prudent thoughts, but to the first ebullition of feelings, which seem unmistakably to prove his knowledge and approval of Hauterive’s device.  We must therefore conclude that he allowed the antagonists of the Concordat to make this treacherous onset, with the intention of extorting every possible demand from the dazed and bewildered Cardinal.

After further delays the Concordat was ratified at Eastertide, 1802.  It may be briefly described as follows:  The French Government recognized that the Catholic apostolic and Roman religion was the religion of the great majority of the French people, “especially of the Consuls”; but it refused to declare it to be the religion of France, as was the case under the ancien regime.  It was to be freely and publicly practised in France, subject to the police regulations that the Government judged necessary for the public tranquillity.  In return for these great advantages, many concessions were expected from the Church.  The present bishops, both orthodox and constitutional, were, at the Pope’s invitation, to resign their sees; or, failing that, new appointments were to be made, as if the sees were vacant.  The last proviso was necessary; for of the eighty-one surviving bishops affected by this decision as many as thirteen orthodox and two “constitutionals” offered persistent but unavailing protests against the action of the Pope and First Consul.

A new division of archbishoprics and bishoprics was now made, which gave in all sixty sees to France.  The First Consul enjoyed the right of nomination to them, whereupon the Pope bestowed canonical investiture.  The archbishops and bishops were all to take an oath of fidelity to the constitution.  The bishops nominated the lower clerics provided that they were acceptable to the Government:  all alike bound themselves to watch over governmental interests.  The stability of France was further assured by a clause granting complete and permanent security to the holders of the confiscated Church landsa healing and salutary compromise which restored peace to every village and soothed the qualms of many a troubled conscience.  On its side, the State undertook to furnish suitable stipends to the clergy, a promise which was fulfilled in a rather niggardly spirit.  For the rest, the First Consul enjoyed the same consideration as the Kings of France in all matters ecclesiastical; and a clause was added, though Bonaparte declared it needless, that if any succeeding First Consul were not a Roman Catholic, his prerogatives in religious matters should be revised by a Convention.  A similar Concordat was passed a little later for the pacification of the Cisalpine Republic.

The Concordat was bitterly assailed by the Jacobins, especially by the military chiefs, and had not the infidel generals been for the most part sundered by mutual jealousies they might perhaps have overthrown Bonaparte.  But their obvious incapacity for civil affairs enabled them to venture on nothing more than a few coarse jests and clumsy demonstrations.  At the Easter celebration at Notre Dame in honour of the ratification of the Concordat, one of them, Delmas by name, ventured on the only protest barbed with telling satire:  “Yes, a fine piece of monkery this, indeed.  It only lacked the million men who got killed to destroy what you are striving to bring back.”  But to all protests Bonaparte opposed a calm behaviour that veiled a rigid determination, before which priests and soldiers were alike helpless.

In subsequent articles styled “organic,” Bonaparte, without consulting the Pope, made several laws that galled the orthodox clergy.  Under the plea of legislating for the police of public worship, he reaffirmed some of the principles which he had been unable to incorporate in the Concordat itself.  The organic articles asserted the old claims of the Gallican Church, which forbade the application of Papal Bulls, or of the decrees of “foreign” synods, to France:  they further forbade the French bishops to assemble in council or synod without the permission of the Government; and this was also required for a bishop to leave his diocese, even if he were summoned to Rome.  Such were the chief of the organic articles.  Passed under the plea of securing public tranquillity, they proved a fruitful source of discord, which during the Empire became so acute as to weaken Napoleon’s authority.  In matters religious as well as political, he early revealed his chief moral and mental defect, a determination to carry his point by whatever means and to require the utmost in every bargain.  While refusing fully to establish Roman Catholicism as the religion of the State, he compelled the Church to surrender its temporalities, to accept the regulations of the State, and to protect its interests.  Truly if, in Chateaubriand’s famous phrase, he was the “restorer of the altars,” he exacted the uttermost farthing for that restoration.

