The Life of Napoleon I Part 10

There was indeed much to exasperate him. At Acre he had lost nearly 5,000 men in killed, wounded, and plague-stricken, though he falsely reported to the Directory that his losses during the whole expedition did not exceed 1,500 men: and during the terrible retreat to Jaffa he was shocked, not only by occasional suicides of soldiers in his presence, but by the utter callousness of officers and men to the claims of the sick and wounded. It was as a rebuke to this inhumanity that he ordered all to march on foot, and his authority seems even to have been exerted to prevent some attempts at poisoning the plague-stricken. The narrative of J. Miot, commissary of the army, shows that these suggestions originated among the soldiery at Acre when threatened with the toil of transporting those unfortunates back to Egypt; and, as his testimony is generally adverse to Bonaparte, and he mentions the same horrible device, when speaking of the hospitals at Jaffa, as a camp rumour, it may be regarded as scarcely worthy of credence.[118]

Undoubtedly the scenes were heartrending at Jaffa; and it has been generally believed that the victims of the plague were then and there put out of their miseries by large doses of opium. Certainly the hospitals were crowded with wounded and victims of the plague; but during the seven days' halt at that town adequate measures were taken by the chief medical officers, Desgenettes and Larrey, for their transport to Egypt. More than a thousand were sent away on s.h.i.+ps, seven of which were fortunately present; and 800 were conveyed to Egypt in carts or litters across the desert.[119] Another fact suffices to refute the slander mentioned above. From the despatch of Sir Sidney Smith to Nelson of May 30th, 1799, it appears that, when the English commodore touched at Jaffa, he found some of the abandoned ones _still alive_: "We have found seven poor fellows in the hospital and will take care of them." He also supplied the French s.h.i.+ps conveying the wounded with water, provisions, and stores, of which they were much in need, and allowed them to proceed to their destination. It is true that the evidence of Las Cases at St. Helena, eagerly cited by Lanfrey, seems to show that some of the worst cases in the Jaffa hospitals were got rid of by opium; but the admission by Napoleon that the administering of opium was justifiable occurred in one of those casuistical discussions which turn, not on facts, but on motives. Conclusions drawn from such conversations, sixteen years or more after the supposed occurrence, must in any case give ground before the evidence of contemporaries, which proves that every care was taken of the sick and wounded, that the proposals of poisoning first came from the soldiery, that Napoleon both before and after Jaffa set the n.o.ble example of marching on foot so that there might be sufficiency of transport, that nearly all the unfortunates arrived in Egypt and in fair condition, and that seven survivors were found alive at Jaffa by English officers.[120]

The remaining episodes of the Eastern Expedition may be briefly dismissed. After a painful desert march the army returned to Egypt in June; and, on July 25th, under the lead of Murat and Lannes, drove into the sea a large force of Turks which had effected a landing in Aboukir Bay. Bonaparte was now weary of gaining triumphs over foes whom he and his soldiers despised. While in this state of mind, he received from Sir Sidney Smith a packet of English and German newspapers giving news up to June 6th, which brought him quickly to a decision. The formation of a powerful coalition, the loss of Italy, defeats on the Rhine, and the schisms, disgust, and despair prevalent in France--all drew his imagination westwards away from the illusory Orient; and he determined to leave his army to the care of Kleber and sail to France.

The morality of this step has been keenly discussed. The rank and file of the army seem to have regarded it as little less than desertion,[121] and the predominance of personal motives in this important decision can scarcely be denied. His private aim in undertaking the Eastern Expedition, that of dazzling the imagination of the French people and of exhibiting the incapacity of the Directory, had been abundantly realized. His eastern enterprise had now shrunk to practical and prosaic dimensions, namely, the consolidation of French power in Egypt. Yet, as will appear in later chapters, he did not give up his oriental schemes; though at St.

Helena he once oddly spoke of the Egyptian expedition as an "exhausted enterprise," it is clear that he worked hard to keep his colony. The career of Alexander had for him a charm that even the conquests of Caesar could not rival; and at the height of his European triumphs, the hero of Austerlitz was heard to murmur: "J'ai manque a ma fortune a Saint-Jean d'Acre."[122]

In defence of his sudden return it may be urged that he had more than once promised the Directory that his stay in Egypt would not exceed five months; and there can be no doubt that now, as always, he had an alternative plan before him in case of failure or incomplete success in the East. To this alternative he now turned with that swiftness and fertility of resource which astonished both friends and foes in countless battles and at many political crises.

It has been stated by Lanfrey that his appointment of Kleber to succeed him was dictated by political and personal hostility; but it may more naturally be considered a tribute to his abilities as a general and to his influence over the soldiery, which was only second to that of Bonaparte and Desaix. He also promised to send him speedy succour; and as there seemed to be a probability of France regaining her naval supremacy in the Mediterranean by the union of the fleet of Bruix with that of Spain, he might well hope to send ample reinforcements. He probably did not know the actual facts of the case, that in July Bruix tamely followed the Spanish squadron to Cadiz, and that the Directory had ordered Bruix to withdraw the French army from Egypt. But, arguing from the facts as known to him, Bonaparte might well believe that the difficulties of France would be fully met by his own return, and that Egypt could be held with ease. The duty of a great commander is to be at the post of greatest danger, and that was now on the banks of the Rhine or Mincio.

The advent of a south-east wind, a rare event there at that season of the year, led him hastily to embark at Alexandria in the night of August 22nd-23rd. His two frigates bore with him some of the greatest sons of France; his chief of the staff, Berthier, whose ardent love for Madame Visconti had been repressed by his reluctant determination to share the fortunes of his chief; Lannes and Murat, both recently wounded, but covered with glory by their exploits in Syria and at Aboukir; his friend Marmont, as well as Duroc, Andreossi, Bessieres, Lavalette, Admiral Gantheaume, Monge, and Berthollet, his secretary Bourrienne, and the traveller Denon. He also left orders that Desaix, who had been in charge of Upper Egypt, should soon return to France, so that the rivalry between him and Kleber might not distract French councils in Egypt. There seems little ground for the a.s.sertion that he selected for return his favourites and men likely to be politically serviceable to him. If he left behind the ardently republican Kleber, he also left his old friend Junot: if he brought back Berthier and Marmont, he also ordered the return of the almost Jacobinical Desaix.

Sir Sidney Smith having gone to Cyprus for repairs, Bonaparte slipped out unmolested. By great good fortune his frigates eluded the English s.h.i.+ps cruising between Malta and Cape Bon, and after a brief stay at Ajaccio, he and his comrades landed at Frejus (October 9th). So great was the enthusiasm of the people that, despite all the quarantine regulations, they escorted the party to sh.o.r.e. "We prefer the plague to the Austrians," they exclaimed; and this feeling but feebly expressed the emotion of France at the return of the Conqueror of the East.

And yet he found no domestic happiness. Josephine's _liaison_ with a young officer, M. Charles, had become notorious owing to his prolonged visits to her country house, La Malmaison. Alarmed at her husband's return, she now hurried to meet him, but missed him on the way; while he, finding his home at Paris empty, raged at her infidelity, refused to see her on her return, and declared he would divorce her. From this he was turned by the prayers of Eugene and Hortense Beauharnais, and the tears of Josephine herself. A reconciliation took place; but there was no reunion of hearts, and Mme. Reinhard echoed the feeling of respectable society when she wrote that he should have divorced her outright. Thenceforth he lived for Glory alone.

CHAPTER X

BRUMAIRE

Rarely has France been in a more distracted state than in the summer of 1799. Royalist revolts in the west and south rent the national life. The religious schism was unhealed; education was at a standstill; commerce had been swept from the seas by the British fleets; and trade with Italy and Germany was cut off by the war of the Second Coalition.

The formation of this league between Russia, Austria, England, Naples, Portugal, and Turkey was in the main the outcome of the alarm and indignation aroused by the reckless conduct of the Directory, which overthrew the Bourbons at Naples, erected the Parthenopaean Republic, and compelled the King of Sardinia to abdicate at Turin and retire to his island. Russia and Austria took a leading part in forming the Coalition. Great Britain, ever hampered by her inept army organization, offered to supply money in place of the troops which she could not properly equip.