In one matter his clear intelligence stands forth in marked contrast to the narrow pedantry of the Roman Cardinals.  At a time of reconciliation between orthodox and “constitutionals,” they required from the latter a complete and public rétractation of their recent errors.  At once Bonaparte intervened with telling effect.  So condign a humiliation, he argued, would altogether mar the harmony newly re-established.  “The past is past:  and the bishops and prefects ought to require from the priests only the declaration of adhesion to the Concordat, and of obedience to the bishop nominated by the First Consul and instituted by the Pope.”  This enlightened advice, backed up by irresistible power, carried the day, and some ten thousand constitutional priests were quietly received back into the Roman communion, those who had contracted marriages being compelled to put away their wives.  Bonaparte took a deep interest in the reconstruction of diocèses, in the naming of churches, and similar details, doubtless with the full consciousness that the revival of the Roman religious discipline in France was a more important service than any feat of arms.

He was right:  in healing a great schism in France he was dealing a deadly blow at the revolutionary feeling of which it was a prominent manifestation.  In the words of one of his Ministers, “The Concordat was the most brilliant triumph over the genius of Revolution, and all the following successes have without exception resulted from it."

After this testimony it is needless to ask why Bonaparte did not take up with Protestantism.  At St. Helena, it is true, he asserted that the choice of Catholicism or Protestantism was entirely open to him in 1801, and that the nation would have followed him in either direction:  but his religious policy, if carefully examined, shows no sign of wavering on this subject, though he once or twice made a strategic diversion towards Geneva, when Rome showed too firm a front.  Is it conceivable that a man who, as he informed Joseph, was systematically working to found a dynasty, should hesitate in the choice of a governmental creed?  Is it possible to think of the great champion of external control and State discipline as a defender of liberty of conscience and the right of private judgment?

The regulation of the Protestant cult in France was a far less arduous task.  But as Bonaparte’s aim was to attach all cults to the State, he decided to recognize the two chief Protestant bodies in France, Calvinists and Lutherans, allowing them to choose their own pastors and to regulate their affairs in consistories.  The pastors were to be salaried by the State, but in return the Government not only reserved its approval of every appointment, but required the Protestant bodies to have no relations whatever with any foreign Power or authority.  The organic articles of 1802, which defined the position of the Protestant bodies, form a very important landmark in the history of the followers of Luther and Calvin.  Persecuted by Louis XIV. and XV., they were tolerated by Louis XVI.; they gained complete religious equality in 1789, and after a few years of anarchy in matters of faith, they found themselves suddenly and stringently bound to the State by the organizing genius of Bonaparte.

In the years 1806-1808 the position of the Jews was likewise defined, at least for all those who recognized France as their country, performed all civic duties, and recognized all the laws of the State.  In consideration of their paying full taxes and performing military service, they received official protection and their rabbis governmental support.

Such was Bonaparte’s policy on religious subjects.  There can be little doubt that its motive was, in the main, political.  This methodizing genius, who looked on the beliefs and passions, the desires and ambitions of mankind, as so many forces which were to aid him in his ascent, had already satisfied the desires for military glory and material prosperity; and in his bargain with Rome he now won the support of an organized priesthood, besides that of the smaller Protestant and Jewish communions.  That he gained also peace and quietness for France may be granted, though it was at the expense of that mental alertness and independence which had been her chief intellectual glory; but none of his intimate acquaintances ever doubted that his religion was only a vague sentiment, and his attendance at mass merely a compliment to his “sacred gendarmerie."[l60]

Having dared and achieved the exploit of organizing religion in a half-infidel society, the First Consul was ready to undertake the almost equally hazardous task of establishing an order of social distinction, and that too in the very land where less than eight years previously every title qualified its holder for the guillotine.  For his new experiment, the Legion of Honour, he could adduce only one precedent in the acts of the last twelve years.

The whole tendency had been towards levelling all inequalities.  In 1790 all titles of nobility were swept away; and though the Convention decreed “arms of honour” to brave soldiers, yet its generosity to the deserving proved to be less remarkable than its activity in guillotining the unsuccessful.  Bonaparte, however, adduced its custom of granting occasional modest rewards as a precedent for his own design, which was to be far more extended and ambitious.