But under the cloak of legitimacy the monarchical Powers harboured their own selfish designs. This Nessus' cloak of the First Coalition soon galled the limbs of the allies and rendered them incapable of sustained and vigorous action. Yet they gained signal successes over the raw conscripts of France. In July, 1799, the Austro-Russian army captured Mantua and Alessandria; and in the following month Suvoroff gained the decisive victory of Novi and drove the remains of the French forces towards Genoa. The next months were far more favourable to the tricolour flag, for, owing to Austro-Russian jealousies, Ma.s.sena was able to gain an important victory at Zurich over a Russian army. In the north the republicans were also in the end successful.

Ten days after Bonaparte's arrival at Frejus, they compelled an Anglo-Russian force campaigning in Holland to the capitulation of Alkmaar, whereby the Duke of York agreed to withdraw all his troops from that coast. Disgusted by the conduct of his allies, the Czar Paul withdrew his troops from any active share in the operations by land, thenceforth concentrating his efforts on the acquisition of Corsica, Malta, and posts of vantage in the Adriatic. These designs, which were well known to the British Government, served to hamper our naval strength in those seas, and to fetter the action of the Austrian arms in Northern Italy.[123]

Yet, though the schisms of the allies finally yielded a victory to the French in the campaigns of 1799, the position of the Republic was precarious. The danger was rather internal than external. It arose from embarra.s.sed finances, from the civil war that burst out with new violence in the north-west, and, above all, from a sense of the supreme difficulty of attaining political stability and of reconciling liberty with order. The struggle between the executive and legislative powers which had been rudely settled by the _coup d'etat_ of Fructidor, had been postponed, not solved. Public opinion was speedily ruffled by the Jacobinical violence which ensued. The stifling of liberty of the press and the curtailment of the right of public meeting served only to instill new energy into the party of resistance in the elective Councils, and to undermine a republican government that relied on Venetian methods of rule. Reviewing the events of those days, Madame de Stael finely remarked that only the free consent of the people could breathe life into political inst.i.tutions; and that the monstrous system of guaranteeing freedom by despotic means served only to manufacture governments that had to be wound up at intervals lest they should stop dead.[124] Such a sarcasm, coming from the gifted lady who had aided and abetted the stroke of Fructidor, shows how far that event had falsified the hopes of the sincerest friends of the Revolution. Events were therefore now favourable to a return from the methods of Rousseau to those of Richelieu; and the genius who was skilfully to adapt republicanism to autocracy was now at hand. Though Bonaparte desired at once to attack the Austrians in Northern Italy, yet a sure instinct impelled him to remain at Paris, for, as he said to Marmont: "When the house is crumbling, is it the time to busy oneself with the garden? A change here is indispensable."

The sudden rise of Bonaparte to supreme power cannot be understood without some reference to the state of French politics in the months preceding his return to France. The position of parties had been strangely complicated by the unpopularity of the Directors. Despite their illegal devices, the elections of 1798 and 1799 for the renewal of a third part of the legislative Councils had signally strengthened the anti-directorial ranks. Among the Opposition were some royalists, a large number of const.i.tutionals, whether of the Feuillant or Girondin type, and many deputies, who either vaunted the name of Jacobins or veiled their advanced opinions under the convenient appellation of "patriots." Many of the deputies were young, impressionable, and likely to follow any able leader who promised to heal the schisms of the country. In fact, the old party lines were being effaced. The champions of the const.i.tution of 1795 (Year III.) saw no better means of defending it than by violating electoral liberties--always in the sacred name of Liberty; and the Directory, while professing to hold the balance between the extreme parties, repressed them by turns with a vigour which rendered them popular and official moderation odious.

In this general confusion and apathy the dearth of statesmen was painfully conspicuous. Only true grandeur of character can defy the withering influences of an age of disillusionment; and France had for a time to rely upon Sieyes. Perhaps no man has built up a reputation for political capacity on performances so slight as the Abbe Sieyes.