In May, 1802, he proposed the formation of a Legion of Honour, organized in fifteen cohorts, with grand officers, commanders, officers, and legionaries.  Its affairs were to be regulated by a council presided over by Bonaparte himself.  Each cohort received “national domains” with 200,000 francs annual rental, and these funds were disbursed to the members on a scale proportionate to their rank.  The men who had received “arms of honour” were, ipso facto to be legionaries; soldiers “who had rendered considerable services to the State in the war of liberty,” and civilians “who by their learning, talents, and virtues contributed to establish or to defend the principles of the Republic,” might hope for the honour and reward now held out.  The idea of rewarding merit in a civilian, as well as among the military caste which had hitherto almost entirely absorbed such honours, was certainly enlightened; and the names of the famous savants Laplace, Monge, Berthollet, Lagrange, Chaptal, and of jurists such as Treilhard and Tronchet, imparted lustre to what would otherwise have been a very commonplace institution.  Bonaparte desired to call out all the faculties of the nation; and when Dumas proposed that the order should be limited to soldiers, the First Consul replied in a brilliant and convincing harangue: 

“To do great things nowadays it is not enough to be a man of five feet ten inches.  If strength and bravery made the general, every soldier might claim the command.  The general who does great things is he who also possesses civil qualities.  The soldier knows no law but force, sees nothing but it, and measures everything by it.  The civilian, on the other hand, only looks to the general welfare.  The characteristic of the soldier is to wish to do everything despotically:  that of the civilian is to submit everything to discussion, truth, and reason.  The superiority thus unquestionably belongs to the civilian.”

In these noble words we can discern the secret of Bonaparte’s supremacy both in politics and in warfare.  Uniting in his own person the ablest qualities of the statesman and the warrior, he naturally desired that his new order of merit should quicken the vitality of France in every direction, knowing full well that the results would speedily be felt in the army itself.  When admitted to its ranks, the new member swore: 

“To devote himself to the service of the Republic, to the maintenance of the integrity of its territory, the defence of its government, laws, and of the property which they have consecrated; to fight by all methods authorized by justice, reason, and law, against every attempt to re-establish the feudal regime or to reproduce the titles and qualities thereto belonging; and finally to strive to the uttermost to maintain liberty and equality.”

It is not surprising that the Tribunate, despite the recent purging of its most independent members, judged liberty and equality to be endangered by the method of defence now proposed.  The members bitterly criticised the scheme as a device of the counter-revolution; but, with the timid inconsequence which was already sapping their virility, they proceeded to pass by fifty-six votes to thirty-eight a measure of which they had so accurately gauged the results.  The new institution was, indeed, admirably suited to consolidate Bonaparte’s power.  Resting on the financial basis of the confiscated lands, it offered some guarantee against the restoration of the old monarchy and feudal nobility; while, by stimulating that love of distinction and brilliance which is inherent in every gifted people, it quietly began to graduate society and to group it around the Paladins of a new Gaulish chivalry.  The people had recently cast off the overlordship of the old Frankish nobles, but admiration of merit (the ultimate source of all titles of distinction) was only dormant even in the days of Robespierre; and its insane repression during the Terror now begat a corresponding enthusiasm for all commanding gifts.  Of this inevitable reaction Bonaparte now made skillful use.  When Berlier, one of the leading jurists of France, objected to the new order as leading France back to aristocracy, and contemptuously said that crosses and ribbons were the toys of monarchy, Bonaparte replied: 

“Well:  men are led by toys.  I would not say that in a rostrum, but in a council of wise men and statesmen one ought to speak one’s mind.  I don’t think that the French love liberty and equality:  the French are not at all changed by ten years of revolution:  they are what the Gauls were, fierce and fickle.  They have one feelinghonour.  We must nourish that feeling:  they must have distinctions.  See how they bow down before the stars of strangers."

After so frank an exposition of motives to his own Council of State, little more need be said.  We need not credit Bonaparte or the orators of the Tribunate with any superhuman sagacity when he and they foresaw that such an order would prepare the way for more resplendent titles.  The Legion of Honour, at least in its highest grades, was the chrysalis stage of the Imperial noblesse.  After all, the new Charlemagne might plead that his new creation satisfied an innate craving of the race, and that its durability was the best answer to hostile critics.  Even when, in 1814, his Senators were offering the crown of France to the heir of the Bourbons, they expressly stipulated that the Legion of Honour should not be abolished:  it has survived all the shocks of French history, even the vulgarizing associations of the Second Empire.

The same quality of almost pyramidal solidity characterizes another great enterprise of the Napoleonic period, the codification of French law.

The difficulties of this undertaking consisted mainly in the enormous mass of decrees emanating from the National Assemblies, relative to political, civil, and criminal affairs.  Many of those decrees, the offspring of a momentary enthusiasm, had found a place in the codes of laws which were then compiled; and yet sagacious observers knew that several of them warred against the instincts of the Gallic race.  This conviction was summed up in the trenchant statement of the compilers of the new code, in which they appealed from the ideas of Rousseau to the customs of the past:  “New theories are but the maxims of certain individuals:  the old maxims represent the sense of centuries.”  There was much force in this dictum.  The overthrow of Feudalism and the old monarchy had not permanently altered the French nature.  They were still the same joyous, artistic, clan-loving people whom the Latin historians described:  and pride in the nation or the family was as closely linked with respect for a doughty champion of national and family interests as in the days of Cæsar.  Of this Roman or quasi-Gallic reaction Napoleon was to be the regulator; and no sphere of his activities bespeaks his unerring political sagacity more than his sifting of the old and the new in the great code which was afterwards to bear his name.

Old French law had been an inextricable labyrinth of laws and customs, mainly Roman and Frankish in origin, hopelessly tangled by feudal customs, provincial privileges, ecclesiastical rights, and the later undergrowth of royal decrees; and no part of the legislation of the revolutionists met with so little resistance as their root and branch destruction of this exasperating jungle.  Their difficulties only began when they endeavoured to apply the principles of the Rights of Man to political, civil, and criminal affairs.  The chief of these principles relating to criminal law were that law can only forbid actions that are harmful to society, and must only impose penalties that are strictly necessary.  To these epoch-making pronouncements the Assembly added, in 1790, that crimes should be visited only on the guilty individual, not on the family; and that penalties must be proportioned to the offences.  The last two of these principles had of late been flagrantly violated; but the general pacification of France now permitted a calm consideration of the whole question of criminal law, and of its application to normal conditions.

Civil law was to be greatly influenced by the Rights of Man; but those famous declarations were to a large extent contravened in the ensuing civil strifes, and their application to real life was rendered infinitely more difficult by that predominance of the critical over the constructive faculties which marred the efforts of the revolutionary Babel-builders.  Indeed, such was the ardour of those enthusiasts that they could scarcely see any difficulties.  Thus, the Convention in 1793 allowed its legislative committee just one month for the preparation of a code of civil law.  At the close of six weeks Cambaceres, the reporter of the committee, was actually able to announce that it was ready.  It was found to be too complex.  Another commission was ordered to reconstruct it:  this time the Convention discovered that the revised edition was too concise.  Two other drafts were drawn up at the orders of the Directory, but neither gave satisfaction.  And thus it was reserved for the First Consul to achieve what the revolutionists had only begun, building on the foundations and with the very materials which their ten years’ toil had prepared.

He had many other advantages.  The Second Consul, Cambaceres, was at his side, with stores of legal experience and habits of complaisance that were of the highest value.  Then, too, the principles of personal liberty and social equality were yielding ground before the more autocratic maxims of Roman law.  The view of life now dominant was that of the warrior not of the philosopher.  Bonaparte named Tronchet, Bigot de Preameneu, and the eloquent and learned Portalis for the redaction of the code.  By ceaseless toil they completed their first draft in four months.  Then, after receiving the criticisms of the Court of Cassation and the Tribunals of Appeal, it came before the Council of State for the decision of its special committee on legislation.  There it was subjected to the scrutiny of several experts, but, above all, to Bonaparte himself.  He presided at more than half of the 102 sittings devoted to this criticism; and sittings of eight or nine hours were scarcely long enough to satisfy his eager curiosity, his relentless activity, and his determined practicality.

From the notes of Thibaudeau one of the members of this revising committee, we catch a glimpse of the part there played by the First Consul.  We see him listening intently to the discussions of the jurists, taking up and sorting the threads of thought when a tangle seemed imminent, and presenting the result in some striking pattern.  We watch his methodizing spirit at work on the cumbrous legal phraseology, hammering it out into clear, ductile French.  We feel the unerring sagacity, which acted as a political and social touchstone, testing, approving, or rejecting multifarious details drawn from old French law or from the customs of the Revolution; and finally we wonder at the architectural skill which worked the 2,281 articles of the Code into an almost unassailable pile.  To the skill and patience of the three chief redactors that result is, of course, very largely due:  yet, in its mingling of strength, simplicity, and symmetry, we may discern the projection of Napoleon’s genius over what had hitherto been a legal chaos.