In the States General of 1789 he speedily acquired renown for oracular wisdom, owing to the brevity and wit of his remarks in an a.s.sembly where such virtues were rare. But the course of the Revolution soon showed the barrenness of his mind and the timidity of his character.

He therefore failed to exert any lasting influence upon events. In the time of the Terror his insignificance was his refuge. His witty reply to an inquiry how he had then fared--"J'ai vecu "--sufficiently characterizes the man. In the Directorial period he displayed more activity. He was sent as French amba.s.sador to Berlin, and plumed himself on having persuaded that Court to a neutrality favourable to France. But it is clear that the neutrality of Prussia was the outcome of selfish considerations. While Austria tried the hazards of war, her northern rival husbanded her resources, strengthened her position as the protectress of Northern Germany, and dextrously sought to attract the nebula of middle German States into her own sphere of influence.

From his task of tilting a balance which was already decided, Sieyes was recalled to Paris in May, 1799, by the news of his election to the place in the Directory vacated by Rewbell. The other Directors had striven, but in vain, to prevent his election: they knew well that this impracticable theorist would speedily paralyze the Government; for, when previously elected Director in 1795, he had refused to serve, on the ground that the const.i.tution was thoroughly bad. He now declared his hostility to the Directory, and looked around for some complaisant military chief who should act as his tool and then be cast away. His first choice, Joubert, was killed at the battle of Novi. Moreau seems then to have been looked on with favour; he was a republican, able in warfare and singularly devoid of skill or ambition in political matters. Relying on Moreau, Sieyes continued his intrigues, and after some preliminary fencing gained over to his side the Director Barras. But if we may believe the a.s.sertions of the royalist, Hyde de Neuville, Barras was also receiving the advances of the royalists with a view to a restoration of Louis XVIII., an event which was then quite within the bounds of probability. For the present, however, Barras favoured the plans of Sieyes, and helped him to get rid of the firmly republican Directors, La Reveilliere-Lepeaux and Merlin, who were deposed (30th Prairial).[125]

The new Directors were Gohier, Roger Ducos, and Moulin; the first, an elderly respectable advocate; the second, a Girondin by early a.s.sociations, but a trimmer by instinct, and therefore easily gained over by Sieyes; while the recommendation of the third, Moulin, seem to have been his political nullity and some third-rate military services in the Vendean war. Yet the Directory of Prairial was not devoid of a spasmodic energy, which served to throw back the invaders of France.

Bernadotte, the fiery Gascon, remarkable for his ardent gaze, his encircling ma.s.ses of coal-black hair, and the dash of Moorish blood which ever aroused Bonaparte's respectful apprehensions, was Minister of War, and speedily formed a new army of 100,000 men: Lindet undertook to re-establish the finances by means of progressive taxes: the Chouan movement in the northern and western departments was repressed by a law legalising the seizure of hostages; and there seemed some hope that France would roll back the tide of invasion, keep her "natural frontiers," and return to normal methods of government.

Such was the position of affairs when Bonaparte's arrival inspired France with joy and the Directory with ill-concealed dread. As in 1795, so now in 1799, he appeared at Paris when French political life was in a stage of transition. If ever the Napoleonic star shone auspiciously, it was in the months when he threaded his path between Nelson's cruisers and cut athwart the maze of Sieyes' intrigues. To the philosopher's "J'ai vecu" he could oppose the crus.h.i.+ng retort "J'ai vaincu."