Some blocks of the pyramid were almost entirely his own.  He widened the area of French citizenship; above all, he strengthened the structure of the family by enhancing the father’s authority.  Herein his Corsican instincts and the requirements of statecraft led him to undo much of the legislation of the revolutionists.  Their ideal was individual liberty:  his aim was to establish public order by autocratic methods.  They had sought to make of the family a little republic, founded on the principles of liberty and equality; but in the new code the paternal authority reappeared no less strict, albeit less severe in some details than that of the ancien regime. The family was thenceforth modelled on the idea dominant in the State, that authority and responsible action pertained to a single individual.  The father controlled the conduct of his children:  his consent was necessary for the marriage of sons up to their twenty-fifth year, for that of daughters up to their twenty-first year; and other regulations were framed in the same spirit. Thus there was rebuilt in France the institution of the family on an almost Roman basis; and these customs, contrasting sharply with the domestic anarchy of the Anglo-Saxon race, have had a mighty influence in fashioning the character of the French, as of the other Latin peoples, to a ductility that yields a ready obedience to local officials, drill-sergeants, and the central Government.

In other respects Bonaparte’s influence on the code was equally potent.  He raised the age at which marriage could be legally contracted to that of eighteen for men, and fifteen for women, and he prescribed a formula of obedience to be repeated by the bride to her husband; while the latter was bound to protect and support the wife.

And yet, on the question of divorce, Bonaparte’s action was sufficiently ambiguous to reawaken Josephine’s fears; and the detractors of the great man have some ground for declaring that his action herein was dictated by personal considerations.  Others again may point to the declarations of the French National Assemblies that the law regarded marriage merely as a civil contract, and that divorce was to be a logical sequel of individual liberty, “which an indissoluble tie would annul.”  It is indisputable that extremely lax customs had been the result of the law of 1792, divorce being allowed on a mere declaration of incompatibility of temper. Against these scandals Bonaparte firmly set his face.  But he disagreed with the framers of the new Code when they proposed altogether to prohibit divorce, though such a proposition might well have seemed consonant with his zeal for Roman Catholicism.  After long debates it was decided to reduce the causes which could render divorce possible from nine to fouradultery, cruelty, condemnation to a degrading penalty, and mutual consentprovided that this last demand should be persistently urged after not less than two years of marriage, and in no case was it to be valid after twenty years of marriage.

We may also notice here that Bonaparte sought to surround the act of adoption with much solemnity, declaring it to be one of the grandest acts imaginable.  Yet, lest marriage should thereby be discouraged, celibates were expressly debarred from the privileges of adopting heirs.  The precaution shows how keenly this able ruler peered into the future.  Doubtless, he surmised that in the future the population of France would cease to expand at the normal rate, owing to the working of the law compelling the equal division of property among all the children of a family.  To this law he was certainly opposed.  Equality in regard to the bequest of property was one of the sacred maxims of revolutionary jurists, who had limited the right of free disposal by bequest to one-tenth of each estate:  nine-tenths being of necessity divided equally among the direct heirs.  Yet so strong was the reaction in favour of the Roman principle of paternal authority, that Bonaparte and a majority of the drafters of the new Code scrupled not to assail that maxim, and to claim for the father larger discretionary powers over the disposal of his property.  They demanded that the disposable share should vary according to the wealth of the testatora remarkable proposal, which proves him to be anything but the unflinching champion of revolutionary legal ideas which popular French histories have generally depicted him.

This proposal would have re-established liberty of bequest in its most pernicious form, granting almost limitless discretionary power to the wealthy, while restricting or denying it to the poor. Fortunately for his reputation in France, the suggestion was rejected; and the law, as finally adopted, fixed the disposable share as one-half of the property, if there was but one heir; one-third, if there were two heirs; one-fourth, if there were three; and so on, diminishing as the size of the family increased.  This sliding scale, varying inversely with the size of the family, is open to an obvious objection:  it granted liberty of bequest only in cases where the family was small, but practically lapsed when the family attained to patriarchal dimensions.  The natural result has been that the birth-rate has suffered a serious and prolonged check in France.  It seems certain that the First Consul foresaw this result.  His experience of peasant life must have warned him that the law, even as now amended, would stunt the population of France and ultimately bring about that [Greek:  oliganthropia] which saps all great military enterprises.  The great captain did all in his power to prevent the French settling down in a self-contained national life; he strove to stir them up to world-wide undertakings, and for the success of his future imperial schemes a redundant population was an absolute necessity.