The general, on meeting the thinker at Gohier's house, studiously ignored him. In truth, he was at first disposed to oust both Sieyes and Barras from the Directory. The latter of these men was odious to him for reasons both private and public. In time past he had had good reasons for suspecting Josephine's relations with the voluptuous Director, and with the men whom she met at his house. During the Egyptian campaign his jealousy had been fiercely roused in another quarter, and, as we have seen, led to an almost open breach with his wife. But against Barras he still harboured strong suspicions; and the frequency of his visits to the Director's house after returning from Egypt was doubtless due to his desire to sound the depths of his private as well as of his public immorality. If we may credit the _embarras de mensonges_ which has been dignified by the name of Barras' "Memoirs," Josephine once fled to his house and flung herself at his knees, begging to be taken away from her husband; but the story is exploded by the moral which the relator clumsily tacks on, as to the good advice which he gave her.[126] While Bonaparte seems to have found no grounds for suspecting Barras on this score, he yet discovered his intrigues with various malcontents; and he saw that Barras, holding the balance of power in the Directory between the opposing pairs of colleagues, was intriguing to get the highest possible price for the betrayal of the Directory and of the const.i.tution of 1795.

For Sieyes the general felt dislike but respect. He soon saw the advantage of an alliance with so learned a thinker, so skilful an intriguer, and so weak a man. It was, indeed, necessary; for, after making vain overtures to Gohier for the alteration of the law which excluded from the Directory men of less than forty years of age, the general needed the alliance of Sieyes for the overthrow of the const.i.tution. In a short s.p.a.ce he gathered around him the malcontents whom the frequent crises had deprived of office, Roederer, Admiral Bruix, Real, Cambaceres, and, above all, Talleyrand. The last-named; already known for his skill in diplomacy, had special reasons for favouring the alliance of Bonaparte and Sieyes: he had been dismissed from the Foreign Office in the previous month of July because in his hands it had proved to be too lucrative to the holder and too expensive for France. It was an open secret that, when American commissioners arrived in Paris a short time previously, for the settlement of various disputes between the two countries, they found that the negotiations would not progress until 250,000 dollars had changed hands. The result was that hostilities continued, and that Talleyrand soon found himself deprived of office, until another turn of the revolutionary kaleidoscope should restore him to his coveted place.[127] He discerned in the Bonaparte-Sieyes combination the force that would give the requisite tilt now that Moreau gave up politics.

The army and most of the generals were also ready for some change, only Bernadotte and Jourdan refusing to listen to the new proposals; and the former of these came "with sufficiently bad grace" to join Bonaparte at the time of action. The police was secured through that dextrous trimmer, the regicide Fouche, who now turned against the very men who had recently appointed him to office. Feeling sure of the soldiery and police, the innovators fixed the 18th of Brumaire as the date of their enterprise. There were many conferences at the houses of the conspirators; and one of the few vivid touches which relieve the dull tones of the Talleyrand "Memoirs" reveals the consciousness of these men that they were conspirators. Late on a night in the middle of Brumaire, Bonaparte came to Talleyrand's house to arrange details of the _coup d'etat,_ when the noise of carriages stopping outside caused them to pale with fear that their plans were discovered. At once the diplomatist blew out the lights and hurried to the balcony, when he found that their fright was due merely to an accident to the carriages of the revellers and gamesters returning from the Palais Royal, which were guarded by gendarmes. The incident closed with laughter and jests; but it ill.u.s.trates the tension of the nerves of the political gamesters, as also the mental weakness of Bonaparte when confronted by some unknown danger. It was perhaps the only weak point in his intellectual armour; but it was to be found out at certain crises of his career.

Meanwhile in the legislative Councils there was a feeling of vague disquiet. The Ancients were, on the whole, hostile to the Directory, but in the Council of Five Hundred the democratic ardour of the younger deputies foreboded a fierce opposition. Yet there also the plotters found many adherents, who followed the lead now cautiously given by Lucien Bonaparte. This young man, whose impa.s.sioned speeches had marked him out as an irreproachable patriot, was now President of that Council. No event could have been more auspicious for the conspirators. With Sieyes, Barras, and Ducos, as traitors in the Directory, with the Ancients favourable, and the junior deputies under the presidency of Lucien, the plot seemed sure of success.

The first important step was taken by the Council of Ancients, who decreed the transference of the sessions of the Councils to St. Cloud.

The danger of a Jacobin plot was urged as a plea for this motion, which was declared carried without the knowledge either of the Directory as a whole, or of the Five Hundred, whose opposition would have been vehement. The Ancients then appointed Bonaparte to command the armed forces in and near Paris. The next step was to insure the abdication of Gohier and Moulin. Seeking to entrap Gohier, then the President of the Directory, Josephine invited him to breakfast on the morning of 18th Brumaire; but Gohier, suspecting a snare, remained at his official residence, the Luxemburg Palace. None the less the Directory was doomed; for the two defenders of the inst.i.tution had not the necessary quorum for giving effect to their decrees. Moulin thereupon escaped, and Gohier was kept under guard--by Moreau's soldiery![128]

Meanwhile, accompanied by a brilliant group of generals, Bonaparte proceeded to the Tuileries, where the Ancients were sitting; and by indulging in a wordy declamation he avoided taking the oath to the const.i.tution required of a general on entering upon a new command. In the Council of Five Hundred, Lucien Bonaparte stopped the eager questions and murmurs, on the pretext that the session was only legal at St. Cloud.

There, on the next day (19th Brumaire or 10th November), a far more serious blow was to be struck. The overthrow of the Directory was a foregone conclusion. But with the Legislature it was far otherwise, for its life was still whole and vigorous. Yet, while amputating a moribund limb, the plotters did not scruple to paralyze the brain of the body politic.

Despite the adhesion of most of the Ancients to his plans, Bonaparte, on appearing before them, could only utter a succession of short, jerky phrases which smacked of the barracks rather than of the Senate.

Retiring in some confusion, he regains his presence of mind among the soldiers outside, and enters the hall of the Five Hundred, intending to intimidate them not only by threats, but by armed force. At the sight of the uniforms at the door, the republican enthusiasm of the younger deputies catches fire. They fiercely a.s.sail him with cries of "Down with the tyrant! down with the Dictator! outlaw him!" In vain Lucien Bonaparte commands order. Several deputies rush at the general, and fiercely shake him by the collar. He turns faint with excitement and chagrin; but Lefebvre and a few grenadiers rus.h.i.+ng up drag him from the hall. He comes forth like a somnambulist (says an onlooker), pursued by the terrible cry, "Hors la loi!" Had the cries at once taken form in a decree, the history of the world might have been different. One of the deputies, General Augereau, fiercely demands that the motion of outlawry be put to the vote. Lucien Bonaparte refuses, protests, weeps, finally throws off his official robes, and is rescued from the enraged deputies by grenadiers whom the conspirators send in for this purpose. Meanwhile Bonaparte and his friends were hastily deliberating, when one of their number brought the news that the deputies had declared the general an outlaw. The news chased the blood from his cheek, until Sieyes, whose _sang froid_ did not desert him in these civilian broils, exclaims, "Since they outlaw you, they are outlaws." This revolutionary logic recalls Bonaparte to himself. He shouts, "To arms!" Lucien, too, mounting a horse, appeals to the soldiers to free the Council from the menaces of some deputies armed with daggers, and in the pay of England, who are terrorising the majority. The shouts of command, clinched by the adroit reference to daggers and English gold, cause the troops to waver in their duty; and Lucien, pressing his advantage to the utmost, draws a sword, and, holding it towards his brother, exclaims that he will stab him if ever he attempts anything against liberty. Murat, Leclerc, and other generals enforce this melodramatic appeal by shouts for Bonaparte, which the troops excitedly take up. The drums sound for an advance, and the troops forthwith enter the hall. In vain the deputies raise the shout, "Vive la Republique," and invoke the const.i.tution. Appeals to the law are overpowered by the drum and by shouts for Bonaparte; and the legislators of France fly pell-mell from the hall through doors and windows.[129]

Thus was fulfilled the prophecy which eight years previously Burke had made in his immortal work on the French Revolution. That great thinker had predicted that French liberty would fall a victim to the first great general who drew the eyes of all men upon himself. "The moment in which that event shall happen, the person who really commands the army is your master, the master of your king, the master of your a.s.sembly, the master of your whole republic."