The Civil Code became law in 1804:  after undergoing some slight modifications and additions, it was, in 1807 renamed the Code Napoleon.  Its provisions had already, in 1806, been adopted in Italy.  In 1810 Holland, and the newly-annexed coast-line of the North Sea as far as Hamburg, and even Luebeck on the Baltic, received it as the basis of their laws, as did the Grand Duchy of Berg in 1811.  Indirectly it has also exerted an immense influence on the legislation of Central and Southern Germany, Prussia, Switzerland, and Spain:  while many of the Central and South American States have also borrowed its salient features.

A Code of Civil Procedure was promulgated in France in 1806, one of Commerce in 1807, of “Criminal Instruction” in 1808, and a Penal Code in 1810.  Except that they were more reactionary in spirit than the Civil Code, there is little that calls for notice here, the Penal Code especially showing little advance in intelligence or clemency on the older laws of France.  Even in 1802, officials favoured severity after the disorders of the preceding years.  When Fox and Romilly paid a visit to Talleyrand at Paris, they were informed by his secretary that: 

“In his opinion nothing could restore good morals and order in the country but ‘la roue et la religion de nos ancêtres.’  He knew, he said, that the English did not think so, but we knew nothing of the people.  Fox was deeply shocked at the idea of restoring the wheel as a punishment in France."

This horrible punishment was not actually restored:  but this extract from Romilly’s diary shows what was the state of feeling in official circles at Paris, and how strong was the reaction towards older ideas.  The reaction was unquestionably emphasized by Bonaparte’s influence, and it is noteworthy that the Penal and other Codes, passed during the Empire, were more reactionary than the laws of the Consulate.  Yet, even as First Consul, he exerted an influence that began to banish the customs and traditions of the Revolution, except in the single sphere of material interests; and he satisfied the peasants’ love of land and money in order that he might the more securely triumph over revolutionary ideals and draw France insensibly back to the age of Louis XIV.

While the legislator must always keep in reserve punishment as the ultima ratio for the lawless, he will turn by preference to education as a more potent moralizing agency; and certainly education urgently needed Bonaparte’s attention.  The work of carrying into practice the grand educational aims of Condorcet and his coadjutors in the French Convention was enough to tax the energies of a Hercules.  Those ardent reformers did little more than clear the ground for future action:  they abolished the old monastic and clerical training, and declared for a generous system of national education in primary, secondary, and advanced schools.  But amid strifes and bankruptcy their aims remained unfulfilled.  In 1799 there were only twenty-four elementary schools open in Paris, with a total attendance of less than 1,000 pupils; and in rural districts matters were equally bad.  Indeed, Lucien Bonaparte asserted that scarcely any education was to be found in France.  Exaggerated though this statement was, in relation to secondary and advanced education, it was proximately true of the elementary schools.  The revolutionists had merely traced the outlines of a scheme:  it remained for the First Consul to fill in the details, or to leave it blank.

The result can scarcely be cited as a proof of his educational zeal.  Elementary schools were left to the control and supervision of the communes and of the sous-préfets, and naturally made little advance amidst an apathetic population and under officials who cared not to press on an expensive enterprise.  The law of April 30th, 1802, however, aimed at improving the secondary education, which the Convention had attempted to give in its écoles centrales.  These were now reconstituted either as écoles secondaires or as lycées.  The former were local or even private institutions intended for the most promising pupils of the commune or group of communes; while the lycées, far fewer in number, were controlled directly by the Government.  In both of these schools great prominence was given to the exact and applied sciences.  The aim of the instruction was not to awaken thought and develop the faculties, but rather to fashion able breadwinners, obedient citizens, and enthusiastic soldiers.  The training was of an almost military type, the pupils being regularly drilled, while the lessons began and ended with the roll of drums.  The numbers of the lycées and of their pupils rapidly increased; but the progress of the secondary and primary schools, which could boast no such attractions, was very slow.  In 1806 only 25,000 children were attending the public primary schools.  But two years later elementary and advanced instruction received a notable impetus from the establishment of the University of France.

There is no institution which better reveals the character of the French Emperor, with its singular combination of greatness and littleness, of wide-sweeping aims with official pedantry.  The University, as it existed during the First Empire, offers a striking example of that mania for the control of the general will which philosophers had so attractively taught and Napoleon so profitably practised.  It is the first definite outcome of a desire to subject education and learning to wholesale regimental methods, and to break up the old-world bowers of culture by State-worked steam-ploughs.  His aims were thus set forth: 

“I want a teaching body, because such a body never dies, but transmits its organization and spirit.  I want a body whose teaching is far above the fads of the moment, goes straight on even when the government is asleep, and whose administration and statutes become so national that one can never lightly resolve to meddle with them....  There will never be fixity in politics if there is not a teaching body with fixed principles.  As long as people do not from their infancy learn whether they ought to be republicans or monarchists, Catholics or sceptics, the State will never form a nation:  it will rest on unsafe and shifting foundations, always exposed to changes and disorders.”

Such being Napoleon’s designs, the new University of France was admirably suited to his purpose.  It was not a local university:  it was the sum total of all the public teaching bodies of the French Empire, arranged and drilled in one vast instructional array.  Elementary schools, secondary schools, lycées, as well as the more advanced colleges, all were absorbed in and controlled by this great teaching corporation, which was to inculcate the precepts of the Catholic religion, fidelity to the Emperor and to his Government, as guarantees for the welfare of the people and the unity of France.  For educational purposes, France was now divided into seventeen Academies, which formed the local centres of the new institution.  Thus, from Paris and sixteen provincial Academies, instruction was strictly organized and controlled; and within a short time of its institution (March, 1808), instruction of all kinds, including that of the elementary schools, showed some advance.  But to all those who look on the unfolding of the mental and moral faculties as the chief aim of true education, the homely experiments of Pestalozzi offer a far more suggestive and important field for observation than the barrack-like methods of the French Emperor.  The Swiss reformer sought to train the mind to observe, reflect, and think; to assist the faculties in attaining their fullest and freest expression; and thus to add to the richness and variety of human thought.  The French imperial system sought to prune away all mental independence, and to train the young generation in neat and serviceable espalier methods:  all aspiring shoots, especially in the sphere of moral and political science, were sharply cut down.  Consequently French thought, which had been the most ardently speculative in Europe, speedily became vapid and mechanical.

The same remark is proximately true of the literary life of the First Empire.  It soon began to feel the rigorous methods of the Emperor.  Poetry and all other modes of expression of lofty thought and rapt feeling require not only a free outlet but natural and unrestrained surroundings.  The true poet is at home in the forest or on the mountain rather than in prim parterres.  The philosopher sees most clearly and reasons most suggestively, when his faculties are not cramped by the need of observing political rules and police regulations.  And the historian, when he is tied down to a mere investigation and recital of facts, without reference to their meaning, is but a sorry fowl flapping helplessly with unequal wings.

Yet such were the conditions under which the literature of France struggled and pined.  Her poets, a band sadly thinned already by the guillotine, sang in forced and hollow strains until the return of royalism begat an imperialist fervour in the soul-stirring lyrics of Beranger:  her philosophy was dumb; and Napoleonic history limped along on official crutches, until Thiers, a generation later, essayed his monumental work.  In the realm of exact and applied science, as might be expected, splendid discoveries adorned the Emperor’s reign; but if we are to find any vitality in the literature of that period, we must go to the ranks, not of the panegyrists, but of the opposition.  There, in the pages of Madame de Stael and Chateaubriand, we feel the throb of life.  Genius will out, of its own native force:  but it cannot be pressed out, even at a Napoleon’s bidding.  In vain did he endeavour to stimulate literature by the reorganization of the Institute, and by granting decennial prizes for the chief works and discoveries of the decade.  While science prospered, literature languished:  and one of his own remarks, as to the desirability of a public and semi-official criticism of some great literary work, seems to suggest a reason for this intellectual malaise: 

“The public will take interest in this criticism; perhaps it will even take sides:  it matters not, as its attention will be fixed on these interesting debates:  it will talk about grammar and poetry:  taste will be improved, and our aim will be fulfilled:  out of that will come poets and grammarians.”

And so it came to pass that, while he was rescuing a nation from chaos and his eagles winged their flight to Naples, Lisbon, and Moscow, he found no original thinker worthily to hymn his praises; and the chief literary triumphs of his reign came from Chateaubriand, whom he impoverished, and Madame de Stael, whom he drove into exile.