Discussions about the _coup d'etat_ of Brumaire generally confuse the issue at stake by ignoring the difference between the overthrow of the Directory and that of the Legislature. The collapse of the Directory was certain to take place; but few expected that the Legislature of France would likewise vanish. For vanish it did: not for nearly half a century had France another free and truly democratic representative a.s.sembly. This result of Brumaire was unexpected by several of the men who plotted the overthrow of unpopular Directors, and hoped for the nipping of Jacobinical or royalist designs. Indeed, no event in French history is more astonis.h.i.+ng than the dispersal of the republican deputies, most of whom desired a change of _personnel_ but not a revolution in methods of government. Until a few days previously the Councils had the allegiance of the populace and of the soldiers; the troops at St. Cloud were loyal to the const.i.tution, and respected the persons of the deputies until they were deluded by Lucien. For a few minutes the fate of France trembled in the balance; and the conspirators knew it.[130] Bonaparte confessed it by his incoherent gaspings; Sieyes had his carriage ready, with six horses, for flight; the terrible cry, "Hors la loi!" if raised against Bonaparte in the heart of Paris, would certainly have roused the populace to fury in the cause of liberty and have swept the conspirators to the guillotine. But, as it was, the affair was decided in the solitudes of St. Cloud by Lucien and a battalion of soldiers.

Efforts have frequently been made to represent the events of Brumaire as inevitable and to dovetail them in with a pretended philosophy of history. But it is impossible to study them closely without observing how narrow was the margin between the success and failure of the plot, and how jagged was the edge of an affair which philosophizers seek to fit in with their symmetrical explanations. In truth, no event of world-wide importance was ever decided by circ.u.mstances so trifling.

"There is but one step from triumph to a fall. I have seen that in the greatest affairs a little thing has always decided important events"--so wrote Bonaparte three years before his triumph at St.

Cloud: he might have written it of that event. It is equally questionable whether it can be regarded as saving France from anarchy.

His admirers, it is true, have striven to depict France as trodden down by invaders, dissolved by anarchy, and saved only by the stroke of Brumaire. But she was already triumphant: it was quite possible that she would peacefully adjust her governmental difficulties: they were certainly no greater than they had been in and since the year 1797: Fouche had closed the club of the Jacobins: the Councils had recovered their rightful influence, and, but for the plotters of Brumaire, might have effected a return to ordinary government of the type of 1795-7. This was the real blow; that the vigorous trunk, the Legislature, was struck down along with the withering Directorial branch.

The friends of liberty might well be dismayed when they saw how tamely France accepted this astounding stroke. Some allowance was naturally to be made, at first, for the popular apathy: the Jacobins, already discouraged by past repression, were partly dazed by the suddenness of the blow, and were also ignorant of the aims of the men who dealt it; and while they were waiting to see the import of events, power pa.s.sed rapidly into the hands of Bonaparte and his coadjutors. Such is an explanation, in part at least, of the strange docility now shown by a populace which still vaunted its loyalty to the democratic republic.

But there is another explanation, which goes far deeper. The revolutionary strifes had wearied the brain of France and had predisposed it to accept accomplished facts. Distracted by the talk about royalist plots and Jacobin plots, cowering away from the white ogre and the red spectre, the more credulous part of the populace was fain to take shelter under the cloak of a great soldier, who at least promised order. Everything favoured the drill-sergeant theory of government. The instincts developed by a thousand years of monarchy had not been rooted out in the last decade. They now prompted France to rally round her able man; and, abandoning political liberty as a hopeless quest, she obeyed the imperious call which promised to revivify the order and brilliance of her old existence with the throbbing blood of her new life.

The French const.i.tution was now to be reconstructed by a self-appointed commission which sat with closed doors. This strange ending to all the const.i.tution-building of a decade was due to the adroitness of Lucien Bonaparte. At the close of that eventful day, the 19th of Brumaire, he gathered about him in the deserted hall at St.

Cloud some score or so of the dispersed deputies known to be favourable to his brother, declaimed against the Jacobins, whose spectral plot had proved so useful to the real plotters, and proposed to this "Rump" of the Council the formation of a commission who should report on measures that were deemed necessary for the public safety.

The measures were found to be the deposition of the Directory, the expulsion of sixty-one members from the Councils, the nomination of Sieyes, Roger Ducos, and Bonaparte as provisional Consuls and the adjournment of the Councils for four months. The Consuls accordingly took up their residence in the Luxemburg Palace, just vacated by the Directors, and the drafting of a const.i.tution was confided to them and to an _interim_ commission of fifty members chosen equally from the two Councils.

The illegality of these devices was hidden beneath a cloak of politic clemency. To this commission the Consuls, or rather Bonaparte--for his will soon dominated that of Sieyes--proposed two most salutary changes. He desired to put an end to the seizure of hostages from villages suspected of royalism; and also to the exaction of taxes levied on a progressive scale, which hara.s.sed the wealthy without proportionately benefiting the exchequer. These two expedients, adopted by the Directory in the summer of 1799, were temporary measures adopted to stem the tide of invasion and to crush revolts; but they were regarded as signs of a permanently terrorist policy, and their removal greatly strengthened the new consular rule. The blunder of nearly all the revolutionary governments had been in continuing severe laws after the need for them had ceased to be pressing.

Bonaparte, with infinite tact, discerned this truth, and, as will shortly appear, set himself to found his government on the support of that vast neutral ma.s.s which was neither royalist nor Jacobin, which hated the severities of the reds no less than the abuses of the _ancien regime_.

While Bonaparte was conciliating the many, Sieyes was striving to body forth the const.i.tution which for many years had been nebulously floating in his brain. The function of the Socratic [Greek: maieutaes]

was discharged by Boulay de la Meurthe, who with difficulty reduced those ideas to definite shape. The new const.i.tution was based on the principle: "Confidence comes from below, power from above." This meant that the people, that is, all adult males, were admitted only to the preliminary stages of election of deputies, while the final act of selection was to be made by higher grades or powers. The "confidence"

required of the people was to be shown not only towards their nominees, but towards those who were charged with the final and most important act of selection. The winnowing processes in the election of representatives were to be carried out on a decimal system. The adult voters meeting in their several districts were to choose one-tenth of their number, this tenth being named the Notabilities of the Commune.

These, some five or six hundred thousand in number, meeting in their several Departments, were thereupon to choose one-tenth of their number; and the resulting fifty or sixty thousand men, termed Notabilities of the Departments, were again to name one-tenth of their number, who were styled Notabilities of the Nation. But the most important act of selection was still to come--from above. From this last-named list the governing powers were to select the members of the legislative bodies and the chief officials and servants of the Government.

The executive now claims a brief notice. The well-worn theory of the distinction of powers, that is, the legislative and executive powers, was maintained in Sieyes' plan. At the head of the Government the philosopher desired to enthrone an august personage, the Grand Elector, who was to be selected by the Senate. This Grand Elector was to nominate two Consuls, one for peace, the other for war; they were to nominate the Ministers of State, who in their turn selected the agents of power from the list of Notabilities of the Nation. The two Consuls and their Ministers administered the executive affairs. The Senate, sitting in dignified ease, was merely to safeguard the const.i.tution, to elect the Grand Elector, and to select the members of the _Corps Legislatif_ (proper) and the Tribunate.

Distrust of the former almost superhuman activity in law-making now appeared in divisions, checks, and balances quite ingenious in their complexity. The Legislature was divided into three councils: the _Corps Legislatif_, properly so called, which listened in silence to proposals of laws offered by the Council of State and criticised or orally approved by the Tribunate.[131] These three bodies were not only divided, but were placed in opposition, especially the two talking bodies, which resembled plaintiff and defendant pleading before a gagged judge. But even so the const.i.tution was not sufficiently guarded against Jacobins or royalists. If by any chance a dangerous proposal were forced through these mutually distrustful bodies, the Senate was charged with the task of vetoing it, and if the Grand Elector, or any other high official, strove to gain a perpetual dictators.h.i.+p, the Senate was at once to _absorb_ him into its ranks.