Such are the chief laws and customs which are imperishably associated with the name of Napoleon Bonaparte.  In some respects they may be described as making for progress.  Their establishment gave to the Revolution that solidity which it had previously lacked.  Among so “inflammable” a people as the Frenchthe epithet is Ste. Beuve’sit was quite possible that some of the chief civil conquests of the last decade might have been lost, had not the First Consul, to use his own expressive phrase, “thrown in some blocks of granite.”  We may intensify his metaphor and assert that out of the shifting shingle of French life he constructed a concrete breakwater, in which his own will acted as the binding cement, defying the storms of revolutionary or royalist passion which had swept the incoherent atoms to and fro, and had carried desolation far inland.  Thenceforth France was able to work out her future under the shelter of institutions which unquestionably possess one supreme merit, that of durability.  But while the chief civic and material gains of the Revolution were thus perpetuated, the very spirit and life of that great movement were benumbed by the personality and action of Napoleon.  The burning enthusiasm for the Rights of Man was quenched, the passion for civic equality survived only as the gibbering ghost of what it had been in 1790, and the consolidation of revolutionary France was effected by a process nearly akin to petrifaction.

And yet this time of political and intellectual reaction in France was marked by the rise of the greatest of her modern institutions.  There is the chief paradox of that age.  While barren of literary activity and of truly civic developments, yet it was unequalled in the growth of institutions.  This is generally the characteristic of epochs when the human faculties, long congealed by untoward restraints, suddenly burst their barriers and run riot in a spring-tide of hope.  The time of disillusionment or despair which usually supervenes may, as a rule, be compared with the numbing torpor of winter, necessary doubtless in our human economy, but lacking the charm and vitality of the expansive phase.  Often, indeed, it is disgraced by the characteristics of a slavish populace, a mean selfishness, a mad frivolity, and fawning adulation on the ruler who dispenses panem et circenses.  Such has been the course of many a political reaction, from the time of degenerate Athens and imperial Rome down to the decay of Medicean Florence and the orgies of the restored Stuarts.

The fruitfulness of the time of monarchical reaction in France may be chiefly attributed to two causes, the one general, the other personal; the one connected with the French Revolution, the other with the exceptional gifts of Bonaparte.  In their efforts to create durable institutions the revolutionists had failed:  they had attempted too much:  they had overthrown the old order, had undertaken crusades against monarchical Europe, and striven to manufacture constitutions and remodel a deeply agitated society.  They did scarcely more than trace the outlines of the future social structure.  The edifice, which should have been reared by the Directory, was scarcely advanced at all, owing to the singular dullness of the new rulers of France.  But the genius was at hand.  He restored order, he rallied various classes to his side, he methodized local government, he restored finance and credit, he restored religious peace and yet secured the peasants in their tenure of the confiscated lands, he rewarded merit with social honours, and finally he solidified his polity by a comprehensive code of laws which made him the keystone of the now rounded arch of French life.

His methods in this immense work deserve attention:  they were very different from those of the revolutionary parties after the best days of 1789 were past.  The followers of Rousseau worked on rigorous a priori methods.  If institutions and sentiments did not square with the principles of their master, they were swept away or were forced into conformity with the new evangel.  A correct knowledge of the “Contrat Social” and keen critical powers were the prime requisites of Jacobinical statesmanship.  Knowledge of the history of France, the faculty of gauging the real strength of popular feelings, tact in conciliating important interests, all were alike despised.  Institutions and class interests were as nothing in comparison with that imposing abstraction, the general will.  For this alone could philosophers legislate and factions conspire.

From these lofty aims and exasperating methods Bonaparte was speedily weaned.  If victorious analysis led to this; if it could only pull down, not reconstruct; if, while legislating for the general will, Jacobins harassed one class after another and produced civil war, then away with their pedantries in favour of the practical statecraft which attempted one task at a time and aimed at winning back in turn the alienated classes.  Then, and then alone, after civic peace had been re-established, would he attempt the reconstruction of the civil order in the same tentative manner, taking up only this or that frayed end at once, trusting to time, skill, and patience to transform the tangle into a symmetrical pattern.  And thus, where Feuillants, Girondins, and Jacobins had produced chaos, the practical man and his able helpers succeeded in weaving ineffaceable outlines.  As to the time when the change took place in Bonaparte’s brain from Jacobinism to aims and methods that may be called conservative, we are strangely ignorant.  But the results of this mental change will stand forth clear and solid for many a generation in the customs, laws, and institutions of his adopted country.  If the Revolution, intellectually considered, began and ended with analysis, Napoleon’s faculties supplied the needed synthesis.  Together they made modern France.